Democracy Continuum

Normally, I wouldn't post a comment from a stranger on another blog, but this one was just too money to pass up. The comment, by sbj, is in reference to a post by Armando about David Brook's latest column and Jim McDermott's call for the Democrats to return to the idea of "the common good." The comment appears in full, with two commas slain and one hyphen born.

Brooks is pouring forth his predictable propaganda-based drivel, and, because he is, in the end, fundamentally clueless (i.e. "non-reality-based") in his thinking, he inadvertently manages, as Armando points out, to make a strong case against virtually every major element in the Bush regime agenda.

Jim McDermott makes a very good case for once again working for the common good. He says the Democratic Party has lost the idea of working for the common good, but of course the same can be said of the repubs too.

But working for the common good also means we need to understand we're on the same side. For me, I think we would be well served to understand that true liberals and true conservatives share the same continuum, a "Democracy Continuum," so to speak, where shared responsibility, participatory electoral power, separation of powers, putting the public interest and the national interest before partisan or personal interests; all these principles combine to make us stronger and better able to achieve the common good.

We (especially the true conservatives), need to understand that the extremist wingnuts who've hijacked the mantle of "conservative" to describe themselves, have nothing to do with conservatism at all. They are not simply "more conservative" conservatives, they are reactionaries, extremists of an entirely different political species. every time they use the word "conservative" to describe themselves, they insult and debase every legitimate conservative citizen and patriot in the country. These manias are not on our Democratic continuum, they're on a "Tyranny continuum," and tyranny is anti-democratic in every way.

Let's hope true conservatives begin to understand that they have far more in common with us liberal, patriotic Democrats than they do with the likes of Frist and DeLay and all those other wingnut blowhards who have absolutely no respect or regard for anyone who doesn't agree with them and follow their dictates. And let's hope that people of true faith likewise begin to recognize that the evangelical fascists who purport to lead them debase the essence of the very spirituality they profess to revere every time they open their mouths.

So, liberals and true conservatives, let's unite in the spirit of democracy to oppose and defeat the wingnut tyranny.