I Am A Radical Dem Because I Believe In --- Liberalism

[TheMastersNemesis]

A living wage. Secure Employment
Strong & enforced labor laws. Due process in employment
Passing ERA Teacher tenure
Women's reproductive rights. Separation of church and state completely
Strong unions Secularism
Secure pensions Full reproductive rights for women.
Expanded Medicare Marriage equality
Expanded Social Security
Unversal health care for all.
Properly funded food stamps
Clean environment
Renewable energy
Punishing outsourcing
Fair taxation
A secure and fair safety net
Generally a second "economic bill of rights" with teeth.

Dems for the most part support these ideas, but they ware weak in aggressively championing them. As soon as they are threatened with being called radical they go silent or retreat. Or they offer compromises the give away the heart of the programs they support so they can be called BIPARTISAN.

[Thinkingabout]

1. K & R

Good post, these are long time Democrat ideas.

[Maedhros]

2. But none of that is Radical,

it's boilerplate Democratic ideology.

[TheMastersNemesis]

3. The Trouble Is Those Ideas Have Been Labeled Communist Marxist

You know the GOP sub meme is that all those ideas only help lazy blacks and hispanics.

[Doctor_J]

4. But the party apparatchiks, including the president, believe in none of them

Which is why it's hard for me to blame those who don't vote. Regardless of who we vote for next week, none of these will happen.

Keep the faith. Eventually we'll have our day and at that point it's going to really suck to be a repuke or a dino.

[MontyPow]

5. Because any D, that's why. Even Republican Ds.

I read it here all the time.

[KittyWampus]

6. You realize that "liberalism" is not that specific a term. In Europe it refers to

economic liberalism. Liberalism= unregulated or unrestrained.

[TheMastersNemesis]

7. I Realize That. I Am Using It As It Is Understood In US.

It is interesting that in Europe liberalism is equated with laissez faire.

[Half-Century Man]

8. I'd call your list of positions, Basic Democrat 101

To me radical is
Wealth cap (100 million; end of all American Billionaire)
Basic cable should be a $20.00 for 20 channels a month, customer's choice (each channels extra raises cost $1.00)
United States Post Office opens small banking functions (payday loans, reloadable debt cards, etc; operating at 5% profit margin)
Maximum inheritance amount set at 5 million dollars.
All forms of income taxed the same.
Criminalize offshore tax evasion.
Strict 501(c)4 adherence to laws as written.
De-militarized police to the point of Sergeant or higher to be allowed regular carry of firearms. The patrol cars of lower ranking officers are equipped with remote controlled weapons racks/lockers for extreme circumstances.
Decriminalization of Marijuana
Treating addiction as a medical condition, including protections for addicted employees.
Taxation of all religiously owned property that isn't a structure used exclusively as a place of non-broadcasted worship or a place of non-denominational charity.

[TheMastersNemesis]

9. Good Additions.

[Adrahil]

10. I agree with most of those points and would like to add:

Investment in national infrastructure.
Investment in basic scientific research (like 10x current levels)
An FDA review process by taxes on affect businesses rather than a fee for service model
Increase NASA funding (at least double)
Increase civil aviation investment (update our aging ATC system)
Net Neutrality
Move towards a guaranteed post secondary education

Liberalism needs to be about improving our prospects, not just holding the line on failures and abuses.

[LWolf]

11. You are the lunatic fringe,

because you're just not pragmatic.

[stillwaiting]

12. If they REALLY believed in these things they would not back down because...

... they would understand how important these things are to most people.

Too many elected Dems provide cover to Republicans and conservative economic ideas.

Your list is a fantastic list and those ideas are worthy of getting passionate about and fighting for. When they don't, I can't help but believe they don't really care about these values very much, but that they care much more about the financial considerations they WILL receive by not fighting too hard (or at all) for these things.

[dembotoz]

13. k and r me 2

[Bluenorthwest]

14. That's a load of seriously harmful horseshit you are pushing, straight man.

It is just a lie to say the President does not believe in reproductive choice or marriage equality. You are also saying that no matter what, there will not be choice? It is a current right we seek to protect. We will not have marriage equality? It's expanding to more States everyday. That ship is currently sailing, and Obama should be commended for speaking out for equality prior to the 2012 election, and for his continued support for our rights. I know where he stands.
Claiming supporters are not supporters, that Obama and all the other elected Democrats don't actually believe in choice or marriage equality in order to makes some vaguely anti participation point is not something I care for. I voted for Jeff Merkley, strong supporter of those and other listed issues, and for Peter DeFazio, member of the Progressive Caucus, constant supporter of those and other listed issues. I voted to legalize marijuana, raise property taxes for schools, to use tax money to fund a college financial aid a program that is pretty great, an Oregon ERA to put equal rights for women into the constitution, to allow driver's cards for undocumented Oregonians.....
Anyone who does not vote is a chump.

[Doctor_J]

15. Patently false

Liberalism= unregulated or unrestrained

This is a really, really bizarre claim. My guess is that you are thinking of libertarianism, which is a common misconception among the New Dems. Liberals believe in fair progressive taxes, strict environmental laws, regulations on businesses (anti-trust, anti-monopoly), federal minimum wage (another "regulation&quot , banking regulations, union rights, and so on. If you want to use liberal as a slur, at least get the definition correct.

[Doctor_J]

16. I stand corrected. Eventually the president supported marriage equality

(some time after Karl Rove declared it OK), and reproductive freedom. That still leaves about 10 crucial issues that the DC dems ignore or take the wrong side on. For many, those two issues are not enough to override the fact that the other 10 are not being addressed. I disagree with those who don't vote, but their dilemna is not hard to see.

[KittyWampus]

17. You need to study the origins of the word liberal AND Neo-Liberal and how both evolved politically

There is a reason for Europe using the term Neo-Liberal.

By the way, what does the phrase "apply salt liberally"? It means with a free hand.

Generally speaking-
If you are liberal socially, you want less government restrictions regarding social issues.
If you are liberal economically, you want less government restrictions regarding economic issues.

Word Origin and History for liberal

adj.
mid-14c., "generous," also, late 14c., "selfless; noble, nobly born; abundant," and, early 15c., in a bad sense "extravagant, unrestrained," from Old French liberal "befitting free men, noble, generous, willing, zealous" (12c.), from Latin liberalis "noble, gracious, munificent, generous," literally "of freedom, pertaining to or befitting a free man," from liber "free, unrestricted, unimpeded; unbridled, unchecked, licentious," fsnip

With the meaning "free from restraint in speech or action," liberal was used 16c.-17c. as a term of reproach. It revived in a positive sense in the Enlightenment, with a meaning "free from prejudice, tolerant," which emerged 1776-88.

In reference to education, explained by Fowler as "the education designed for a gentleman (Latin liber a free man) & ... opposed on the one hand to technical or professional or any special training, & on the other to education that stops short before manhood is reached" (cf. liberal arts ). Purely in reference to political opinion, "tending in favor of freedom and democracy" it dates from c.1801, from French libéral, originally applied in English by its opponents (often in French form and with suggestions of foreign lawlessness) to the party favorable to individual political freedoms. But also (especially in U.S. politics) tending to mean "favorable to government action to effect social change," which seems at times to draw more from the religious sense of "free from prejudice in favor of traditional opinions and established institutions" (and thus open to new ideas and plans of reform), which dates from 1823.

Neo-Liberalism
Originally neoliberalism was an economic philosophy that emerged among European liberal scholars in the 1930s attempting to trace a so-called ‘Third’ or ‘Middle Way’ between the conflicting philosophies of classical liberalism and collectivist central planning.[3] The impetus for this development arose from a desire to avoid repeating the economic failures of the early 1930s which was mostly blamed on economic policy of classical liberalism. In the decades that followed, neoliberal theory tended to be at variance with the more laissez-faire doctrine of classical liberalism and promoted instead a market economy under the guidance and rules of a strong state, a model which came to be known as the social market economy.

In the 1960s, usage of the term "neoliberal" heavily declined. When the term was reintroduced in the 1980s in connection with Augusto Pinochet’s economic reforms in Chile, the usage of the term had shifted. It had not only become a term with negative connotations employed principally by critics of market reform, but it also had shifted in meaning from a moderate form of liberalism to a more radical and laissez-faire capitalist set of ideas. Scholars now tended to associate it with the theories of economists Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman.[4] Once the new meaning of neoliberalism was established as a common usage among Spanish-speaking scholars, it diffused directly into the English-language study of political economy.[5]

Neoliberalism also represents a set of ideas that are famously associated with the economic policies introduced by Margaret Thatcher in the United Kingdom and Ronald Reagan in the United States.[1]

Today the term neoliberalism is mostly used as a general condemnation of economic liberalization policies and their advocates that support - under reference to neoclassical economic theory — for extensive economic liberalization, privatization, free trade, open markets, deregulation, and reductions in government spending in order to enhance the role of the private sector in the economy.

[alp227]

18. Yes, but how much should Democrats let themselves be defined by others?

I know it seems ill-liberal to be pushy/aggressive and "evangelical" unlike the right, but Politics 101 = standing up for something, is that correct?

Does the benefit of standing strong for values outweigh the RW noise machine? In the information age, the RW noise machine is far beyond talk radio and Fox News TV - look at the right wing YouTube videos that have 100k's of views. And shady "news" outfits like Breitbart and The Blaze. And the memes you see on the Right Wing Dad blog. This is what progressives have to stand up to. The right wing media complex has been empowered by the Internet.

[Skidmore]

19. This is just not helpful.

At all. Unless the goal is to label and divide. I don't know a single Dem who doesn't agree with the OPs list. And as for pragmatism, it is something we all need to use at various times in our lives because, no matter what our ideas, there is a need to function within our environments and with the people around us.

[hifiguy]

20. I could not agree more.

Bipartisanship is bullshit.

[Maedhros]

21. We shouldn't let the GOP control the narrative and thereby our platform.[n/t]