Crooked Timber leads me to urban drift uk, who is commenting from a far-left point of view on Gordon Brown and the future of the Labor party.
The worst possible outcome is not necessarily that of a Labour party shut out of power for the foreseeable future, but that of a Labour government enjoying sustained electoral success in a society that has become more rightwing under its watch. Gordon Brown may harbour a progressive vision of the ideal society, but without a different approach, and with time, and the patience of the left running out, the challenge of rectifying the rightward drift of British society will be insurmountable.
The notion that the government should be empowered to move society to the right or left, rather than somehow implementing policies through programs, is somehow kinda disturbing to me. Then again, I don’t have a Mao or Che poster in my living room.
Modern leftists are great believers in rule by oligarchy. What they need to do is “rectify” (interesting euphemism) what’s left of British democracy, which has already been stifled in the rest of Europe.
> Then again, I don’t have a Mao or Che poster in my living room.
The religious extremists who so deeply want to change US society via government probably don’t have such posters either, as they worship neither of those two. But their ignorance of such people is hardly relevant to their deep desire to demonize gays, arabs, Moslems, Europeans, Mexicans, and anyone else unlike them, and their desire to use federal policy in order to accomplish these religious desires…
Ah yes, the pronounced rightward shift in British society.
I can almost touch it with my bare hands. No, really.
More accurately, is the disconnect between the lefty elite/oligarchy and the much less “progressive” James Sixpints.
It’s interesting that “rectifying” would be used.
When Mao carried out one of his purges, they were referred to as “rectification campaigns.”
I guess “urbandrift” is concerned about “contradictions among the people.”
AL
Great ending – it made the post.
Fred
Your comment about “religious extremists”
_But their ignorance of such people is hardly relevant to their deep desire…blah, blah, blah…_
is also ignorant. Conservatives (and some liberals) *do* understand Mao and Che – they were evil tyrants. That’s why we don’t hang thier posters. Left wing liberals don’t seem to get that.
But Limbaugh and Hannity do spend an inordinate amount of time talking about “Activist Judges”, and that that these “secular tyrants are beyond the will of the people”.
That’s preety harsh language for a judicial process that’s intended to make decisions outside of the enviroment of pollitical rhetoric, and not too far from the “my word is gospel” views of Che or Stalin.
Oops, they aren’t European politics, but it still points out that these viewpoints exist on both sides of the spectra.