The War on Women, Gays, Blacks and Latinos
In courting in the 2012 political campaign's unabashedly the votes of women, gays, blacks and Latinos, is the Democratic Obama campaign team running the risk of modern demagoguery (think Huey Long and Joe McCarthy... where Webster's Dictionary defines demagoguery as the "strategy for gaining political power by appealing to the prejudices, emotions, fears, vanities, and expectations of the public?"
The Democratic Party 2012 electoral rallying cry to these voting blocks seems to be: if you vote Republican you will vote for a wholesale return to 1960's and and stultifying homophobia, racism, WASP ism and and sexism.
Is a it really reasonable to assume that America will ever go back to those dark days of prejudice and bigotry in racial and sexual matters, or re-create a society where women will no longer by working side by side with men in the workplace? Aren't those and other progressive and historically inevitable genies already out of the American bottle, never thankfully to be returned? Their re-closeting fears remind me of a Woody Allen joke of his fear of one day returning to the womb and never again seeing the light if day.
In over stressing the potential Republican reactionary ism concerning these hard won social victories, are Democrats perhaps running the risk echoing the father of modern Republican conservatism himself, Barry Goldwater, who famously said when running as the conservative presidential candidate in 1964--"I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice! And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue!" (And with that statement was viciously castigated by the left, by the way?)
Is the rallying cry of the Obama campaign 2012 running the risk of sounding all-too-similar in their defence of women, gays, blacks and Latinos to Barry Goldwater in 1964?: I paraphrase, of course, to make my ironic point: "I would remind you that extremism in the defense of the liberty of women, gays, blacks and Latinos is no vice! And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice in such matters is no virtue!"?? (And in so vigorous and unyielding a series of political positions running the risk of creating a defeating backlash similar to the one Goldwater created for himself in his moral certainty...an a similar defeat?
November will tell.
The Democratic Party 2012 electoral rallying cry to these voting blocks seems to be: if you vote Republican you will vote for a wholesale return to 1960's and and stultifying homophobia, racism, WASP ism and and sexism.
Is a it really reasonable to assume that America will ever go back to those dark days of prejudice and bigotry in racial and sexual matters, or re-create a society where women will no longer by working side by side with men in the workplace? Aren't those and other progressive and historically inevitable genies already out of the American bottle, never thankfully to be returned? Their re-closeting fears remind me of a Woody Allen joke of his fear of one day returning to the womb and never again seeing the light if day.
In over stressing the potential Republican reactionary ism concerning these hard won social victories, are Democrats perhaps running the risk echoing the father of modern Republican conservatism himself, Barry Goldwater, who famously said when running as the conservative presidential candidate in 1964--"I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice! And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue!" (And with that statement was viciously castigated by the left, by the way?)
Is the rallying cry of the Obama campaign 2012 running the risk of sounding all-too-similar in their defence of women, gays, blacks and Latinos to Barry Goldwater in 1964?: I paraphrase, of course, to make my ironic point: "I would remind you that extremism in the defense of the liberty of women, gays, blacks and Latinos is no vice! And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice in such matters is no virtue!"?? (And in so vigorous and unyielding a series of political positions running the risk of creating a defeating backlash similar to the one Goldwater created for himself in his moral certainty...an a similar defeat?
November will tell.
posted by Cliff Osmond at 1:51 AM
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