Journal Daniel Dvorkin's Journal: Why I am a partisan Democrat 4
Glenn Greenwald does a beautiful job here of explaining why "partisanship" can be a good thing and "bipartisan" isn't all it's cracked up to be. The key paragraph:
Partisan disputes happen because people are very different and have very different views. Partisanship is about advocating for your own beliefs and discrediting the beliefs that you reject and believe are harmful. This doesn't mean that these disagreements must or should break down along Republican/Democratic lines. On so many critical, contentious issues, the leadership of the two parties are in perfect harmony. Many of the worst policies are embraced by the mainstream of both parties, and the real disagreements now break down on other lines, whether it be insider/outsider or diverging socioeconomic interests or rapidly-re-aligning ideological divisions. But politics is and should be about defeating ideas -- and people -- that are discredited and destructive.
There is, of course, one type of partisanship that is always bad. A good idea is good idea whether it comes from a Democrat, a Republican, a member of another party, or an independent; ditto for a bad idea. Democrats should not reject good Republican ideas simply because they come from Republicans, nor should they assume that ideas originating in their own party are automatically good. But bipartisanship for bipartisanship's sake is not in and of itself a good thing. Compromise is possible only when both sides (or all sides, as the case may be) share common ends, and disagree primarily about the means. And I don't think that's the case here. Republicans, or at least the people currently representing the face of the Republican party in Washington, want a different America than Democrats do. We know what the America they want looks like, and we know how ugly it is. We've been living there for eight years.
There are not two sides to every story -- or if there are, the sides do not have equal merit. On any political issue, when two people or two parties disagree, at least one of them is wrong. This does not mean that the other side is right, of course. But it does mean, again, that one of them is wrong. If both are wrong, then it may be that the right answer lies somewhere between their positions, and it's possible to find our way there by negotiation. But the right answer may also be more extreme than either of their positions, or it may be off the axis entirely. It may also be (and this happens more often than the bipartisanship fetishists want to admit) that one of the positions is completely right, and the other is completely wrong. In either of the latter two cases, negotiation and bipartisanship and compromise are also wrong.
We don't know if we're right. We hope we are, of course, and history tends to indicate that we are much more likely to be right than they are. Democratic policies have produced good results, and Republican policies have produced bad ones, with remarkable consistency throughout living memory. We do know, vividly, how very wrong they are. They had their chance at compromise, at negotiation, at the bipartisan sacred cow, and they didn't take it. Instead we got eight years of "the majority of the majority" and "the decider," and we know where that got us. To undo the damage they have done, partisanship is not only necessary, but right. We must all be partisans now.
Chacham (Score:2)
Bias is good, and defined as "If I can decide for my side, I will."
Prejudice is bad and is defined as "I will decide for my side, regardless."
Hence, although very much left-wing, I am against gun control, just for example. Not one of the arguments presented has been anywhere near good enough to convince me otherwise.
Re: (Score:2)
I like that distinction!
I'm also in the "pro-gun, otherwise standard-issue liberal" camp. There are a lot of us out there, and our numbers seem to be making a difference. Democratic platforms still tend to be anti-gun, but it no longer seems to be anywhere near the priority for the party that it used to be.
Uhh, let's backup a little with the "living memory (Score:1)
I *distinctly* remember in my living memory a little deal where we had a D president a D dominated senate and a D dominated house, who all seemed to think the big fat lie of the tonkin gulf non attack that didn't exist beyond a few war monger's wet dreams was a wonderfully spiffy idea to go invade another nation, kill three million of the people there including the use of WMD aerial spraying of poison, that killed 50,000 of our own guys directly and no one even knows how many indirectly from the use of tha