Recently in Liberalism Category

Juan Williams was in Dallas yesterday, and said some controversial, interesting things at a luncheon. Read all about it here. I like these excerpts:

On the No. 1 mistake liberals make: "The world is changing fast. There's a need for innovation," and "liberals are slow to react. For example, the biggest challenge of our time is education, and the poor quality of education for minorities. How can we have a discussion about equality when there's such an achievement gap? How are we not talking about the breakdown of the family-70% in the black community? Yet the left is absent on those issues. That pocket of issues requires innovative thinking. You don't see the left changing with the times."

On the No. 1 mistake conservatives make: "Republicans feel embattled, and I think it's been a mistake by some Republicans not to be more engaged in the health care debate. There's also a changing demographic: more people of color, younger people, and there has to be a Republican approach [to them]. There has to be a clear message sent, and a willingness for the party to engage. That's crucial if it's to grow."

I would say that the two most important mistakes both sides make are complementary.

No. 1 mistake American liberals make is to devalue the paramount role of culture in determining behavior, particular in terms of success and failure. They are afraid to privilege some cultural values over others. This is to say, I'm pretty much agreeing with Williams. The No. 1 mistake American conservatives make is to devalue the role social and economic structures play in creating culture (well, their more particular mistake in the current moment is to be more interested in heretic hunting than innovative thinking, but you've heard that from me already).

What do you think the No. 1 mistakes each side makes are? If you answer, answer for both liberals and conservatives, not just one side. (Feel free also to comment on Juan Williams' remarks).

Lord have mercy, Mark Shea has found 100 percent uncut Beck bait: video of a liberal church liturgy for health care in which the congregation chants a litany to Barack Obama (e.g., "Hear our prayer, Obama"). [UPDATE: Okay, I got that wrong; it's "Hear our cry, Obama" and "Deliver us, Obama" -- the exact language churches use for liturgical petition to God, e.g., "Hear our cry, O Lord," "Deliver us, O Lord"] It's not a fake; it's from the Gamaliel Foundation.
Ah, the Religious Left at prayer.

This is sacrilegious, yes, but it's also asinine. And it's the kind of thing guaranteed to drive far-right paranoia over Obama-as-messiah. In a way, it's like ACORN: with people like this, right-wing paranoids don't even have to break a sweat. Like Mark says, you have to see this to believe it. Poor Obama. With friends like this, who needs enemies?:

UPDATE: A commenter mentioned that he watched the same video on the Gamaliel website, and it sounds to him like they're saying "Hear our cry, O God" and "Deliver us, O God." I listened to it there as well, and I had to play it several times, because it sounds to me like they're saying "Obama" in the first few petitions. But if you listen on, it sounds like they're indeed saying "O God." I can't imagine that they'd say "Obama" for some but in some others "God." So perhaps I heard wrong. Or perhaps they're petitioning both God and Obama, in a misguided way. Anyway, I thank the reader for drawing my attention to the Gamaliel video, because the captions on the other video, as well as the garbled congregational response, really does sound like they're "praying" to Obama. I'm not exactly sure what they're saying here, but watch the Gamaliel version, and judge for yourself. If I've wrongly accused these folks, I do apologize. I think they're mixing both God and Obama up in their litany:

UPDATE.2: Last night, this post appeared in this thread:

I was the organizer for Gamaliel for this action - we were trying to get the attention of a large insurance comapny (UHC). I voted for Obama, and most us in Hawaii like him - but praying to him would be crazy, not to mention sacrilegious.

Here's the liturgy we used for the record:

With the prophet Jeremiah, we cry out, Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there? Why then has the health of my poor people not been restored?
Hear our cry, oh God!

With the prophet Martin Luther King Jr., we cry out, Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in health care is the most shocking and inhumane.
Hear our cry, oh God!

From health care systems and industries that place profit over people,
Deliver us, oh God!

I still can't make out all of the soundtrack with clarity, even on the Gamaliel video, but I will take this commenter at his word, and say that I believe him, and am sorry I heard wrong and posted the initial video.

New shock video of a blabbermouth ACORN employee in San Bernandino not only offering to help the undercover duo set up a prostitution ring to launder money for a political campaign, but bragging that she will hurt anybody who rats them out because hey, she killed her husband once upon a time. Un. Freaking. Believable. ACORN must be terrified about what else the gonzo filmmakers have. They bloody well ought to be. The U.S. Senate just voted to deny ACORN funds from HUD. The US Census Bureau cut off contact with ACORN after the first videos appeared. These two filmmakers, Giles and O'Keefe, are making ACORN radioactive, and a byword for sleaze.

And did you see the videos they shot undercover at a New York ACORN office? Same deal. So much for it being a one-off thing. That's four ACORN offices so far. I am so loving the audacity of these filmmakers. Brilliant stuff. ACORN says it's going to sue them. Good luck with that. If these two have misrepresented the ACORN employees, then they'll get their heads handed to them. But the more these videos show up from different ACORN offices, the harder it will be to assert that they're making a mountain out of a molehill.

I think Krauthammer is spot-on re: Van Jones and why he had to go. It's not that he was a young commie, or blamed white people for environmentally abusing poor minorities, or even that he called Republicans a-holes (like Krauthammer says, big deal; we shouldn't be so prissy):

He's gone for one reason and one reason only. You can't sign a petition demanding not one but four investigations of the charge that the Bush administration deliberately allowed Sept. 11, 2001 -- i.e., collaborated in the worst massacre ever perpetrated on American soil -- and be permitted in polite society, let alone have a high-level job in the White House.

Unlike the other stuff (see above), this is no trivial matter. It's beyond radicalism, beyond partisanship. It takes us into the realm of political psychosis, a malignant paranoia that, unlike the Marxist posturing, is not amusing. It's dangerous. In America, movements and parties are required to police their extremes. Bill Buckley did that with Birchers. Liberals need to do that with "truthers."

You can no more have a truther in the White House than you can have a Holocaust denier -- a person who creates a hallucinatory alternative reality in the service of a fathomless malice.

But I will credit Van the Man for understanding how to manipulate the middle-class professionals in newsrooms today. A supporter of his named Judith Lewis writes in today's L.A. Times:

At the annual Bioneers convention in 2007, Van Jones described to an audience of scientists, activists and environmentalists how he had spent 20 years trying to get Americans to pay attention to the urban poor. "We would call newspapers, television stations, saying kids are dying, we're going to funerals every weekend. 'Not interested.' We'd say we've got kids going to school in Oakland, 30 kids in the classroom, six books, no chalk.' 'Not interested.' "

Finally, the Yale Law School graduate turned community organizer told the crowd, "We said, 'Well, we want green jobs and not jails for our youth.' And they said, 'Green? Green? Green!' GIVE THAT MAN A MICROPHONE!' "

Stuff White People Like strikes again!

Conor Friedersdorf considers the case of 9/11 truther Van Jones, recently departed from the Obama administration, in particular the pro-Jones case being made by some liberals, who argue that there are no enemies to the left:

This is basically the same argument that certain conservatives make when I criticize Human Events and World Net Daily -- if there's going to be a serious conservative movement in this country, they say, you can't just have a bunch of Inside The Beltway elites. You need to loyally support the most energetic partisan fighters and the hard core among the grassroots, even if they have some associations or views or past statements that the average American would regard as nuttily odious. Ideological movements at most stay silent about these fringe friendlies -- also see Ron Paul's libertarians -- so you'll inevitably have a day when it's the left calling for the resignation of some guy who signed an Obama birther petition. And I won't feel sorry for him either.

But today's reminder is that just as the grassroots right traffics in its paranoid nonsense, the grassroots left has subsections of people who are sympathetic to militant Marxism, 9/11 trutherism, and other idiocies that don't seem to hurt their rise in that movement. This is why the average American is deeply suspicious of career political activists and people who rise via both parties into low level administration posts. They're right to be! A lot of true believers climb ideological ladders in this country and wind up in government, leaving the average citizen upset because they suspect there are plenty of folks who aren't ideological extremists, but are nevertheless qualified to fill those posts -- they just don't happen work in circles with connections to a partisan political world where loyalty to the cause is prized above all else.

As Conor points out, it's quite an achievement for someone in the administration to make Glenn Back look sensible. Congratulations, Van Jones!