Lone Star Democracy Builders Association

I was in a fabulous graduate seminar this morning. We were talking about attitudes that we here in the US have about government. Some said that US folks are too trusting of politicians. Some said we're quite skeptical. And suddenly a very important distinction hit me.

There's a big honking difference between being cynical and being skeptical.

Cynicism is not productive. It is pessimistic and, at some level, passive. Why bother? Nothing can change. Everything sucks. People suck. Their motives are suspect and no one tells the truth. So we might as well sit here and watch TV (possibly even blog about how everything sucks ;) ).

On the other hand, skepticism, when practiced rigorously, is healthy, forward-looking, and progress-oriented. It wants evidence. It wants to understand. It wants to make things work - and it'd be nice if they worked better.

Put it this way: it's not possible to be a cynical revolutionary. Cynicism stymies action.

Lots of people are cynical about US government. Not enough folks, IMNSHO, are skeptical.

When we're the minority party, we have to be extraordinarily careful to keep our rhetoric skeptical, not cynical. This is especially true of lefty folk. We can't go around bashing government - since we believe that government can be a force for community problem-solving, it's inevitable that such linguistic indulgences will come back to bite us in the ass. And we're hypocrites if we say that Those People Are Just Bad; if we're serious about valuing community, we have to make room for everyone. That's not to say we can't vigorously disagree. We do. And the thing about our way (separation of church and state, freedom of speech, universal human rights, etc) is that it *does* leave room for everyone. We're right. No need to overplay our hand.

We have to be careful to point out that it's not government per se that's broken; it's the way we happen to be doing government right now. Rick Perry's current ads ("I'm proud of Texas. How 'bout you?") are nauseating, but brilliant. Texans are proud. We don't like to be told that we rank below some developing nations in various quality-of-life indicators. Heaven knows there's plenty to be mad about and plenty to criticize. And it's tempting to get stuck on that particular rant. But I think that what lefties would be wise to do is talk about how things could be better - the vision thing, in the language of the 1992 campaigns. Let's talk about where we're going. Let's talk about how we're going to make the society we deserve (and I'm an optimist, so I mean that in the good way). Negativity might score us points in the short run, but what fires the imagination is a positive vision of what we can make happen together, and how government can be the vehicle for that. Tons of studies in the field of education show that all things being equal, people will perform to your expectations. Hand 'em negativity, you'll get it back in spades. So let's hand 'em positivity instead. I'd love to be there when it happens.

Posted by Carrie at 10:53 PM in How To Communicate | Permalink

The author Malcolm Gladwell has a new blog, and one of his first posts was talking about how his views on universal health care have changed since the early 1990s. In writing about this, he's provided a really useful metaphor for understanding why health care shouldn't be something that's the responsibility of our employers:

"The closest I can come is to imagine if we had employer-based subways in New York. You could ride the subway if you had a job. But if you lost your job, you would either have to walk or pay a prohibitively expensive subway surcharge. Of course, if you lost your job you would need the subway more than ever, because you couldn't afford taxis and you would need to travel around looking for work. Right? In any case, what logical connection is there between employment and transportation?"

You can read the entire posting at Malcolm's site.

Posted by Ben at 7:22 PM in Health Care & How To Communicate | Permalink

Austin's Democracy for Texas group had their monthly meetup tonight, and their special guest was Judge Bob Gammage, Democratic candidate for Texas Governor.

Not having been around Texas politics much, I didn't know what to expect going into the meeting. What I found was a very inspiring candidate, one that shared my frustrations with the national and state government and one who seemed to have some great ideas for solving Texas' policy problems. I'm finally excited about the governor's race again.

Gammage's stump speech started with an introduction to the "Dirty 30", the group of Democratic and Republican legislators that stood up to the long-standing Democratic machine in the 1970s and helped reform Texas government to serve the interests of its citizens. After serving as a state representative, he went on to serve in the state Senate, the US House, the Texas Court of Appeals, and the Texas Supreme Court, with the last two being statewide elected offices. Mr. Gammage talked about how he watched Bush, Perry, and the Republican Party turn corrupt and unaccountable, and how after working in the 2004 election to try to elect Kerry, he decided that the best way he could serve the state was to run for Governor, standing up against Rick Perry.

After giving his background, Gammage made a strong attack against Perry on the topic of school financing. To quote him, "Texas, if measured on its own, is the 8th largest economy in the world, yet we're 40th among the US state in public education spending." That's a real disgrace, and a real indicator of the priority that our government has given to educating children. If elected, he wouldn't raise property taxes, but instead would design a plan with no sacred cows, looking at all the sources of wealth in the state with the idea of spreading the tax base to fund our schools widely and fairly. I loved his question, asked multiple times in his speech: "Why on earth does the property value of a district have anything to do with the quality of their education?"

On the topic of health care, Judge Gammage felt strongly that every child born in the US should have the right to adequate health care, and he'd work as governor to promote this idea at the national level. I think that's a great strategy; the route to a great national right to health care will start by taking care of our children.

Gammage is an exciting candidate, definitely the best I've seen so far in this race. I'll close with another quote, one that direct addresses the current governor's television ads: "I'm proud to be a Texas, but, Rick Perry, I'm not proud of you". Well said.

Posted by Ben at 10:40 PM in Elections and Voting | Permalink | Comments (1)