It's something no sensible person would do... I wish I was married to you

It was kind of lost in the shuffle this week, what with the continuing scandals that the administration likes to create instead of actually governing, but Governor Eliot Spitzer of New York announced he will be submitting legislation to legalize gay marriage in the state. This is a very good thing, even though it stands almost no chance of passing the Republican-led New York State Senate. It's been debated how much "political capital" he should use to try to impose his will, but short of a State Senate majority, it will have to stand for the moment as a powerful but temporarily symbolic gesture. If New York can manage to pass civil unions instead, which seems likelier at the moment, and Rhode Island also joins New Hampshire in allowing them, you will basically have legalized gay marriage in Massachusetts (all efforts to overturn it have basically gone nowhere), civil unions throughout the rest of the Northeast and West Coast, and additional pressure on the more liberal states in the Midwest that have Democratic governors and state houses to possibly follow suit (that means Illinois, by the way). It would come as no shock whatsoever if a very significant percentage of the country soon has civil unions, and the continuing refusal of Massachusetts to actually break out in Armageddon will only make it more likely that states go further, not retreat. Honestly, once you've got NY and CA, you;ve basically got the cultural centers of America (Chicago would be a bonus, and call me an unreasonable optimist but I truly believe in the power of the media elite to both reflect the culture in which they find themselves and to normalize it for the rest of the country. We've all basically known that someday gay marriage will be viewed like interracial marriages are today, as inherent rights for people opposed by bigots and those who refuse to deal with the modern world, but I think it happens sooner than we think. I give it about twenty years, give or take, especially if the Supreme Court ever goes liberal by a 6-3 majority with younger justices being able to assert themselves.

One can ask, in the midst of this hopeful flight of fancy, if there is a political price to be paid. Honestly, the answer is yes, but not for Spitzer or the NY state Democrats. No, he is way too popular at the moment to be touched, and he's actually going on the offensive against State Senate Republicans for blocking campaign finance reforms. This latter move has the potential to reshape NY State politics for the first time in my lifetime, but some explanations are in order. For basically forever, the State Assembly has had a Democratic majority , and the State Senate a Republican majority. As a result, the leaders of both houses, along with the governor, sit in a room each year and basically run the state. It's a classic top-down, party boss system and in no way allows the interests of the public to be represented at all. The stability of the arrangement has been maintained by an informal, off-the-record truce, in which neither side nor the governor really interferes in the other's affairs. Thankfully, Democrats seem to have realized that with the entire Northeast trending heavily blue, this arrangement basically screws them over for no reason. Earlier this year, they actually picked off a Republican-held State Senate seat, and indications are that they might actually try to win more in 2008 for a change.

It's important to remember that dissatisfaction with the Republicans, which led to the Democratic wave in 2006, shows no signs of retreating. We've got all sorts of indictments either underway or in the works, and public opinion continues to turn against the war in a big way. Just today, it was reported that 55% of Americans agree with Harry Reid that the war is lost, so one could easily argue that no matter how much the Republicans hyperventilate about treason and such, it really does help the Democratic cause, since the war is so bloody unpopular. Call it a hunch, but I think issues like this may carry a bit more weight that Spitzer's take on gay marriage in 2008.

Speed of lightning, roar of thunder, Fighting all who rob or plunder: Underdog, Underdog.

Hi y'all, sorry about the hiatus, but work has been keeping me busy for the past week (no need for sarcastic comments about working hard, hardly working, etc.). Anyway, I had to weight in on something eventually, and certainly one thing is at the forefront of my mind: the NCAA basketball tournament, and why I'm a Democrat. Yes, those two are related. We'll get to the latter in a second or two.

First, the Big Dance, which as a 64-team single-elimination team sports tournament shares what has to be the most exciting format in all of Sports This is not American triumphalism or some such, I just mean the format itself, which is shared, for example, by the national cup tournaments in European soccer, the FA cup being perhaps the most famous, especially to readers of Nick Hornby. The key to the format is that there are never 64 really evenly matched teams in any sport, so you end up with numerous underdog vs. favorite matchups, especially in the early going, which then morph into Cinderella stories in the middle round. Typically, midnight strikes eventually, leaving us with a bunch of good but often surprising teams presenting us with the cognitively dissonant fact that all you have to do in order to win the whole thing is to win six straight games, yet only one team manages the feat. Needless to say, it's also the best format for gambling pools nationwide, since you need virtually no inside basketball knowledge whatsoever to fill out a bracket. I usually pick some possible upset picks from the #2 and #3 seeds, since everyone picks #1 seeds and it lowers the marginal value in betting with them, and then hope that they'll go far. I should mention this virtually never actually works. Still, it makes it more fun to root for underdogs throughout the entire tournament. That way, I've successfully hedged my bets. When favorites win, my bracket looks better. When underdogs win, I'm happy on a personal level. As a side note, since I'm really not alone in these rooting interests, it explains why debates over who should be in the tournament (aka "Who's on the bubble") are essentially meaningless. The Illini were one of the last teams in, making fans in Champaign and several counties in Central Illinois happy. The rest of the nation, not so much. Had Drexel, or Missouri State, or Bradley, or a smaller program made it, everyone not from Virginia Tech would have been rooting for the upset. Instead, no one cares.

Rooting for the underdog goes to the heart of my liberal political beliefs, of course. Up until 2006, being a Democrat we very much like rooting for a mid-major program. They show some promise, but you just know that they're going to lose in the end. Thankfully, sometimes Cinderella makes the final four, like George Mason last year, and sometimes those in power fall, like Duke this year in the first round (to Virginia Commonwealth). Anyway, back to actually making a point. The democratic party, in its ideals, certainly appeals to those who root for underdogs (in practice, politicians are politicians first and people second or third, and appeal primarily to deep-pocketed donors). Unions over corporations, the poor over the rich, the right of people to vote over the right to suppress it, etc. Seriously, for those who speak badly of unions, WTF? I'm not suggesting that they are perfect, but you have to be seriously deranged to believe that corporations needing protection from their workers is a more pressing issue than the reverse. On the death penalty, what does it say about your very soul if you are more comfortable seeing an innocent man murdered by the state rather than a guilty man go free? Karl Rove, the man seemingly behind the US Attorneys scandal (there's a shock!) wanted certain people fired for failing to investigate "voter fraud", which in practice means anecdotal evidence of some trace amount of illegal voting by non-citizens. The favorite republican tool to stop this: odious voting registration requirements that suppress minority turnout. Seriously, if you don't like the rules of the game, just change the rules in order to keep the other side down (see Bush vs. Gore for more of this kind of policy).

At heart, I really dislike people who root for the big guy over the little one (no height-related comments from the peanut gallery please). It basically means that you are picking your sides based on who you think will win, rather than who should win. It's like being a Yankees fan, only toward life, rather than just baseball. We're not kids anymore, crying because we lost a little league game, or a talent competition, or something like that. Especially in cases where the big guy is a combination of corporate interests that value profits over people, along with their theocratic allies who value profits over prophets, and a scattering of macho bullshit idiots who think that war is a game not much different than basketball, but for the traumatic injuries, deaths of soldiers and civilians, millions of refugees, etc....well, let's just say to root for the little guy.

More tomorrow night when I'm in the mood to be a bit coherent. Until then, here's hoping for Upset City, baby!

I'm not quite clear about what you just spoke....was that a parable, or a very subtle joke?

Today on the blogs, we had a flare-up of one of the classic religious/political arguments of all time. Battling for my side (which for our purposes can be taken to be secular liberals, aka flaming-heart heathens) is Atrios, who as I've said is just about always right when he chooses to devote a few words to a topic. First, from the antagonist, Mark Kleiman at samefacts.org:

I'd love it if fervently religious folks decided to try to be "the soul and conscience of the Democratic Party," for example by insisting that the party stand foursquare against torture, or, as Mara Vanderslice suggests, that we need to be fervent rather than lukewarm in insisting on economic justice. And of course if you want to appeal to fervently religious folks, casting them in a role they'd like to occupy is a good way to do it.

This quote looks innocent at first glance, but it got Atrios' hackles up, and rightly so, IMHO:

I see no reason religious people are uniquely qualified to be against torture, or to convince those in the Democratic party to stand against it. It's, again, assuming that religious people have strong sense of morality that magically matches Kleiman's, and/or that they have a higher level of moral authority to persuade others.

I'd love it if religious people all over the country suddenly embraced my policy agenda and persuaded others to do so. But it's absurd and patronizing to assume they will, and it's insulting to both them and me to suggest that they'll arrive there through some deeper sense of morality.

This point goes to the heart of something that I've long believed. Just because someone believes in God in no way makes them inherently more moral (or soulful) than those who don't. Just to make it clear, let's just stipulate that the vast majority of the non-religious believe in some form of the Golden Rule/Inverse Golden Rule as their fundamental moral principle. The Golden Rule is more interventionist, the Inverse more libertarian, but both are basically designed around the reciprocal nature of existence, the idea that other people at heart are essentially like us in just about all moral and ethical qualities. We'll further stipulate that virtually no one decides on grand-scale hedonism as their fundamental moral code, even though a bunch of wacky religious types always seem to assume that this is the case. I'll note just to be insulting that Ken Lay, Jeffrey Skilling, Andy Fastow, and the rest of the Enron gang were all churchgoers, as are any number of indicted Congresscritters (cough, Tom DeLay, cough).

The heart and soul of the Democratic party need not be the "religious left", it should be the whole frickin' party. How in the heck can anyone claim that politics should be divorced from a moral basis, anyway? What Kleinman wants to say, and Atrios would almost certainly agree with, is that Democrats should couch their arguments in terms of a persuasive moral vision ("moral" can, but need not, equal "religious"). We don't believe in Social Security just because it's successful, but also because it is the right thing to do for the elderly. We care about the environment not because endangered species are pretty/fuzzy/cute, but because we want to leave the planet a better place than when we first stepped foot upon it. We believe that something should be done for all the forgotten victims of Hurricane Katrina because it's the glaringly obvious thing to do, and we're not criminally incompetent wastes of phosphorus who honestly care more about Trent Lott's vacation house than the million internal refugees we now have in the country. Speaking in terms of right and wrong is something I think Democrats should do more often, but this has nothing to do with religion. If Obama wants to credit his church for shaping his moral philosophy, that's fine, since his moral vision is a really appealing one. If someone comes to a similar set of views and doesn't believe in some form of quasi-spiritual bearded superbeing, though, how does that not count in the same way? Forgive me for expressing an opinion that is somewhat unpopular in our national discourse, but I honestly think that the religious feelings of a scary number of people are driven not by a sense of right and wrong, since that would require more thought and less rote repetition, but rather as a cheap and effortless way to feel morally superior to their fellows, even though they haven't put in the time and effort to really think about how their actions, great and small, fit into a larger moral framework. Still, for the majority who find a grounding for their moral beliefs in Biblical teachings, and then turn those beliefs for good, more power to them.

To close, I think I'll have to turn over the floor to kos, who nailed it today, in the context of the winning campaigns of Democratic Senators Jon Tester of Montana and James Webb of Virginia:

Democrats and liberals have been too willing in the past to make their electoral appeals based on the intellect -- offering a laundry list of 10-point plans and programs they will create and/or support. We're trying to appeal to the brain, while Republicans have learned to appeal to the heart.

So we bore and confuse voters, giving them little sense in what makes our candidates tick. They are busy. They have two jobs, kids to shuffle between soccer practice and camp, myriad problems to deal with. Political blog readers may be obsessed with politics, but it's mostly a hobby. Most people have other hobbies. Politics is background noise. They don't want to deal with the details or learn about the issues. That's why we have a representative democracy -- so we can elect people to worry about the details.

What voters want is a sense of what makes a candidate tick. When confronted with a decision, what values will the official draw upon to inform his or her decision.

And while many people -- thanks to the good branding work of the Religious Right -- think that "values" equals "religion", fact is that values can come from any number of places.
...
And where do those values come from? If a candidate sincerely gets his or her values from religion, then that's fine. The Bible is a wonderfully liberal text. And when it's sincere it doesn't come across so grating, so imposing. Compare Obama's talking about religion to Bush's "favorite philosopher" b.s.

But religious values are no more superior than the values I learned from my abuelita (and most Latinos will get a good sense of what my value system looks like just by referencing the word "abuelita"). They are no more superior than the values Tester learned on the farm from his farmer father and grandfather. Or the values that Webb learned while proudly wearing his uniform. Or the values someone might learn by contemplating the great philosophers. Or whatever.

Values are important, and Democrats must be comfortable talking about them. Voters will respond to those better than any laundry list of issues.

That is the way to make sure people understand that the heart and soul of the Democratic party includes everyone, both people and politicians, religious and secular alike. V'imru, Amen.

Some cats and rats and elephants, but Lord, I'm so forlorn

Some days, the news is just too ridiculous to not comment about it. First up are some cool cats who might be a bit too cool for their own good:

More than 10 blinking electronic devices planted at bridges and other spots in Boston threw a scare into the city Wednesday in what turned out to be a publicity campaign for a late-night cable cartoon. The devices depict a character giving the finger...

Highways, bridges and a section of the Charles River were shut down and bomb squads were sent in before authorities declared the devices were harmless.

Turner Broadcasting, a division of Time Warner Inc. and parent of Cartoon Network, said the devices were part of a promotion for the TV show "Aqua Teen Hunger Force," a surreal series about a talking milkshake, a box of fries and a meatball.

From the category of rats, we've got the kind screwing up the war we've been fighting in Iraq:

Tens of millions of U.S. dollars have been wasted in Iraq reconstruction aid, some of it on an Olympic-size swimming pool ordered up by Iraqi officials for a police academy that has yet to be used, investigators say. [ed. note: try hundreds of millions, not tens]...

According to the report, the State Department paid $43.8 million to contractor DynCorp International for the residential camp for police training personnel outside of Baghdad's Adnan Palace grounds that has stood empty for months. About $4.2 million of the money was improperly spent on 20 VIP trailers and an Olympic-size pool, all ordered by the Iraqi Ministry of Interior but never authorized by the U.S.

U.S. officials spent another $36.4 million for weapons such as armored vehicles, body armor and communications equipment that can't be accounted for. DynCorp also may have prematurely billed $18 million in other potentially unjustified costs, the report said.

Responding, the State Department said in the report that it was working to improve controls

Needless to say, next time perhaps they can try tracking how they spend BILLIONS of dollars before they just hand it out. Just suggesting...

Anyway, our other rats are those trying to get us into our next war:

Investigators say they believe that attackers who used American-style uniforms and weapons to infiltrate a secure compound and kill five American soldiers in Karbala on Jan. 20 may have been trained and financed by Iranian agents, according to American and Iraqi officials knowledgeable about the inquiry.

The officials said the sophistication of the attack astonished investigators, who doubt that Iraqis could have carried it out on their own — one reason a connection to Iran is being closely examined. Officials cautioned that no firm conclusions had been drawn and did not reveal any direct evidence of a connection.

You'll note that there is not a single shred of evidence that the Iranians were involved, except for the fact that the attackers were "sophisticated". So help me, if the attack had been "intricate", we might be at war already. WTF is wrong with people to believe this crap?

On to elephants. First the kind in the New York State Senate who truly have their priorities straight with regard to who needs to be looked out for in next year's state budget:

Gov. Eliot Spitzer will propose a budget of more than $120 billion Wednesday that would increase overall spending by more than 6.3 percent, a larger increase than his predecessor, George E. Pataki, proposed last year but significantly lower than the budget enacted by the Legislature, people briefed on the plan said.

After talking for months about the need to rein in spending, the governor had to reconcile his campaign promises to substantially increase funds for education and lower property taxes, while also moving to make health insurance available to all of the state’s children and increase aid to distressed municipalities.

The governor’s plan for property tax cuts is aimed at the middle class, adding $6 billion over three years to the existing School Tax Relief program, known by the acronym STAR. Benefits under the plan decrease for upstate households with incomes exceeding $60,000 and households in New York City and its suburbs with incomes exceeding $80,000.

Some Senate Republicans criticized his proposal for not doing enough to help constituents with higher incomes.

It's always a shame when politicians fail to look out for the interests of those with higher incomes. We may see riots all the way down Wall Street, if they weren't so busy taking advantage of all their federal tax cuts that Republicans in Washington have been handing out for the past few years.

Finally, the best news story of the day, about elephants...as in pachyderms. The military has blacklisted them, but with an important caveat. From Too Hot for TNR:

According to a recently-issued Special Forces manual, while certain pack animals are acceptable to use for spec-ops purposes (donkeys, mules), elephants "should not be used by U.S. military personnel." In the assessment of the manual's authors, "Elephants are not the easygoing, kind, loving creatures that people believe them to be. They are, of course, not evil either."

There you have it. The military has concluded that elephants aren't actually evil. Giraffes, on the other hand, are either with us or against us, and we must fight them there so we don't have to fight them here.

conservative compassion

A little late to post, but as I was listening to some MLK speeches that were played on student radio yesterday, I was reminded that despite his current universal canonization he was a political leader as well as a civil rights leader, and took some pretty strong "leftist" views, from opposition to the Vietnam war to active agitation for labor rights (he was supporting a garbage workers' strike when he was assassinated in Memphis).

Like duh, dude. But that's why it's galling to me when contemporary conservatives appropriate him. I mean, weren't they screaming that Rev. King was a dirty commie not so long ago? Weren't they the ones yelling about states' rights being more important than human beings? Who was supporting apartheid until its collapse? Liberals?

I have my problems with leftists. They can hold naive dualistic views, sometimes also leading them to support dictators for ideological reasons. But dammit, like they say in Latin America, the heart is on the left. If you care about human beings suffering, you act, maybe through naive government intervention or inefficient labor unions, rather than saying that tax cuts and the free market will cure all ills. Conservatives can be useful as a counterweight sometimes, but damn, they never missed an opportunity to oppose morally imperative changes.

Dr. King was a conservative, in the same land where Iraq is a shiny happy place, and global warming is caused by liberals hating America.

Mother, should I run for president? Mother, should I trust the government?

So, it was asked in the comments who I'm supporting in the Democratic primary for the Presidency. Oddly enough, we have a split decision at home, with my #2 as her #1 at the moment, and vice versa. Noting that my opinion may very well change, and that certain candidates may either join or drop out of the race, here's how they rank at the moment, from last to first.

6. Other:: In this category, we'll include everyone not mentioned below. Suffice it to say, there are already two candidates I'm relatively thrilled about, so I'm not looking for a darkhorse, nor do I think we need one.

5. Hillary Clinton: Unlike the candidate to be found at #2 below, Hillary combines the worst of both worlds: A candidate who's not a particularly reliable progressive on some issues, primarily foreign policy (Hotline has her at 66 for foreign policy where 100 is ultra-liberal and 0 ultra-conservative), who's seen by many in the country as a loony liberal. Honestly, even though very little of it is her fault, I worry about a candidate that so many people view so negatively. Beyond this, too, some of her advisers or just those in general still associated with the Clintons have to be among the most noxious of the backstabbing inside-the-beltway democratic crowd, and I'd be happy to see their influence wane (this list includes Carville, Begala, Lanny Davis, Mike McCurry, Larry Summers, and a few others). Hillary deserves more credit than she gets, but she's the one candidate on the list likely to hurt the party with the infighting we really don't need.

3 (tie). Wesley Clark: For a bunch of reasons, I think his strengths will be less crucial now than they would have been in 2004, and his weaknesses more of a liability. Last time around, he was the military voice that could have stood up to Bush, Cheney, and their chickenhawkishness. Kerry should have been this way too, but he was tarred early as a fake and did an awful job of fighting back properly. In 2008, with the war going badly, the Republican love for national security as theater, rather than as something to plan out in a serious manner, will be coming back to bite them. Already, we're hearing an escalation of troops described as "The McCain Doctrine", and it's going to be an albatross for them. Thus, Clark's advantage as a General is less necessary, and his status as a campaigner becomes more important. Unfortunately, he was a good general but a rather poor campaigner, and I don't see what will have changed in the past few years to alleviate this.

3 (tie): Bill Richardson: Has good foreign policy chops and executive experience as governor of New Mexico, but can't really be said to have a ton of charisma. Maybe a good darkhorse Veep choice.

2. Barack Obama: My wife's top pick. I'd love to vote for him in the primary, but I can't commit to that yet. Oddly enough, race has nothing to do with it; he's not associated with the urban machine politics that tars a lot of black congressmen in some white voters' eyes (e.g., like Harold Ford). My big problem is the lack of policy in his message. He's all about tone, and he's by far the most gifted political speaker I've ever heard (better than Bill Clinton, who's damn good). He exudes charisma. He also has yet to say much beyond the need for changing the tone. If he would propose something big, he's got my vote. Calling for a redeployment out of Iraq helps a ton, but I want to hear something bold domestically as well. Presidents spend much of their time in office compromising, so I'd really prefer that he stakes out a bold set of policies as a starting point for negotiating ahead of time. If he endorses universal healthcare or something like that, he might become my number 1.

1. John Edwards: More charismatic than anyone besides Obama, he's been far and away the most substantive Democrat on the issues so far (noting that it's still early in the process). Trying to alleviate poverty is important, and I'm still a bit stunned that he seems to be the only major politician out there who noticed that New Orleans has been forgotten about by the President, a whole US city shattered and only rebuilt with piecemeal measures. Even if he ends up not winning the nomination, I think he and Obama will force each other in the right directions. Both will have to out-positive the other with the vision of an optimistic and progressive future, a message I think will have real resonance with the voters. There is a synergy to be found with their messages that would really make it difficult for Republicans to smear them, and I think this kind of optimism will win in the end against either McCain or Giuliani and their facade of strength, which in reality is a stubborn insistence on burying our military in Iraq while singing hollow platitudes to those sent off to die unnecessarily.

Wild Card: Al Gore: If he jumps in, all bets are off. He'd instantly become my favorite. I really, really doubt that he's running.

But don't talk about revolution, That's going a little bit too far

Just for clarity, that's not a Beatles' line, rather it's this guy, from this song.

So, the news from Iraq is that the generals rolled over and we're sending more troops, exactly as I said in part one of my tribute to Country Joe and the Fish. There is a rather strident discussion in some left-leaning circles as to the exact mechanics of the process within the Pentagon. Consensus seems to be that Abizaid stepped down early to stay out of it, that the guys currently in charge in Iraq either had to agree or step down (you can't follow orders while questioning them publicly; that's called mutiny), and that while Casey just pulled a flip-flop, the guy who'll be in charge of our escalation is a raving looney-tune. If you're not feeling depressed enough, it is important to realize that while the new troops have to fight somebody, we haven't yet decided who that'll be. The problem here is that the administration apparently believes its own bullcrap, and has trouble with the following chart:

Militia	Sect	Leader	Power Base	Iraq/Iran	Wants to Kill
Badr Brigades	Shi'ite	Abdul Aziz al-Hakim/The Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq	Southern Iraq	Linked closely to Iran	Everyone else on this list, plus Kurds when possible
Mahdi Army	Shi'ite	Muqtada al-Sadr	Baghdad/Basra	Iraqi nationalist	Everyone else on this list, plus Kurds when possible
iraqi Sunnis/al Qaeda(?)	Sunnis	God only knows	al Anbar province in Western Iraq	Hate both, but have Saudi support	Everyone else on this list, plus Kurds when possible

We are currently supporting SCIRI, even though they have the closest ties to Iran, and seem itching to fight Sadr, even though the latter's Iranian ties are much weaker, he controls much of the capital plus Basra, the key oil city in the south, and would likely win in a fight between the two. Note that US press releases rarely mention the last column, and the fact that every time someone decides to cleanse a Baghdad neighborhood, the Iraqi army either participates actively or sits the fight out to avoid having to fight the police, and they always inform the Americans that our help is not necessary.

Anyway, this post is really supposed to be a response to dkon's remarks on moderation, in which we seek out a way to become the bleeding-heart liberals we want to be without turning everyone off (BTW, it's Kossack, even with all the unsavory connotations, not Kossian). Let's start with why I'm still a good little capitalist at heart:

It would be nice if all large corporations were inherently evil capitalistic enterprises, and we just had to smash them to achieve peace and justice.

I would argue it is just as silly to argue that large corporations are evil as it is to argue that they are good; you are trying to assign morality to an entity that is fundamentally amoral, not immoral, and the distinction is critical. What is the purpose of a corporation? At least in America, to maximize profits for shareholders (my impression is that in Europe stakeholders are given more weight, e.g., employees and customers). Welcome, my friends, to the Chicago school and the aforementioned tragic ascendancy of economic theory into daily life, in this case like so many thanks to the Chicago School. In modern practice, it seems that while corporations are non-moral creatures, their executives are often the scum of the Earth, twisting the system for their own personal enrichment. If one wishes to impose a moral system on capitalist America, it has to be externally implied. Let me suggest that Republicans dropped the ball because it was worth billions for them to do so; one can only hope that some Democrats, especially the resurgent economic populists, might do a tad bit better. If nothing else, the revival of unions in America certainly couldn't hurt, at least to provide a counterbalance.

Development and even intervention by the derided West can lead to very positive results (is Bosnia better off now or in 1994? How about India with all the evil globalization?).

I think this argument may reflect living in a part of the country, like Madison or among my family in Rochester, where Greens and Democrats battle for the mantle of the left. I, along with many Democrats, supported the Bosnian intervention before the government finally went in, as well as intervention in Afghanistan. If the latter has exposed one flaw in US policy, it is that we lose interest before finishing the job, and this does undercut the justification of war, which ends not when hostilities cease but when some measure of civil society is established. Unlike Iraq, which was predicted by many unheeded voices to be a disaster in the making before the war, Afghanistan was fundamentally a manageable conflict in which we had the support of virtually every major world power. Doing good through multilateral exercise of power is in no way an illiberal approach, and remains a valid theory of international relations. Obviously, I could never support another military action under Bush (or McCain) given that he has proven his inability to commit to the long-term steps necessary after a war, but that does not mean that at some point in the future, under competent leadership, that we don't have a role to play in conflicts like Darfur. The same goes for economic development as well: the problem is not globalization itself, but rather how it is managed.We are happy to sign all sorts of agreements, but unwilling to give up the domestic agricultural subsidies that are killing people in the third world, or to negotiate the conditions that will allow wealth to be spread more widely in the developing world. If people complain about the WTO, IMF, and World Bank, it is not necessarily because they are inherently evil, but rather that on a good day they do a half-assed job with many aspects of their policies. Admittedly, in this case there is a strong argument to be made that the perfect can be the enemy of the good, but one should remember that the entrenched interests that benefit from globalization aren't going to be the ones to point out the flaws they themselves built into the system.

As a final note, the left vs. right comparisons are telling. Noam Chomsky is by any standard in the far left-wing of American politics, whereas Condi Rice is considered a centrist Republican. Mother Jones is pretty far to the left (further away from the center than The Nation, The American Prospect, and the New Republic, which is so contrarian by nature that it serves as its own opposite in the political spectrum. The National Review, which is equally as crazy as MoJo, if not vastly more, is not so far to the right (that's the Weekly Standard's role). We are in a situation where we can now debate if the center-right is more deluded than the fringe left. Similarly, look at the craziness and outright racist and bigoted garbage one gets from perfectly acceptable right-wing pundits: Ann Coulter, Michelle Malkin, Bill O'Reilly, Pat Buchanan. Honestly, who amongst leading Democratic voices is anywhere near that crazy? We need not go off the deep end of the left, but it is important to remember that on a host of issues (Stop Teh Gayz; Down with Evilution; Cutting taxes while increasing spending is teh s#!t), we really are right and they really are wrong. There's just no polite way to say it.