Religious right = Traditionalist EvangelicalsMmm... robust!
Heartland Culture Warriors = Traditionalist Mainline Protestant plus Traditionalist Catholics plus Latter Day Saints (Mormons)
Moderate Evangelicals = Centrist Evangelical
White Bread Protestants = Centrist Mainline Protestants
Convertible Catholics = Centrist White Catholics
The Religious Left = Modernist Evangelical Protestants plus Modernist Mainline Protestant plus Modernist Catholics
Black Protestants = Black Protestants
Spiritual But Not Religious = Unaffiliated Believers
Latinos = Latino Catholics plus Latino Protestants
Jews = Jews
Muslim & Other Faiths =Other Faiths
Secular = Secular plus Atheist plus Agnostic
Your point is one that many people've made, but I don't agree.posted by nasreddin at 6:45 PM on May 10, 2007
First, look at the state of the political system in the United States, or any major industrialized country. How much influence do you, as an individual voter, have on government action and policy decisions? Assume you live in a state where one vote matters, which is not true for any state in the real world. Once you've cast your vote, your influence on the political process has ended. Yes, you can lobby your congress-person, or write angry letters to the White House. Unfortunately, politicians' track record for paying attention to people that do this is pretty dismal. Usually for the politician the choice is between a handful of voters and a powerful corporate interest with lots of money. It's pretty easy to see what the choice is going to be. If you're an anarchist or a leftist, you are in the extreme minority, which gives the politician even less reason to listen to you.
"But," you say, "at least I can choose who gets into office." That's not quite true either. You are not the only person casting a vote, and the majority of voters are moderate conservatives. The range of people for whom you can vote (based on primary elections) will therefore be limited to a narrow band around the middle of the political spectrum. None of them will be anarchists (what anarchist would become a politician?). If you vote for Nader or Kucinich or Cobb or Badnarik, you probably know ahead of time that your candidate will never win and your vote is thus purely symbolic; you'll also get yelled at by Democrats who think it is your duty not to be a "spoiler." And all that is considering that Nader is, by European standards, a centrist, not especially radical at all.
So your participation in the political system is based on a symbolic act that affirms that you support the government. But if you're an anarchist, you don't support the government, so why give it that symbolic support? If no one voted, government as it exists in the US wouldn't exist; each additional vote is therefore adding legitimacy to a corrupt state system, hurting your own cause.
You confuse anarchism with liberalism or socialism. They're very different. Liberals and socialists want to use the state to make people's lives better, while anarchists think that that's an impossible goal. So if a socialist or a liberal gets into office, she will increase the power of the state, ostensibly in order to give it the ability to make people's lives better. As an anarchist, I think any increase in the power of the state is harmful. Why would I support a candidate that believes the opposite?
If we as "progressives" continue to define ourselves only as "not the Republicans," what we are doing is squelching and suppressing the individual voices and movements within the anti-authoritarian community. We can't work together effectively until we realize that we have serious disagreements with one another over politics, theory, method, and even facts themselves. I dislike the Democratic Party as much as the Republican Party (for different reasons), and trying to bludgeon me into ideological conformity with the club of "if you don't support us the Republicans will win" is not a very good way of building a functional anti-authoritarian coalition.
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I'm annoyed when people disagree with me, but I'm even more annoyed when they agree with me. This is what is affectionately labelled "political dinosaur" cuz I'm the method of my own extinction.
All kidding aside, this is just another way to stereotype people, which I find patently offensive. So should the jews and latinos, even though we nonjews and nonlatinos know they both suck. Who's with me!??
posted by ZachsMind at 9:25 PM on May 9, 2007