You
asked what Elizabeth Warren, “liberal nut” as you called her, is
fighting for. If she were writing this, she would make it much more
clear than I will, but you have challenged me, not her, so I will
respond.
What are liberals fighting for?
We
liberals fight for justice, not because we think our society,
government and its people are awful, but because we revere them and want
to see them reach their full potential. By society, I mean individuals
and collectives who interact to create values, norms and expectations
for human thought and behavior. By government I mean the democratic
republic that was and is our national choice which relies on direct and
indirect participation by the citizenry, direct being serving as
representatives in elected or appointed offices and indirect being
engaging in public debate over issues, voting your conscience and
serving as called upon on juries or in other occasional capacities-e.g.
as a party participant or leader. And by people, I mean citizens who
seek information to help them stay current on the issues of the day so
they can be ready to engage individually or collectively.
These
three groups are not inherently good or bad, right or wrong; but rather
they sometimes work at cross purposes. Sometimes our societal norms,
institutions, values, laws and policies are such that they benefit a
distinct minority and underserve the interest of a distinct majority. In
the last several decades our government has moved away from protecting
the interests of ordinary citizens to serving the interests of the
powerful: corporations, the wealthy, the politically connected. Many
individual citizens are not fully informed as to prevailing norms,
values, policies and may not even know how their government works for or
against their interests. Unions have historically worked on behalf of
the working class to help inform citizens and to influence norms and
governmental and corporate institutions.
Unions
have been successfully characterized by those who would like to keep
the average person in our country in the dark as to the prevailing
cultural norms, corporate actions and the extent to which the government
is under the influence of the powerful, as enemies of the economy.
Unions are seen as dangerous by those who would keep you ignorant and
out of power as a working-class person, and so they cast them in a bad
light as often as possible.
What
Elizabeth Warren means is that she is willing to fight against the
powerful 1% of Americans who now receive 20% of the income, because
those people have taken over the government, they own the corporations
and they have created a condition in which the norms, institutions and
values of our society are distinctly against the interest of those who
are in the economic middle class or lower.
Conservatives
say they are fighting for traditions and against change advocated by
liberals, but in fact, over the last forty years our nation has changed
dramatically in favor of the wealthy, so the conservative cause
currently is to keep the change coming, and preserve the changes that
have occurred during that span of time. Since 1973 the income of the
bottom 98% has stayed roughly the same while that of the top 2% has
risen by many fold. If productivity gains during this time had been
passed along to you and me, you and I would be making around 30% more
than we currently do, per year. It's not a coincidence that the middle
class in the U.S. was strongest when unions were strongest, during the
middle part of the 20th century.
You
will not be told this type of thing by Fox News, talk radio and the
typical protestant minister in the southeastern United States, three of
the most powerful, largely white/male political forces in our country.
To learn more of what the liberal cause is, you need to do what you did
right here on FB, ask a good question.
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