Men are not women. DEI is racism and Israel has every right to exist and to defend itself. Schools have no business transing children or activating them politically or passing them along whether they can read or write or do math.
It has all happened under Democratic aegis- across the last 12 years. I have watched in horror as my beloved Democratic Party, the Party of my grandparents and parents and my grown children has thrown itself into this pyre.
I cannot imagine what would ever woo me back.
Because I do not trust them.
I am glad my parents are dead and cannot see where their liberal beliefs have led us.
People ranging from John McWhorter, James Lindsay to Nellie Bowles etc etc wrote whole books about this (the new great faith called Social Justice) years ago. Opposing it would have required a level of courage and principle beyond the ability of almost every politician and anyone in "Left spaces".
Trump first conquered the Republicans, now the reaction against him is killing off the Dems.
Or the way I put it to my friends and family towards a decade ago .. Trump killed the Republican Party and the Democrat Party committed suicide. (The silver lining is we have an unusual opportunity to blow on the dust as it is settling into two new Parties .. hopefully two sane ones). (btw, in addition to the conventional wisdom on how Trump did it .. my own thought that it was also necessary that the 2016 Republican Primary included such a long roster of unusually qualified and excellent candidates .. which of course split all the normie voters .. and gave weight to the open primary Democrat Party disrupters who assumed that a Trump candidacy meant an automatic win to Hillary).
This is an excellent perspective. It's what happens when the Augustinian concept of City of God is confused with what he called City of Man. In other words, when religion and faith ceased to be spiritual realms and were incorporated into the state. Socialism is essentially a secular religion with no God. It's also known as secular humanism, and it's a substitute for religious faith. Unfortunately, it doesn't work, because since there's no God, some human being is, in effect, made God. In a Soviet system, that was Lenin or Stalin or Marx. By definition, it's what religious people refer to as idolatry, because every human being has feet of clay and has a dark side.
I couldn't agree with you more that moderates in the Democrat Party need to push back on this, because it will be the ruination of our nation. I can assure you that those of us who are independent and center-right will fight to the last breath to defeat these people. We know what happened under socialism in the 20th century and what's happening today in the 21st. Look at North Korea. There's a perfect example of a tin-horn god-man that is driving his people into the depths of despair. They are prisoners.
We're not going to do that. We'll resist it by literally any means necessary. The Democrats better do it too, or they're doomed. They are no longer going to be Democrats. They're going to be communists, because that's what DSA is. In fact, I think they're worse than communists.
So kudos on a magnificent perspective on this whole issue, and I hope that it is disseminated far and wide through the Democrat Party. I think people like James Carville understand this, and Al Hunt, and some of the more courageous and conscientious Democrats. But a lot of them are really held hostage by these crazy DSA nutballs, and they need to break free of that, because in the end, it will be their doom.
This comment demonstrates the problem with calling socialism a “secular religion.” The metaphor quickly becomes a theological argument that people who cease believing in God must worship the state instead. That is not an explanation of socialism. It is a religious judgment about unbelievers.
The historical record alone should give pause. Socialism became a mass movement in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when organized religion was thriving and churches were central to communal life. It grew because of industrialization, dangerous working conditions, enormous inequalities of wealth and the political weakness of labor. Some socialists were atheists; others were devout Christians who regarded socialism as an expression of their faith. Evidently, socialism does not require a religious vacuum.
Nor is socialism “also known as secular humanism.” Secular humanism is a nontheistic ethical outlook; it prescribes no particular economic system. Humanists may be socialists, liberals, social democrats or libertarians. Equating every non-Christian philosophy with socialism and then every kind of socialism with Stalin and North Korea does not establish a chain of causation. It merely groups together everything the writer dislikes.
The DSA’s program is radical enough to deserve forceful criticism on its actual merits. There is no need to pretend that a DSA candidate competing in a Democratic primary is an embryonic Kim Jong Un. Nor does invoking Augustine improve that argument. Augustine’s two cities were communities defined by different kinds of love, not simply “the spiritual realm” on one side and the secular state on the other.
Most disturbing is the promise to resist these people “by literally any means necessary.” Someone claiming to defend democratic government ought to understand that the means matter. Once political opponents have been declared idolaters, communists, “worse than communists” and agents of national ruin, abandoning democratic restraints can begin to sound righteous. That is exactly how political belief becomes dangerous—and the danger in this comment is not coming entirely from the left.
Leftism which is another word for Marxism has always been a secular religious movement. Maoism and Bolshevism are the ultimate endpoints. They literally believe their movement can bring "paradise on earth."
So far two posters, Freedom Lover and 50 Bravo, have responded to Ollie Parks' comment by reiterating elements of Mr. Shay's original comment. I strongly disagree -- I think Ollie Parks' response is exceptionally clear-eyed and well balanced. I think it's one of the best comments I've encountered on Substack.
I agree with elements of Ms. Jackson's post: there are indeed elements of DSA-style politics that resemble religious groups. The larger progressive universe includes people along a spectrum of commitment to the various ideologies that underlie hardline DSA positions ("socialism" -- a term with multiple definitions -- being only one of them), and only a small portion of them are so committed to any ideological position that no evidence of argument could dispel their commitment, because it is based on Faith, rather than reason.
Every element in the current progressive ideological portfolio -- neo-Marxism, anti-Imperialism, Identitarianism, and so forth -- includes elements that are valid and that liberal Democrats (or Democratic liberals) can point to and voice agreement. And every element also includes distortions that are products of the way ideologies reduce the complexities of experience to simplistic distortions. Liberal Democrats can articulate how accepting those reductionist distortions and shaping policy around them cannot solve the actual policy problems we face.
In my view, what Mr. Shay, Freedom Lover, and 50 Bravo share (Mr. Shay only in part) is a comparably distorted form of reductionism: anything "Left" inevitably degenerates to Marxism, Leninism, Bolshevism, Maoism, Pol Potism, whatever. If this is meant as a way to write off the Democratic Party, as commenters on this blog are often prone to do, then that's fine -- those comments are not really relevant to the goal of this Substack: bringing the Democratic Party back to full health. But if they are truly offered as analyses of what the Party faces as it tries to respond to progressive criticism I believe they are misguided.
What American parties used to share broadly, though never absolutely, was liberalism, a term that had both Left and Right senses, but that in both senses shared a commitment to open argument and the possibility that new knowledge can change our views, even as the parties may differ in enduring aspirational principles. American "liberals" vs. "conservatives" was not a contest of ideologies, but an argument about styles of liberalism, constrained by an aspirational declaration and a structural constitution. What DSA-style politics and MAGA share is illiberalism. That's the fundamental dualism that I see currently, and the danger seems to me to be that illiberalism has prevailed on the Right and is now making progress on the Left.
Liberalism is a robust political approach, open to ideas that have promise to provide solutions to real-world problems, regardless of where they come from, and opposed to the notion that any closed ideology -- whether religious or secular -- can do more than provide ideas that may address some specific problem without demanding adherence to the simplistic worldview of any ideology.
So while I see the illiberal DSA as a threat to the Democratic Party and American liberalism of all variants, I don't see progressives like El-Sayed or AOC in this way at all. I believe both of these politicians -- and some others like them -- are basically aligned with the values of the liberal mainstream in the Democratic Party, while finding in democratic socialism (*not* the DSA per se) important policy positions and approaches that they believe can serve the goals of a liberal party. For the record, that's not what I see in a candidate such as Darializa Avila Chevalier, and I think examining these differences can help clarify where socialism involves constructive principles for a liberal society and where its illiberal elements do not. (I should add that I have a pretty superficial understanding of Chevalier's positions, so perhaps I am not doing her justice -- I'd be happy to learn that was so, but I have not so far.)
That's a little broad, Bob. Every society has taboo words--words that are broadly offensive because of the force of social convention. Woke language policing carried it to an absurdity but I think it's the flip side of coded in-group language, such as you see on white nationalist chatboards. Both are aggressive uses of language to demarcate in-group/out-group identity, and I wouldn't call that as mark of "religious"/"secular" divide unless those two terms are being used metaphorically.
Late edit: I hadn't realized this string had continued over the past couple of days: now I see why you began your comment with "and again."
"Liberalism is a robust political approach, open to ideas that have promise to provide solutions to real-world problems, regardless of where they come from, and opposed to the notion that any closed ideology -- whether religious or secular -- can do more than provide ideas that may address some specific problem without demanding adherence to the simplistic worldview of any ideology"
Your paean to liberalism doesn't address closing the feedback loop to correct ideas that have pure intent and poor execution. The robust political approach you cite is all too often an excuse to keep digging the hole you've created. That way no one is at fault...we just haven't tried hard enough. Keep digging ever deeper as opposed to reconsidering what the real results say about the efficacy of your approach.
What was the last federal welfare program that was shut down and written off as a well meaning mistake? They get "tweaked" and the bill for the tweak is invariably greater than the original price but the success rate is still a loser.
Good comment, 50 Bravo. I think there have been plenty of programs that have been more than "tweaked" because the response to poor results hasn't been "try the same approach harder" but "try a different approach." You focused on welfare programs, and obviously those went through a large scale change under Clinton when ADFC was changed to block grants under TANF.
But the fact is that among Western democracies the US has one of the most modest welfare safety nets, and when costs increase it is often not because the program is not basically well designed but because it was underfunded to achieve its goals (e.g., SNAP). Opponents of these programs have discovered "one weird trick" that limits support for them -- find some instances of fraud (which cannot be completely eliminated without over-expenditure on monitoring) and make them representative of all beneficiaries as a way of getting support for cuts.
The way to get the liberal feedback loop you're looking for is to recognize that "liberal" here denotes the competition among both parties for power to enact their principles for social improvement. In a healthy political environment liberals and conservatives (both fashions of liberalism-writ-large) serve as checks on one another through criticism, negotiated outcomes, and alternations of electoral power. For example, Obama's ACA was designed to appeal to conservatives with precisely that type of political approach in mind. Many Democrats now assail that decision saying that since the GOP was never going to let a single vote of approval be cast we might as well have gone full Medicare-for-All. But I believe the only reason the ACA survived under Trump 45 was because it had proved its value through gradualism, considering taking conservative critiques of fully socialized medical insurance into consideration in devising a liberal administration's approach. I support Medicare-for-All in principle, but I think one way or another it needs to be implemented gradually, with either conservative input (though Lord knows where a MAGA conservative can be found) or good faith strongmanning of conservative arguments for caution.
(Another example, only tangentially related to welfare, was the immigration reform bill originally associated with Sen. Lankford, which involved really promising negotiated policies until Trump nixed it because he did not want a bipartisan, negotiated result.)
Incorrect. Communism or socialism (if you take your politics with a mixer) are essentially trying to farm out the moral codes as presented in Christian theology. Instead of a (sometimes) forgiving God asking us to play by His rules or suffer the consequences we have whomever the current (they wish) pope or bishop of the left defining what is acceptable behavior. Somehow divine guidance from the trolls of the left only inspire bodycount. They are consistent from Stalin through Pol Pot and none of the folk you suggest as workable are not even house broken.
'Socialism' is not a particularly useful word when used in the hypostatized way it is being used here. Its definition is so contextually heterogeneous that people just use it to mean whatever they need it to mean.
For example: is publicly-funded infrastructure 'socialism'? Public infrastructure funded by taxation of a nation's citizenry can be said to constitute the collectivization of resources that would otherwise be private.
What about unions and their collective bargaining agreements--these essentially inhibit what capitalists would prefer to set their wage rates at, what kind of benefits they would like to provide, etc. They are a collectivist intervention into private transactional agreements between workers and employers.
Is that 'socialism'?
Both fit a very stringent definition of it, and both were called that, in various contexts, in the 19th century. Doctrinaire laissez faire philosopers like Ludwig Von Mises called unions and public infrastructure that in the 20th century, and said it was ruinous to society. (Von Mises famously called Milton Friedman a socialist, and would occasionally accused Friedman's mentor, Friedrich von Hayek, as being a socialist)
Yet that definition of socialism is not at all what the Soviets meant by the word 'socialist' in 'the United Soviet Socialist Republic'. In that context the word signified a totalitarian communist state.
If you define 'socialism' solely in the last sense (which would in turn suddenly confuse the distinction between socialism and communism, but put that aside), sure, there are no success stories. But if you define it as 'states featuring robust private market economies supplemented by certain collectivized, state-provisioned public resources'--as it was used in other contexts--you're describing the nations with the highest quality of life on Earth.
About 90% of the discourse over 'socialism' concerns defining 'socialism' in a way that benefits your arguments, and undermines those of the person you are discursing with. Articles like this, while thoughtful, tend to fall into this trap.
Definitions matter. Socialism is public control of production while recognizing private property rights (being able to own your own home). This is what the DSA is advocating. Having a robust safety net is not socialism. Calling a robust safety net socialism is a way to get people to think it is benign. It is not. Look at what happened to Venezuela.
I did not think of any of this as a religion in my 64 years .. except as satire .. UNTIL the Woke era introduced the concept of career-killing and social ostracizing taboo words. Taboo is a religious (or faith-based) marker. Period. (The stoning scene in The Life of Brian illustrates this perfectly).
nuances: I have identified as an Isaac Asimov style secular humanist since about age 12 - but if forced to pick a team today. I am less interested in semantics and pedantic defenses of any particular politic or religion than I am in the response to my singular test of whether it is worth consideration: "Does this system/model require 100% participation in order to work as advertised?" (ie if one cannot opt-out or get off the grid, then I will likely fight it, no matter how genuinely paradisical .. I think a few early Star Trek episodes were of this theme .. and I would definitely have eaten of The Apple, even knowing of the consequence.)
All of the author's proposals are not exactly "moderate", except perhaps for DSA members. A public health option, for catastrophic coverage, could be plausible. Otherwise the proposal encompasses a remodel of 18% of the economy, because it will likely kill private insurance.
A Billionaire tax hike is likely passable, assuming they do not all decamp for Bermuda or the Cayman Islands in the world's first umbrella drink tax strike.
The notion of investing in education, in a country that already spends more K-12 per pupil than nearly any other nation on earth, all to fail miserably, seems more slogan than policy. More than 1/2 of US public schools students cannot perform at grade level. If we cannot teach students to read, write and perform Math, we should probably have a better system before we expand our efforts.
Reasonable people can debate Immigration and mass migration, which are entirely two different things. What Dems undertook was the wholesale bypass of decades of US Immigration law. Deportation isn't applicable only to violent criminals, but to anyone who resides in the US illegally. If Dems want to amend those laws and replace ICE with a different agency, they should propose new legislation and a new agency, negotiate the specifics, and pass a new law.
It is hard to ignore the elephant in the room. Some of these "moderate" proposals require a vast expansion of government, as we sit on $40 trillion dollars in debt. The devil is always in the details, and how we pay for it.
There is much truth in this article, but also a massive major flaw. The DSA is driven in part by its alliance with the Islamofascists represented by Piker, Mamdani, El Sayed, Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar, etc. The secular "religion" of the Left will be overwhelmed and displaced by the intolerant and bigoted religion of Islam should the DSA prevail. This is a true religious invasion of America with its traditional Judeo-Christian Western values. If Democrats enable this tragedy to occur...they will NEVER recover. The liberal white Karens of the secular religion will have brought on the worst nightmare vision of a Hand Maid's Tale on themselves.
It's no wonder the DSA has become popular. If I am to understand the four bullet points.
*Health care is important, we should talk about it.
*Those other rich people are the problem and increasing their taxes a fraction of a percent of the deficit will show we are really really serious,, really.
*Defund the police that enforce the laws we don't like and we'll keep the 20 million low wage workers to clean our apartments and deliver restaurant food.
*Free college for us and train the plebes to take those now low wage jobs in the trades that we just imported 20 million workers to do.
DSA is looking better all the time, Chomsky said nice things about the Khmer Rouge, they can't all be bad.
I realize sarcasm is a pretty harsh way to comment also but Dem insiders need to come to Jesus. These folks set the agenda for the whole party and it's just not working. We can steal the good parts Trump had or sit on the sidelines and react to Vance saying he wants to give 9K to stay at home moms.
This piece has some good insights, but it underestimates the Democrat’s problem with the DSA and the other leftist aspects of their current coalition. Trump and MAGA have taken clear positions popular with majorities: deport illegals, lock up criminals, two sexes, no transing kids, colorblind merit over racial preferences. Democrats are forced to either change their platform to agree (fracturing their party) or doubling down on positions that repel most voters.
It’s not possible to distract from those core issues with promises to reform healthcare (again!), or “invest in education” (LOL, look at the “investment" record), or anything else. Those are trivial issues compared to the ones I listed. Most voters don’t want to “invest in education” if that means teaching about “white supremacy” and trans ideology.
DSA or not, Democrats seem well and truly stuck with leftist ideas that will doom them in most elections outside blue enclaves for years to come.
The big problem with those issues is that nobody will denounce them, but instead downplay them. You can't downplay an issue that is important to the other side without directly addressing it. If they're in favor of those issues, come out in favor. They're big losers as far as issues go, but just ignoring the reasons someone supports your opposition who is successfully pursuing them is a losing strategy.
The DSA defenders who call for a big-tent Democratic Party forget what FDR’s big tent looked like. Socialists and communists had their own parties in the 1930s, and FDR’s coalition included lots of conservative Democrats (and I don’t just mean Southern segregationists). A big Democratic majority today that resembled FDR’s would be formed by winning back the moderate and conservative-leaning Democrats alienated from the party by social and cultural issues over the last decade or more, not by embracing a far left that will alienate those people even more.
I support the right of Israel to peacefully exist, essentially under the terms set by the U.N. in1946 (which the U.N. unfortunately lacked the power to fairly enforce in the best interests of all concerned).
But the term "Zionist" is so ambiguous that people using it should be careful to explain their interpretation of it.
As a disinterested secular American, I view "Zionism" as being advocacy of the right of Jewish people from all over the world to immigrate to the part of the Mideast that was occupied by their ancestors several millennia ago. That occurred after those ancestors had forcibly ousted the previous inhabitants, as documented in the Old Testament of the "Holy" Bible that was "written" by the Hebrew people who forcibly occupied that area for a period of time.
Considering the extreme discrimination that Jewish people have experienced since their displacement from the "Holy Land," I am very sympathetic to their having their right to immigrate to there. But in practical terms, I recognize and agree with that"right" being based on the determination by the U.N. in 1946 that the "state" of Israel should be determined by the demographics on the ground -- namely, that the areas with a then-extant Jewish majority should become "Israel" while the parts with a then-extant Muslim majority should become "Palestine."
This "secular" interpretation of "Zionism" is in contrast to the religiously-based interpretation that all Jews (however their "Jewishness" has been diluted over the millennia by intermarriage with others) are "God's chosen people" with a "God-given" right to the entirety of the "Holy Land." This attitude is especially apparent in the ongoing efforts of Jewish religious fanatics to forcibly displace Muslims from the area that the fanatics refer to as "Judea/Samaria," but which is more commonly referred to by the neutral term of the "West Bank" (of the Jordan River).
In conclusion, I support the "secular" version of "Zionism," but not the version based on Jewish religious fanatacism.
First of all that 1946 thing is long gone and gone forever. 80 years of war and murder has mooted it. There is no way in a million years Israel would ever return to the Auschwitz lines. Second, the term Zionism means the national movement of the Jewish people for a state in their historical homeland. Period. An anti-Zionist opposes that. A tiny miniscule number of Israelis want Israel to conquer the whole territory on religious grounds. If someone says they are a Zionist it means in these times they support the right of the state of Israel to defend itself from its manu enemies who wish to destroy it. Period. An anti-zionist wants Isra destroyed and replaced by what will be a Muslim Arab terror state.
So, in plain English, am I a "Zionist" in supporting the right of Jewish people to establish the independent "state" (actually, "nation") of Israel, or an "anti-Zionist" in rejecting the historical and religious "justification" for that?
If the religious-based Zionists like you are as smart as they think they are, they/you had better recognize that their claims to be "God's chosen people" -- having occupied the so-called "Holy Land" for one period of time in human history -- are counter-productive in terms of their future welfare. That is heavily dependent on the support of us non-Jews like me in the U.S. and Europe.
If you know what is best for the citizens of Israel who just want to live in peace within essentially the original borders of Israel, then you had better quit dissing us. Otherwise, you are not fundamentally different than a Hamas or Hezbollah fanatic.
True to a point, Mr. Purzycki, but remember that FDR's big tent did include most of those identifying as socialist and communist -- he even made Henry Wallace his VP, which would like Biden having run with AOC in 2020 (she was ineligible then, but you get the point). I agree with your goal, but the Dems absolutely need to avoid alienating DSA-adjacent people on the Left to the point where they leave the tent.
And so you have just proven the author's point. The DSA SHOULD be alienated. It does not belong in a liberal party that supports the American Constitution.
Freedom Lover, my criticism of Ms. Jackson would be that she cannot distinguish between the DSA platform and Democrats who agree with elements of it, such as El-Sayed. She also fails to recognize that "socialism" is a *very* broad term, and many of those who view themselves as socialists very much belong in the Democratic Party. However, I'd agree with you that the DSA is an illiberal party. While liberal progressives who align with it may people Democrats want to appeal to, it would not be right to embrace the DSA as a party.
For the record, I tend to agree with a number of the DSA positions on social policy (e.g., Green New Deal; Medicare for All) as matters of principle. I think they are certainly consistent with a liberal society that incentivizes action that improves the lives of society in general. (I also support strongly protecting the rights of pro-Palestinian demonstrators, as the DSA calls for, despite the fact that I am a liberal Zionist -- that's part of what liberalism means to me.)
First of all El Sayed is bad news whatever he pays dues to. Second of all I have no idea what you mean by strongly protecting the rights of pro-Palestinian demonstrators. Last I saw they are highly protected while the rights of Jews to be free from mobs and menacing intimidation is non existent. So it seems to me that you are already pretty close to the DSA.
Plus the fact that FDR’s administration was riddled with hundreds of actual communists. Some were at high levels, such as Alger Hiss and Harry Dexter White.
The vast majority of voters want more effective government. The establishment from both parties has failed to deliver this basic and essential aspect of politics. Hence the emergence of resistance movements to both parties.
If the DSA serves as a wake up call for the Democrats, the way MAGA picked up the Tea Party movement's goals on the right, so be it.
I'm certainly not voting for more politicians to collect salaries while sitting on their asses accomplishing nothing and shrugging their shoulders at the rest of us.
None of the current DSA are as terrible as Biden and Harris were at their jobs, I'll say that much for them.
If the moderates can come up with new, younger, and more effective politicians I'll listen.
If it's the newcomers from the DSA or some slobbery senile old fart like Schumer, well, dip me in red paint and call me a socialist (I'm not, but compared to Schumer and other ancient and ineffective pols, I'll take my chances, just like many other voters).
The establishment's failures are why the DSA exists. Stop failing and they'll go away.
Excellent analysis. Really gets to the heart of so many political viewpoints. Let’s hope this great country doesn’t fall for the false and misleading promises of the DSA. Moderates on both sides need to speak out and be more active in politics. Extremists are ruining it for the majority middle.
Thought-provoking essay-Thank you. In re: "This is not a faction that wants to be part of the party. This is a religious group on a crusade," moderate pushback and Marlenes's post below:
First, please forgive this long post. Second, my own disclaimer: I am a lifelong Democrat from a Democrat-voting family.
Ms. Jackson, I think there is another secular religion that has already eaten the Democratic Party, and that is gender identity ideology. Perhaps the current Democrat Party has, for a variety of reasons, become vulnerable to extremist ideologies too. For example:
1) The Democrat Party’s refuses to grasp, accept or care that a majority of Americans, Democrat, Republicans and Independents, do not support “gender-affirming care” for children and adolescents, or men in women’s sports, who are not “Right-wing bigots” and “transphobes.” This refusal sunk Harris’ campaign (The GOP attack ad "Kamala is for they/them, President Trump is for you" shifted the race 2.7% in Trump’s favor) and I understand that the Party is ignoring these messages from the 2024 "Autopsy". For example:
2a) In a rare feat of solidarity, the Democrats in Congress have followed the Party line and voted against every bill to protect the sex-based rights of women to their sports and the health of children. And to paraphrase Ed Markey on the day of his win, the Democrats will vote to pass the Transgender Equality Act, which will collide with and override women's hard-won sex-based rights and protections: https://equality.house.gov/equality-act-introduced-119
3) It is hard to ignore that the Democratic Party has been captured by gender identity advocacy and money and is actively mainstreaming the trans agenda:
3b) An April 21 Associated Press article gave a glimpse of a well-funded, stealth campaign: “Human Rights Campaign targets battleground districts during broader reckoning over LGBTQ+ rights.” https://apnews.com/article/human-rights-campaign-midterm-elections-lgbtq-55147b73698ef63d13068abe1a109747. The HRC intends to spend $15 million to support Democratic candidates in the US Senate in battleground districts in Georgia, Michigan, Minnesota. New Hampshire, Ohio and Texas, basically functioning as a Democratic PAC.
c) At the very end of a meeting with NC Rep Valerie Foushee's staff, constituents heard "We believe that trans women are women," a thought-terminating cliche that would have impressed even the great cult analyst Robert J. Lifton. One can imagine what the HRC will spend to buy Democratic candidates at the national level in 2028.
d) However, it's hard to know from Democrats' campaign ads where they stand on this belief system. The CEO of the HRC tipped her hand: Slip “trans rights and equality” into local and national Democrat platforms, and camouflage transgender culture change messages behind economic/cost of living terms ("Affordability!"). As Leor Sapir said, “If I’m a Democrat consultant, my advice would be: Do everything in your power to keep this off the public agenda.” This trans advocacy handbook advises as much (“Only Adults? Good Practices in Legal Gender Recognition for Youth”: https://www.trust.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/downloaded_file-69.pdf. These are guidelines on how transgender ideology can be successfully and stealthily promoted:
1. “Tie your campaign to a popular reform” and “Use human rights as a campaign point” (i.e., “Transgender rights” and gender equality);
2. “Get ahead of the government agenda and media story”; and
And I suppose it is not surprising that the DSA has appropriated feminism to mainstream extremist gender identity ideology into their platform: "DSA Program - Workers Deserve More! "Socialist feminism fights for queer liberation and the freedoms of all working-class women." https://program.dsausa.org/#demand-feminism-for-all.
Rahm Emmanuel and Jonah Wheeler seem to be two of the scarce sane voices in the Democratic party: https://x.com/jonahowheeler/status/2089145286169866561. "Gender ideology is an illiberal, backwards way of thinking that I make no apologies for opposing. Here's a bit of my explanation as to why. | Jonah Wheeler | Facebook
4) Independents, moderate or liberal leaning Democrats (or now-ex Dems)--We the People who want to fight autocracy and get the fascists out-- are also likely wary of voting the Democratic Party's extremist--illiberal, misogynist, homophobic and anti-child--philosophy into office. Politically homeless, between a rock and a hard place, and no obvious alternatives: A choice between extremist programs of the far left or far right--or today's mainstream Democratic Party.
Regarding moderate pushback, yes, but how? The gender identity ideology advocacy groups like HRC and GLAAD have highly effective, well-funded communications strategies which employ defamation, character assassination, cancellation and media suppression to counter or prevent the airing of dissenting viewpoints. We need a mainstream media as bold as independent media, starting with a mainstream press asking pertinent questions of all candidates during debates and interviews-- including their reasoning. Let's vote all illiberal ideologies out! Ideas and alternatives welcome.
He has held the Presidency because even the pre-DSA democrat party offered options that were judged by the voters to be inferior.
While the Donald does have the ability to enrage the Pope, some of the ideas and changes he has supported have been beneficial. Admit it and shuck the "orange man bad" BS. I hope you can help restructure the democrat party to resume the role of intelligent, patriotic folk with as much focus on program results as program goals.
The thing with Trump is that while his style is best described with words that aren’t fit for a family publication, he’s generally at least half right most of the time.
And you can be SURE that good idea or bad he actually understands the proposal and backs it. As opposed to the ventriloquist doll and cabal he replaced.
That I no longer have to take off my shoes to gain permission from the government to freely associate (ie get on a plane) and that he restored the beloved name of my hometown of Fort Rucker Alabama .. will probably be the only things I clearly and always remember as concrete outcomes of his reign .. and I don't even like the guy.
The Dems began to religiously adhere to gender ideology starting around 2012-2014. It has many of the hallmarks of a religion.
1) Revelation. Gender identity is treated as an inner essence that adults must recognize, not a hypothesis that might be wrong. Sex becomes “assigned.” Disagreement becomes “erasure.”
2) The holy innocent. The child who says “I am the other sex” is not a patient with a cluster of comorbidities, social contagion risk, autism, trauma, or same-sex attraction. The child is a truth-teller. Adults who hesitate are the danger.
3) The sacrament. Social transition, pronouns, secret school names, puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and in some cases surgery are not experimental medical responses to a poorly understood condition. They are “life-saving care.” Once you call a treatment life-saving, opposing it is attempted murder.
4) The martyr story. Suicide statistics are used the way older revivalists used Hell: not as a careful epidemiological claim, but as a threat that ends the argument. “Would you rather have a dead son or a live daughter?” is not medicine. It is an altar call.
5) The blasphemy code. Saying “men are not women,” “minors cannot consent to infertility,” or “girls’ sports are for girls” is not an empirical claim. It is a sin against the child.
Jackson writes as if Democrats were a normal center-left party that suddenly acquired a socialist church.
IMO the left struck out using class as a lever for their revolution and decided to focus on identity politics. This started after the Berlin Wall fell and state control of the economy was proven to be a failure.
"From each according to ability, to each according to need" transformed into "From each according to his privilege, to each according to zher's oppression ranking"
Now that Woke 1's collapse has left people skeptical of DEI and all of the other shibboleths, the left is "going home" and returning to class as a lever.
Why "The Long View' has taken as its main goal to pillory DSA is beyond me. You're overreacting.
1. People who vote for leftist candidates have no idea what the DSA's party platform is. What they're voting for is a path forward that isn't The Long View's cautious approach that has alienated so many Democrats and deemed ineffectual Biden 2.0 by persuadable Trump voters. Investing in education? A public option? Job training? Do you think people who've been struggling for decades see these ideas as their salvation?
2. Even DSA candidates don't subscribe to the party platform that was probably written by a few people that no one listens to. But you constantly bring it up to scare people.
El Sayed’s attitude toward non-supporters (or is it non-believers?) isn’t all that different from Obama’s. To this day Obama would tell you that opponents to his policy were driven solely by craven greed or the quest for partisan advantage. (And, he implied, the former usually drove the latter.) The notion that the other side might have principled or factual objections was risible and beyond his comprehension.
The article closes with the writer’s recommended policy positions to “neuter” the “DSA” momentum. I have to question what evidence can be offered for these polices given the party’s track record on health care policy (“if you like your doctor, you can keep him”), “closing tax loopholes” when the top 10% of earners already pay over 70% of the total, better border enforcement by the party whose policy was clearly the exact opposite (“the border is closed”), and “reducing” educational costs which have far exceeded our inflation rates as reading and math literacy scores continue to plummet. I fear the party’s track record on these important policy issues - plus the current leadership’s never ending drive for impeachment which will produce gridlock instead of innovation and real progress if and when they gain control - leaves little incentive for change in a party which has not yet recovered from 2024.
This is ten years too late.
Men are not women. DEI is racism and Israel has every right to exist and to defend itself. Schools have no business transing children or activating them politically or passing them along whether they can read or write or do math.
It has all happened under Democratic aegis- across the last 12 years. I have watched in horror as my beloved Democratic Party, the Party of my grandparents and parents and my grown children has thrown itself into this pyre.
I cannot imagine what would ever woo me back.
Because I do not trust them.
I am glad my parents are dead and cannot see where their liberal beliefs have led us.
"This is ten years too late."
🎯🎯🎯
People ranging from John McWhorter, James Lindsay to Nellie Bowles etc etc wrote whole books about this (the new great faith called Social Justice) years ago. Opposing it would have required a level of courage and principle beyond the ability of almost every politician and anyone in "Left spaces".
Trump first conquered the Republicans, now the reaction against him is killing off the Dems.
Or the way I put it to my friends and family towards a decade ago .. Trump killed the Republican Party and the Democrat Party committed suicide. (The silver lining is we have an unusual opportunity to blow on the dust as it is settling into two new Parties .. hopefully two sane ones). (btw, in addition to the conventional wisdom on how Trump did it .. my own thought that it was also necessary that the 2016 Republican Primary included such a long roster of unusually qualified and excellent candidates .. which of course split all the normie voters .. and gave weight to the open primary Democrat Party disrupters who assumed that a Trump candidacy meant an automatic win to Hillary).
This is an excellent perspective. It's what happens when the Augustinian concept of City of God is confused with what he called City of Man. In other words, when religion and faith ceased to be spiritual realms and were incorporated into the state. Socialism is essentially a secular religion with no God. It's also known as secular humanism, and it's a substitute for religious faith. Unfortunately, it doesn't work, because since there's no God, some human being is, in effect, made God. In a Soviet system, that was Lenin or Stalin or Marx. By definition, it's what religious people refer to as idolatry, because every human being has feet of clay and has a dark side.
I couldn't agree with you more that moderates in the Democrat Party need to push back on this, because it will be the ruination of our nation. I can assure you that those of us who are independent and center-right will fight to the last breath to defeat these people. We know what happened under socialism in the 20th century and what's happening today in the 21st. Look at North Korea. There's a perfect example of a tin-horn god-man that is driving his people into the depths of despair. They are prisoners.
We're not going to do that. We'll resist it by literally any means necessary. The Democrats better do it too, or they're doomed. They are no longer going to be Democrats. They're going to be communists, because that's what DSA is. In fact, I think they're worse than communists.
So kudos on a magnificent perspective on this whole issue, and I hope that it is disseminated far and wide through the Democrat Party. I think people like James Carville understand this, and Al Hunt, and some of the more courageous and conscientious Democrats. But a lot of them are really held hostage by these crazy DSA nutballs, and they need to break free of that, because in the end, it will be their doom.
This comment demonstrates the problem with calling socialism a “secular religion.” The metaphor quickly becomes a theological argument that people who cease believing in God must worship the state instead. That is not an explanation of socialism. It is a religious judgment about unbelievers.
The historical record alone should give pause. Socialism became a mass movement in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when organized religion was thriving and churches were central to communal life. It grew because of industrialization, dangerous working conditions, enormous inequalities of wealth and the political weakness of labor. Some socialists were atheists; others were devout Christians who regarded socialism as an expression of their faith. Evidently, socialism does not require a religious vacuum.
Nor is socialism “also known as secular humanism.” Secular humanism is a nontheistic ethical outlook; it prescribes no particular economic system. Humanists may be socialists, liberals, social democrats or libertarians. Equating every non-Christian philosophy with socialism and then every kind of socialism with Stalin and North Korea does not establish a chain of causation. It merely groups together everything the writer dislikes.
The DSA’s program is radical enough to deserve forceful criticism on its actual merits. There is no need to pretend that a DSA candidate competing in a Democratic primary is an embryonic Kim Jong Un. Nor does invoking Augustine improve that argument. Augustine’s two cities were communities defined by different kinds of love, not simply “the spiritual realm” on one side and the secular state on the other.
Most disturbing is the promise to resist these people “by literally any means necessary.” Someone claiming to defend democratic government ought to understand that the means matter. Once political opponents have been declared idolaters, communists, “worse than communists” and agents of national ruin, abandoning democratic restraints can begin to sound righteous. That is exactly how political belief becomes dangerous—and the danger in this comment is not coming entirely from the left.
Leftism which is another word for Marxism has always been a secular religious movement. Maoism and Bolshevism are the ultimate endpoints. They literally believe their movement can bring "paradise on earth."
So far two posters, Freedom Lover and 50 Bravo, have responded to Ollie Parks' comment by reiterating elements of Mr. Shay's original comment. I strongly disagree -- I think Ollie Parks' response is exceptionally clear-eyed and well balanced. I think it's one of the best comments I've encountered on Substack.
I agree with elements of Ms. Jackson's post: there are indeed elements of DSA-style politics that resemble religious groups. The larger progressive universe includes people along a spectrum of commitment to the various ideologies that underlie hardline DSA positions ("socialism" -- a term with multiple definitions -- being only one of them), and only a small portion of them are so committed to any ideological position that no evidence of argument could dispel their commitment, because it is based on Faith, rather than reason.
Every element in the current progressive ideological portfolio -- neo-Marxism, anti-Imperialism, Identitarianism, and so forth -- includes elements that are valid and that liberal Democrats (or Democratic liberals) can point to and voice agreement. And every element also includes distortions that are products of the way ideologies reduce the complexities of experience to simplistic distortions. Liberal Democrats can articulate how accepting those reductionist distortions and shaping policy around them cannot solve the actual policy problems we face.
In my view, what Mr. Shay, Freedom Lover, and 50 Bravo share (Mr. Shay only in part) is a comparably distorted form of reductionism: anything "Left" inevitably degenerates to Marxism, Leninism, Bolshevism, Maoism, Pol Potism, whatever. If this is meant as a way to write off the Democratic Party, as commenters on this blog are often prone to do, then that's fine -- those comments are not really relevant to the goal of this Substack: bringing the Democratic Party back to full health. But if they are truly offered as analyses of what the Party faces as it tries to respond to progressive criticism I believe they are misguided.
What American parties used to share broadly, though never absolutely, was liberalism, a term that had both Left and Right senses, but that in both senses shared a commitment to open argument and the possibility that new knowledge can change our views, even as the parties may differ in enduring aspirational principles. American "liberals" vs. "conservatives" was not a contest of ideologies, but an argument about styles of liberalism, constrained by an aspirational declaration and a structural constitution. What DSA-style politics and MAGA share is illiberalism. That's the fundamental dualism that I see currently, and the danger seems to me to be that illiberalism has prevailed on the Right and is now making progress on the Left.
Liberalism is a robust political approach, open to ideas that have promise to provide solutions to real-world problems, regardless of where they come from, and opposed to the notion that any closed ideology -- whether religious or secular -- can do more than provide ideas that may address some specific problem without demanding adherence to the simplistic worldview of any ideology.
So while I see the illiberal DSA as a threat to the Democratic Party and American liberalism of all variants, I don't see progressives like El-Sayed or AOC in this way at all. I believe both of these politicians -- and some others like them -- are basically aligned with the values of the liberal mainstream in the Democratic Party, while finding in democratic socialism (*not* the DSA per se) important policy positions and approaches that they believe can serve the goals of a liberal party. For the record, that's not what I see in a candidate such as Darializa Avila Chevalier, and I think examining these differences can help clarify where socialism involves constructive principles for a liberal society and where its illiberal elements do not. (I should add that I have a pretty superficial understanding of Chevalier's positions, so perhaps I am not doing her justice -- I'd be happy to learn that was so, but I have not so far.)
and again .. any movement that contains a list of taboo words is not a secular one.
That's a little broad, Bob. Every society has taboo words--words that are broadly offensive because of the force of social convention. Woke language policing carried it to an absurdity but I think it's the flip side of coded in-group language, such as you see on white nationalist chatboards. Both are aggressive uses of language to demarcate in-group/out-group identity, and I wouldn't call that as mark of "religious"/"secular" divide unless those two terms are being used metaphorically.
Late edit: I hadn't realized this string had continued over the past couple of days: now I see why you began your comment with "and again."
Thanks for taking the time and effort.
You wrote:
"Liberalism is a robust political approach, open to ideas that have promise to provide solutions to real-world problems, regardless of where they come from, and opposed to the notion that any closed ideology -- whether religious or secular -- can do more than provide ideas that may address some specific problem without demanding adherence to the simplistic worldview of any ideology"
Your paean to liberalism doesn't address closing the feedback loop to correct ideas that have pure intent and poor execution. The robust political approach you cite is all too often an excuse to keep digging the hole you've created. That way no one is at fault...we just haven't tried hard enough. Keep digging ever deeper as opposed to reconsidering what the real results say about the efficacy of your approach.
What was the last federal welfare program that was shut down and written off as a well meaning mistake? They get "tweaked" and the bill for the tweak is invariably greater than the original price but the success rate is still a loser.
Good comment, 50 Bravo. I think there have been plenty of programs that have been more than "tweaked" because the response to poor results hasn't been "try the same approach harder" but "try a different approach." You focused on welfare programs, and obviously those went through a large scale change under Clinton when ADFC was changed to block grants under TANF.
But the fact is that among Western democracies the US has one of the most modest welfare safety nets, and when costs increase it is often not because the program is not basically well designed but because it was underfunded to achieve its goals (e.g., SNAP). Opponents of these programs have discovered "one weird trick" that limits support for them -- find some instances of fraud (which cannot be completely eliminated without over-expenditure on monitoring) and make them representative of all beneficiaries as a way of getting support for cuts.
The way to get the liberal feedback loop you're looking for is to recognize that "liberal" here denotes the competition among both parties for power to enact their principles for social improvement. In a healthy political environment liberals and conservatives (both fashions of liberalism-writ-large) serve as checks on one another through criticism, negotiated outcomes, and alternations of electoral power. For example, Obama's ACA was designed to appeal to conservatives with precisely that type of political approach in mind. Many Democrats now assail that decision saying that since the GOP was never going to let a single vote of approval be cast we might as well have gone full Medicare-for-All. But I believe the only reason the ACA survived under Trump 45 was because it had proved its value through gradualism, considering taking conservative critiques of fully socialized medical insurance into consideration in devising a liberal administration's approach. I support Medicare-for-All in principle, but I think one way or another it needs to be implemented gradually, with either conservative input (though Lord knows where a MAGA conservative can be found) or good faith strongmanning of conservative arguments for caution.
(Another example, only tangentially related to welfare, was the immigration reform bill originally associated with Sen. Lankford, which involved really promising negotiated policies until Trump nixed it because he did not want a bipartisan, negotiated result.)
Incorrect. Communism or socialism (if you take your politics with a mixer) are essentially trying to farm out the moral codes as presented in Christian theology. Instead of a (sometimes) forgiving God asking us to play by His rules or suffer the consequences we have whomever the current (they wish) pope or bishop of the left defining what is acceptable behavior. Somehow divine guidance from the trolls of the left only inspire bodycount. They are consistent from Stalin through Pol Pot and none of the folk you suggest as workable are not even house broken.
Depends on what you mean by 'socialism'.
'Socialism' is not a particularly useful word when used in the hypostatized way it is being used here. Its definition is so contextually heterogeneous that people just use it to mean whatever they need it to mean.
For example: is publicly-funded infrastructure 'socialism'? Public infrastructure funded by taxation of a nation's citizenry can be said to constitute the collectivization of resources that would otherwise be private.
What about unions and their collective bargaining agreements--these essentially inhibit what capitalists would prefer to set their wage rates at, what kind of benefits they would like to provide, etc. They are a collectivist intervention into private transactional agreements between workers and employers.
Is that 'socialism'?
Both fit a very stringent definition of it, and both were called that, in various contexts, in the 19th century. Doctrinaire laissez faire philosopers like Ludwig Von Mises called unions and public infrastructure that in the 20th century, and said it was ruinous to society. (Von Mises famously called Milton Friedman a socialist, and would occasionally accused Friedman's mentor, Friedrich von Hayek, as being a socialist)
Yet that definition of socialism is not at all what the Soviets meant by the word 'socialist' in 'the United Soviet Socialist Republic'. In that context the word signified a totalitarian communist state.
If you define 'socialism' solely in the last sense (which would in turn suddenly confuse the distinction between socialism and communism, but put that aside), sure, there are no success stories. But if you define it as 'states featuring robust private market economies supplemented by certain collectivized, state-provisioned public resources'--as it was used in other contexts--you're describing the nations with the highest quality of life on Earth.
About 90% of the discourse over 'socialism' concerns defining 'socialism' in a way that benefits your arguments, and undermines those of the person you are discursing with. Articles like this, while thoughtful, tend to fall into this trap.
Definitions matter. Socialism is public control of production while recognizing private property rights (being able to own your own home). This is what the DSA is advocating. Having a robust safety net is not socialism. Calling a robust safety net socialism is a way to get people to think it is benign. It is not. Look at what happened to Venezuela.
I did not think of any of this as a religion in my 64 years .. except as satire .. UNTIL the Woke era introduced the concept of career-killing and social ostracizing taboo words. Taboo is a religious (or faith-based) marker. Period. (The stoning scene in The Life of Brian illustrates this perfectly).
nuances: I have identified as an Isaac Asimov style secular humanist since about age 12 - but if forced to pick a team today. I am less interested in semantics and pedantic defenses of any particular politic or religion than I am in the response to my singular test of whether it is worth consideration: "Does this system/model require 100% participation in order to work as advertised?" (ie if one cannot opt-out or get off the grid, then I will likely fight it, no matter how genuinely paradisical .. I think a few early Star Trek episodes were of this theme .. and I would definitely have eaten of The Apple, even knowing of the consequence.)
All of the author's proposals are not exactly "moderate", except perhaps for DSA members. A public health option, for catastrophic coverage, could be plausible. Otherwise the proposal encompasses a remodel of 18% of the economy, because it will likely kill private insurance.
A Billionaire tax hike is likely passable, assuming they do not all decamp for Bermuda or the Cayman Islands in the world's first umbrella drink tax strike.
The notion of investing in education, in a country that already spends more K-12 per pupil than nearly any other nation on earth, all to fail miserably, seems more slogan than policy. More than 1/2 of US public schools students cannot perform at grade level. If we cannot teach students to read, write and perform Math, we should probably have a better system before we expand our efforts.
Reasonable people can debate Immigration and mass migration, which are entirely two different things. What Dems undertook was the wholesale bypass of decades of US Immigration law. Deportation isn't applicable only to violent criminals, but to anyone who resides in the US illegally. If Dems want to amend those laws and replace ICE with a different agency, they should propose new legislation and a new agency, negotiate the specifics, and pass a new law.
It is hard to ignore the elephant in the room. Some of these "moderate" proposals require a vast expansion of government, as we sit on $40 trillion dollars in debt. The devil is always in the details, and how we pay for it.
As always Brenda your point are cogent, concise and clear common sense. I'm always glad to see you here.
Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play. They just can't help themselves.
There is much truth in this article, but also a massive major flaw. The DSA is driven in part by its alliance with the Islamofascists represented by Piker, Mamdani, El Sayed, Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar, etc. The secular "religion" of the Left will be overwhelmed and displaced by the intolerant and bigoted religion of Islam should the DSA prevail. This is a true religious invasion of America with its traditional Judeo-Christian Western values. If Democrats enable this tragedy to occur...they will NEVER recover. The liberal white Karens of the secular religion will have brought on the worst nightmare vision of a Hand Maid's Tale on themselves.
They're locked into the Marxian Omnicause in a desire to eliminate all contradictions.
But life isn't that simple!!!
Red-Green Alliance 2026 version!
Look to Iran.
It's no wonder the DSA has become popular. If I am to understand the four bullet points.
*Health care is important, we should talk about it.
*Those other rich people are the problem and increasing their taxes a fraction of a percent of the deficit will show we are really really serious,, really.
*Defund the police that enforce the laws we don't like and we'll keep the 20 million low wage workers to clean our apartments and deliver restaurant food.
*Free college for us and train the plebes to take those now low wage jobs in the trades that we just imported 20 million workers to do.
DSA is looking better all the time, Chomsky said nice things about the Khmer Rouge, they can't all be bad.
Given some of the comments here, you might want to consider a clearer "sarcasm" label.
I realize sarcasm is a pretty harsh way to comment also but Dem insiders need to come to Jesus. These folks set the agenda for the whole party and it's just not working. We can steal the good parts Trump had or sit on the sidelines and react to Vance saying he wants to give 9K to stay at home moms.
If Vances 9k comes out of Education Dept or HUD, I’m fine with that.
This piece has some good insights, but it underestimates the Democrat’s problem with the DSA and the other leftist aspects of their current coalition. Trump and MAGA have taken clear positions popular with majorities: deport illegals, lock up criminals, two sexes, no transing kids, colorblind merit over racial preferences. Democrats are forced to either change their platform to agree (fracturing their party) or doubling down on positions that repel most voters.
It’s not possible to distract from those core issues with promises to reform healthcare (again!), or “invest in education” (LOL, look at the “investment" record), or anything else. Those are trivial issues compared to the ones I listed. Most voters don’t want to “invest in education” if that means teaching about “white supremacy” and trans ideology.
DSA or not, Democrats seem well and truly stuck with leftist ideas that will doom them in most elections outside blue enclaves for years to come.
The big problem with those issues is that nobody will denounce them, but instead downplay them. You can't downplay an issue that is important to the other side without directly addressing it. If they're in favor of those issues, come out in favor. They're big losers as far as issues go, but just ignoring the reasons someone supports your opposition who is successfully pursuing them is a losing strategy.
Great article!
The DSA defenders who call for a big-tent Democratic Party forget what FDR’s big tent looked like. Socialists and communists had their own parties in the 1930s, and FDR’s coalition included lots of conservative Democrats (and I don’t just mean Southern segregationists). A big Democratic majority today that resembled FDR’s would be formed by winning back the moderate and conservative-leaning Democrats alienated from the party by social and cultural issues over the last decade or more, not by embracing a far left that will alienate those people even more.
Today an unapologetic Zionist will he excluded from the "big tent."
I support the right of Israel to peacefully exist, essentially under the terms set by the U.N. in1946 (which the U.N. unfortunately lacked the power to fairly enforce in the best interests of all concerned).
But the term "Zionist" is so ambiguous that people using it should be careful to explain their interpretation of it.
As a disinterested secular American, I view "Zionism" as being advocacy of the right of Jewish people from all over the world to immigrate to the part of the Mideast that was occupied by their ancestors several millennia ago. That occurred after those ancestors had forcibly ousted the previous inhabitants, as documented in the Old Testament of the "Holy" Bible that was "written" by the Hebrew people who forcibly occupied that area for a period of time.
Considering the extreme discrimination that Jewish people have experienced since their displacement from the "Holy Land," I am very sympathetic to their having their right to immigrate to there. But in practical terms, I recognize and agree with that"right" being based on the determination by the U.N. in 1946 that the "state" of Israel should be determined by the demographics on the ground -- namely, that the areas with a then-extant Jewish majority should become "Israel" while the parts with a then-extant Muslim majority should become "Palestine."
This "secular" interpretation of "Zionism" is in contrast to the religiously-based interpretation that all Jews (however their "Jewishness" has been diluted over the millennia by intermarriage with others) are "God's chosen people" with a "God-given" right to the entirety of the "Holy Land." This attitude is especially apparent in the ongoing efforts of Jewish religious fanatics to forcibly displace Muslims from the area that the fanatics refer to as "Judea/Samaria," but which is more commonly referred to by the neutral term of the "West Bank" (of the Jordan River).
In conclusion, I support the "secular" version of "Zionism," but not the version based on Jewish religious fanatacism.
First of all that 1946 thing is long gone and gone forever. 80 years of war and murder has mooted it. There is no way in a million years Israel would ever return to the Auschwitz lines. Second, the term Zionism means the national movement of the Jewish people for a state in their historical homeland. Period. An anti-Zionist opposes that. A tiny miniscule number of Israelis want Israel to conquer the whole territory on religious grounds. If someone says they are a Zionist it means in these times they support the right of the state of Israel to defend itself from its manu enemies who wish to destroy it. Period. An anti-zionist wants Isra destroyed and replaced by what will be a Muslim Arab terror state.
Huh?
So, in plain English, am I a "Zionist" in supporting the right of Jewish people to establish the independent "state" (actually, "nation") of Israel, or an "anti-Zionist" in rejecting the historical and religious "justification" for that?
If the religious-based Zionists like you are as smart as they think they are, they/you had better recognize that their claims to be "God's chosen people" -- having occupied the so-called "Holy Land" for one period of time in human history -- are counter-productive in terms of their future welfare. That is heavily dependent on the support of us non-Jews like me in the U.S. and Europe.
If you know what is best for the citizens of Israel who just want to live in peace within essentially the original borders of Israel, then you had better quit dissing us. Otherwise, you are not fundamentally different than a Hamas or Hezbollah fanatic.
True to a point, Mr. Purzycki, but remember that FDR's big tent did include most of those identifying as socialist and communist -- he even made Henry Wallace his VP, which would like Biden having run with AOC in 2020 (she was ineligible then, but you get the point). I agree with your goal, but the Dems absolutely need to avoid alienating DSA-adjacent people on the Left to the point where they leave the tent.
And so you have just proven the author's point. The DSA SHOULD be alienated. It does not belong in a liberal party that supports the American Constitution.
Freedom Lover, my criticism of Ms. Jackson would be that she cannot distinguish between the DSA platform and Democrats who agree with elements of it, such as El-Sayed. She also fails to recognize that "socialism" is a *very* broad term, and many of those who view themselves as socialists very much belong in the Democratic Party. However, I'd agree with you that the DSA is an illiberal party. While liberal progressives who align with it may people Democrats want to appeal to, it would not be right to embrace the DSA as a party.
For the record, I tend to agree with a number of the DSA positions on social policy (e.g., Green New Deal; Medicare for All) as matters of principle. I think they are certainly consistent with a liberal society that incentivizes action that improves the lives of society in general. (I also support strongly protecting the rights of pro-Palestinian demonstrators, as the DSA calls for, despite the fact that I am a liberal Zionist -- that's part of what liberalism means to me.)
First of all El Sayed is bad news whatever he pays dues to. Second of all I have no idea what you mean by strongly protecting the rights of pro-Palestinian demonstrators. Last I saw they are highly protected while the rights of Jews to be free from mobs and menacing intimidation is non existent. So it seems to me that you are already pretty close to the DSA.
We can't have a productive conversation because you are living in a fantasy world. Have a good day.
Plus the fact that FDR’s administration was riddled with hundreds of actual communists. Some were at high levels, such as Alger Hiss and Harry Dexter White.
The vast majority of voters want more effective government. The establishment from both parties has failed to deliver this basic and essential aspect of politics. Hence the emergence of resistance movements to both parties.
If the DSA serves as a wake up call for the Democrats, the way MAGA picked up the Tea Party movement's goals on the right, so be it.
I'm certainly not voting for more politicians to collect salaries while sitting on their asses accomplishing nothing and shrugging their shoulders at the rest of us.
None of the current DSA are as terrible as Biden and Harris were at their jobs, I'll say that much for them.
If the moderates can come up with new, younger, and more effective politicians I'll listen.
If it's the newcomers from the DSA or some slobbery senile old fart like Schumer, well, dip me in red paint and call me a socialist (I'm not, but compared to Schumer and other ancient and ineffective pols, I'll take my chances, just like many other voters).
The establishment's failures are why the DSA exists. Stop failing and they'll go away.
Ick
Excellent analysis. Really gets to the heart of so many political viewpoints. Let’s hope this great country doesn’t fall for the false and misleading promises of the DSA. Moderates on both sides need to speak out and be more active in politics. Extremists are ruining it for the majority middle.
Thought-provoking essay-Thank you. In re: "This is not a faction that wants to be part of the party. This is a religious group on a crusade," moderate pushback and Marlenes's post below:
First, please forgive this long post. Second, my own disclaimer: I am a lifelong Democrat from a Democrat-voting family.
Ms. Jackson, I think there is another secular religion that has already eaten the Democratic Party, and that is gender identity ideology. Perhaps the current Democrat Party has, for a variety of reasons, become vulnerable to extremist ideologies too. For example:
1) The Democrat Party’s refuses to grasp, accept or care that a majority of Americans, Democrat, Republicans and Independents, do not support “gender-affirming care” for children and adolescents, or men in women’s sports, who are not “Right-wing bigots” and “transphobes.” This refusal sunk Harris’ campaign (The GOP attack ad "Kamala is for they/them, President Trump is for you" shifted the race 2.7% in Trump’s favor) and I understand that the Party is ignoring these messages from the 2024 "Autopsy". For example:
Poll Data on Gender Identity Policies — Women's Liberation Front: https://womensliberationfront.org/poll-data
DEMS GETTING IT WRONG | DIAG: https://www.di-ag.org/dems-getting-it-wrong
2) This blind refusal seems impervious to reason. Here are only three of the many attempts to reason with the Democrat Party on this issue:
The Democrats’ Culture Denialism - by Ruy Teixeira, The Liberal Patriot
Opinion | On Transgender Issues, Voters Want Common Sense – Pamela Paul, The New York Times https://share.google/xsBPF444FcAAR7CoE
The Democrats Need an Honest Conversation on Gender Identity – Helen Lewis, The Atlantic https://share.google/HlSGfBD1E9nKWKVY4
2a) In a rare feat of solidarity, the Democrats in Congress have followed the Party line and voted against every bill to protect the sex-based rights of women to their sports and the health of children. And to paraphrase Ed Markey on the day of his win, the Democrats will vote to pass the Transgender Equality Act, which will collide with and override women's hard-won sex-based rights and protections: https://equality.house.gov/equality-act-introduced-119
3) It is hard to ignore that the Democratic Party has been captured by gender identity advocacy and money and is actively mainstreaming the trans agenda:
3a) https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2026/aug/15/democrats-plan-decade-long-strategy-push-pro-transgender-narrative/
3b) An April 21 Associated Press article gave a glimpse of a well-funded, stealth campaign: “Human Rights Campaign targets battleground districts during broader reckoning over LGBTQ+ rights.” https://apnews.com/article/human-rights-campaign-midterm-elections-lgbtq-55147b73698ef63d13068abe1a109747. The HRC intends to spend $15 million to support Democratic candidates in the US Senate in battleground districts in Georgia, Michigan, Minnesota. New Hampshire, Ohio and Texas, basically functioning as a Democratic PAC.
c) At the very end of a meeting with NC Rep Valerie Foushee's staff, constituents heard "We believe that trans women are women," a thought-terminating cliche that would have impressed even the great cult analyst Robert J. Lifton. One can imagine what the HRC will spend to buy Democratic candidates at the national level in 2028.
d) However, it's hard to know from Democrats' campaign ads where they stand on this belief system. The CEO of the HRC tipped her hand: Slip “trans rights and equality” into local and national Democrat platforms, and camouflage transgender culture change messages behind economic/cost of living terms ("Affordability!"). As Leor Sapir said, “If I’m a Democrat consultant, my advice would be: Do everything in your power to keep this off the public agenda.” This trans advocacy handbook advises as much (“Only Adults? Good Practices in Legal Gender Recognition for Youth”: https://www.trust.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/downloaded_file-69.pdf. These are guidelines on how transgender ideology can be successfully and stealthily promoted:
1. “Tie your campaign to a popular reform” and “Use human rights as a campaign point” (i.e., “Transgender rights” and gender equality);
2. “Get ahead of the government agenda and media story”; and
3. “Avoid excessive press coverage and exposure.”
This had a low profile during Mamdani's campaign: "Standing Up for Trans New Yorkers: Mayor Mamdani Launches $15 Million Plan to Expand Access to Gender-Affirming Care - NYC Mayor's Office: https://www.nyc.gov/mayors-office/news/2026/06/standing-up-for-trans-new-yorkers--mayor-mamdani-launches--15-mi
And I suppose it is not surprising that the DSA has appropriated feminism to mainstream extremist gender identity ideology into their platform: "DSA Program - Workers Deserve More! "Socialist feminism fights for queer liberation and the freedoms of all working-class women." https://program.dsausa.org/#demand-feminism-for-all.
Rahm Emmanuel and Jonah Wheeler seem to be two of the scarce sane voices in the Democratic party: https://x.com/jonahowheeler/status/2089145286169866561. "Gender ideology is an illiberal, backwards way of thinking that I make no apologies for opposing. Here's a bit of my explanation as to why. | Jonah Wheeler | Facebook
Young Democrat breaks with party over transgender issues: Jonah Wheeler interview: https://thehill.com/video/young-democrat-breaks-with-party-over-transgender-issues-jonah-wheeler-interview/10667072/
4) Independents, moderate or liberal leaning Democrats (or now-ex Dems)--We the People who want to fight autocracy and get the fascists out-- are also likely wary of voting the Democratic Party's extremist--illiberal, misogynist, homophobic and anti-child--philosophy into office. Politically homeless, between a rock and a hard place, and no obvious alternatives: A choice between extremist programs of the far left or far right--or today's mainstream Democratic Party.
Regarding moderate pushback, yes, but how? The gender identity ideology advocacy groups like HRC and GLAAD have highly effective, well-funded communications strategies which employ defamation, character assassination, cancellation and media suppression to counter or prevent the airing of dissenting viewpoints. We need a mainstream media as bold as independent media, starting with a mainstream press asking pertinent questions of all candidates during debates and interviews-- including their reasoning. Let's vote all illiberal ideologies out! Ideas and alternatives welcome.
Ruy you need to get past your thing with Trump.
He has held the Presidency because even the pre-DSA democrat party offered options that were judged by the voters to be inferior.
While the Donald does have the ability to enrage the Pope, some of the ideas and changes he has supported have been beneficial. Admit it and shuck the "orange man bad" BS. I hope you can help restructure the democrat party to resume the role of intelligent, patriotic folk with as much focus on program results as program goals.
The thing with Trump is that while his style is best described with words that aren’t fit for a family publication, he’s generally at least half right most of the time.
And you can be SURE that good idea or bad he actually understands the proposal and backs it. As opposed to the ventriloquist doll and cabal he replaced.
That I no longer have to take off my shoes to gain permission from the government to freely associate (ie get on a plane) and that he restored the beloved name of my hometown of Fort Rucker Alabama .. will probably be the only things I clearly and always remember as concrete outcomes of his reign .. and I don't even like the guy.
The Dems began to religiously adhere to gender ideology starting around 2012-2014. It has many of the hallmarks of a religion.
1) Revelation. Gender identity is treated as an inner essence that adults must recognize, not a hypothesis that might be wrong. Sex becomes “assigned.” Disagreement becomes “erasure.”
2) The holy innocent. The child who says “I am the other sex” is not a patient with a cluster of comorbidities, social contagion risk, autism, trauma, or same-sex attraction. The child is a truth-teller. Adults who hesitate are the danger.
3) The sacrament. Social transition, pronouns, secret school names, puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and in some cases surgery are not experimental medical responses to a poorly understood condition. They are “life-saving care.” Once you call a treatment life-saving, opposing it is attempted murder.
4) The martyr story. Suicide statistics are used the way older revivalists used Hell: not as a careful epidemiological claim, but as a threat that ends the argument. “Would you rather have a dead son or a live daughter?” is not medicine. It is an altar call.
5) The blasphemy code. Saying “men are not women,” “minors cannot consent to infertility,” or “girls’ sports are for girls” is not an empirical claim. It is a sin against the child.
Jackson writes as if Democrats were a normal center-left party that suddenly acquired a socialist church.
IMO the left struck out using class as a lever for their revolution and decided to focus on identity politics. This started after the Berlin Wall fell and state control of the economy was proven to be a failure.
"From each according to ability, to each according to need" transformed into "From each according to his privilege, to each according to zher's oppression ranking"
Now that Woke 1's collapse has left people skeptical of DEI and all of the other shibboleths, the left is "going home" and returning to class as a lever.
Why "The Long View' has taken as its main goal to pillory DSA is beyond me. You're overreacting.
1. People who vote for leftist candidates have no idea what the DSA's party platform is. What they're voting for is a path forward that isn't The Long View's cautious approach that has alienated so many Democrats and deemed ineffectual Biden 2.0 by persuadable Trump voters. Investing in education? A public option? Job training? Do you think people who've been struggling for decades see these ideas as their salvation?
2. Even DSA candidates don't subscribe to the party platform that was probably written by a few people that no one listens to. But you constantly bring it up to scare people.
What Dems need is bold thinking and a little courage: https://bobgriendling.substack.com/p/dems-have-a-chance-in-november
El Sayed’s attitude toward non-supporters (or is it non-believers?) isn’t all that different from Obama’s. To this day Obama would tell you that opponents to his policy were driven solely by craven greed or the quest for partisan advantage. (And, he implied, the former usually drove the latter.) The notion that the other side might have principled or factual objections was risible and beyond his comprehension.
The article closes with the writer’s recommended policy positions to “neuter” the “DSA” momentum. I have to question what evidence can be offered for these polices given the party’s track record on health care policy (“if you like your doctor, you can keep him”), “closing tax loopholes” when the top 10% of earners already pay over 70% of the total, better border enforcement by the party whose policy was clearly the exact opposite (“the border is closed”), and “reducing” educational costs which have far exceeded our inflation rates as reading and math literacy scores continue to plummet. I fear the party’s track record on these important policy issues - plus the current leadership’s never ending drive for impeachment which will produce gridlock instead of innovation and real progress if and when they gain control - leaves little incentive for change in a party which has not yet recovered from 2024.