The rumors are that Condoleeza Rice will be the new Secretary of State. I’ve always been impressed by her (although I did think her testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee was so-so), and note that this makes her a likely contender for the Republican nomination, if she’s interested in it.

Which in turn brings to mind two interesting thoughts.First, how amazingly cool it is to see a black woman in a position of such authority. And how interesting it will be to listen in on some of the more Paleozoic Republicans as they get their heads wrapped around the notion that she might bear their standard.

Fifty years ago, she would have been stuck bearing their illegitimate children.

Next, it makes the Hillary run for office even more intriguing. I’ve felt for a long time that she was overly heavy-handed; Hillary is certainly not someone who would shy from using the power of office or the state to meet the goals she felt were worth meeting. But I can’t help but think she’d make a better-than average President, given the inevitable minefields of policy that she’d have to navigate to get that far.

But she’s also probably the single most divisive political figure in America today – more than Bush, I’d say – and I think she’d get killed in the general election.

But, damn. A Clinton vs. Rice campaign would be a knock-down hum-dinger bell-ringer of a campaign. We’d have a helluva interesting time, and it might well be that the country would be better for it.

Middle Guy is doing his college applications right now, and mostly plans on going to a University of California campus, probably Berkeley or San Diego. So I’m watching news from the university system with some interest; particularly as it comes to student fees – which increased 14% this year.

They’re still good value, as U.C. runs one of the best university systems in the world. It should be better, and public policy would be served by making it better and adding to the social capital of our state, except for two problems: the state government is too broke to spend the money it should on improving the quality of the education there and broadening the availability of that education to students whose parents – unlike me – don’t have the means to send them there.

That’s the liberal argument.
Then there’s a conservative argument: that the university bleeds the money it does get through bureaucratic waste and inefficiency.

Go check out the home page for UCLA. Note the logo in the upper left corner? The one that says “UCLA?” That’s the new campus-wide logo.

The university administration spent $98,000 to get that logo – a slightly italicized Helvetica font “UCLA.” They paid this sum to Keith Bright Strategic Design.

The Daily Bruin, the student newspaper, has a good column on it:

“We did about 1,500 different explorations on UCLA,” said Keith Bright, a UCLA alumnus. “Out of that, we did probably 20 or 30 different identities and we picked out of those. Then we put them on various things and that got it down to six to four (designs) and this is the one that survived.”

UCLA could have paid me $50 and I could have typed out “UCLA” in Helvetica font, italicized it and it would’ve been a done deal. Here, I’ll try it: UCLA.

That looks pretty good, doesn’t it?

The logo will find its way onto the letterhead of every piece of UCLA stationary, though the athletic department will continue to use its famed cursive script. The logo, in conjunction with the university’s new commercial and the redesign of the UCLA Web site, signifies a push to re-image UCLA.

At a total cost of about $168,000.

Yeah, $168,000 is a drop in the bucket, and ‘branding’ UCLA isn’t a bad thing to do.

But UCLA has a strong brand, and right now, in an era when student aid, research grants, and budgets for facilities and personnel are so tight – is this really what we need to be spending $100,000 on?

That’s basically the full cost of sending one student to school for four years. Or tuition waivers for 40 students for a year.

One thing that defines liberals is a willingness to spend public money to build social capital – through infrastructure, better education, or other means.

But one thing that defines smart liberals is an insistence that the money be spent wisely, and in pursuit of the actual goals being sought.

Commenter TJ Madison left a lengthy comment on the Veteran’s Day post, laying out a what I take as a libertarian case against honoring the veterans of American wars. I haven’t had a lot of success in starting constructive arguments with people who don’t believe that society exists at all, but because I said I would, here goes.

His quotes from my post are preceded by >>.

<<First, you have to love America.

This is an odd statement. “America” is simply a geographic area filled with 300 million people. It’s too large and too diffuse for anyone to “love” in a meaningful sense.

That’s silly. America is also an idea, or a group of ideas. As noted by Lincoln in the Lyceum speech I mentioned last year:

We find ourselves in the peaceful possession, of the fairest portion of the earth, as regards extent of territory, fertility of soil, and salubrity of climate. We find ourselves under the government of a system of political institutions, conducing more essentially to the ends of civil and religious liberty, than any of which the history of former times tells us. We, when mounting the stage of existence, found ourselves the legal inheritors of these fundamental blessings. We toiled not in the acquirement or establishment of them–they are a legacy bequeathed us, by a once hardy, brave, and patriotic, but now lamented and departed race of ancestors.

Their’s was the task (and nobly they performed it) to possess themselves, and through themselves, us, of this goodly land; and to uprear upon its hills and its valleys, a political edifice of liberty and equal rights; ’tis ours only, to transmit these, the former, unprofaned by the foot of an invader; the latter, undecayed by the lapse of time and untorn by usurpation, to the latest generation that fate shall permit the world to know. This task of gratitude to our fathers, justice to ourselves, duty to posterity, and love for our species in general, all imperatively require us faithfully to perform.

The lives we lead are in fact a legacy, and like it or not we have a debt to pay forward to the generations that come after us.

I’m constantly amused that libertarians somehow believe that the social constructs that surround us and make up our society and polity are natural; it’s kind of like believing that the 405 freeway is somehow the product of nature, just laid out here so we can commute on it. Law, domestic tranquility, the advanced arts and sciences we enjoy didn’t spring fully-formed from the forehead of Zeus.

Anyone who has owned a home or a boat knows what it is to fight entropy. The reality is that everything we build wears down, wears out, and is used up. We need to constantly spend effort to keep them up.

Social constructs are no different than physical ones. Libertarians either believe that this is false, and that the social sphere will somehow self-generate with no effort on our part, or that they can get a free ride on the social goods – property among them – that are so produced.

If you don’t think property is a social good, ask yourself how much land in Mogadishu is worth. The answer: enough ammunition to keep someone else from taking it from you by force.

<<This isn’t a perfect country. I think it’s the best county.

Indeed. The govenment here is the least oppressive (for now). As a result people here can actually get some work done.

And that least oppressive government is the product of a political history that requires constant maintenance. Back to Lincoln:

But those histories are gone. They can be read no more forever. They were a fortress of strength; but, what invading foeman could never do, the silent artillery of time has done; the leveling of its walls. They are gone.–They were a forest of giant oaks; but the all-resistless hurricane has swept over them, and left only, here and there, a lonely trunk, despoiled of its verdure, shorn of its foliage; unshading and unshaded, to murmur in a few gentle breezes, and to combat with its mutilated limbs, a few more ruder storms, then to sink, and be no more.

They were the pillars of the temple of liberty; and now, that they have crumbled away, that temple must fall, unless we, their descendants, supply their places with other pillars, hewn from the solid quarry of sober reason. Passion has helped us; but can do so no more. It will in future be our enemy. Reason, cold, calculating, unimpassioned reason, must furnish all the materials for our future support and defense.–Let those materials be moulded into general intelligence, sound morality, and in particular, a reverence for the constitution and laws: and, that we improved to the last; that we remained free to the last; that we revered his name to the last; that, during his long sleep, we permitted no hostile foot to pass over or desecrate his resting place; shall be that which to learn the last trump shall awaken our WASHINGTON.

His appeal to reason is an appeal against the passions of the mob, and their desire to take the law into their own hands, and so weaken it. His reason encompasses the totality of the human experience, individual as well as social.

<<I love this country, my country, my people. And those who attack her…from guerilla cells, boardrooms, or their comfy chairs in expensive restaurants…better watch out.

Again, America is not a person. Guerilla cells attack and kill PEOPLE. Why should I care more about the deaths of innocent people I don’t know in NYC as opposed to innocent people I don’t know in Sudan? The only moral answer I see involves simple logistics: strangers in NYC are easier for me to help, so spending effort on them is more efficient.

That’s immensely stupid. You live in a social, economic and political matrix which ties you more closely to people in New York than to people in the Sudan. To deny that is adolescent fantasy at best; it’s important to remember that Ayn Rand’s work is classified as “fiction”.

<<So thanks, veterans. Thanks soldiers and sailors and marines and airmen. Thanks for doing your jobs and I hope you all come home hale and whole, every one of you.

Occasionally the USG does actually defend the US population from harm. The bungled operations in Afghanistan, despite their failure to get OBL, may have slowed down the terrorists. Historically speaking, however, General Smedley Butler, USMC, CMH*2 seems to have been correct.

Yup, the pre-WWII General. If only we’d listened to him and disbanded the standing Army…wait! We did!

You seem to operate from the fallacy that all harm comes from the powerful interests of the West. A lot has; but human history – the history that, try as you may, you’re a part of – is the history of harm done and defended against.

<<And I came to realize that these men and women – who had trained for a substantial part of their life to learning do unspeakable violence – had the energy and breadth of intelligence to also focus intently on doing good. And that they wanted more than anything to do good, and in so doing keep at bay the need to do violence.

This means nothing. The Nazis were committed to “doing the right thing” by their own standards. Sincerity of purpose isn’t nearly as useful as people seem to think it is.

See, I have no trouble telling the difference between our standards, which have to date been largely good (aimed at promoting freedom, health, and life) and the standards of the SS (aimed at promoting oppression, misery, and death). We don’t always – or often – meet our own standards, but they are there for us to measure ourselves against nonetheless.

<<On the worst day in modern history for the U.S. military, a few soldiers covered themselves with honor.

The worst day? THE WORST DAY? How about Dresden, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Tokyo? 100x civilian fatalities? Or does that not count as “modern history” anymore?

Sorry, strategic war is still war. For most of human history, the enemy’s people have been a legitimate target. For a lengthier discussion of this, go over to my old discussion on the nature of terrorism at Armed Liberal.

Of course there are some ethical people in the military. The selection pressure for unquestioning obedience is very strong, but it isn’t perfect.

<<I realized that the military was not a machine, separate from me and against which I could struggle. I realized that it was a group of individuals who are an expression of our society – of our worst and our best.

It’s BOTH. Most of the people in that machine seem decent enough as individuals. But the US military is still a machine. And unquestioning obedience to authority and rational virtuous action are still incompatible.

You flatly don’t know what you’re talking about. I don’t know if you’re projecting old fantasies (as I did) or simply watching too much television, but what you’re saying isn’t remotely borne out by facts.

<<But they are our soldiers, and they choose to stand between us and people who would murder us in our sleep. The wrong they do is ours, and the honor their own.

I didn’t select these men, or support their actions in any way, except to the extent their paycheck is extorted from me. I bear no responsibility for their actions, good or bad.

Bzzzt. Sorry. You live behind walls they erect with their bodies. You don’t spend time standing watch over your home to make sure that no one invades and takes it away because they do.

<<And for my fellows who look at them as soulless thugs, you owe them an apology too, and all of us owe them our gratitude.

They aren’t soulless thugs, true. But I owe them no apology. They are responsible for their actions.

Yes, as you are for yours.

It’s frustrating for me to debate Randians too much, because the vocabulary doesn’t mean the same thing to me as to them. They see a far different world than I do, and that’s frustrating because I want to realign liberalism – an ’emergent’ liberalism – along some lines that I think would be appealing to libertarians. I’m just not sure how to make the connection.

There’s a simple thing that I believe blogging is about: honest argument and debate. We bloggers aren’t usually in the forefront of direct reporting, but we ought to make up for it in intellectually honest argument.

Sadly, not everyone agrees with this.

Jeralyn Merritt, at TalkLeft, is a passionate advocate for progressive values through the law. I read her blog for some time. And then she proposed a silly comments policy, and I wrote her this email:

Jeralyn, I noted your new comment regime before, and now see that you’ve implemented it. As I noted in my post, I find what you’re doing in targeting ‘conservative’ posters to 4 messages to be the height of false liberalism; You’re not banning people or deleting their posts because of what they do, but because of who they are.

You linked to Red State and suggested that your policy is the equivalent of theirs; nothing could be further from the truth. Their policy simply says “don’t be disruptive of the spirit of this place” – you could do the same, and choose not to.

I’m going to take a break from reading you. I doubt you’ll miss me. But I’ll leave you with one thought: I really, really hope that you change this. We liberals have to find a way to have honest dialog with conservatives, if for no other reason than to convince the undecided that we won’t delete their comments if they say the wrong thing, and that a vote for us might in fact be a vote for positive change.

Take care.

Marc

Jeralyn replied:

the purpose of talkleft has never been about dialogue with conservatives. It’s purpose is to stir up the choir. I have been unfailingly gracious in allowing the other side to comment at all.

I’m tired of repeating myself, for those, including you apparently, who don’t want to listen. The four a day is limited to right wing troll type commenters whose purpose is to divert the discussion and obscuring the information. There are plenty of conservative commenters whose comments are not being limited. In fact, only about five have been limited and they are troublemakers, just like at red state.

If you want the information talkleft disseminates, then you will be the poorer for not stopping by. If you want to hear debate, there are lots of better sites to do that at.

Thanks for writing and for reading.

Jeralyn Merritt
TalkLeft: The Politics of Crime
http://talkleft.com

I let it go at that point, and then tonight, I read this at Patterico:

The controversy concerns a TalkLeft post that portrayed a blogger as a victim of governmental harassment — a visit from the Secret Service — supposedly for the simple offense of being “critical” of President Bush. In a comment to TalkLeft’s post, I had the audacity to quote the blogger’s post, to show that said blogger had not simply “criticized” Bush — she had actually advocated President Bush’s assassination! Once you get past TalkLeft’s whitewash of the blogger’s ugly behavior, you can understand why the Secret Service might have gotten involved.

Here’s where the irony gets rich. TalkLeft, having stood up for the blogger who advocated killing Bush — and having misled people as to what that blogger had actually said — edited my comment, to remove any reference to the fact that the blogger had advocated Bush’s assassination!

Then she added a snarky update trying to make me sound like a jerk for pointing out that she had defended someone who was expressly advocating killing George Bush.

You know, there’s a word for this – Orwellian.

It’s both offensive to what blogging should be about – the pursuit of intellectual honesty – and stupid in the terms Jeralyn defines for herself, as “stir[ring] the choir.” It makes the choir look at itself with embarrassment, as it should. And that’s hardly stirring.

Here’s a fairly definitive analysis of voting machines and polling patterns (pdf format) by the Caltech/MIT Voting Technology Project that pretty clearly debunks the ‘Diebold Vote Fraud’ rumor (hat tip to The Opinionated Bastard who’s probably from Dabney – where I’m told all the Ayn Rand fans live).

Summary:

# A series of claims have been made in recent days alleging that discrepancies between exit poll results and the presidential vote in certain states provides evidence of malfeasance in those states. These claims seem to be concentrated on states using electronic voting systems.

# Exit polls predicted a significantly greater vote for Kerry nationwide than the official returns confirmed, but there is not any apparent systematic bias when we take this same analysis to the state level.

# Analysis of deviations between the exit polls and the official returns show no particular patterns for states using electronic voting; nor does this analysis reveal any patterns for states using other forms of voting systems.

# We conclude that there is no evidence, based on exit polls, that electronic voting machines were used to steal the 2004 election for President Bush.

Read the whole thing, as they say.

This is the third post I’ve written on Veteran’s Day. I plan to do this every year from now on; even after I stop blogging (if I ever do).

I want to do this because I have reconnected in these years with three things I’m not sure I knew enough about or valued enough beforehand.

# My love for this country and its polyglot people.

# My affection for the quotidian, undramatic, unRomantic events that make up most of our lives.

# My incredible debt to and respect for the members of our military, the average men and women who put on uniforms and defend both our country and our undramatic daily lives with far above-average courage, commitment, and skill.

So it started in 2002 when I wrote something about Veteran’s Day over at Armed Liberal. Here’s what I wrote in ‘I Started To Write About Veteran’s Day…‘

…and to thank the veterans alive and dead for protecting me and mine.

And worried that what I wrote kept coming out sounding either too qualified or would be interpreted as being too nationalistic.

And I realized something about my own thinking, a basic principle I’ll set out as a guiding point for the Democrats and the Left in general as they try and figure out the next act in this drama we are in.

First, you have to love America.

This isn’t a perfect country. I think it’s the best county; I’ve debated this with commenters before, and I’ll point out that while people worldwide tend to vote with their feet, there may be other (economic) attractions that pull them. But there are virtues here which far outweigh any sins. And I’ll start with the virtue of hope.

The hope of the immigrants, abandoning their farms and security for a new place here.

The hope of the settlers, walking across Death Valley, burying their dead as they went.

The hope of the “folks” who moved to California after the war.

The hope of the two Latino kids doing their Computer Science homework at Starbucks’.

I love this country, my country, my people. And those who attack her…from guerilla cells, boardrooms, or their comfy chairs in expensive restaurants…better watch out.

I don’t get a clear sense that my fellow liberals feel the same way. And if so, why should “the folks” follow them? Why are we worthy of the support of a nation that we don’t support?

So let me suggest an axiom for the New Model Democrats:

America is a great goddamn country, and we’re both going to defend it from those who attack it and fight to make it better.

And for everyone who is going to comment and remind me that ‘all liberals already do that’…no they don’t. Not when the Chancellor has to intervene at U.C. Berkeley to get “permission” for American flags to be flown and red-white-and-blue ribbons to be worn. Not when the strongest voices in liberalism give lip service to responding to an attack on our citizens on our soil.

Loving this country isn’t the same thing as jingoism; it isn’t the same thing as imperialism; it isn’t the same thing as blind support of the worst traits of our government or our people.

It starts with recognizing the best traits, and there are a hell of a lot of them.

They were worth defending in my father’s time, and they are worth defending today.

So thanks, veterans. Thanks soldiers and sailors and marines and airmen. Thanks for doing your jobs and I hope you all come home hale and whole, every one of you.

It’s been two years since I wrote that and to me, it rings as true as ever.

Last year, I discussed why I felt that being progressive did not contradict being patriotic, and why even the most ardent American leftist could – and should – embrace American exceptionalism.

They should first because it’s true. And second because it offers a route to reconnect with the nonprogressives out there who believe that the Left only sees America as exceptional in its flaws.

This year, in a year of war, I want to talk specifically about the military.

This week, U.S. troops are engaged in a major battle in Iraq, and continue to fight in Afghanistan, and this year, I have been in contact with the military through my involvement with Spirit of America. And because I have dealt with them, my attitude has once again gone through an immense change.

I have personally seen the best face of the American military. Because Spirit of America is aimed at providing assistance to rebuild Iraq, the discussions I had and have heard about centered around what could be done to make the lives of the people in Iraq better.

And I came to realize that these men and women – who had trained for a substantial part of their life to learning do unspeakable violence – had the energy and breadth of intelligence to also focus intently on doing good. And that they wanted more than anything to do good, and in so doing keep at bay the need to do violence.

And I realized two things.

1. First, that these men and women are just like me, except better.

I didn’t always believe that. I grew up during the late 1960’s and early 1970’s, when any discussion about the military was a discussion about Vietnam.

And the image of the military in Vietnam was inevitably centered around My Lai, a small village where on one horrible day a platoon of American soldiers turned an ugly war into massacre.

As a student and a leader of the antiwar movement, I studied every detail of the massacre, planning to deepen my own understanding of the evil that was being done by our men in uniform on my behalf, and so the evil that I was trying to distance myself from.

And as I studied the events of that day, a small story – one that was relatively poorly reported then and even now – came to my attention and changed me.

Warrant Officer Hugh Thompson was flying a scout helicopter, leading a flight of three in advance of the AmeriCal’s advance into My Lai. He watched from the air as American soldiers descended into bloodlust and murder.

Some of you may not know his story, and you should:

On that historic morning, Thompson set his helicopter down near the irrigation ditch full of bodies. He asked a sergeant if the soldiers could help the civilians, some of whom were still moving. The sergeant suggested putting them out of their misery. Stunned, Thompson turned to Lieutenant Calley, who told him to mind his own business. Thompson reluctantly got back in his helicopter and began to lift off. Just then Andreotta yelled, “My God, they’re firing into the ditch!”

Thompson finally faced the truth. He and his crew flew around for a few minutes, outraged, wondering what to do. Then they saw several elderly adults and children running for a shelter, chased by Americans. “We thought they had about 30 seconds before they’d die,” recalls Colburn. Thompson landed his chopper between the troops and the shelter, then jumped out and confronted the lieutenant in charge of the chase. He asked for assistance in escorting the civilians out of the bunker; the lieutenant said he’d get them out with a hand grenade. Furious, Thompson announced he was taking the civilians out. He went back to Colburn and Andreotta and told them if the Americans fired, to shoot them. “Glenn and I were staring at each other, dumbfounded,” says Colburn. He says he never pointed his gun at an American soldier, but he might have fired if they had first. The ground soldiers waited and watched.

Thompson coaxed the Vietnamese out of the shelter with hand gestures. They followed, wary. Thompson looked at his three-man helicopter and realized he had nowhere to put them. “There was no thinking about it,” he says now. “It was just something that had to be done, and it had to be done fast.” He got on the radio and begged the gunships to land and fly the four adults and five children to safety, which they did within minutes.

He put himself and his men between American troops and the villagers they obviously intended to murder. He threatened American troops with his own crew’s weapons, and arranged for the other helicopters in his flight to evacuate a group of villagers, and then for his own crewman to rescue an uninjured small child from a pile of bodies.

When he returned to base, he reported the massacre; his reports were covered up.

On the worst day in modern history for the U.S. military, a few soldiers covered themselves with honor.

And my own attitude went through an immense change.

2. I realized that the military was not a machine, separate from me and against which I could struggle. I realized that it was a group of individuals who are an expression of our society – of our worst and our best.

I like to believe that had my personal history been different, I would have been Hugh Thompson, not William Calley. I know that both of them are part of my history and yours as well.

I believed for a little while that Calley represented the truth of the military, and I was an ass for believing that. When I read the rants of the anti-imperialist Left, the fevered imaginations of those who see the military as I once did, as an all-devouring machine that ate the souls of those who were part of it.

It’s not.

I’ve sat in meetings with officers who today are in Fallouja. I’ve worked side by side with some of the nineteen and twenty-year olds they are leading.

Their souls are fine, thank you very much. I’ve looked in their eyes, and I know it.

The soldiers are optimistic, committed, smart people. They have chosen a hard path for themselves, and like everyone who walks a difficult path, they are better human beings for it. They see obstacles as challenges and challenges as what they are on earth to overcome.

They are human and war is horrible. Bad things will happen, some that will be our fault. It has always been so.

But they are our soldiers, and they choose to stand between us and people who would murder us in our sleep. The wrong they do is ours, and the honor their own.

For myself, I owe an apology to all of them for doubting them, and here it is:

bq.. I’m sorry. I’m deeply, truly sorry for myself and for my peers and what we felt and some feel about the men and women who wear the uniform of our country.

And for my fellows who look at them as soulless thugs, you owe them an apology too, and all of us owe them our gratitude.

We may disagree with our national policies, but this isn’t Policy Day.

This is the day that we honor the men and women who put their lives on the line to defend us and carry out those policies, and in so doing express something that is really one of the highest moral values of all. They risk their lives for all of us, for the folks at home, the flag and their fellows.

p. So thanks, veterans. Thanks soldiers and sailors and marines and airmen. Thanks for doing your jobs and I hope you all come home hale and whole, every one of you. If you find me, I’ll gladly shake your hand in gratitude. If you can’t find me, just look to the right or left of you, because someone else gladly will.

Today and tomorrow are the days to remind people about Soldier’s Angels. Take what you were going to spend on lunch these days, and give it to them instead.

[Update: Author Cosma Shalizi points out that they had an error in their program, and the effect I point out in the post was an artifact. Oh, well – another beautiful theory slain by an ugly fact. Compliments to Cosma for getting the correction out so quickly.]

Via Crooked Timber, I’m indirectly taken to this page of cartograms on the election results by Michael Gastner, Cosma Shalizi, and Mark Newman.

It’s fascinating (and beautiful).

Here’s the money quote, though:

Of course, we know that nationwide the percentages of voters voting for either candidate were almost identical, so what is going on here?

The answer is that there were very few counties in which most people voted for the Republican candidate, but there were many in which most people voted for the Democrat. Put another way, the amount of red on the map is skewed because there are many counties in which only a slim majority voted Republican; there were substantially fewer counties in which a slim majority voted Democrat.

As an example, leaving out for the moment voters who voted for third-party candidates, the number of counties in the US in which more than 99% of voters voted Republican was five (out of 4533). The number of counties in which more than 99% of voters voted Democrat was 307.

There’s a histogram on this up at Three-Toed Sloth, go look at it right now…it shows a fairly normal curve, with a huge spike at the 100% Democratic level.

I don’t have time to sift election data and find the 307 counties where 99% percent voted Democratic, but I’m willing to bet that they included areas where the political and media leadership of the country live.

Welcome to the ‘bubble’, folks. If this is right, it’s physical as well as informational.

For those who are convinced that our choice is between theocracy and progressivism, a small bit of history for you to consider:

On Wednesday, December 13 [1961], Slater King, who had been elected vice president of the newly formed Albany Movement, led 200 protestors to city hall. At the courthouse steps they stopped to pray for the students’ release. As SNCC had hoped, people were drawing on their own strengths, notably their passionate religious commitment, to rally under the civil rights banner. By the end of the march, Slater King and his 200 marchers were on their way to jail. Police Chief Laurie Pritchett arrested them for parading without a permit. “We can’t tolerate the NAACP or SNCC or any other nigger organization [taking] over this town with mass demonstrations,” Pritchett said in a news conference.

By mid-December, Chief Pritchett and his officers had arrested more than 500 demonstrators. Albany’s mayor, Asa Kelly, agreed to negotiate the possible integration of the bus and train stations as well as conditions for the release of the prisoners now packing city jails.

The Albany Movement had not anticipated so many arrests, especially of homemakers, cooks, maids, and laborers. Recognizing the need for outside help, movement president William Anderson decided to call an old college classmate in Atlanta – Martin Luther King, Jr. He asked the minister to come to Albany and speak at a movement rally.

That Friday night, the Shiloh Baptist Church overflowed with people who had come to hear Rev. King. Loudspeakers were set up outside for those who couldn’t get in. “I woke up this morning with my mind stayed on freedom,” they sang. “Martin Luther King says freedom-Let the white man say freedom.”

“Eyes On The Prize: America’s Civil Rights Years 1954 – 1965” p 168

Let me toss out an idea: the issue isn’t so much the content of the values; the issue is how they are framed within the context of the larger values held by many in America.

I believe that the progressive values I’m most interested in – environmental stewardship, equality, tolerance, a government standing up for the less powerful – can be framed within the values of community, family, home that I believe are central to many who voted against Kerry.

I’ve been working on a piece about “The Future of the Democratic Party,” and I realize that it’s going to have a lot of competition in the next few months.

That’s OK. It’s good, actually. As I read the emails from my friends, and the blogs and news sites, I see a lot of questions and some ideas.

Someone on one of my email lists put this up:

My co-worker reminded me today that advertisers have a better pulse on America than most Democrats…they know and accept that decisions are made from the gut — emotional level — not the brain.

Time to employ a bit of marketing strategy…

So to her, the problem is that the Democrats don’t know how to sell.”Screw Them” Kos has a simple answer:

So how did Bush even get this far? By demonising an entire group of people — gays and lesbians. By cynical appeals to religion. By slandering a true war hero. And, most importantly, by scaring people. You see, terrorists would detonate a nuclear bomb in a major city if Kerry were elected. Only Bush can protect us. And those efforts, as I have written before, were all aided and abetted by a well-oiled message machine the likes of which the American left is still unable to match.

So the problem is that the opposition is evil, and unprincipled.

I’ve got a different one.

Go look at the electoral map. Go read my piece on country music and values.

Here’s the problem. Amy Sullivan says, over at Political Animal:

I think Democrats need to say out loud now what many have been whispering (or blogging) for a while. I adore my former boss Tom Daschle and–objectivity be damned–am heartbroken today about his loss. But it is clear that Senate Democrats simply cannot afford to have a leader who hails from a hardcore red state. It puts both the leader and the party in an untenable position.

While I think Amy is absolutely right in the things she’s written about the need for the progressive movement to reconnect to issues of faith and religion – and she’s one of the pioneers that have talked about that – she’s absolutely wrong here, and has it completely backwards.

The Democrats won’t be a dominant party until they can align their message with the American people well enough that their leadership is safe running in Red states.

Does this mean that they repudiate core Democratic values?

I don’t think so.

I believe in the liberal values of tolerance, equality, and government on the side of the little guy. I believe in clean air and water I can drink. I think that most Americans do as well, and that while there are healthy debates to have about how to get there – or closer to there – I simply believe in the product that liberals and Democrats should be able to sell. I don’t think most Americans are too stupid to buy it.

I do think, that like the automakers in the 1970’s and the dot-com kids in the 1990’s, the apparatus of the Democratic Party has forgotten that it has customers and that the needs of those customers take precedence over the wants of the management and employees.

It’s got to be the Democratic Party for the whole country, not just suburban Washington D.C., Manhattan, Brentwood, and Mill Valley.

So here’s a thesis:

The Democratic Party is the Democratic Party for the whole country, not just for New York, Massachusetts, and California.

In fact, rather than designing what the party should look like, let’s step back and talk about what the party is for.

Let’s come up with a set of design principles – a set of theses for the Democratic Party.

I think we ought to be able to express what we want in less than a hundred of them. I bet we can do it in ninety-five of them.

Then I’ll nail the fucking things to the door of party headquarters, and we’ll start a real Reformation.

Go ahead and add your own in the comments. I’ll build a list here as we go.

Donovan Janus, founder of Exposure Manager and the Netherlands’ gift to technology, has started a blog, ‘The Flying Kiwi.’

His latest post is a look at the aftermath of the second ideological murder in a year in the Netherlands; the assassination of Theo Van Gogh.