Have you read, "The Democrats Need a Spiritual Left" by Lerner?

[vet_against_Bush]

For years the Democrats have been telling themselves "it's the economy, stupid." Yet consistently for dozens of years millions of middle income Americans have voted against their own economic interests to support Republicans who have tapped a deeper set of needs.

Tens of millions of Americans feel betrayed by a society that seems to place materialism and selfishness above moral values. They know that "looking out for number one" has become the common sense of our society, but they want a life that is about something more --- a framework of meaning and purpose to their lives that would transcend the grasping and narcissism that surrounds them. Sure, they will admit that they have material needs, and that they worry about adequate health care, stability in employment, and enough money to give their kids a college education. But even more deeply they want their lives to have meaning --- and they respond to candidates who seem to care about values and some sense of transcendent purpose.
Many of these voters have found a "politics of meaning" in the political Right. In the Right wing churches and synagogues these voters are presented with a coherent worldview that speaks to their "meaning needs." Most of these churches and synagogues demonstrate a high level of caring for their members, even if the flip side is a willingness to demean those on the outside. Yet what members experience directly is a level of mutual caring that they rarely find in the rest of the society. And a sense of community that is offered them nowhere else, a community that has as its central theme that life has value because it is connected to some higher meaning than one's success in the marketplace.

It's easy to see how this hunger gets manipulated in ways that liberals find offensive and contradictory. The frantic attempts to preserve family by denying gays the right to get married, the talk about being conservatives while meanwhile supporting Bush policies that accelerate the destruction of the environment and do nothing to encourage respect for God's creation or an ethos of awe and wonder to replace the ethos of turning nature into a commodity, the intense focus on preserving the powerless fetus and a culture of life without a concomitant commitment to medical research (stem cell research/HIV-AIDS), gun control and healthcare reform., the claim to care about others and then deny them a living wage and an ecologically sustainable environment --- all this is rightly perceived by liberals as a level of inconsistency that makes them dismiss as hypocrites the voters who have been moving to the Right.

Published on Thursday, November 4, 2004 by CommonDreams.org

[GreenPartyVoter]

1. Yep! :^)

------------------------------------
Would Jesus love a liberal? You bet!
http://timeforachange.bluelemur.com/

[OldLeftieLawyer]

2. Please

We Democrats need to make sure no more elections are stolen from us, show some backbone, and hold to what Democrats are supposed to be about. Now is hardly the time to start readjusting who we are and what we espouse. If we fall prey to this "moral values" nonsense that's currently being spewed by people who have none and who know full well that a lot of people voted out of fear, because that's what they were brainwashed into believing by the rightwingnuts currently squatting in the White House and the Pentagon, we're going to end up chasing our tails, to the vast and deadly amusement of the thugs who will keep mocking us.

Instead of all this self-examination, why not just stand up for what we believe, and quit taking shit from the liars and pricks who keep beating up on us?

We don't need spirituality, whatever the hell that is. We need backbone.

Michael Lerner has always given me a headache. This piece is no exception.

[w4rma]

3. Careful.

Dont mistake accepting or respecting spirituality with lack of backbone.

[OldLeftieLawyer]

5. No comparison there

Hardly.

I don't even know what "spirituality" means in this context, so how could I compare to anything? The lack of backbone - and focus - is what the Democrats need to work on, not some ill-defined concept that means nothing in the matters at hand.

[Kevin Spidel]

4. lerner is working with us

on organizing jsut this base. from the kucinich campaing to the new releigious left! join this yahoo group if you interested in doing more with this base: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/dems_of_faith