"Values" and Liberal Social Philosophy.

[ReaderSushi]

We believe in tolerance and they say it means an atmosphere where anything goes.
We beleive in diversity and they say we are nothing more than a loose coalition of factional interests.

Sure it's hard fighting the right wing noise machine but we are partially to blame. We need to be more assertive about things like these and when the right trys to reframe us in the worst light our people need to fight back, don't even dignify their ideas except to fight back. Look what Howard Dean did in the primaries: George Bush says he gave us "tax relief" and Dr. Dean responded it was a "tax shift". We need to start fighting like that. Don't let them demonize the word liberal anymore.

Too many liberals, at least those that I know try to present facts like a laundry list instead as a narrative. Look at what John Edwards did during the primaries. He didn't say healthcare was a right, he said he was concerned about the children who lacked medicines in the richest nation on earth.He need to be able to add an emotional level to our words that doesn't seem to be there.

One advantage we have now is that the media is making a big deal about the evangelical influence, that just has to scare the libertarian wing of the right. This is the time to fracture them. We disagree on economic policy but not social: "Live and let live" applies to our beliefs as well. Couch this in terms and ideas we share with them, equality of opportunity, freedom of consenting adults etc.

[RaleighNCDUer]

1. You're right. They are not a solid block, even if it appear that way.

They have wedge issues, if we can exploit them. Yes, the libertarians have reason to worry about the religious right. But shouldn't the religious right also worry about Sun Myung Moon, a man who thinks himself to be the 2nd coming of Christ. Why aren't they up in arms about this man's long standing relationship with the BFEE? The PNAC crowd want to, in their twisted way, spread democracy across the middle-east, and to protect Israel from the extremist Muslims who vow to destroy it. The millennialist/ Dominionist Christian Zionists want to preserve Israel only as the battleground of Armageddon, and care nothing for the Jewish people who are all damned because they rejected Jesus. Think Wolfowitz and Perle and Kristol are really happy with them?

If we can hammer on the internal inconsistencies between the factions, use them as wedge issues, we can take them down.

Where are our strategists?