In the 1960s, when I cut my political teeth, a joke we told on ourselves almost became a cliché: Put 10 progressives in a room to discuss a topic, and you’ll get 13 points of view. We progressives just love to split hairs. The posts on practically every dKos thread provide electronic proof.
To outsiders, however, and I don’t mean merely the hard right, we often appear to be cut from the same cloth. There’s some truth to this. I’d be willing to bet a dKos T-shirt that if all the regulars here answered the libertarian-skewed
World’s Smallest Political Quiz, the overwhelming majority of Kossacks would wind up somewhere in the “left-liberal” box.
But that poll contains ten questions with no way to express nuance. It would take a hundred-point quiz to do us all justice. In the answers to those additional 90 questions can be found our differences and the places where we can learn the most from each other. Obviously, those differences include some of the determining factors in why we choose to make phone calls, walk precincts and vote for John Kerry, Howard Dean, Carol Moseley-Braun or None of the Above.
During the past week, courtesy of
Melanie, we’ve had some intense and intensely healthy discussions about religion and feminist critiques of political meme-ry.
These discussions have not, for the most part, been about hair-splitting differences. Rather the back and forth has run a good deal deeper than that. Viewed through a narrower political lens, such discussion can, I think, provide us with some hints on how to reach voters that Democrats haven’t been able to reach … or have lost to apathy or the GOP in the past 25 years.
With that in mind, I’m interested in hearing other Kossacks discuss
one key area in which they differ or feel they differ markedly from other progressives and/or Democrats. By this I don’t mean nitpicks. I mean big differences. Something that makes you feel like an
outsider among people with whom you usually agree.
I don’t mean to turn this thread into a place to argue the merits of the contrary positions any poster dares to admit. Nor to make this an opportunity to spew a bunch of “0” or “1” ratings. My idea here is simply to get a sense of where we differ, and what that means, if anything, to something all but a handful of us here
definitely agree on – getting Dubyanocchio out of the White House next year.
I’ll go first. (Deep breath) I’m way to the right on gun control. Well, not when I’m on a rightwing thread. For instance, I support the Brady Law. Waiting periods are good ideas. Also, I am not opposed to licensing handgun owners. However, I am dead set against the assault weapon ban. And I favor concealed-carry laws that permit any adult without a criminal or mental record not only to own a gun but also to carry it hidden on her or his person wherever he wants. (Not onto airplanes, of course, unlike the stance of some ultra-libertarians.)
As I said, this isn’t the place to argue the merits of a particular position. On subsequent threads, we can discuss whether I’m an idiot, or whether those who hold contrarian views on affirmative action, abortion, welfare reform, estate taxes, windmill subsidies, drug laws, euthanasia, et cetera, are idiots.
Here’s a poll sampling a
few potential areas of dispute: