I remember in my elite business school we had 30% of students from other countries, and my classmates celebrated the "diversity". i said, well, that's all well and good, but we don't have any economic diversity here. Almost every non-white student was from abroad, and whites and foreign students alike were fairly wealthy. They didn't even get what I was saying.

"He was, if anything, well to the right of, say, Bill Clinton in 1992 -- and Bill Clinton in 1992 was the most right-wing Democratic candidate since Woodrow Wilson."

I agree with this. And, the thing is, BC was President during the ascension of the conservative era. I thought once that era crested in 2006, we would easily have a more liberal administration in 2008, than his, I mean, as a result of the crash of conservative philosophy.

So what do we do now?

I've seen this same essay written three or four more times during this week, and to be honest, I'm still not sure what to make of it. I agree with a lot of it, and disagree with much of it. This:

(anti-racism and anti-sexism) It is rather that they currently have nothing to do with left-wing politics, and that, insofar as they function as a substitute for it, can be a bad thing.

gets me to the heart of my discomfort. It's one thing to make the very truthful point that these things aren't the end-all/be-all of liberal American politics, but it's entirely another to imply that they have "nothing to do with left-wing politics." I'm a bit worried in the direction this ideology has been pushed in the three or four different takes I've seen on this issue by liberal bloggers in the past few days. Again, it's completely true that anti-racism and anti-sexism can't act as substitutes for economic justice, but I'd hope these liberals wouldn't take the framing that these things aren't important, anymore, and aren't still part of the strengths of American liberalism.

To me, these arguments are a bit too close to the tone of our president, who has been dismissive of the watershed moments of the 60's. I'm just saying that I think we can all agree that economic justice has gotten a pretty raw deal without treading on the other important parts and successes of modern American liberalism.

Economic justice and civil rights for marginalized groups is so interconnected that I've come to believe it's a chicken and egg discussion. Sexism/racism serve to shore up power structures that are often economic in nature; they keep certain people in their place. When certain groups are virtually locked out of getting the right education or seed money so as to commence bootstrapping, they tend to stay in their places where those who hold power want them. Out of sight and out of mind, for the most part, except when the haves get into a benevolent mood.

Charity is enactment of a power relationship, an exercise of largesse from a have to a have-not that never need have happened and is fundamentally performed for the psychological satisfaction of the empowered party. It is capricious and, in that caprice, reifies the power of the giver and the powerlessness of the recipient.

At the foundation of all power structures is the motivation for building them, and there are generally two different ways to exercise power, and form tends to follow function. People generally either exercise power over or power to, they either dominate others or empower others. The classic example in the charity realm is giving someone a fish dinner vs teaching them how to fish. The fish dinner only lasts so long before the recipient is in need again, but the person who learned to fish is no longer dependent upon the benevolent. A further example would be soup kitchens vs micro-lending, and to extend the empowerment, you make sure you micro-lend to people who will use the money to empower others instead of playing poker.

I agree with much of what Floyd said, but I'm not sure whether he gets that civil rights for everybody go hand in hand with economic justice, it's not an either/or. Also, although we've come a long way, we're not nearly so far as we thought judging by the recent unfortunate election. Just because some Stockholmed individuals broke free of their assigned places and became part of the power structure doesn't mean we're all of a sudden a post-whatever society. These are merely symbolic changes, not the dawn of a new era. The Stockholmed individuals, in spite of themselves, can become harbingers of a new era as they inspire the young uns to step out of their assigned places. Then it's up to the next ones coming up whether they exercise power to or over other people. Until the domination model goes out of vogue, or at the very least, gets balanced by the empowerment model, no real change is gonna come for the working class.

and if you look at it you'll see that the heart of the right-wing agenda what you find isn't so much what they claim it is, as their demand for control of others' property -- in every sense from the spiritual property of religions other than "evangelical Christianity", i.e. the innate property of one's own soul, to the control of others' property in terms of jobs, earnings, wages, ability to live in safe and clean and user-friendly neighborhoods, their demands that "their" tax dollars not be used to aid "others" -- and most poignantly, their demand that they control the physical property of all women's bodies.

It's "property rights." It's just that they aren't satisfied with their property. They want the rights to control all property, no matter what kind.

look at the rules in Hammurabi's Code.
Check out the Torah.
Look hard at the Constitution, too.