Manx

irate has a good thread going on the voices around here "scapegoating" Evangelicals.

I see some other voices which disturb me in a similar fashion - the voices that claim Democrats need to appeal to certain aspects of our society that strongly believe in God in order to win elections.

This is indeed a very practical proposal. It is precisely what fiscal conservatives have done.

But is it the right thing to do?

In my mind, there are two flaws with the concept:

1- It is simply not honest. It wasn't honest of many fiscal conservatives to join together with social conservatives in order that each disparate group could gain their power and it would not be honest for liberals to being appealing to social conservatives in the same fashion. And if it is all just a lie, then once the liberals, with their new found "faith" to grab the social conservative vote, are in power - they either have to follow through with the lie, or end up losing the next election. Fiscal conservative were able to sacrifice their ideals in order to maintain the lie. As a liberal, I cannot.

2- It is appeasement. The lack of power of liberal Democrats is not that they don't appeal to the majority of Americans (which is so often touted by conservatives), the lack of power is attributable to the lower cause of concern among liberals vs. the higher cause of concern among social conservatives. To suggest that liberals need to either adjust their means of talking to these social conservatives, or worse, adjust their principles to align them more with these social conservatives is nothing but a destruction of the liberal philosophy. No one in this country can claim the majority of Americans are socially conservative - what we have seen with this election is ONLY that the majority of those who vote are either socially conservative or willing to sacrifice their opposing ideals in order to gain power fiscally.

It is my belief that the vast majority of American's are much more liberal than conservative when it comes to social morals. The problem is that the passion felt by the minority of social conservatives is more powerful than that felt by the liberals - and so they win the vote and get the power. There is no middle ground. There is no cooperation when it comes to whether a gay couple are allowed to marry and whether the state or country has the right to prevent that. There is no appeasement.

Unfortunately, that the liberals could not get up off their ass and vote two days ago is a sign to me that it is just impossible for them to ever compete with the social conservative.

But appeasement and lying is nothing more than caving in to ideals which a liberal simply does not hold. And there has been FAR too much talk of doing something like this around here. I certainly attribute it to the many conservatives around here who would like nothing more than to slowly but surely crush the philosphy of the liberal. But I also attribute it to the passive weakness of the liberal.