Tuesday, January 14, 2014

Someone Tells Me I'm Not a Leftist

I'm getting tired of people who tell me I'm not on the left when they're far more to the right than I am.  It's often on the basis of being a political realist, knowing that passing better laws to make the lives of real people really better, of protecting the biosphere on which we all depend is infinitely better than striking what is taken by superficial people as a striking pose, gaining their esteem for the one who shows he's the most left in the room.  Or, in these paranoid, isolated, lazy, dysfunctional times, on the comment thread.

Let's put my leftist bona fides  to the test:

Support the right of workers to the ownership of the means of production?  Yes.
Support their right to be able to pay off, once and for all, all investments with a reasonable rate of interest AND THAT LENDING MONEY GIVES NO LEGITIMATE RIGHT OF OWNERSHIP OF THE MEANS OF PRODUCTION? Yes.
Support a universal living wage?   Yes.
Support a limit on the upper end of income?  Yes.
Support the right to organize by all workers?  Yes.
Support full rights to paid absence for birth (two years) to care for loved ones, etc. Yes.
Support the right of people to be protected against discrimination and sexual harassment on the job and outside of it?  Yes.
Support single-payer universal healthcare?  Yes.
Including dental, eye care, and all parts of the body?  Yes.
Support the right to excellent universal public education up to and including university level?  Yes.
Support the right of self-determination of all adults in so far as their own body is concerned?  Yes'
Support the legalization of marijuana and other low-risk drugs?  Yes.
Support affirmative action and its extension to LGBT folks?  Yes.
Support the right of women to choose whether to terminate a pregnancy?  Yes.
Support the right to full and accurate contraceptive information and methods?  Yes.
Support the proposition that all partners in sex have a moral obligation to prevent pregnancy and disease?   Yes.

This could go on and on.  But notice that last one, it carries another reason that the charge is made against people on the real left.   Being a real liberal, being a real leftist goes far, far beyond merely putting requirements on government to provide for the common good, IT ALSO ACKNOWLEDGES AN OBLIGATION FOR INDIVIDUALS TO DO THE SAME.   That personal obligation part is what is generally missing from pseudo-liberalism,  so many are not so big on that part of it.  But it is essential, most of what happens to people, to other sentient beings, to the environment isn't done to them by governments, it's done to them by individuals and groups of people.   People who don't accept that obligation will not produce any kind of left that will make life better, they will produce a moral atrocity that discredits the left.  They will produce a dismal, nasty result as certainly as the right will.  

When Bill Clinton told the assembled and glittering crowd at one of his fundraisers that he wanted Hollywood to help him create the new American culture I cringed.  There is probably no worse group to turn to if creating an American culture is going to be democratic, decent and sustainable.  Lots of Hollywood hacks, directors, producers and actors have what are taken a liberal stands, most of them actually libertarian.   But just look at the cynical dystopian view of life that they promote when they have those liberties to produce what they choose to.   Just as an aside, the cheap imitation of profundity that cynicism has been sold as, an ongoing thing since the later decades of the 19th century, has gotten old.  Only it began decayed so no one ever noticed.   There is no surer sign of a hack without anything to say and limited abilities to say it than cynicism.   Cynics are the crappiest leftists.  They don't want to believe things can get better because that might mean some work has to be done.

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