Politics

"In a true democracy every man and woman is taught to think for himself or herself."

—Gandhi

Politics are famously no less controversial than religion. Like religion, politics have tremendous impact on the quality of life in any given society. And like religion, politics are difficult to explore without offending. But the similarities don't end there.

Politics are like religion in that the average individual will often absorb the viewpoint of those he or she has been raised with, without looking far below the surface. And politics are also like religion in that a superficial understanding isn't enough, either for an understanding of the world or for the responsibilities of citizenship.

Given all of these similarities, our approach to politics will be much like our approach to religion. That is, we don't have much interest in demonizing other sincerely held points of view. We have too many bright and well-informed moderate and conservative friends to suppose that they are all either fools or knaves. We hate being evangelized, and assume others hate it, too. And there's always a real danger of so polarizing the issues that compromise becomes hard to seek.

On the other hand, we feel pretty strongly that the point of view expressed here goes underrepresented for a whole host of reasons, all of them bad; and we generally find that our point of view is less well understood by moderates and conservatives than the reverse. What we hope for then, at a minimum, is to encourage a deeper understanding of the issues confronting us in general, and a better understanding of the Progressive perspective more specifically.

If it's dangerous to wear too tight an ideological strait-jacket, it's even more dangerous to be uninformed, or to lose the big issues in the background noise of daily news and "infotainment." So decisions have to be made here as to what the big issues are—this itself being an extremely important issue—and those decisions can only be made against the backgound of underlying values.

Once again, we make no pretense of false impartiality where such values are concerned. Make no mistake: the viewpoint expressed here is progressive/populist against a background of Humanistic values. Still, we'll try to keep a sharp eye on both the facts—which are, in the end, more important than any ideology—and other viewpoints. There's really no better way to reality-check.

Finally, it's crucially important to apply perspective to the facts. Corporately-originated journalism (often deeply embroiled in unacknowledged conflicts of interest) supplies very little or else misleading context. So we'll try to make up this deficit here.