[S]ingle issue groups have hijacked [the Democratic Party] for their pet causes. So suddenly, Democrats are the party of abortion, of gun control, of spottend [sic] owls, of labor, of trial lawyers, etc, etc., et-frickin'-cetera. We don't stand for any ideals, we stand for specific causes. We don't have a core philosophy, we have a list with boxes to check off....It seems to me that both parties make too much of the abortion issue. Both parties hold lots of attraction for voters who disagree with their position on abortion.
Problem is, abortion and choice aren't core principles of the Democratic Party. Rather, things like a Right to Privacy are. And from a Right to Privacy certain things flow -- abortion rights, access to contraceptives, opposition to the Patriot Act, and freedom to worship the gods of our own choosing, or none at all.
Another example of a core Democratic principle -- equality under the law. And from that principle stem civil rights, gender equity, and gay rights. It's not that those individual issues aren't important, of course they are. It's just that they are just that -- individual issues. A party has to stand for something bigger than the sum of its parts.
We have confused groups that are natural allies of the Democratic Party for the party itself. And the party has ceded way too much power, way too much control, to those single issue groups.
Personally, I like the idea of seeing privacy and equality as fundamental. Actually, I think both parties should accept these things as so fundamental that there is nothing to fight over. They ought to need to look elsewhere for issues.
ADDED: What strikes me about Kos's statement and made me want to quote it at length is that it would put libertarian values at the center of the Democratic Party. There are plenty of people with libertarian values who don't feel at home in either party. But if the Democratic Party really were committed to this more abstract ideology, it would have an entirely different feel. The reason I broke out the quote I chose for the title was because I don't believe it. I think the party begins with its politically useful defense of the right to abortion and that Kos's effort to derive a "core principle" is motivated more by the desire to make the abortion right more appealing than by an interest in understanding what motivates the party to try to distinguish itself with abortion-centered political activity.
UPDATE: I note that part of what Kos is saying here is nearly the same thing Howard Dean said on "Meet the Press" yesterday:
Here's the problem--and we were outmanipulated by the Republicans; there's no question about it. We have been forced into the idea of "We're going to defend abortion." I don't know anybody who thinks abortion is a good thing. I don't know anybody in either party who is pro-abortion. The issue is not whether we think abortion is a good thing. The issue is whether a woman has a right to make up her own mind about her health care, or a family has a right to make up their own mind about how their loved ones leave this world. I think the Republicans are intrusive and they invade people's personal privacy, and they don't have a right to do that....
But when you talk about framing this debate the way it ought to be framed, which is "Do you want Tom DeLay and the boys to make up your mind about this, or does a woman have a right to make up her own mind about what kind of health care she gets," then that pro-life woman says "Well, now, you know, I've had people try to make up my mind for me and I don't think that's right." This is an issue about who gets to make up their minds: the politicians or the individual. Democrats are for the individual. We believe in individual rights. We believe in personal freedom and personal responsibility. And that debate is one that we didn't win, because we kept being forced into the idea of defending the idea of abortion.
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I just read the piece by Kos and I think that there are at least two problems with it:
(1) He overestimates the extent to which the Republican Party is free of single-interest politics. Whether it's the gun lobby or more radical pro-life groups, the Republican Party is as captive to interests as the Democrats. Winning just makes it appear that the Republicans have more for which they stand and that they stand above the interest group-catering the Democrats do.
Watching Newt Gingrich's appearance before an Iowa group last week, broadcast on CSpan last evening, drove home the point that neither party is talking much about ideas that vault past interest groups' virtual veto power over public debate. Gingrich is talking about ideas and it's refreshing. Yes, I know that there are problems with Gingrich, that he too caters to groups, and that he just wants to ride ideas as vehicles to power. But to advance ideas and not be a political cliche is very rare among politicos of either party. Somehow, Gingrich seems to be content with practicing his politics in this way. (McCain and Hagel stand out examples of such exceptional pols as well.)
(2) Political parties always have knitted together majorities through what I call "coalitions of selfishness." Often, people who end up in a partisan coalition are akin to the lovers in Bob Seger's "Night Moves": "I used her and she used me." There's no love of party principle, just of advncing one's own agenda.
The game is simple: Tote up enough positions appealing to various interest groups and you get a majority. That's discouraging sometimes and often disgusting. But it's the way things work in a democracy. There have been few exceptions to this usual modus operandi in our history, it seems.
Good post!
I could not agree with Joe more.
Not only that, but Dean's comments especially indicate a misunderstanding of the pro-life position. Most pro-lifers I know aren't pro-life because they think that they should be able to tell women what to do; they're pro-life because they don't think that women should be able to make the choice of life or death for fetuses. It's an issue of which right is greater or more fundamental: a woman's right to control her body or a fetus's right to live/not be killed. (And yes, I realize that fetuses generally don't have rights, but I'm postulating that pro-lifers think that they should.)
I was struck by the quote of Howard Dean saying that the Dems support "personal responsibility". I have yet to see Democrats promote any sort of responsibility other than that of the government to support everyone.
"I think the party begins with its politically useful defense of the right to abortion and that Kos's effort to derive a "core principle" is motivated more by the desire to make the abortion right more appealing...."
Eh. Prima facie it strikes me as just as likely that Kos is moving to leverage the enthusiasm for abortion rights toward other natural interests of the Democratic party and so to highlight what is now an only cryptic coherence among platform goals--because I suppose like Dean Kos sees the appearance of ideological coherence as a strength of the Republican party. It's easy to mistake coherence for righteousness, as noted by Okkam and Kuhn.
LizrdGizrd, I nearly spit out my coffee when Dean came out with that "personal responsibility" remark.
I love to hear Democrats get on the "big idea" bandwagon. They skim the surface until they find something that "sounds good," and then they'll go with that, rarely thinking their big idea through to it's logical conclusion. This discussion thread, relatively brief as it is, has raised a few "right to privacy" issues that would have the Democrats running away as quickly as possible. Fun, fun.
It is quite easy to get to the argument on whether Tom Delay should decide or you should decide after everyone agrees that the unborn child is not a person. The problem with the abortion argument and the right to privacy is that not eveyone believes that the unborn has no rights. We don't debate whether a mother has the right to privacy to kill her one- year old because "most" would believe that the one-year old's right to live outwieghs the right of the mother to do whatever she wants.
The real abortion debate should be where one stands on the rights of the unborn. The "right to privacy" argument is just a cover-up to the real issue becasue most people feel "uncomfortable" arguing that a 20 week fetus has no natural rights.
When I was 20 years old, I did not understand this distinction, mostly because no one ever asked me the question....
It is great that we are finally hearing this debate on what the dems stand for. In the early 90s, the gops underwent a similar debate, which ended up becoming Newt's "Contract for America."
I think the libertarian comments are interesting, but I am not sure the libs would be interested in voting dem. Most of today's libs are more interested in the market rather than the person, and the dems will never submit to worship of the Market to satisfy a lib's religious zealotry.
Moreover, the individualism that is seeping out of these discussions will never hold up. Dems have always been a party that recognizes the need for everyone to cooperate in society, because we all have to share limited space on this planet. Libs would rather hole themselves up in their property rather than sacrifice something for the common good. Dems won't forget their commitment to society as a whole. This doesn't mean instituting socialism; it simply means taking into consideration how everyone will be affected by policymaking rather than certain groups like business, for example.
Despite all of this, Dems have always held dear the principle of right to privacy, especially when it comes to monitoring bedroom behavior. Kos is not trying to make its stance on abortion more appealling; rather, Kos is trying to steer abortion away from the center of dem discussions. Remember, the gops are the ones who made the issue the focus of American political discourse in an effort to get votes. This has effectively ended all rational debate on other topics.
All I am saying is that both sides need to control their special interests, and we need to get back to rational debate rather than bickering and name calling. Frankly, politics these days is stressing me out.
".....Kos is trying to steer abortion away from the center of dem discussions. Remember, the gops are the ones who made the issue the focus of American political discourse in an effort to get votes. This has effectively ended all rational debate on other topics....."
I agree. The abortion debate will end as an activist issue as soon as the Court gives it up and lets the legislatures decide by majority vote. As long as abortion is decided by elites, it will be a polarizing issue.
We have all kinds of "natural rights" that should not be taken away by the majority. But, that is besides the point. The privacy right is just the legal tool the Court used so that it could strike down the law. However, to strike it down it had to say that the unborn (at a certain point) had no rights. Once it is decided that the unborn has rights, those rights should trump any rights to privacy.
My point about the legislatures and abortion is that the legislature is really the only appropriate institution that can decide when the unborn has rights. Because we cannot know the absolute truth on the matter (we are not God), the next best alternative is to debate the question and decide through the most democratic instituion we have (the state legislatures).
The worst alternative is to let a few individuals decide. Unfortuantely, this is the current state of things as the Court has made this decision (only 5 Justices).
In my opinion, most (if not all) of the state legislatures would keep abortion legal, with various differences in the restrictions and definitions of when life begins.
The democratic results, however, would satisfy many that the laws were made and decided fairly.
In addition, I don't think the Democrats are going to capture much of the libertarian vote as long as they're still the party of gun control.
Either Kos is suggesting they dump that in favour of a right to privacy (and, well, that pesky second amendment) based acceptance of a right to keep and bear arms, which I just can't see happening, or he's suggesting both that a right to privacy doesn't let one own arms and he thinks that libertarians don't care about that.
I don't think the latter is plausible. (The former of the two is plausible even if I disagree with it.)
When I see Democrats complain about the "nanny state," I will begin to consider that a Right to Privacy might be one of their core principals of the Democratic Party.
Nothing is completely private. Everything affects other people. To too many Democrats, this means that everything is public, and hence people's desires must take second place to the public interest.
Support for "abortion rights" seems to be less a respect for a right to privacy than a judgment that the decision doesn't really have any bad effects. Unlike, say, the decision to smoke or get breast implants (which strengthens false values and supports the patriarchy).
From above "...luckily, we don't have a system where only a few decide. Instead, each woman gets to make that decision for herself. A true democracy..."
Yikes. Alas, you are not shy about your moral relativism.
War is Peace.
Freedom is Slavery.
Ignorance is Strength.
"...The only way to have a truly "moral" system is to recognize each woman's right to make her own decisions..."
How can you have a "moral system" where people are allowed to define their own morality. The contridictions to such a "system" are endless.
Your comment about abortion being "morally ambigious" may be true for you but not for many others. Laws are constantly legislating morality. Many believe that taxation is immoral, or gun control, or capitalism, the war in Iraq, blah, blah. If we had Courts levying taxes or legislating gun control, or declaring war (or preventing war) there would be an uproar. For some reason, however, Courts have taken it upon themselves to decide when an unborn child has the right to live.
".. Therefore, your argument is - and has been - a red ..."
We will never agree becuase you see the abortion issue as an argument of civil rights for the mother. I see the argument as civil rights for the unborn child.
I have been arguing a legal position. Your wrong about my personal views on abortion. "knowing . I would probably vote to allow abortion at somepoint between conception and 20 weeks because I can rationalize that beyond that it is possible for a baby to live outside the womb. Further, people need to be realistic about abortion. Completely outlawing it is not a practical answer. Again, I think a majority of Americans would vote to keep it legal with more restrictions. Further, I cannot be sure that I am "right" (in an absolute sense) about my opinion. And I am very sure that 5 justices are no more right than I am. These judges have used judicial activism to circumvent the right of the people to decide.
I disagree with you about tax laws and morality. The taking of property is a part of all morality systems.
Or taxes can collectively degrade society.
Even more so is who should pay and how much..... and what should the taxes be used for. Busn is currently making this argument with Stem Cells. He is saying he thinks it appears wrong to support embryonic stem cell research, so at the very least the government should not use taxes from all the people to support it....
The problem is that a very substantial amount of people believe that aborting an embryo is immoral. A majorty of people people believe that aborting a 20+ week fetus is immoral (even if they think it shouldn't be illegal).
If I had to vote on the matter and by the 20 week margin it bacame a more difficult moral dilemma, maybe its prudent to err in favor of life rather than the liberty to abortion.
How about this as ananalogy:
The problem is that a lot of people think slavery is immoral.
...If they do then they shouldn't own slaves. Problem solved.
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