Liberals Finding Their Voice in Blogs

It seems there's a rule out there that says it's impossible to please all the people all the time. I have to admit one of my character flaws is thinking that from time to time I can break that rule. I'm a liberal Democrat but given the extraordinary problems presented by Bush's presidency, I find myself reaching out to moderates and rational conservatives who are increasingly uneasy about Bush because I believe it is critical to do so.

Although I'm a liberal, I'm also a pragmatist and I know it's a simple fact that liberals, by themselves, cannot hold Bush accountable and check his abuse of office. I also know that many professionals in government are conservative and if not for them, there's a lot about Bush's transgressions we would not know.

But I also don't want to lose sight of some new and interesting voices out there that are liberal who are talking not just about how liberals can regain their voices but how ordinary people across America can also regain their voices regardless of what their politics are. The (liberal) Girl Next Door talks about some of this and may be an interesting voice herself even if sometimes she gets a little too caught up with what she's saying (it's easy for honest passion to do that to people; I know, I've done it myself). Here's one recent paragraph that caught my attention:

If sunlight is the best disinfectant, we can only assume that the Bush White House is one dirty place. They continually promote the idea that if citizens don’t have anything to hide, they shouldn’t be concerned with NSA, Pentagon or FBI spying and infringements on our right to privacy, but what about them? The more they hide, the more we question their motives for doing so. Transparency in government is as essential to democracy as the freedoms laid out in the Bill of Rights. When we are asked to give up those things, we are being asked to give up on our democracy. What does it say about us that we are even willing to consider surrendering any of them?

In another post, The (liberal) Girl Next Door writes about the marketplace of ideas:

The need for leaders to carry the message of liberals in this country has reached its pinnacle, but who those leaders will be is yet to be determined. There is a democracy of ideas that is growing on the net, with so many lefty bloggers putting out new ideas and the readers of the blogs who give right back. It is a marketplace that is growing every day and the products being sold are hope, ideas and an opportunity to have your opinion heard. It can’t be long before some smart upstart is able to capitalize on the vitality and passion that is ripe for the picking and free to whomever chooses to harvest the best ideas and whittle them down into a cohesive platform with populist appeal.

(snip)

Politics is not merely a numbers game. While it is important to know the numbers and to know where the best chances of winning are, it is more important to appeal to the voters in every district of this country. Calculating exactly what position they should take on any given issue based on the number of votes gained by that position is hallow politics plain and simple. Inside the beltway politicians, lobbyists, staffers and the reporters who cover them for the mainstream media may be getting bent out of shape by liberal bloggers who are changing the rules of the game, but they better adapt to the new political landscape or risk being left behind.

Lefty bloggers are making elections more about the process and the people and less about the strategy that has been traditionally hatched by the party elite. Where the message of candidates used to be tightly controlled and beltway reporters were the only avenue for getting the message out, the lefty bloggers have changed the face of politics and it is beginning to resemble democracy again. When individual bloggers can promote primary candidates that would, in the past, have been easily relegated to nearly anonymous status, the voters have more information at their fingertips and this tips the balance away from the traditional power holders. Easy to see why there’s so much resistance to the new political system but hard to see how this is bad for the Party or bad for democracy.

A true marketplace of ideas is something that is under threat in America whether it's science, business, art, philosophy or politics; it's forgotten that respect for a marketplace of ideas is what led to many of America's great ideas, discoveries, inventions and even economic vitality. It's never been an ideal system but liberalism and the Bill of Rights came out of that marketplace as well. As flawed as our history has sometimes been, America has given a lot of great ideas to the world. A written constitution was one of those ideas.

I didn't agree with a lot of the politics of the first President Bush, but I agree with many people that he was considerably more competent and mindful of the law than the current President Bush. And yet, let me mention one small story. I remember years ago reading a small article in the back pages of a newspaper about an interview the senior George Bush gave to a magazine with a small circulation. When the senior Bush admitted that he tended to stretch the truth in a nationally televised debate, he said he was perfectly comfortable telling the magazine that information since the magazine only had a circulation of 50,000 and hardly anyone was going to read what he said in the interview. He said when talking to a large audience of millions, the goal was not to tell the exact truth, but to win. His campaign manager was Lee Atwater who perfected that advice; two of his pupils were Karl Rove and George W. Bush.

But the Internet may be changing the rules of the game. Hopefully, the Internet will survive. If it does, perhaps our democracy will survive.