One thing I didn’t understand about the 2000 election – among a million other things – was how Al Gore’s campaign never managed to say the one thing that should have persuaded the most voters, namely: “what part of eight years of peace and prosperity didn’t you like?” Arguably, he wanted to stay away from invoking the unsavory elements of Bill Clinton’s reign, but this was potentially a fatal miscalculation. Ahhh, anyways, hindsight is 20/20.
Moving on. Why isn’t the picture to the right in every single general election centered ad run by the Democratic party? George W. Bush has the highest disapproval rating in the history of the Gallup poll. And he and John McCain agree on a lot of the issues. After all, McCain is running on a platform that supports a war opposed by a supermajority of Americans, a war started by Bush. The ads write themselves: “George Bush got us into this war, and John McCain will keep us there.”
McCain currently describes himself as a maverick, potentially distancing him from Bush, but it’s our fault if we let him keep that label. It seems almost too obvious to point this out, but the Democrats need to do a better job equating John McCain with George W. Bush. If the nomination battle isn’t over yet, perhaps, at least, the Democrats could start a coordinated spin effort.
Among other things, the failure of Democratic & progressive politicians in recent years to command a majority of Americans may be due to a serious overreach of the previous generations. Modern Americans owe many of our most treasured political victories to earlier generations of liberals, who secured victories including equal rights for women, equal rights for all races, the near-end of subjective morality as a guide for federal legislation, and more. But it’s possible that we went too far, and now we’re paying for the consequences. Whatever the cause, the thesis of Hannah Rosin’s fascinating book (pictured to the left) is that America is about to face – or, is facing – a backlash from zealous, committed, and politically active fundamentalist Christian culture warriors. This, in itself, isn’t shocking, but her in-depth study of this influential & growing subculture is fascinating.
More important than her description of the subculture, though, is the lesson that we as progressives ought to draw from the book. While fundamentalist Christian children are training for the next political fight, going into politics or seeking out politically influential legal careers, they’re being met by a dearth of progressive political resistance, a fractured Democratic party, and in general, a new generation of progressives who take our past victories for granted, ignoring that their ideals may soon be under greater attack than ever.
Read the book. Understand the new face of Christian culture warriors, be alarmed, and resolve to fight back. Given the failures of the Bush years, it’s our turn to shine again, if we’re willing to seize it. We can’t afford to let American values like rationalism, equal justice, and social progress slip away any further.
If you’ve been following the movie Expelled, you’ll know what I think of it. Well, we may not need to worry about it any more. Premise Media, the company which produced Expelled, is being sued by Yoko Ono for appropriating her husband’s song, Imagine. I heard about this a while ago – it started when the Huffington Post, concluding that the use must have been authorized, blasted Ono for supporting Ben Stein’s pseudoscience documentary. This (erroneous) post drew her ire, and ultimately led to her filing this lawsuit to preserve her from being publicly identified with the film.
Now, lawsuits happen, and their mere filing is no guarantee of the filing party’s victory, especially in a copyright case where the infringing use constitutes only ten seconds or so. But a recent e-mail I received from Stein (I signed up for his newsletter for precisely this reason) seemed almost plaintive in urging me to see the movie, and see it now.
If you haven’t done so already, PLEASE SEE EXPELLED NOW; its future relies on you. Without strong support from leaders like you, EXPELLED could get tossed from the theaters. PLEASE get out to SEE EXPELLED THIS WEEK. Ben is risking his career by taking on the world’s leading atheists, and he can’t do it alone – he needs your support.
Apparently Stein is running scared. So let’s accept his challenge: go see Expelled while you still can, but theater-hop to avoid paying him. Or, donate the price of the ticket to the National Center for Science Education.
