Episode Transcript
Speaker 1 00:00:04 Welcome friends to another episode in the second season of Talking Strategy, making history. I'm Dick Flax, and at the mike as well is Dara Mahal. Remember the second series talking about socialism? And this is an important conversation in that ongoing process
Speaker 2 00:00:32 On this show. Dick, I reached out to you cuz I, I saw basically socialism in the news and an issue that actually includes our local member of Congress salute Carbahol in some national discourse, as it were about socialism. And it was very relevant to the discussions that we've been having. So, uh, I thought I'd bring it to your attention and see if we could maybe do a deep dive into how socialism gets talked about in kind of mainstream discourse in the United States and why it matters and or why it doesn't and Right. That's the plan. Yes.
Speaker 1 00:01:07 I, I, uh, I'm glad you did because I didn't pay any attention to this. I thought this was one of those real just trick political things, this resolution that the House of Representatives pass. I didn't read it till after you called my attention to it. I was shocked in a way by it because it's so crude. Uh, and we'll get into that. And the fact that our esteemed congressperson, saluted Carbahol, who I consider a friend, I've known him for many years, his wife was a student of mine to be truthful, that he voted for this. But let's get in. Why don't you lay out the details of what happened that were, that's the focus of what we'll be talking about.
Speaker 2 00:01:46 Right? So it is a political trick, <laugh>, uh, that yeah, I mean, your instinct was right, I think. But recently the House of Representatives under a Republican control passed a, a resolution, which is a, you know, not a piece of law, but a, a, a statement of principle of the body denouncing the horrors of socialism is actually the title of it. And it was, uh, supported of course by all of the Republicans in the house, but also a majority of the Democratic caucus, including our member of Congress from here in Santa Barbara area, salute Caral. And yeah, it's a piece of work, right? It's one of these things that really felt, I read it and, and thought of two things of like college Republicans, you know, trying to like flex a very weak understanding of history into sounding more astute than they are. And also, you know, like the fifties and a kind of assertion of Americanism as a right wing project.
Speaker 2 00:02:51 And, uh, Democrats sort of cowering and fear to go along with it. So the resolution starts, I'm just gonna read the kinda operative language at the beginning and the end, I'll summarize the, the bits in the middle that are a bit pedantic. But, uh, so it starts out with the real juicy bits with, whereas socialist ideology necessitates a concentration of power that has time and again, collapsed into communist regimes, totalitarian rule, and brutal dictatorships. Whereas socialism has repeatedly led to famine and mass murder and the killing of over 100 million people worldwide. Whereas many of the greatest crimes in history were committed by socialist idea ideologues, including Vladimir Lennon, Joseph Stalin, Mount Seung, Fidel Castro, ppo, Kim Jong Ill, Kim Jong-Un, Daniel Ortega, Hugo Chavez, and Nicolas Maduro. Whereas tens of millions died in the Bolshevik Revolution. At least 10 million people were sent to the gulags in the Union of Soviet socialist Republics and millions more starved in the terror famine ho andmore in Ukraine.
Speaker 2 00:04:04 And then it goes through a kind of greatest hits of communist atrocities and then comes back to the sort of ideological purpose here, which is whereas the author of the Declaration of Independence, president Thomas Jefferson wrote to take from one, because it is thought that his own industry and that of his fathers has acquired too much in order to spare to others who or whose fathers have not exercised general or exercised equal industry and skill is to violate arbitrarily the first principle of association, the guarantee to everyone, a free exercise of his industry and the fruits acquired by it. Whereas the father of the Constitution, president James Madison wrote that it is not just a government, nor is property secure under it, that it is not a just government nor is property secure under it, where the property, which a man has in his personal safety and personal liberty, is violated by arbitrary seizures of one class of citizens for the service of the rest.
Speaker 2 00:05:08 And whereas the United States of America was founded on the belief in the sanctity of the individual to which the collectivistic system of socialism in all its forms is fundamentally and necessarily opposed. Now, therefore, be it resolved by the House of Representatives, uh, the Senate concurring that congress denounces socialism in all its forms and opposes the implementation of socialist policies in the United States. Right? Hmm. Profound <laugh>. So what's going on in this res? Like what is this resolution of ballet, why it's 2023? And, you know, the Soviet union's long dead, almost all of all of the regimes except the Chinese one and the Cuban one are sort of like, not really survived. Yeah. They don't exist anymore. So look, what's, what's going on?
Speaker 1 00:05:57 Well, it's socialism in all its forms is a very key phrase, I think because, uh, it, I agree. And there's nothing even in, in this documentation they provide, there's nothing to support socialism in all its forms being inevitably to be characterized the way they are characterizing it in this particular document. So that's seems like bad faith, me speaking as a professor, you'd get a, you'd get a, a downgrade for that lack of coherent reasoning on that point. And we'll get, presumably we're gonna get back to that. But there's something new in politics, of course knew in our, in for several generations, which is the presence of socialists in the Democratic caucus in the, in the house of representative, not just Bernie Sanders, but several other members, uh, in the Senate. But several members of Congress, a o c being most famous, who were there elected with the help of the Democratic socialists of America. They call themselves socialists, democratic socialists. So g o p clearly loves to be able to brand the Democrats as harboring and maybe really truly allied with those socialists. That's seems to be what they, they have in mind. And
Speaker 2 00:07:16 Yeah, I mean, so, so first, yeah, so first of all, like that's a really interesting thing, right? Is that this isn't just a theoretical exercise, right? Like, there are a bunch of people who are members of the Democratic caucus colleagues who are sitting in the, in the house right now, and like their colleagues are passing a resolution that's like your ideology, dot dot.direct link, the killing fields of Cambodia, right? That's wild. I mean, from a, just from a party cohesion standpoint, it seems like really taking the bait to be like, yeah, Republicans were gonna make this like really pretty slanderous accusation at our own people. That's
Speaker 1 00:08:00 Interesting. So one could conjecture that there were, there are members of the Democratic caucus who, who really want to suppress the socialist participation in that caucus, or really upset with it, want to not only separate themselves from it, but in some way alienate, uh, the, the socialists from the Democratic party. I haven't heard anyone completely really say that. The only thing we have heard is people, even Nancy Pelosi declaring at various times, well, I'm not a socialist on the capitalist. Or even Elizabeth Warren, remember in the debate presidential primary debate, she said, well, I'm a capitalist, not a socialist in me trying to distinguish from Bernie Sanders. Well, I don't think Elizabeth Warren's a capitalist, cuz she doesn't, as far as I know, um, uh, employ labor or capital <laugh> or even Pelosi who's quite wealthy,
Speaker 2 00:08:59 Uh, might own some stock.
Speaker 1 00:09:01 Yeah, we all, I'm a capitalist from that point of view. I'm even a landlord cuz I have a little rental unit here. So I
Speaker 2 00:09:07 I'm speak for yourself. It's not
Speaker 1 00:09:08 We all I know, not you,
Speaker 2 00:09:09 Not all of it. It's not we all
Speaker 1 00:09:11 <laugh>. Right. Well, when you, okay, nevermind. So, um, <laugh>, so that may be one thing. I kind of feel like why would our congressperson vote for this? I don't think he has quite those motives at all. I think he just wants to, there's a very continuing pattern that democrat liberal Democrats think that by sort of preempting a Republican line or, or supporting it mm-hmm. <affirmative>, they will do away with that as a possible divisive wedge issue that the Republicans can raise. Right? So like the best famous example is Bill Clinton abolishing the Age to dependent children, the welfare program, uh, saying, uh, things like, um, this era of big government is over to completely eliminate the use of the welfare state as a, as a, um, wedge against the Democratic party. And I, I have a whole other, you know, list of examples from particularly the McCarthy period, the red scare period that are pretty hair raising if you want I can, I can mention that now of pre precedence.
Speaker 1 00:10:34 The one that comes to mind is, uh, uh, is the fact that, so in 1940, the, the Republicans decided and were successful politically right after World War II to use communist presence or influence in the Democratic Party as an issue they hitting on that year after year, during the forties and, and into the fifties. So Harry Truman, president in, uh, succeeding Roosevelt adopted a loyalty program to kind of preempt that criticism. This was a program that the president authorized to investigate every employee of the government in terms of their political affiliations, if there was any, uh, evidence that they were alive with communist. And something like,
Speaker 2 00:11:27 But see, I'm gonna, but I want to, hold on. I'm gonna jump in there because that, like, I, I do think we need to draw the parallels between this and McCarthy era particular, or just the re you know, the various red scares. But, but like, I, I do wanna make a distinction between government action that, you know, could violate civil liberties and we could oppose for all kinds of reasons, but that was geared at the Communist Party as an organization, and it's possible ties to espionage, et cetera, separate that from what I think is really distinct in this resolution is a particular use of anti-communism, right? Right. To draw this line that it's like communism bad. We all agree, right? I mean, come on Democrats, if you don't agree with me that poll pot's a bad guy and Stalin's a bad guy, then like, obviously you're right.
Speaker 2 00:12:15 You hate America and freedom and we got you. Right? So it starts with that. Like we all hate communism, right? And then moves from there to, well, co socialism is basically the same thing. And then using these like, uh, you know, again, sort of first year undergraduate right-Winger, uh, quotes, like interpretations of the founders is like, see, in America we don't like anything collectivistic or government or whatever, and that's all of a piece. It's like, yes. So then it's social security.dot dot pull pot, right? And that kind of anti-communism is the one that I think, like when we were talking about communism and anti-communism Yeah. And other episodes, I think you pushed me rightly to say we have to distinguish between a, a good right. Progressive, you know, small d demo democracy, anti-communism, and what the right wing in America does with anti-communism. And this is like exactly, it was like setting this trap of like, hey, if you, if you don't like gulags, then you probably, you, you don't like the government having a role in the economy. Come on, Democrats step right into my trap. And you know, a bunch of 'em did <laugh>.
Speaker 1 00:13:29 So I see. Well, I agree with you. Uh, uh, I mean, I understand what you're saying. I just wanted to say the relevance of what I was, uh, referring to about the loyalty program. And even worse, a bill that Humphrey, Hubert Humphrey sponsored that set up detention camps for people, certain people in case of a national emergency, and this was a, had some of the same motive. I, that's my only point. They wanted to preempt the red scare attacks on the Democratic party by saying, look, we, we want the strong, uh, so-called security measures. I mean, loyalty program wasn't just directed at the Communist party. It was directed at people who could be said to affiliate with. It was very 40,000 government employees were purged under that. Amazingly, uh, we didn't Yeah,
Speaker 2 00:14:22 No, don't, I'm not trying to
Speaker 1 00:14:23 Defend No, no, I'm, I'm
Speaker 2 00:14:24 Saying especially in practice.
Speaker 1 00:14:25 I'm saying, I'm just saying what, when, when, when I, when I see Salude par Garba or Congressman voting for this, I'm thinking that's the same kind of motive as Humphrey sponsoring that bill in the 1950s in a way, not that, not as extreme, not as consequential, of course, on Car Baha's part. All right. So, but the main thing we want to focus on, I think, is that, yeah. Is this is this deliberate effort to try to, uh, claim that there's one thing called socialism. Is there any intellectual foundation for this belief that the road to serfdom, I'm giving you a hint, <laugh>. Yeah, exactly. Uh, what was that I, have
Speaker 2 00:15:11 You ever read? Yeah, yeah. So yeah, that's the thing, right? Is this argument is comes from the Austrian School of Economists and then to the United States via Milton Friedman. But the Road to Surfman by Frederick Hi Hayek is sort of the, the, the masterpiece of this argument. And, you know, I'm, I I was, I was taught, I was brought up to, you know, have some, a little bit of intellectual respect for Hayek. Yeah. Which I kind of maybe still do, but, you know, the, but it's still a absolutely ridiculous argument that he began to make, that the, that totalitarianism has its roots in, you know, really any kind of collective solution to economic and social problems, right? So, you know, the, the road to serfdom, the road to all of us losing our freedom, he argued is like there is the welfare state. Um, and it was, you know, his experience in Austria where the two prevail, well, you could say three prevailing political trends that, or political forces, you know, of social democracy, communism, and, uh, um, well, fascism sort of national conservatism that then went full fascist.
Speaker 2 00:16:29 You know, all of them made appeals to social welfare. All of them were about building the state up, et cetera. So this is where this argument again, sort of popularized in the United States by folks like freedom or like Friedman, uh, you know, came from that if the government taxes people to redistribute wealth, that's the road to serve him. That the road to totalitarianism, if the government gets control over something that could be run by the market like healthcare, that's the road to Servet, himm, et cetera. And, you know, that's all throughout this, um, this piece, right? This declaration, uh, resolution, and I, this, and I want you to comment on this too, Dick, but you know, you and I, we're, we're socialists of a kind. I would like, we, we want a robust welfare state and a different balance of power between workers and bosses.
Speaker 2 00:17:23 And if there need to be bosses at all, et cetera, like that's our line of thinking. But like, even if you are someone yeah, like Elizabeth Warren, who's you thinks, you know at, its that the, the basic architecture of a market system is good, but it could have all kinds of, uh, you know, tweaks to it and regulations and countervailing forces, like a strong labor movement, et cetera. Like if you're that kind of what we used to to call a liberal good liberal, why would you support an argument that says that the policies that you are for are part of a slippery slope to, you know, pull pot and Stalin? Like, what do you see?
Speaker 1 00:18:06 It don't, yeah, no, I think they, I think they, uh,
Speaker 2 00:18:08 Productive in a way, even if you're not a socialist.
Speaker 1 00:18:10 No, I can't. I think that they thought, let's get this off the table. You know, they'll, they'll never, if I vote for this, they'll never be able to accuse me of, of being a socialist. I voted for this resolution. I think it's, it's not, it's, it's both, it's kind of lazy. It, it thinks that, that you can short circuit issues like that, and maybe you can, that's the bet that people don't give, don't care about this that much. Let's just not make it more of an issue than make it a one day issue, so to speak. And, you know,
Speaker 2 00:18:45 Which is probably not wrong. I mean, that's not, it's not like there is a huge, I mean, we, yes, socialism is relevant in a way that it hasn't been in a long time, but nobody's gonna get primaried or successfully primaried because they voted for this stupid resolution. Right? I mean, that's, that's their logic.
Speaker 1 00:19:03 That's what they're in,
Speaker 2 00:19:04 In the
Speaker 1 00:19:05 Building. Whereas if they didn't vote for it, then presumably in some districts, there'd be space for, you know, something to come along and bite them and attack them so forth. It's easier to vote for this than to try to build an argument against it. It's the only way I can think of it, of, of a reason for, for supporting this, because they can't possibly, I don't, I doubt that there's any Democrat Now, there might have been in the old days of Southern of the Dixiecrats, but there's no Democrat now that would say that any measure that involves welfare state or, or government helping people solve their problems is socialism that is going to lead directly to gulags. Mm-hmm. <affirmative> and, and, and the murders of people. I mean, so, so yet they voted for it, um, in lar in considerable numbers, including most of the leadership of the party in Congress, I think.
Speaker 1 00:20:11 Um, and even some of the progressive caucus voted for it. Yeah. So I, I wanted to make one point about quoting the, the founding fathers. I was struck by, by this quote from Jefferson, and it turns out by the way that the, the right wing has a habit of quoting figures like Jefferson and Lincoln by making up quotes. And this one is, I, I looked it up. So there, there really is a dispute about what, what Jefferson said on about this particular point of taking the property of the, of someone who's got it, got it made, and giving it to someone who, who was a loser, their versions of that quote that are bogus. But this particular quote apparently does come from something Jefferson wrote. So I, I went ahead and, and tried to find on Google, you know, not spending a lot of time.
Speaker 1 00:21:08 Is there any other quotes from Jefferson that you could steal? I mean, you could say, well, who wants to listen to a slave holder? But it is true that Jefferson of all our presidents, really took a lot of time to define what democracy meant, what, what a good government meant. And oddly enough can say, since they quote James Ja, James Madison, as well as Jefferson, Jefferson becomes ambassador to France, and he writes a letter to, to Madison, uh, uh, while he was in France, and he tells about how he was walking on a road, and he meets this very, very poor woman on the road. And he, he interrogates her and finds out a lot about her, uh, p very poor circumstances. And he gives her some money, and she's extremely grateful. And Jefferson said it's like maybe more money than any more than anyone's ever tried to do to help her.
Speaker 1 00:22:12 And he, he wants to contrast that with the more egalitarian American situation where you wouldn't have such desperate poverty. But then he says something, I, I want to read this, this is, he says, listen to this. The Earth is given as a common stock for man to labor and live on. Wow. That's <laugh> the earth is a common stock. So presumably Jefferson's questioning whether there really is a legitimate way for people to claim exclusive property rights of the land itself. If for the encouragement of industry we allow it to be appropriated, namely parts of the earth, we must take care that other employment is furnished to those excluded from the appropriation. This is <laugh> exactly, exactly what the socialist argument would be. If we do not the fundamental right to labor the earth returns to the unemployed. It is too soon yet in our country to say that every man who cannot find employment, but who can find uncd land, shall be at liberty to cultivate it paying a moderate rent. But it's not too soon to provide by every possible means that as few as possible shall be without a little portion of land. The small landholders are the most precious part of a state. So, I mean, I think Jefferson were around, he would say, you can't have liberty if there's a large landowners controlling most of the land, and other people have nothing, you cannot have liberty. Sure.
Speaker 2 00:24:04 And, and absolutely. Yeah. I mean, there's, there's both the, I mean, there's both like the Rian notions of kind of where humanity was comes from and is the most pure and has the most freedom and so forth. That was around, you know, in these debates. But also what he's saying, right, is that the great thing about America is that we can give land to white men <laugh> that we've stolen, right? And that creates this great republic of equality, which just gets to like, yes, I agree with you. I mean, I get your point that that's a contradiction of the like hyper individualistic, you know, like, uh, yeah. Iron Rand Thomas Jefferson that they're trying to get to in this resolution. That's not accurate. But the real Jefferson is also like pretty horrid. And, and that's, that's where I land, which is this, I resist this entire idea that we can take the words of the founders and then, and then of course cherry pick and Yeah.
Speaker 2 00:25:06 You know, manipulate them. And like, that forms what America is about. And then we'll use that to reject, you know, like 200 years of political thought and development, you know, responding to real world events and capitalism and so forth. Like all, everything that, you know, liberals and socialists and all kinds of people have said need to be done in the face of industrialization. Like, we're gonna dismiss all of that and go back to these roots of this guy who was like, you know, wondering how to have the most free republic of land owning white men. Right? I just, it's like, who cares? The, is my response. And, and worse than that, and this, this is where I do think your experience and what you're bringing up about the McCarthy area is so important that whenever people start to say, like, start to make this a kind of nationalist argument, that there's a fundamental character of America that excludes socialism. Oh, and by the way, socialism is everything the Republican party doesn't agree with. Yeah. That is, I mean, I don't wanna be like these guys and say it, it directly leads to a right wing authoritarianism, but it certainly, you know, helps enable it, um, for sure.
Speaker 1 00:26:21 Yeah. And I, but I also think that, uh, that it's worth as a socialist noting that the same observations that led people to embrace socialism were present in a lot of the other discourse that didn't get the name socialism in our, in our own history mm-hmm. <affirmative>. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. So Lincoln apparently had a, he was a reader of Carl Marx, the Carl Marx, who was the European correspondent of the New York Tribune. Lincoln read a lot of Marx's articles, and Lincoln had a, in one of his, in his first State of the Union address, he has this famous passage that the Red diaper baby learned that, that he said this kind of stuff. He said, labor is prior to an independent of capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital deserves much.
Speaker 1 00:27:34 The higher consideration capital has its rights, which are as worthy of protection as any other rights, but labor superior to capital. You can see why people who reared in any kind of Marxism would say, wow, Lincoln <laugh>, he's even using the vocabulary that Marx use. So, but not that that proves anything other than what I'm trying to get across, which is I resent not just cherry picking the quotations of founding fathers or of the Bible for that matter, but the of the ignorant mm-hmm. <affirmative> simple mindedness that thinks there's anything solved by calling into play, uh, libertarian free market kinds of ideas as the be all and end all of human experience. The Bible doesn't teach that. And even Adam Smith, I believe, recognized that you had to have some kind of floor for living standards if you were gonna have any kind of decent society. And John Stewart Mill, these are the two father figures of, you know, merely serious libertarian kinds of thinking. And they both would've probably agreed with the kind of welfare state that the Republican party has always opposed. I remember when Ga Barry Goldwater was riding high opposing Medicare as the road to socialism
Speaker 2 00:29:07 Does. Yeah, well, the, everything, right? Yeah. I mean the, uh, the minimum wage, yeah. Uh, the Wagner act like all these things that, you know, conservatives still want to <laugh> undermine and destroy, but like, not always on the election pitch, you know, admitted, you know, being open about it to voters, but historically those were all, you know, labeled the, the path to Gulag.
Speaker 1 00:29:33 And why was that? Why, why do they even re resist? You know, once the these reforms are instituted, then they become accepted. And it's, I mean, he Trump the other day just attacked, um, DeSantis for having voted many times to cut social security. So Trump understands, you know, that's a clue to why <laugh>, why they end up, you know, it, it looks like such, um, phony hypocrisy when a, in the aftermath of these reforms getting passed, the Republicans embrace them or are silent about them, or try to re trim them and contain them, but they don't continue this, this argument. But yet Congress votes the majority in Congress, overwhelming we votes for a bill that embodies that kind of simple-minded reasoning. Mm-hmm.
Speaker 2 00:30:24 <affirmative>. Yeah. And the, I think the, one of the thing that you said is so important and gets to why this, this was like frankly offensive, is that, you know, there are lots of great Americans who have had ideas about the world and the economy and social justice that are not encapsulated in these, like, yeah. Again, a rand speaks through the founders quotes, right? Uh, you know, and don't agree with this definition of Americanism. And then there are people who are socialists and good Americans who, who like also don't agree with it that this resolution states baldly
Speaker 1 00:31:07 All, all forms, all forms of socialism,
Speaker 2 00:31:09 All forms. They're all just like right up there with Paul pot and you know, so that's you. So is Martin Luther King and Jane Adams. And you know, not to mention as you started at us off with like people sitting right next to the people who voted for this, right? That, you know, are on the same team. And frankly for Salute Carbo Hall, like I, I know when he was first elected, like his entire team basically were, you know, millennial socialists of course excited about Bernie Sanders. And so, so it's like you gonna tell those pe you like, walk into your headquarters, your, all the people that are working their asses off to get you elected and you're like, Hey, you guys are really awfully close to the Castro regime with your desire for free college. It's pretty much the same thing. Well, Ben is, and I know he doesn't really think that, so why, why do so, why give them
Speaker 1 00:32:02 This? Yeah. Well, one other little tidbit, I I think in terms of the, when this bill was vote being de debated and voted on, mark Pocan, who's former head of the Progressive caucus, had proposed an amendment that would make it clear that this didn't refer to social security and, and other programs and the Republicans rejected that amendment <laugh>. Well, yeah. Well that would've been a good reason to vote against the damn thing, don't you think? And that's
Speaker 2 00:32:29 Probably, there you go, there was the cover. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1 00:32:32 And, and,
Speaker 2 00:32:33 Um, and so the one just last thing I wanna say bef cuz I think we could, could easily make this a dead horse kind of thing, but is that I wish that democrats who are not socialists, of which of course there's many, uh, some of my best friends are not socialists <laugh>, but I wish they would learn how to talk about socialism in a way that didn't naively think they're, you know, playing jiu-jitsu and, you know, flipping the script, but makes a distinction that they're, they, they don't share socialist views on everything or about the, the economy, but like, are happy to be in the same party as socialists. And I think if that's not really a hard reframing, I think especially for voters right now, looking at the two parties, one of the things that makes Democrats more attractive is that we, like, you know, we tolerate discussion and debate and d opinion, and we can be adults like that.
Speaker 2 00:33:36 And it's not, we're not a doctrinaire party that, you know, expects rigid, uh, alignment. Like people don't like that about the Republicans. So, you know, if salute and people like that, uh, you know, Biden falls into this, I think all the time into this trap instead of, you know, pivoting off of the left of the party and disparaging them by comparing them to the great leap forward in China. You know, you could just say, Hey, I, we don't agree about everything. We're a big tent party that represents millions of people with different views, uh, in the United States. But, you know, we, we share some fundamental values that we don't share with Republicans, and I'm proud to be colleagues with them. And honestly, if you just, just want to look at party success, strategic back to the strategy question, like Republicans, they have a, a, a fringe, you could say.
Speaker 2 00:34:36 Or if they have, if there's like a part of the party that is more ideological or, or more polarizing than others, like they don't throw them under the bus the way that Democrats tend to, I mean, like, look, look how hard it has been to, to even get them to be, to take any accountability for like terrible terroristic behavior, let alone extreme things. Racism. Yeah, yeah. And ra Exactly. Exactly. So this like, it's so unseemly and sad for our party leaders or our members of the Democratic Party to ma take moves that are aimed at marginalizing people like a o c when like, you know, what, what did AOC do wrong? She once fully, you know, uh, public supported healthcare, that's, that's what makes her a weirdo. Meanwhile, they have, you know, predators and people pushing Qan on and so forth that they rally behind and support until they're like in prison. And that's, that's, you know, that's a problem that the Democratic party has that that translates into defeats, I think.
Speaker 1 00:35:49 So in the, in the New Deal period, when the Democrats controlled the government, they were, and there was a very strong left wing in the country, many stripes, um, that was, and a, and a rising labor movement that was quite radical in many of its, um, demands. And its a actions, you know, they, I think the New Deal was a, as it developed, was a framework in which what you're saying would've been brought into being, except for the one horrible thing about it was it included ra white supremacist, Southern Democrats in that, in that coalition. But my point being in like, I, I remember that fdr, Eleanor Roosevelt was always communicating with the left, you know, she was not averse to, you know, and that might have caused some tension within even their household, let alone the administration as a, as a whole. But, but the idea of getting the left out of the Democratic party was not really a goal because they want, they were afraid that if they, that would destroy the party, I think.
Speaker 2 00:37:00 Yeah. I mean that's been an ongoing,
Speaker 1 00:37:01 Well, so, so now, I mean,
Speaker 2 00:37:03 Process debate depends on the times.
Speaker 1 00:37:04 I mean, there isn't really an open discussion or debate yet in the Democratic party is they're between those who say, uh, we really must have a centrist party and the left wing doesn't belong. But there must be
Speaker 2 00:37:18 Yes, no, yeah, I was gonna say that earlier. I didn't wanna interrupt, but yeah, go ahead. When you were saying like, I don't think people really, no, no, there's def there are members of the Democratic caucus, you believe there, there are organized, yeah. The, the third way and the, like, the what came out of the D L C and those, that stuff still very much exists. There's very much an infrastructure in the Democratic party trying to destroy the left, get rid of it, thinks it is a, an impediment to electoral success plus, you know, they just have ideological reason. No, no, no. The those, the internal struggle for the, you know, within the Democratic party is not any less volatile and real now than it it has been. And like if you look at some of these like quasi scandalous things or sort of like unprecedented things where, you know, the party's own apparatus playing, you know, with, without any kind of accountability mm-hmm. <affirmative> or decision making just unilaterally playing in, in party primaries, usually against, uh, progressives. Hmm. No, it's, it's, it's definitely there. Which is, you know, another reason why this, there's so many Democrats voting for this really, it, it was a political si, uh, uh, signal and not a good one. So, and not one that our congress members should
Speaker 1 00:38:31 Have been. So there's two hypotheses that we're, we're, we're articulating. One is what you just said, which is people supported this resolution cuz they do want to isolate the left wing in the Democratic party and even in congress in some way. And the other is my more benign view. It's just, uh, kind of way of, of fending off, uh, the right wing attack by saying, oh, I supported this resolution. Oh, but
Speaker 2 00:39:01 We're we're definitely both right?
Speaker 1 00:39:03 <laugh>. Yeah, no, and both are true.
Speaker 2 00:39:05 There are, it's over a hundred people. Both are
Speaker 1 00:39:07 True.
Speaker 2 00:39:07 Yeah. Over a hundred people we're talking about who voted for Democrats who voted for it. So for some it was one or the other, or both.
Speaker 1 00:39:13 So in terms of our own congressperson, any idea what to do about him with him in relation to him, with him,
Speaker 2 00:39:21 What to do about him? You know, I mean, at first I wanna say is like, generally his voting record has been pretty good. Yeah. Like he's always had this rhetorical tendency to sort, I think just like pander to conservatives and I don't think he should or needs to do that, but, uh, but his voting record's pretty good, which is why I don't, you know, I'm not trying to do some kind of scorched earth thing here on him or anything. No. But, but yeah, I mean I think I'd like to get a response from him about more than just, you know, oh, I thought it was good politics cuz it, you know, shut them up or something. Like, I, I want him to wrestle with these questions of like, how do you stand by the claims about what America is about? What, you know, like is sort of within the pale and beyond the pale and politics and, and also like how you know me, you know, Dick, you know, all kinds of socialists. Like what, you know, this just isn't true about our politics. So yeah, I don't know, maybe we could write a letter, maybe we could try to get something published with some people's names on it. He is a fairly accessible guy, but, and I think we could,
Speaker 1 00:40:23 Well one, one obvious thing is once we get this published, this launched on the on the Waves airwaves, um, we'll tell him about it and have him say, you better listen to this cuz we <laugh> we're talking about our podcast, um, not threatening him but sing, you know, be good if you have a way of respond, you wanna respond, we'll put you on the, we'll put you on the podcast.
Speaker 2 00:40:47 Absolutely. Let's definitely link to the resolution in the show notes and possibly look for a response. Well thanks a lot. Thanks for a good discussion and we will see you next time.
Speaker 1 00:40:59 Thanks for listening.
Speaker 3 00:41:03 Ever visit a public library? Why? I'll tell you why. Cuz you're a socialist. Like you Liss Instagram, Yellowstone National Park, ever been there? Yeah. You're a social is Black Teddy Pinko Roosevelt. That guy was talking about Universal healthcare. You're a tax agent. Appropriate and regulating nanny stating social. I remember when my dog got run over by truck and the socialist animal control people came and took away my dog. Then my neighbor's house caught on fire and the socialist fire department came and put it out.
