What does it mean to be a Progressive/Liberal in America today? How do Progressives understand that term?
That seems to me to be an extremely important question, which I touched on in my last post.
There was a split in the Democratic Party in the late sixties between (roughly) the economic justice/labor/New Deal left on one side, and the (then) "New" Left/Anti-war/Cultural Revolutionary Left on the other.
One reason Obama excites me as a candidate is that he seems to me to represent a recognition that the old fights are fading in importance: in part because 1968 is, well, 40-years-ago history - the combatants are either mostly dead (the Boomers' parents) or will be in rest homes gumming creamed spinach pretty soon (the real, actual hippies the Right still rants about); and in part because the last 8 years have established beyond a doubt that the old hippie/square shouting matches are a luxury we can no longer afford.
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