The Bulletpoint Blog

Moderation? Leverage = force times distance.

I just found this post on DemocraticUnderground. It is excellent.

Republicans have been telling me for a couple of months now that Democrats need to move to the right on issues or risk becoming irrelevant.

Hogwash.

Our DLC-type leadership are sellouts. I am disgusted with them. They not only helped the person most responsible with protecting us from 9-11 obtain her new job speaking for us on the international stage, they also supported Alberto Gonzales, the man who wrote an official policy of torture and gave incomplete legal advice to then-governor Bush in life-or-death decisions. It is not at all unlikely that he is singly responsible for the execution of innocents and torture on a systematic scale.

What does it take?

I can excuse elected officials for acting in an unprincipled, pragmatic fashion, when it serves a bigger purpose. I can't excuse them for acting in an unprincipled fashion when it undermines the bigger purpose. If Democrats retake power, our swirling circuits around the porcelain bowl can be arrested. However, our Democratic leaders are acting as if they are enjoying the ride.

To retake power, our elected officials need to speak with conviction about principles that are supposed to guide america, and particularly the Democratic party.

I am very hopeful that Dean can help to drive the national dialogue in such a way that the power of truth, applied at enough ideological distance from the current meme that the public begins to question the issues that the press hasn't the courage to tackle.

• Moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue
• The ends may justify the means, but the absence of a virtuous end does not.
• Moving the dialog back from the right wing fringe will require a bold approach, not a marginal one, and applied at an ideological distance.

posted by Lumberjack @ 7:25 PM