I Went!

Somehow, this time I really went down to DC, and attended this event, the Rally to Restore Sanity AND/OR Fear.

My friend and I went down two days earlier, because we had a long weekend; we stayed outside the beltway, and took the train in, and cased the joint on the day before.  My friend is a fan of the Library of Congress, so we spent most of our time there.  [This is a gorgeous building; there are literally scores of busts and murals, most of them with mottoes adorning them ---or possibly, the murals were intended to illuminate the mottoes--- some of them utterly corny.  But truly, the Library of Congress is a worthy effort on the part of the USA put forward to stand beside the great libraries of London, Paris, Rome and Berlin, for instance.]  We saw with relief and satisfaction the large array of Porta-A-Johns standing ready for the attendees, which meant that we did not need to take potties with us.

On the day of the Rally (Saturday) we arrived around 9:00 A.M., long before the event was scheduled to start (noon), and observed the uncompromising sanity of the crowd sanely trickling in.  We were surround by the lunatic fringe of the out-of-town Sanitarians, from as far away as Michigan and Georgia, accompanied by their calm-eyed, sane children.  The roads off the Mall were populated by people selling unlicensed merchandise, and some of them giving away Sanity merchandise (notably a souvenir Sanity towel, on which you could sit, on the grass)!

We took a walk out into downtown Washington, hoping to buy a spare battery for my phone, but failed to do so.  But we saw yet more Sanitarians, eagerly holding up their placards.  I just could not think of something both sane and funny, and so I didn't have a placard, to my utter shame.  (It did make it easier to get around, though . . .)

We got back, and got seated in front of a large so-called Jumbotron, which is a large digital screen that shows what's going on onstage.  Until the show started, there were clips from The Daily Show, and the Colbert show, bringing everyone up to date on the planning that led up to the event.

Finally, sharp at noon, the first act was introduced, the band The Roots, with guest star John Legend.  In addition to being the first act, they were the backup band for all the musical acts that followed.  (The Roots featured a bassist playing a 6-string electric bass, which impressed me.  He was great, accurate, and firmly on the beat.  There was also a huge Sousaphone, a sort of large tuba that is played by the player inserting him- or herself into the coils of the instrument.)

Just as I was beginning to despair that I would have to listen to an interminable string of hip-hop, or rap, or whatever, Jon Stewart came on, to cheers, and introduced Father Guido Sarducci, a character familiar from Saturday Night Live a couple of decades ago.

Fr Guido, having respectfully thanked God for everyone getting to the Mall safe and on time, proceeded to ask God for a sign to know which religion or denomination was the true one.  Unfortunately, there was no response, but I'm not surprised; all around me cellphones, for instance, were not getting through.

Then the Myth Busters team came on: a pair of funny guys whose main idea is to present demonstrations of principles of physics on TV. They choreographed a number of experiments suitable for a large gathering of the size of close to a couple of hundred thousand people, for instance creating a seismic wave by jumping up and down. (As Colbert remarked later, the willingness of the crowd to get to its feet and cooperate in this bit of idiocy showed the kind of crowd it was: earnest, fun-loving, and more filled with political frustration than viciousness. There's a bit of a leap there, from seismic sensors to mood sensor, admittedly :)

The business of the rally got started, with clashing of the apparent intellectual differences between the two hosts, Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, the latter who claimed to be extremely unwilling to give up being scared.  Colbert put forward the unwillingness to be scared as positively unAmerican.

One of the musical highlights of the rally was Yusuf Islam, a.k.a. Cat Stevens, singing his 70's hit, Peace Train.  I have seen videos of Yusuf from around the turn of the century, singing Peace Train, looking very sober and unhappy, and I despaired of ever again seeing him with the vitality of the old Cat Stevens.  But on Saturday, his voice had the energy and the flexibility of Cat Stevens at his best, and it was delightful!  But Colbert interrupted with Ozzy Ozbourne singing about a train running off the track, in true Hegelian style, until the O'Jays came in to sing Love Train, which managed to get all the musicians singing together.  Also singing were Kid Rock, and Sheryl Crow.  (The rally ended with a musical item, led by Mavis Staples.)

The event also featured David Byrne, Spinal Tap, Green Day and Devo and several other bands in the video portion,  before the live portion started.

The crowning event, for me, was a thoughtful and funny monologue by Jon Stewart, called his Keynote speech, in which he articulated the principles he was trying to put forward, namely the demonization of each political side by the other, aptly explained by Arianna Huffington.




Linkins of the Huffington Post describes his Sanity Rally experience like this:

The Rally To Restore Sanity was a well attended, and [by my] vantage, a well organized event, that drew thousands of very friendly, somewhat liberal, but not at [all] limited to young, people to Washington, DC. The early [arrivals] were deep into the sanity theme. With signs that decried hysteria, endorsed conversation, and made great sport of the excesses that we are, all, used to by now ("There was only the one Hitler" read one), the most dedicated attendees showed up to support reasonableness. (It was only after the show was over that the "Fox News Sucks" signs seem to show up.) Everyone was very well behaved. It was one of the friendliest crowds I've ever been a part of. One attendee seemed to have it exactly right, carting a sign that read, "I'm pretty sure I'd like you if I got to know you."

That shows you how little this guy knows about me!

Respectfully submitted,

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A Story!

Once upon a time, a young girl stood on the shoulder of the Interstate, fearfully waiting to hitchhike to college several hundred miles east of her home.  She had won a full choir scholarship, but her father was in the throes of acute depression (for reasons not having anything to do with her, incidentally) and would not (or could not) help her with her college plans.  She was dressed all in pink, and carried a guitar on her back, and a pink back-pack was at her feet.  Fortunately for her, she was picked up by friendly travelers, and presently found herself not only safely registered for the Fall classes, but helping out with the recreation program at the little city park close to her new college, at the tail end of the Summer.

The young lady, whose nature was passionate, outgoing and generous, soon found herself involved with many special musical programs at her school, and many opportunities to earn money as well.  Two years later she found herself the proud recipient of a loan of a rare unconverted Baroque violin, and was well on her way to becoming a violinist of rare talent and sensibility.  But more importantly, she was discovered as a remarkable voice, and the demands on her to sing began to eclipse her importance as an instrumentalist.

Then disaster struck.  Fatigue and personal tragedy had a shattering impact on her, and she finally began to succumb to the stresses of a serious college education --she had refused to compromise in her first two years, and signed on for difficult courses in every field in which she was interested.   She had something that was suspiciously like a nervous breakdown.  She took a year off after her Sophomore year, and lived in the wilds of rural Canada with a friend.  But music called her back, and she returned to complete college.

Fifteen years later, she had completed a doctorate, and pulled back somewhat from her performance career to teach at a small college.  But she could not resist acceding to a request to sing Messiah at a Royal command performance in the UK.  She had sung much more musically important parts: Eva in Meistersinger, Susanna in Figaro, Eurydice in Orfeo, not to mention the Bach oratorios and passions.  But to sing in English, for music written to be sung in English was a special treat!

She was really two people rolled into one: an earnest Bach scholar and dedicated teacher and musicologist on one hand, and a secret sybarite* hedonist on the other.  Among her friends she counted members of the adult entertainment business, who recognized that their friendships had to remain secret, and did their best.  She had even made an amazing R-rated adult movie, well disguised and under a pseudonym.  The disguise was so perfect that even the movie producers were ignorant of the fact that their star was in fact a respectable music professor.  The movie was an exhilarating lesbian romp, featuring an adventurous band of girl fighters in an imaginary bronze age on an imaginary planet.

The movie was an instant hit, but of course, our heroine dared not reveal her part in it.  However, she decided to star in a new movie (under her own name), which was to be a light-hearted spoof of the earlier movie, the new movie containing no sex at all; just good clean fun, and rated PG13.  However, the romantic interest in the spoof was between two young women.

She reveled in the fame the second movie brought her, but soon after, the Christian Right and conservative critics turned against her, declaring that she had made "perversion acceptable to children."  Parents began removing their children from the college at which she taught.  Her invitations to perform sacred music evaporated.  By Christmas, she was no longer welcome to perform even with the little orchestra she had founded.  But she had gotten pregnant over the summer, and the pregnancy gave her a little strength to hold on.  She decided it was best to take a semester off, and look after her little family of four: three adopted girls, and her own little boy.

Tragedy struck on Christmas Day.  After a heavy early snowstorm, driving home by herself from a Christmas visit, she lost control of her vehicle, and plunged off a steep incline onto a solid rock, destroying the car and the child she was carrying.  Her face was badly cut, but it was repaired by careful surgery.

The love of the children, and that of a young woman with whom she had made friends that summer, pulled her through the several difficult months that followed, ending with the sad passing of the mother of her girlfriend, leaving the family of the latter practically destitute.  But that Spring she announced her retirement, at the young age of thirty-eight, and began dismantling her organization.

At first, the family was anxious, but she found other things to do, and was moderately healthy and cheerful, and they began to relax.  At Christmas, the music that came out of the radio constantly reminded her of that musical world from which she had been exiled.  The children had tried to be careful, but the occasional soprano aria slipped through their careful filter, and the former soprano gave up the battle to appear unconcerned.

The mood in the house was decidedly glum, but the kids rallied round to sing songs at the piano, bake cookies, and liven up the atmosphere, and our hero managed to put a smile on her face for the sake of her children, and a few friends who had come over.  But a call from Ohio, from one of her former teachers, said that PBS was doing something interesting: a Best of Messiah program at 8:00 p.m. that night, featuring a variety of choirs and orchestras, recorded around the world, smoothly edited into a single glorious performance by the miracle of modern technology.

At first, the children were thoroughly excited at the prospect of watching the show, but one look at their mother's ashen face reminded them of how painful it would be for her.  They decided not to watch.  But at eight, she snapped, and marching over to the TV, turned it on to the patchwork Best of Messiah program.

It was agony to watch for several minutes, especially when other soloists were featured at the very same performances in which she had sung soprano, but she herself was not.  One of her favorite arias: Rejoice, O daughter of Zion! was sung by a young woman she had never seen, and sung well, too.  Her heart heavy, she slipped out of the room, and went to sit on the front steps, so hurt that she could not even cry.  She was sure they would not feature her at all.

The program arrived at the remarkable double aria He shall feed his flock / Come unto Him, for soprano and alto, and she recognized the voice of a well-known contralto, someone she had never sung with.  That was almost the last number that involved a soprano soloist, and her defeat was complete . . . or so it appeared.

But, magically, they had faded her own soprano solo into the alto solo, despite the fact that they were from two entirely different performances!  She had sung this before Queen Elizabeth two years earlier; it had been a sort of personal triumph for her.  She had been asked to meet the grand old lady, who had said some gracious words of admiration to her.  She had been to the White House, and been fussed over by heads of state, but this performance had had a glow to it that she had treasured.  And it was being featured on this montage!  The children were going crazy with excitement, and they came out to haul her back inside.

She had looked a lot younger then, before the accident and the surgery.  She could hardly believe how she had dominated that audience with her personality, her charm and her beauty, as well as the beauty of her wonderful voice!  She watched herself singing, flushed with pleasure.

The music wound on, with the great choruses that make the Messiah so memorable, as well as the magnificent solos.  She sighed; she had no cause to be bitter, now; she consoled herself that it took greater skill to do justice to a double-aria than in the showpiece which had featured the younger soprano: one had to restrain oneself from overshadowing the contralto, a delicate feat of balance.

About to leave the room to quietly think by herself, she was stunned to see her own face on the screen once again: the camera had caught her getting to her feet and walking forward, while the orchestra played a familiar ritornello: it was the strange aria based on a letter of St Paul: I know that my Redeemer liveth.  They had featured her singing a second aria!

The song was all about physical resurrection, something she had never believed.  But that night, she had meant every word of it.  She had believed that she would face her maker exactly as she had been that night, accepting that it would not be some ethereal shadow of her being that would face the Judgment, but she herself in the body with which she sang.  She was her own instrument, and god would judge her in that instrument.  It was as though she declared that she was unafraid to be judged so.  It was the unique relationship between a singer and her body, much like that of an athlete: for a philosopher, perhaps, only the mind mattered.  But for a soprano, without her body she was nothing.

The notes soared sublimely, expressing faith in things that she had long ceased to believe in, but as she listened to herself, she believed them anew.  She saw the children watch and listen, spellbound.  The microphone had picked up every little detail of her singing, every syllable, every ‘t’ and every ‘p’.  And there was a beatific smile on her face as she sang, and her pleasure in performance was clearly visible.  When she finished, she remained standing, her eyes surveying the audience with a smile, and the camera had caught it all.

It went on flawlessly, ending with the awesome Amen.

She drew in her breath, trying to feel her chest expanding, ready to sing, but she could only sigh.  Understandably, she was filled with a myriad conflicting emotions ranging from acute embarrassment to ecstasy.  Afterwards, she only remembered that the children had talked to her for nearly an hour, to most of which she had not responded very intelligently.

But it had been clear that the pride of the children in her had been re-kindled, and she had not realized until that moment that it had waned so much.  At one level, she had known that the children had a great deal of trouble accepting her retirement from the concert stage, but this television event, which should have been a triumph, had only underscored one thing: she could never again sing like that.  Not ever!

[*"Sybarite" appears to be the wrong word...] 

[Note: though the principal character here is depicted as having Christian beliefs, the author himself does not!]

Episodes make the Finals!!

I have been following this group with great interest; you can hear their music on their MySpace website: Episodes.  Over the summer they decided to compete in the Southern Arizona Acoustic Battle of the Bands, and after two rounds, they have come up winning both!

Being in touch with the challenges that keep cropping up for them, it is amazing to me that despite their difficulties they manage to deliver on the music, even under a little pressure.  The final round will have them facing both runner-up bands from the semi-final round, and the winner of the other half of the draw.

This band started out around 2006 with Uma (who sings most of the vocals, and writes most of the songs), Jacob (who was their original drummer) and Brian (lead guitar).  Shortly afterwards they were joined by Troy (the original bassist), and Joe (violin and keyboards).  There were several changes of personnel; most importantly two drummers, Carlos and Brian, played with them for a time and departed, and Troy left the band over the summer, and Nick and Stefano joined as drummer and bassist respectively.

An interesting fact about the band is that none of the performers are primarily musicians; they're all amateurs, and have full-time occupations: Uma is a graphic designer, Brian, Joe and Stefano are all physics graduate students, and Nick is a medical student.  However, there has been a high level of musicianship all along, which enables them to ride with the inevitable waves caused by nerves and ---occasionally--- inadequate rehearsal.  Being as busy as they are, finding rehearsal time is always difficult, and I know they are all reluctant to be hardliners about practicing, since it is a miracle that they have stayed together as well as they have.  When the four students finish school, breakup of the band is almost unavoidable.  So it is a matter of making their mark while they're still together.

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Episodes Video Blog #1 for 9/19/2009

Episodes | Myspace Music Videos

Comedy Central

Of late, I simply have not been able to get my daily dose of news.  It's partly that I don't wake to the radio, as I used to, and partly that I'm just slowing down.  Most of what I get is ---you might not believe this, but--- from reports posted on FaceBook.  Obviously, this results in a rather uneven news selection that isn't particularly healthy.

I do get a lot f news from the infamous Daily Show, with Jon Stewart.  This is a comedy show that delights in making fun of the various idiotic statements made by the loonier elements of the GOP, as well as the contradictions or self-serving statements made by the more notable hypocrites there.  Many of the things we hear from the Right would make even conservatives angry, if it weren't for the fact that they are so furious with the Democrats that they allow any sort of idiotic utterance through with little comment.  After hearing such a statement my blood boils to discuss it with somebody, but being surrounded by conservatives out where I live and work, there simply is no opportunity.  So the Daily Show is desperately welcome.

Despite the fact that, broadly speaking, the Daily Show is by liberals, for liberals, the tone of the show, and the level of liberalism to be found there is moderate, and the implied criticism of the conservatives mostly friendly ridicule.  OK, sometimes it is not very friendly ridicule, but still, a lot less vicious ---not vicious at all, in fact, except for the vicious humor--- than I would personally be inclined to dish out.

On October 30th, Jon Stewart of the Daily Show has organized a big rally on The Mall, called the Rally to Restore Sanity.  I'm planning to attend, and so are many of my more like-minded friends from both sides of the political divide.  I keep wondering whether there will be some disruptive incident to spoil it, but I'm going to take the risk and go.  Evidently it will be mostly music and comedy, and I'm expecting some surprise appearances by celebrities.  At the worst, Jon may decide to declare his candidacy for the Presidency.

Many institutions we know and love have functioned for years based on what they were promised to be, at their inception: schools, the government, families, property ownership, the economy, employment.  These things are brought into being in an atmosphere of optimism, and so they function well on the momentum of their promise.  But soon, people begin to find ways of perverting them and exploiting them, and we discover that there are no defenses against these trends.

Just yesterday I think I found another instance.  I signed up for "mobile computing", where you buy a device that you connect to your USB port, and you get Internet access via what appears to be a cellphone network.  I chose the option to buy just a week's worth of access, limited to 300 megabytes.  (In other words, the total volume of material I upload and download is limited to 300 Mb.)  Unfortunately, the volume is metered by the service provider.  Now, with water use I let the water company assess my usage, no matter how reluctantly.  After all, how much can they fudge their estimate of how many gallons of water I use?  And there's a water meter, sitting right in my basement.  Similarly with the electric company.

Things become more complicated with the phone company.  But the worst is this Internet usage.  There really is nothing to prevent them from padding their metering of my Internet use with all sorts of costs.  If I download a piece of mail that is 3K on my hard disk, they could easily justify a claim that the actual cost of delivering that 3K is several megabytes, the cost of my computer requesting the file, their computer telling mine that it's too busy, and mine calling back, asking their computer to cut the crap and give over the damn file, and their computer saying What file? and so forth.  So I simply have no control over how much they charge me for the service.  On the other hand, they have a virtual monopoly over this type of Internet access, and so I'm a part of an essentially captive clientele.

Meanwhile, I have Internet access via DSL provided by the same provider.  Of late, I have not been able to get on the Internet; my connection to the router in my house is excellent; the router's connection to the Internet is awful.

Perhaps coincidentally, the service began to deteriorate moments after I asked to discontinue their home wiring insurance.  "Home Wiring Insurance" is an agreement where they will come in and fix any problem with the part of the phone circuit that lies inside my house.  What are the chances that my Internet access is jinxed because of something supposedly wrong inside my house?  Jesus is not going to be happy with them.  So something that was great at one time is now going down the tubes.

Congress is like this.  At first, congressmen were volunteers.  But somewhere along the line, they approved themselves a stipend, to offset the increasing costs of maintaining a residence in the Capital, until at this time each congressman makes close to $200,000 annually.  It is very difficult to slow down the rate of compensation of our representatives for obvious reasons.

In addition, every racket that a Congressman invents becomes something all Congressmen can exploit, making sure that they keep their activities under the radar.  There is Lying, Lobbyists, Pork, Influence peddling, and Shady deal-making.

I think the most recent invention is for conservatives to get elected as centrist liberals, but then switching parties for the next election.  This is further confused by individuals who are themselves confused: people with conservative inclinations, and a mix of conservative and liberal values; people with liberal inclinations, brought up to revere conservative values.  I thank fate a dozen times a day that my values are firmly liberal, even if I'm unwilling to give any liberal politician a blank check, because a few liberals have, over the years, often proved themselves to be rascals.  The stupid extreme of the Conservative block also contains rascals; the intelligent core of the conservatives is, generally speaking, honorable, even if wrong-headed.  What we are battling are a bunch of wrong-headed intellectuals, a few stupid rascals, and a few opportunistic crooks.  The crooks, not being ideological, are perfectly willing to switch parties at the first opportunity, in order to get whatever benefit they can, to make their personal fortunes and empires.

With all this smoke and fog, party politics becomes very difficult.  You can't depend on the Democrats for the clear-cut liberal values they have always stood for.  Some Democrats are confused about their values, while others are willing to compromise their values in order to satisfy their electorates.  (Possibly conservatives have similar problems, but while a Democrat administration is in power, they are unified in trying to get rid of it.)

I bet things would improve if we could buy Congressional Insurance.  You pay a certain amount every month, just to make sure that your liberal congressman remains a liberal.  However, there would be no way to control the rates going up and up.

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Autobiography

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I reported recently that I was in the process of writing my autobiography.

Over the last several weeks, I managed to sketch out about 15 years' worth of memories, and I printed them out, and mailed them off to a couple of elder relatives.  (I also allowed one of my buddies to read them, just to show off!)

It was interesting to find that both my buddy and my relatives are amazed at how much I can remember!  Of course one is never certain just how well one's own memory compares with those of others.  For whatever reason, I can remember events from more than fifty years ago, as well as my reactions to them, and what I perceived as the reactions of people I was with.  What does this mean?  Perhaps I was sensitive to emotional subtleties of those around me from when I was a kid; perhaps I mulled over these matters so often that I was able to resolve any confusion I might have had about the events to my satisfaction.

Most of all, I think, that the process of writing fiction hones one's perspective on the past.  A good writer of fiction, I'm convinced, simply has to draw on experience, and the experiences of an observant individual are going to be that much more useful to draw on.

This encourages me to keep writing.  Even if my own thoughts are wrong-headed, someday my children can draw on my memoirs, and have something concrete from which to base their theories about what happened before they were born.

I'm beginning to believe that my generation was particularly bad about simply and accurately reporting what they saw.  So much of what were current events when we were growing up was interpreted by the media that it is now hard to separate fact from fiction for everything other than what you witnessed yourself.  I must make sure that I make that clear: this I experienced first-hand, or got from an first-hand account; this I read in the papers, or heard on the radio.  This emerged much later, reported by people who should know, but I'm just conveying it.

Once again, I urge everyone, whenever you have the time, jot down your memories!!!!  The benefits are numerous:

1. If you are new to writing, this is good practice.  It isn't easy to describe a scene if you've never done it before.  And what could be easier than to describe a scene that you've witnessed?
2. If you're a writer of fiction, these scenes will form the bricks and mortar of what you write.
3. Your offspring and younger relatives may not be interested in history, but they will be interested in their history, which is what you're writing.
4. If your life has been difficult, describing it could be a means of making peace with it.  It is particularly important to those who care about you to know that this process has taken place, if it has, or even where you are relative to it.  We often look at painful episodes in our lives with fury or bitterness, until we're wise enough to lay that fury or bitterness aside.  There's nothing sadder than a child, or a nephew, who does not realize that the bitterness has, indeed, been set aside.
5. If a period of your life was particularly wonderful, recalling it should generate gratitude.  Gratitude is a major engine for driving generosity and benevolence.  Those who have felt ill-used by the universe are seldom willing to make a generous gesture; those with generous instincts have a miraculous ability to recognize even minute experiences of happiness, and respond with gratitude.
6. Finally, young people today live in a world in which cause and effect are greatly removed from each other.  They see the highways, and seldom connect them with the Great Depression, or World War 2; they see Anti-Discrimination law, and seldom pause to think about what brought them about.  The problem is not that they weren't taught these things, but that they were.  They're so accustomed to tuning out their school teachers, that all this material becomes simply academic.  This is where family can make a difference: we can make history personal to our younger relatives.

In case you weren't listening, writing your memoirs (or an autobiography) is a lot of fun; don't let these points above make you think of it like eating oatmeal.  It is pure joy, really.  Just go for it!

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A Liberal Manifesto

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A specter is haunting America.  It is the specter of a large majority of intelligent people, unwilling to adopt knee-jerk reactions, unwilling to be persuaded by the hyperbole of lobbyists and the media, by bible-thumping Religionists and flat-earthers, and capitalist wannabes, who set themselves up as the forces that want to create jobs for everyone, but in actual fact just want to keep spending their profits without contributing to the common good, the specter of such right-thinking people finding themselves without a political home.

In a not-so-distant past, the Democratic Party was the party of the common man, the party of workers, and those who valued the contributions of workers, and all those who actually worked for their living, intellectuals, and those who prided themselves on being called liberals.  It used to be that if you were a liberal, you stood for the following things:

All people were created equal.  This meant that everyone had a right to basic things, regardless of whether you were born into a family that was independently wealthy.  This meant that health, education, housing, employment, freedom from discrimination were all yours.  But over the years, this belief was gradually circumscribed, and now these expectations seem to be tainted.  Those who speak for health care for all are looked at with disgust.  Decades of distrust of "career unemployed" has led to reduction of unemployment benefits.  The bogey of "reverse discrimination" has gradually begun to erode the advances of equal rights.  And a number of cultural conditions have resulted in lower achievement in education in proportion to input---the same resources are beginning to yield poorer results---and the immediate suspects are teachers.  This plays into the hands of those who want to privatize education.


As a result, it is easier for conservatives to vilify anyone who stands up as a liberal.  Liberals still feel comfortable in analyzing the initiatives of the conservatives, and seeing the hidden agendas there.  But it is harder to formulate a position as to what you stand for, rather than what you stand against.

Bruce Ackerman and Todd Gitlin have proposed a manifesto for Liberals, which they vigorously defend in their post of 2006.  The pivotal paragraph of their post is as follows:

We reaffirm the great principle of liberalism: that every citizen is entitled by right to the elementary means to a good life.
We believe passionately that societies should afford their citizens equal treatment under the law -- regardless of accidents of birth, race, sex, property, religion, ethnic identification, or sexual disposition.
We want to redirect debate to the central questions of concern to ordinary Americans -- their rights to housing, affordable health care, equal opportunity for employment, and fair wages, as well as physical security and a sustainable environment for ourselves and future generations.

I felt, without any reservation, that these principles were eminently worthy of subscribing to.  Unfortunately, the arguments put forth by anti-liberals are resonating among those who feel threatened by these principles:
"Can we afford these things?"
"Are the common people worthy of these things?"
"Are the people who propose these things secretly working for some enemy, such as Socialism, or European-style welfare"?
"Is it possible to be A Christian and still adopt these principles?"
"Are the people proposing these things Christians, and if not, isn't that a good excuse for opting out of this sort of agenda?"
"Isn't Big Business what made this country great, and since to provide the elementary means of a good life one must raise taxes, and raising taxes hurts Big Business, shouldn't we give up on the whole thing?"

As many writers have pointed out, some of the poorest of the poor are in favor of lowering taxes, even if higher taxes will help fund social programs.  Someone has succeeded in persuading them that some day, they will be wealthy, and it is better to have taxes lowered now, so that when their ship comes in, they will have fewer taxes to pay.  The pathos of this must be clear to everybody.

Unfortunately, one of the roots of the popular distrust of progressive legislation ---even among inexperienced Congressmen and women!!!--- is the rampant immorality and corruption among the members of Congress.  Unfortunately, Republicans have succeeded in persuading everyone that Democrat Congressmen and women are more corrupt than Republican Congressmen and women, despite the fact that the known cases of corruption are just about evenly divided.  (Even during the Clinton era, when Republicans had to work long hours to discredit one of the most effective presidents in history, the personal peccadilloes of the Republicans in Congress more than balanced out those of the Democrats, even if they didn't have as exalted venues in which to carry out their indiscretions!)

I have digressed.  But we have, above, a nucleus of a liberal manifesto, if we're willing not to be distracted with anti-liberal smoke and fog.

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What's Going On? We need a Liberal Manifesto

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Well, it's been a long time since I posted!  What is happening in the political microcosm of the US?

First of all, the Tea Party has won many of the Republican Primaries.  In other words, the candidates who have identified with the Tea Party sub-brand within the Republican Party (aka GOP) have won most of the elections that they have contested.

Mano Singham explains the position of the Tea Party within the Republican Party well.  Here's a reduction of his post.
The Republican Party, consists of several groups broadly described as follows:
(1) "old-style conservatives": Smaller government (self-explanatory), less government spending, law and order, and a sane 'stay-at-home' foreign policy
(2) "rank-and-file [conservative] social values base": Guns, gays, abortion, stem-cell research, flag, the Bible, and immigration
(3) "The Christianist leadership": people ... who claim to speak for the social values base but [who are more interested in lower taxes, and fewer social programs for the poor]
(4) "The neoconservatives": Their interests lie less in domestic policies and more in creating a muscular foreign policy. They dream of America exercising hegemony over the world, using its might to destroy its enemies. They are firmly convinced that America is a force for good in the world and should not be shy about using its military, political, and economic muscle to dominate it.

The Tea Party, he argues, is a loose coalition of people in groups (2) and (3) in "an uneasy alliance", who are often quite critical of the mainstream Republican agenda --and who wouldn't be?  As is clear now, the invention of the Tea Party allows the rank-and-file of the GOP to distance itself from its discredited leadership, and stand behind the portions of the Republican platform toolkit, if you like, that most lazy-thinking Republican masses can understand and support: The Bible, Patriotism, Guns, Motherhood and Applie Pie, but no foreigners, no gays and lesbians, and no abortion.

So that part is clear; we know where the Tea Party comes from --it comes out of the Bush era political disappointments and lost credibility.  And it brings to power the stupid end of the GOP glamour leadership, to battle the more intellectual end of the Democrat leadership as personified by Barack Obama.

It is becoming clear that a combination of factors have conspired to make the country as a whole, or at least the unthinking masses, suspicious of the intellectual elite in both parties.  This isn't surprising: First of all, the intellectuals in the GOP managed to throw mud in Bill Clinton's eye, and most of the country felt, simultaneously, that the Smartypants Bill Clinton was a suspicious character, and that the Smartypants Kenneth Starr and Newt Gingrich and all that ilk were deceiving the people.  The fact was that Smartypants Clinton was on the side of the people, while Smartypants Gingrich was on his own side.  The outcome was that now various hidden Smartypants could make it look as though anyone with the intelligence to actually solve the problems of the country was likely to have a hidden Smartypants agenda.  It seemed that only idiots were to be trusted.  So now the GOP has some actual idiots, e.g. Sarah Palin, and some pretended idiots, e.g. Rush Limbaugh (or maybe he really is an idiot), all working together to keep as many citizens as possible from voting in their true interests [I mean, the true interests of the citizens].

The thinking of the Barack Obama administration is opaque to everyone.  The partial failure of the Health Care Reform initiative, and the efforts of the health care industry to defeat the benefits of the new law, and the efforts of the GOP to point out new ways in which the new law could be problematic, all seem to result in making the Democrat Congress everyone's pet hate du jour.  All we know is that the President has come out calling for improved morale.

Unfortunately, a significant proportion of the Democrats in Congress are very nervous ninnys, who look as if they might want to turn coats at the drop of a hat.  These new Democrats, many of them pro gun and anti-abortion, pro military intervention, anti-gay and lesbian, anti-tax, anti-health-care-reform, are really conservatives in disguise.  They constitute a sort of Trojan Horse, and the only way to strengthen the position of the Democrats is to field a slate of true liberals.

The huge conservative presence in the media is constantly working to make "Liberal" a bad word.  It is imperative that those of us who are liberal should define that quality in positive terms; at the moment, it simply means not conservative.  What is the meaning of the word "Liberal" that describes what we stand for in this context?  What is it about the particular mix of values to which we subscribe that makes them integral, something more than a random mix of attitudes?  I think a Liberal Manifesto is long overdue.

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