Unemployment

[kandrathe]

Being able to accurately tell black from white, rather than squint it all into a blurry shade of anti-libertarian grey, is not myopia. It's common sense.

The progressiveness of the Iraq war is found in the liberation of the women, and the exporting of democracy (our brand), and that mind set that we did this for the Iraqi people and they should be grateful. You are correct that the war in Iraq, if it were rooting out terrorism, or dismantling the WOMD, would have been in our national interest. But, was it really in our national interest? Would Bush (or Republicans) give a speech against tobacco? No. Did he(they) support, or sign any legislation against tobacco? Yes. Progressives very rarely step up during the campaign and say, "I want to raise your taxes, and impinge on your liberties!" Mondale tried that in his bid against Reagan. Again, I'm surprised you don't see this. The rush to the middle of George HW Bush, the compassionate conservative, a thousand points of light, are all symptoms of the Republicans appealing to the dominance of Democrats social justice platform. For the Republicans after Reagan, it was not about principles, it was about winning elections and holding power. This is why we have the Tea Party movement and people marching in the streets. Neither party represents those people. And... if the two parties philosophies were not so commingled and homogenized, how might an Arlan Specter just decide to change from being a Republican to being Democrat? His belief system remained unchanged and was embraced by both parties.

The heart of progressiveness is egalitarianism by force, by laws and regulations or literally the point of a gun as we saw in Iraq.

Edit: I'd throw in a heavy dose of elitism as well. The debate for progressive change starts with assuming people are too stupid to do the right thing, and so we must force them to change for their own good.