On huge issues, incrementalism doesn't work - you buy in to the big picture or you don't.

[Phoebe Loosinhouse]

These issues are similar, but not limited to:

Slavery

Women's suffrage

Civil Rights

*************************************************************************************************************************************
Modern inclusions should be:
2. Gay marriage

3. Universal Healthcare (NOT universal Health Insurance)as a right and a function of government
*************************************************************************************************************************************

You either understand and accept or reject the overarching moral imperatives or you don't. Trying to dance around the issues and wondering if we can't just do a little bit at a time is foolish and wasteful. There are points in history where fell swoops are needed that wipe out exsisting standards without a look backwards.

[Solly Mack]

1. K to the mighty damn right R

[Mike 03]

2. I agree with your statement. I've tried to make this point before. NT

[Mike 03]

3. This is such a key concept. Kick and rec. NT

[FreakinDJ]

4. Incrementalism work well for the RATpubliCONs

I can still remember Rush LimpBalls peaching it in the early 90s

[patrice]

5. Right On!

Increments get compromised away by time and circumstances.

Incrementalism is a ppropriate to preparation, to conditioning the environment, to contextual engineering, but the fundamental change itself has to be what it is or it is nothing.

[Oregone]

6. Universal Health Insurance works fine for me...

Im not sure whats wrong with Single-payer insurance paying for the care.

[Fumesucker]

10. Universal health insurance and single payer are not necessarily the same thing..

Mandated private insurance will be "universal"..

And I think that is what we are going to get.

[Oregone]

25. Im not sure why people entertain the notion of using the word "Universal" for that

Despite even Democratic politicians pandering with it (while offering the shit private mandates). Few things make me so angry as the hijacking of that word. Private insurance is anything but universal, even if mandated, due to claims denials and pre-existing conditions.

[Phoebe Loosinhouse]

26. I was careful to be explicit that Universal healthcare was the goal

not universal health insurance. I think universal healthcare and single payer can be used almost interchangeably. I see Universal Healthcare as the end and single payer as the means to achieve that end.

I meant a single level of care and coverage offered to all despite age, income, gender, class, employment etc.

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/universal
2. applicable everywhere or in all cases; general: a universal cure.
3. affecting, concerning, or involving all: universal military service.

I agree that universally mandated private insurance is not at all the same thing. One is butter and one is I Can't Believe It's Not Butter.

[John Q. Citizen]

80. Jessie Jackson in his 1988 presidential bid used the term Universal health care to mean single payer

Then Hillary Clinton expropriated the phrase to mean managed care in 1993.

[TheKentuckian]

7. All case studies in incrementalisim. You don't get to the watershed moments in single bounds.

To be an incrementalist one has to buy into a goal and have a pretty wide scope. The incrementalist simply sees the path it takes to a goal that is further than a hop, skip, and a jump.

Freedom for the slaves, the granting of their civil rights, and Women's suffrage were all efforts decades and generation after generation in the making, with many starts, stops, reversals, and conflicted compromises along the way. The "fell swoops" were giant leaps after long years of many small steps, not all in the right direction either.

The OP's examples do not support the post. Almost like they suffer from memorizing dates without the context of the history that lead to them.

[Darth_Ole]

8. Good points, Kentuckian.

I also seem to remember another person, one Hillary Clinton, who tried to overhaul the health care system in one stroke. How well did that work out?

Yes, Obama is trying to root out the very lobbyists and special interests that killed Clinton's efforts, but if it takes something as simple as updating electronic records to put us on the road to universal coverage, so be it.

As far as women's rights, the Seneca Falls convention was in 1848, I believe. Women, of course, didn't get the vote until 1920, more than 70 years later.

I'm not saying the GLBT community will or should wait that long to be treated equally, but that theh problem is going to be approached by a lot of different angles: court cases, state legislatures, voter's referenda, etc. Besides, even a phrase like gay rights is so broad, it's hard to know where to start. Legalizing marriage? Repealing Don't Ask Don't Tell? Repealing DOMA? Right to adopt? Workplace discrimination?

Where do you start? It requires setting priorities and strategy.

I, for one, am hopeful. I think the California movement royally fucked up last year, but state legislatures are moving on this, and while we've seen no action action on DADT just yet because the president has umpteen-gadzillion things to deal with right now and it requires Congressional action besides, at least the people in charge personally want it the policy revoked.

Besides, we now have Ted-fucking-Olson of all people having filed a challenge to Prop 8. If that's not a sign history is on our side, I don't know what is.

[Jakes Progress]

9. You don't understand incrementalism.

The OP did not say that the good fight was one without struggle or that they happened all at once. Incrementalism is a process of slowing change not moving it forward.

Freedom slaves did not come with increments like "Okay, slaves will be free on Thursdays and alternate Saturdays". Or "Well, the light skinned slaves can be free, but they can't vote or get married." It happened when a president said "These people are citizens of these United States."

Likewise with Women's suffrage, the battle was long, but the decision to make it happen didn't come incrementally.

DODT and tax subsidies for the Insurance industry are methods of deciding not to do something, not a way of getting the the right thing.

The OP is correct.

[Phoebe Loosinhouse]

12. Thanks, Jake - that is exactly what I meant.

When the moment is at hand, to make the sweeping change called for and to it codify that change as part of our Constitution or federal law so that all may know that as a nation we have one standard.

[HamdenRice]

19. For most slaves in the west, your statement is exactly wrong

Britain freed slaves in the British Empire in 1833. It created a system in which slaves became forced "apprentices" to their old masters. They were free some days of the week to work for themselves, and "apprenticed" on other days to their old masters. Children were free, but apprentices were only semi-free. Light skinned slaves who were the illegitimate children of masters were more likely to be immediately manumitted while field slaves weren't -- hence the importance in the Caribbean of "free men of color". The "free men of color" even fought against the slaves and for the whites in the early stages of the Haitian revolution.

[Jakes Progress]

20. But it was not this kind of incrementalism

that made the change. It was not a matter of people sitting down and planning a step-by-step series of actions to achieve emancipation. Those things you mention were just evidence of the building pressure to do something. We have evidence of pressure for ending DADT and DOMA. We have mandate for universal healthcare. Now what is needed is a leadership with a will to lead.

[HamdenRice]

22. "It was not a matter of people sitting down and planning a step-by-step"

Actually, it was, in all three examples. In the civil rights case, it was Charles Hamilton Houston, Thurgood Marshall and Charlie Black planning a systematic assault on segregation and then executing it.

Same could be said for the abolitionists in England and America.

Then when the ball is in the government's court so to speak, legislators, judges and administrators plan, step by step, how to implement the change.

[Jakes Progress]

28. Sounds like a history book version.

In those books, everything has to fit into chapters and "overarching theories".

Real history is not that tidy. It sounds precise and perfect. Life (real history) is messier than that. It takes leadership to make things happen - Martin Luther King's determination and fire - LBJ's gut-based decision. Besides, neither of those were about the elimination of slavery. Though abolition had been debated by factions in the country beginning with the Declaration of Independence and up, it was things like the compromises and accommodations that went on in the 1790's were just ways to hope things would get better. Surely the abolitionist legislators thought they were planning for the demise of slavery, but the twenty year compromise came and went. It took Abraham Lincoln to make it really happen.

Just having an idea and planning for it is not the same as doing it. The OP is correct. On certain major issues, you must step up to the plate. Finagling with the edges is how to not get it done. Someone in a leadership position must gut it up and act.

I worked 35 years in education. I was part of those national programs where we worked to move education forward in incremental steps. We knew where the country had to go and we had the brightest minds working on making it happen in those carefully crafted and logically planned increments. For twenty years, the progressive movement in education was one step forward and two steps back. What your plan doesn't allow for is that while you are planning to make things better, there are those working hard to keep the bad and make them worse. It is a hundred year war of skirmishes, little victories, little defeats. It makes for an exciting and intellectually stimulating life, but it does not bring about real change. It makes one feel important and purposeful, but after all those years I sit back in my garden and wish that we had had a leader who could brush aside the inconsequential squabbles and overhaul the mess that we were only making more complicated.

Little bit by little bit is not progress unless you are a historian. Real people's lives and real world damage is done while the planners craft the perfect path.

Action now or action never.

[HamdenRice]

30. Well, facts are facts

Either Charles Hamilton Huston and Thurgood Marshall planned a long incremental civil rights litigation campaign, or they didn't. Either Martin Luther King planned and executed a long term, incrementalist strategy of activism combined with behind the scenes negotations and crafting of legislation, or he didn't.

However my argument sounds to you, it contains certain claims about facts. Those are either true or they aren't.

[Jakes Progress]

33. Not your facts.

Just because Huston and Marshall planned doesn't mean that is why it happened. Martin Luther King did not plan a slow march to freedom. It took time, but I was there. I marched and I listened. Our chants were not "What do we want - Freedom. When do we want it - well whenever the timeline indicates a pleasant and accommodating period of adjustment will lead to eventual success." Sort of loses it ring, don't you think?

One of the worst arguments possible is "Facts are facts". If you are talking about the atomic weight of cesium, you have a good place to start with that fact. If you are talking about cause and effect in human events, facts are just statements one side puts forth.

[HamdenRice]

34. Okey, Dokey

Neither King nor Marshall were planners. Just ran into the street screaming give us our rights NOW. And they were granted! The left and Black Power movement never accused King of being an incrementalist.

Otay!

Everyone is entitled to their own opinions. Everyone is not entitled to their own facts. Except on DU, where everyone is also entitled to their own facts too!

:rofl:

[Jakes Progress]

37. What was your plan

to move the people on this thread to your point of view? Did you plan carefully to make small changes in people's opinion? Did you plan involve putting words in the mouths of those who disagreed with you?

Don't you love it when a plan comes together.

[HamdenRice]

40. I'm merely pointing out historical inaccuracies, not making plans

I'm simply saying that the examples that have been presented against incrementalism either (1) are themselves incrementalist, or (2) were not incrementalist, but didn't work.

If you would like to provide other examples, I'd gladly consider them. Or if you want to make an argument that today's problems are sui generis, I'd gladly consider that also.

[Jakes Progress]

58. Your views of history

and your interpretation of the word incrementalism can make for a lot of back and forth, a lot of hoo-rah.

But if you have no plan, don't know of a plan, can't conceive of how one would work, I would suggest that discussion would be pointless. You call for a slow, long, buildup - a baby-step to freedom. But then cannot say how that will accomplish the goal. What compromises do you suggest? What accommodation to bigotry and greed would you have our president make?

Without answers to those questions, why would you suggest more waiting, more delay?

[HamdenRice]

59. Ah, here's where you go off the rails: "You call for a slow, long, buildup"

No, I don't "call for" anything at all. I have definite views about how certain policy goals can be accomplished, but I have not disclosed those views. Just as you seem to be "making up" certain historical processes, you have "made up" a picture of my views.

Just because I think certain historical analysis in this thread are factually wrong, doesn't mean that I don't want certain problems to be solved quickly.

I'm merely saying -- and I'm now repeating myself -- the analysis of certain historical events in this thread as non-incremental is factually in error. I'm open to an explication of other non-incremental reforms, if you decide to provide it.

[Jakes Progress]

62. So there is no point?

Your posts are just a matter of playing semantics to no particular end?

Sorry. I take these things seriously. I'm aware that this is simply a forum for political junkies, but refining thoughts for action is a useful exercise. if blowing smoke rings just to see what shape they turn into is the goal, I don't want to "play".

[HamdenRice]

64. Of course there is a point. History is important!

I take history seriously. Getting it right is exceptionally important because those who don't learn history are doomed to repeat it.

So far, there is a lot of "history" in this thread that doesn't get it right.

[Fire1]

72. Nail on the head. I, too, identified the inaccuracies in the OP,

but don't have your patience. Kudos.

[Land Shark]

77. check out this post and see if your points re "history" are all that relevant

The rate at which the master in fact and in history gives up power, so to speak, may be incremental. The question is what do we support and advocate for.

Yes, the real question is what the PUBLIC GOAL we work for is, and DU is public forum, not a strategic backroom tactical discussion about salvaging a few steps forward. Martin Luther King Jr referred to the "tranquilizing drug of gradualism". SEe http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=5746122&mesg_id=5750010

If you affirm an incremental approach from the get go, you're arguing with not only Martin Luther King Jr. but Susan B. Anthony and every great progressive. SO check out this thread below, and my challenge to debate at post 71 if you like as well, then get back to me here, or there.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=5746122&mesg_id=5750010

[Jakes Progress]

87. But, but that makes history so messy.

No. Better we just sit and plan and talk and dither. Then we can point out the number of ways that anyone who sees it differently must be wrong. Surely those people who made things happen weren't the real important people. Surely the ones who sat and talked and planned are the ones who made it happen, not the ones who took the blows and struck out against evil. Surely those were just the ones who benefitted from the hard, hard work done in armchairs and salons and clubs where the real heros of history served the world by waiting and waiting and waiting.

[Land Shark]

93. I've no objection to "planning" in the abstract, only to the "incremental" assumption of linear slow

progress. That being said, I hear and second your preference to action. A certain thought-predicate to action can and must occur, but dithering forever in armchairs? Not good. :)

[Jakes Progress]

89. A real historian

knows that there are several interpretations of historical material. You argue as if every historian agrees, and specifically that they agree with you. You call your interpretation facts. That is not a term that serious historians use with a straight face.

I have attended several history conferences. The halls are filled with learned men who violently disagree with each other over exactly the same set of facts. Pompously calling your interpretation fact and haughtily calling other interpretations "wrong" is something only the very amateur historians do.

You interpretation seems to say that real change come by waiting. It calls for progress by committee and commission. But this doesn't jibe with the examples you give. Just what small step, just what accommodation for bigotry did Thurgood Marshall call for. What part of freedom did he say should wait? You used him as an example, so give me the quotes and the details of his purposeful and deliberate decisions to hold back on the march to freedom.

Then show me the decision for non-action that Martin Luther King Jr. told people to take. Where did he tell his followers to avoid standing up for their rights. I was at three of his speeches, and I never heard that one.

Yes. History is important. And it shows us that until people take action, nothing will be done.

[HamdenRice]

97. Wrong again: "You interpretation seems to say that real change come by waiting"

This seems to be a really difficult concept for you. I am not making any proscriptive claims for how change will come. I am saying that the claims about the examples given so far are historically wrong.

Historians disagree about interpretations. Historians don't agree about most facts. You seem to half grasp this when you write:

The halls are filled with learned men who violently disagree with each other over exactly the same set of facts.

But then you don't seem to realize that the examples in the OP are factually wrong. There are factual questions raised -- such as whether the British emancipation laws did or did not include apprenticeship and different categories of free and semi-free and non-free, or whether Thurgood Marshall argued cases relying on "separate but equal" before he decided to attack separate but equal directly in Brown. You can read the various emancipation plans of the British Empire and reasonable people will not disagree about the words used. You can read policy statements of Thurgood Marshall and see when he decided to have the NAACP directly attack segregation, and when he litigated on the basis of separate but equal.

I also disagree with your interpretation of the facts, such as when you write:

It calls for progress by committee and commission.

I am not calling for anything. I am talking about history. That said, I hope you do realize that Marshall did not litigate civil right cases by himself. He did so on behalf of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, whose various local chapters, boards and committees had to consult and come to an agreement on strategy. Similarly Martin Luther King created a large, somewhat complex national organization called the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, which coordinated non-violent action, but that then also sat down and hammered out contracts, agreements and reform local ordinances to desegregate with local officials and business leaders. Most people seem not to realize that King was as much a negotiator and drafter of agreements as he was an direct action organizer. So obviously, as an historical example, the civil rights movement created progress by "committee and commission." Did you think that people just went into the streets and that civil rights as a result just happened?

Then show me the decision for non-action that Martin Luther King Jr. told people to take. Where did he tell his followers to avoid standing up for their rights.

I hope you realize that there were times when King called off demonstrations or direct actions because of the threat of violence. You do realize I hope, that he often counseled patience -- and I am neither endorsing nor criticizing that stance just stating the historical fact -- and that he was excoriated for that by more radical protest leaders.

[BzaDem]

98. K & R for having the patience to argue with people who feel entitled to their own facts. n/t

[Jakes Progress]

109. As you feel entitled to your own facts. nt

[HamdenRice]

100. Correction

Just to be clear, there is a typo in my own post. The sentence:

Historians disagree about interpretations. Historians don't agree about most facts. You seem to half grasp this when you write:

Should read:

Historians disagree about interpretations. Historians don't disagree about most facts. You seem to half grasp this when you write:

[Jakes Progress]

111. Inanity.

You can't give examples of what kind of change you want. You don't have a clear idea of what is needed.

On a thread about bringing change, you want to argue points of history and historical interpretation. You get very het up over exactly what way a word is used, not to progress the argument about change, but just to be pedantic. If you do not hold the opinion that slow change and hesitation and incremental compromise are the best way to achieve goals, just why bother to post? Just to read your words in print?

If you are not calling for anything, why bother? Your reading of historical events seem much more important to you than the plight of gay people and those without insurance. Fine. There are sites where people argue these things. If you like, I will google some for you. There you can discuss inane points of order and quibble over how many men were in Washington's boat. The OP here is about bringing on needed changes. If you have nothing to say about the changes, you manifest a pomposity beyond belief to butt in with outrage over things that have nothing to do with bringing about change.

But it's a fee forum. You're entitled to lead the thread where you want.

[HamdenRice]

112. Talk about inane

"The OP here is about bringing on needed changes". True. It also talks about how to bring about change using historical examples. Those historical examples are all, however, wrongly described. You seem upset that this has been pointed out, and project your emotional reaction on me for pointing it out. For example, I don't think my "reading of historical events" is "more important" than the solution of real world problems; neither am I outraged over anything. Mildly amused would be a better description.

You seem to be saying that we need to avoid analyzing the OP's proposal for how change occurs, because we agree with its ends.

Suppose the OP had written, "change will come from elite compassion; just look at the French Revolution, and how Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI peacefully implemented democracy, created a social safety net for the peasants and avoided bloodshed. That's how we will get universal health care."

Or how about if the OP had written, "Martin Luther King helped achieve civil rights for all by taking up arms and heading into the bush to start guerilla war. That's the only way to achieve civil rights victories in America."

Are you saying that anyone who wants universal health care should agree with those statement, including the historical howlers, as some sort of expression of solidarity with the ultimate goals?

Can you see how starting out with false historical premises about your historical examples might lead one to come up with inappropriate or ineffective strategies for change?

You seem to be saying that discussing what actually happened is somehow an illegitimate activity on a discussion board.

[Jakes Progress]

113. Call the king's men. You've fallen from the wall.

Now you say you believe we need to examine the historical references as a pattern for implementing change. But before you said you didn't really have anything to say about change, just that you disagreed with the historical references. Make up your mind.

Mmm, yeah. We're gonna have to ask you to go ahead and submit those TPS reports when you get a chance. You know the ones about the incremental changes that you think we need to do to achieve the changes we talked about. Oh, and be sure to give us details about the little steps and compromises that gays and the uninsured will have endure so we can wait some more. We did discuss this about five threads back and ever since. Your work is extraordinarily tardy here. And I believe you have my stapler. (I thought I could get you to answer if I channeled Lundberg. He must be a hero of yours.)

But feel free to write another dissertation on the patterns of shadow and light on deciduous trees native to western uplands. I hope you won't mind if the rest of us go ahead and try to save the forest.

[HamdenRice]

119. Your perspective is noted. Facts don't exist. Historical examples can be made up.

Logic doesn't matter. Consistency is for fools.

Your latest post is pretty much a summation of your perspective. Fine. We can all see that, and I guess we can agree to disagree.

But given your perspective, you can't really articulate a reason why those of us in the "reality based community" need to take anything you have to say seriously, nor why we need to deem any analysis of yours as worthy of even minimally serious consideration.

[Jakes Progress]

123. Still waiting

for you to back up your premise with examples of how we can best achieve equality for gays and universal health care by waiting and planning and hoping and compromising. Anything?

[Land Shark]

79. A quote on point from Martin Luther King Jr. is here that contradicts your "planners" point

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=5746122&mesg_id=5750010

I think the basic distinction is between what one asks for and what the powers that be concede or what is voted for at a certain point in time by legislators (especially).

I never had something even as small as a minor landlord tenant matter where the plaintiff didn't ask for 100% of what they thought the law would or should support. And they stuck to that position until it was shot down by the court or so much pressure was put on them that they agreed, always reluctantly and hesitatingly, to a lesser settlement, in light of a legal form of duress taking the form of the risks, costs, pressures of trial, etc.

Everybody asks for the full measure of their rights. Half-rights, like freedom of speech every other day, is not freedom of speech at all. If it is a matter of fundamental rights, "incremental progress" is an oxymoron. State by state, one either has the right to vote, or one does NOT have the right to vote. When the right to vote is recognized, one jumps from 0% enfranchisement to 100%. That's not incremental because Equal protection doesn't allow second class voters who vote on some things but not others. If it takes a long time, and perhaps 650,000 dead Americans in a Civil War in order to get the full measure of freedom, when it comes it's still relatively suddenly. BTW, Lincoln was assassinated shortly after, and because of (According to Booth) Lincoln's advocacy for the first time of the recognition of the right to vote in freed slaves.

I don't think that the days prior to Good Friday, 1865 were the first time Lincoln ever "thunk" of the vote for freed slaves nor the first time he supported it in his mind and his heart. Lincoln's revolutionary "incrementalism' (if anyone would call Lincoln incremental, I dunno) was yet another product of force. Nobody accepts incremental progress toward a goal except when forced to do so by some force in fact, or some force they've assessed as too powerful for them to overcome.

So, in the end your point seems to be that the "masters" so to speak give up power slowly in most historical circumtances, and you'll fight tooth and nail to make sure the bolder ones on DU understand that it will likely be a long haul. Ok.

Of what use is that, really? No military commander that can't fire up the troops deserves to lead. One can combine historical "accuracy" in whatever form you believe to be accurate and still manage to keep the troops inspired. So, whatever the facts are, they're beside the point of why we don't just agree to keep everyone as fired up as possible on goals that in all likelihood we agree on anyway?

Is it because accuracy-in-detail trumps enthusiasm in importance EVEN WHEN THE GOAL IS AGREED CORRECT??? Nothing great was accomplished without enthusiasm, and details (specifically when the overall direction and attitude are correct) are not of equal importance. Details should be made, but not at the (significant) expense of enthusiasm, such as raining on a parade without expressing any support at all. Why the negativity of correction on detail, combined with a refusal to confirm or deny unequivocally whether one shares the same goal?

What's the rate of incumbents being re-elected to congress, if they file? 98% these days? If one is running a Dem campaign challenging an R incumbent, do you tell your volunteers to be sure they have accurately fixed in their mind a 98% chance of LOSING? Or do you put the best possible construction on the campaign's chances? Call it what you will, but a little bit of willingness to strain the facts a little is a sign of good faith in a cause. (NO, i don't advocate flat out lying of course)

Not EVERY route up the mountain is equally long and difficult, some are much easier and others extremely difficult. Same with politics, and argumentation, some arguments make things easy others are very difficult to win with. No matter what we may think of the details of history, a decent open-mindedness for the variety of historical experience compels something other than discouragement of others, not to mention the importance of enthusiasm.

One last time: One can stipulate to any given set of historical "facts" and the point still stands: The goal sought must always be the full measure of rights, and I wonder if damping the enthusiasm of others is justified for friends of the same goal, as important as details of history might be.

[Jakes Progress]

88. Oh those silly quotes.

They get in the way of a good rousing thesis. Plus as suggested, it wasn't the action of MLK that made the difference. It was the planning and the waiting that made it all happen.

[Land Shark]

103. Irony and sarcasm and ridicule duly noted and concurred with... nt

[Greyhound]

41. The acceptance of the goal, the idea that it must be achieved, does happen at once.

It is the battle to achieve that can take time.

[Fire1]

73. I think any sane person would agree. n/t

[PufPuf23]

46. Slavery, Civil Rights , Woman's Sufferage

There were a build-ups to critical mass.

There were a black-white social decisions.

There are 50 or more years of social and legal adjustments not yet complete.

The black-white social decision was not incremental while the build-up and implementation are incremental.

What we have been getting in legislation is feel good legislation names that protect the entrenched interests.

We desperately need revolutionary change just to join the community of modern nations - like Universal Health Care and true financial reform and a move away from a global military empire -- not three card Monte.

[ProudDad]

65. We've been incremental

since 1948...when Harry Truman tried to get Single-Payer and was thwarted by Congress.

It's time to get there as the rest of the civilized world already has!

Anything less would be more of the same old sh*t...

[Number23]

70. You are exactly right.

An expression I heard over and over again from my great-aunts and uncles and great-grandmother -- all black folks from the Deep South whose parents and grandparents used to say this as they fought through slavery, Jim Crow, voter rights etc. etc. etc:

"Begin with the end in mind."

One of the greatest expression I think I've ever heard. Of course, I had no idea what it meant until I was grown. :)

[John Q. Citizen]

81. But we have medicare, VA, Medicade, and Schip, So it's time to take that final incrimental leap to

Tax payer subsidized private insurance companies???

No Way, that's a leap backwards.

The incremental step forwards would be to one single payer system that cover everyone, is tax funded and non-profit like Medicare, VA, medicade, etc.

[Land Shark]

82. OK, how about, post 9-11, the patriot act, afghanistan, torture and Iraq? Massive worldwide moves..

Are those "incremental" in nature? A slow slog up the hills of Progress, or Regress? Did that pre-election bailout for 800 billion or so that passed the Senate and then the house take years and decades to be accomplished??? I don't know about you but the bailout caught me by surprise in its speed and scope.

Things CAN and do happen fast under some circumstances. Especially if in the interests of those already in control. But occasionally under other circumstances as well, but as JEfferson noted, pro-people progress only happens in times of an aroused populace, which is why he hoped for a rebellion every generation or so. It may not happen all the time, but it does happen in favor of the people, when and if they get aroused.

It's Our country, after all. Since the only way we make non-incremental progress is when the population is fired up, I'm hoping that friends of progress won't be going around raining on that parade in the name of their Holy Cause of the "the odds are against us." WHy is that worth fighting so hard for?

[NoSheep]

118. That's what 9-11 was for....see?

Everything you just cited is a polar opposite. We need a single catalyzing event! I thought the Obama election would be enough but apparently it is a lot harder to do good than it is to do bad. What stands in the way? Greed. Period. That's why you should keep those cards and letters going to your elected representatives. Keep writing letters to the papers. Just like I'm sure you're doing now.

[NoSheep]

117. My thoughts exactly.

Who starts these threads? 13 yr olds?

[ColbertWatcher]

11. Thank you. I wish I knew more about the DuBois-Washington "feud" than I do ...

... http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/race/etc/road.html

But, alas, I am a slow reader.

Maybe another DUer could enlighten?

[tavalon]

13. Absolutely

and Obama has been listening to too many damned pollsters. He needs to get his finger out of the wind and lead. He has such potential but he's squandering it with a Clinton style administration, so intent on watching the polls that they forget to lead.

[HamdenRice]

14. Completely and totally historically inaccurate. All those struggles were won incrementally.

It is so depressing whenever DU takes up historical examples to make a point, because most of us have a kind of presidents' birthday/MLK Day view of history.

Not a single example you provided is historically correct.

Slavery was ended incrementally. It started with humanitarian and abolitionist agitation in Britain and the northeastern United States. The first victories were not world wide abolition, but the ending of the slave trade, and the gradual ending of slavery around the world, especially the British Empire.

Britain abolished slavery only in Britain itself (not in the Empire colonies) as a result of a common law court case, the Somersett Case in the 1772. The fledgling US prohibited slavery in the new Ohio territories in 1787. France abolished slavery during its revolution in the 1790s. Then Britain abolished the slave trade as an attempt to limit slavery's growth and put pressure on the slave holders in the Empire. Then the US Constitution provisions ending the slave trade went into effect in 1808. These attacks on the slave trade, but not slavery directly, were a result of specific incrementalist strategic choices not to attack the "slave power" directly, but to limit it, weaken it, and perhaps force improved treatment of slaves by preventing importation of new slaves. Britain finally abolished slavery throughout the Empire in 1833, but kept in place a form of "apprenticeship" as a transition from slavery to freedom throughout the colonies (so the statement above that slaves could not be partially freed is dead wrong). Moreover, they were alarmed by certain unanticipated consequences, such as the slave owning Boers of South Africa emigrating out of the Cape Colony to set up slave owning "free republics" in the interior of Africa. Then the US Congress and successive administrations fought a long and bitter political fight over limiting slavery in the new territories of the west, leading to mini-civil wars, such as "Bleeding Kansas." Then the Civil War occurred and Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation that in effect, freed no one, but was a great propaganda exercise. Finally the Thirteenth Amendment was passed in 1865 abolishing slavery in the US. Slavery continued in Cuba, being challenged during a 10 year war beginning 1868 and only ending in 1886, while slavery continued in Brazil until 1888. So, slavery in the west took well over 100 years to eradicate.

Women's suffrage -- or more properly, women's emancipation in the United States -- took well over 100 years to accomplish. The first steps were the state by state passage of the Married Womens' Property Acts, which recognized the rights of married women to own property apart from their husbands, which in effect, made them no longer minors before the law. Women's various civil and political rights accumulated during the 19th century. Various western territories began granting women the right to vote after the civil war, although some ironically, took away that right when the territories became states. By the early 1900s, several states granted women the right to vote, and the state by state trend toward giving women the right to vote culminated in the Nineteenth Amendment, which was passed in 1920.

Civil Rights also took nearly 100 years of incremental change. The national legal basis was laid with passage of the Fourteenth Amendment after the Civil War, but some northern states effectively provided all citizens due process and equal protection before that. For example, one of the most forgettable presidents in American history, Chester Allan Arthur, was ironically, once an idealistic young lawyer, and as such, in 1855 litigated a civil rights case on behalf of Lizzie Jennings, a 19th century Rosa Parks, a black woman who refused to give up her seat on a street car, and the New York City based, "Legal Rights Association;" Arthur's case ended segregation on public transportation in the city, for "Negroes" who were "sober, well behaved and free of disease." The Supreme Court at first enforced Fourteenth Amendment civil rights, but began to move backwards with Plessy v. Ferguson. The NAACP launched a long term strategy for securing civil rights by the 1930s and began litigating on a state by state, and issue by issue basis for the next four decades. They specifically decided not to seek all rights at once because they feared "push back" from segregationists. The first sector they attacked was segregation in state university law schools, which they felt would cause the least resistance. By the early 1950s, they decided to litigate segregation in elementary school education, and won Brown v. Board of Education. But Brown was not a sweeping decision ending segregation in the south; it ended segregation only in the classroom. That's why even a decade later, young college age students still had to challenge segregation in southern lunch counters (sit ins) and interstate bus transportation (freedom rides). A combination of court cases and the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act effectively ended the legal basis for segregation only in the mid 1960s -- just about one hundred years after the Fourteenth Amendment had been adopted.

[Phoebe Loosinhouse]

15. Please see posts 9 and 12. nt.

[HamdenRice]

16. posts 9 and 12 are simply historically wrong.

If you have an argument, why not just state it.

[Phoebe Loosinhouse]

17. Well, both posts are so clear, I didn't see any need to restate them.

Since post 12 is my opinion, I am not sure how it could be historically wrong.

Obviously the end of slavery and woman's suffrage and civil rights were the culmination of many small movements, but FINALLY there did come in each case a large, broad, all encompassing Amendment or legislation that said THIS IS THE AMERICAN STANDARD.

We have and are choosing the incremental route with Healthcare when we are at the point that we could just affirm if we had a leader so bold: "Healthcare is the right of all Americans and the American government will insure that right."

Same with Gay civil rights. "GLBT have the same rights as all other Americans with no exceptions"

To get there would require 2 things, a groundswell from the bottom and non-flinching leadership from the top. The groundswell from the bottom will NEVER be unanimous, but there is apoint where the MAJORITY of people were for the ending of slavery, the vote for woman and modern civil rights laws. I think we are at a similar point with Single Payer and Gay civil rights.

[HamdenRice]

18. A statement can be "clear" and also "clearly wrong"

The civil rights and suffrage movements were long drawn out state by state struggles, and slavery was a state by state and colony by colony struggle. When the state by state struggles reached a tipping point, only then was a national standard declared.

And for most of the world, slavery did not end all at once. It was transformed into various forms of forced "apprenticeship" that lasted decades, so the statements upthread about it being impossible to be a slave on alternate days is dead wrong. That is in fact exactly what happened throughout the British Empire -- slaves had to work for their former masters for a few days a week and were free the other days. Some were free (children, the manumitted) and some weren't (apprentices).

And what happened in the Empire was far more representative of how slavery ended world wide simply because the Empire was so big compared to the southern United States.

[Usrename]

21. Thought provoking thread.

I think what we are seeing now is not incremental change, but instead a well orchestrated hoax of only paying lip service to change. I think that this is the distinction that we now face, as opposed to the progress that was made on some of those other historical issues. It's as if everyone is agreeing that change is necessary now, but for some reason or another we will choose to stifle it all for now.

I don't believe this is a very productive plan of action, and it's also difficult to imagine that this is how things ever got accomplished historically.

[Jakes Progress]

31. Correct.

Increments are ways to avoid change. See post 28.

As the OP suggested, you may incrementally change your diet or your television viewing habits, but for the big things it takes a gutsy leader who will make it happen.

Abraham Lincoln did not sit in committee and plot a slow course correction. He issued the Emancipation Proclamation. Harry Truman did not dither with the Joint Chiefs on dates and quotas. He wiped out legal segregation in the military.

Such action comes with a cost, and some men are willing to pay. LBJ lost the south for the Democrats when he carried through with Civil Rights legislation. Martin Luther King did not ask for slow progress. He brought city services to a halt and stood up to guns. He was killed for it.

How many talented service men and women will be lose and how many people will be denied their rights under DADT and DOMA while back rooms buzz with compromise? How many people will die for lack of medical care and how many families will be ruined because of medical bills while we make sure that every money-grasping corporate head is appeased.

[HamdenRice]

36. Two points of information

1. Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation freed no one. That was done on purpose. Slaves in the border union states were not freed. The proclamation only freed slaves in states in rebellion, which obviously denied Lincoln's jurisdiction to free anyone.

2. Truman did not wipe out segregation in the military. The North Korean army desegregated the U.S. Army. Truman was under pressure from all sides -- from civil rights organizations, as well as from political operatives (Clark Clifford was telling him he needed the black vote to win the 1948 election), and military manpower studies (which recommended desegregation), but also the southern wing of the Democratic Party.

Truman certainly decided to, and intended to, desegregate the Army with Executive Order 9981. The main language of the order was:

"1. It is hereby declared to be the policy of the President that there shall be equality of treatment and opportunity for all persons in the armed services without regard to race, color, religion or national origin. This policy shall be put into effect as rapidly as possible, having due regard to the time required to effectuate any necessary changes without impairing efficiency or morale."

The problem is that the Army "pushed back." Perhaps most disheartening was that General Omar Bradley himself resisted the order.

Omar Bradley was by far the most beloved General of World War II. Because he generally tried to minimize casualties, because he was so unpretentious, because it was rumored he never issued an order without saying "please," and because he was often in the trenches with his troops -- all in contrast to General Patton -- Bradley was fondly called the "G.I. General."

African American troops adored Gen. Bradley who was the general officer over the 332nd Fighter Squadron, the Tuskeegee Airmen, or Black Army Airforce. My father, who served in the 332nd, talked about Gen. Bradly fondly his whole life. In other words, it was Bradley who allowed the Tuskeegee Airmen to prove that blacks could be pilots and officers.

After the War, Gen. Bradley became Army Chief of Staff. When Truman issued E.O. 9981, Bradley said that desegregation would only come to the Army when it came to the larger American society.

The Army basically said to Truman's order: "No."

You can imagine how heartbroken African American solders and veterans were by Bradley's statement.

You can also imagine how damaging this was to the tenuous notion of civilian supremacy over the military, and may have contributed to General MacArthur's imperious disregard for civilian control some years later as American troops approached the Yalu River between North Korea and China.

Moreover, the wording of Truman's order was ambiguous. It simply required "equality" of treatment and opportunity, not desegregation. The governing Supreme Court doctrine was "separate but equal," (Brown v. Board was several years away) and hence the Army could interpret the order as merely requiring equal opportunity for segregated black and white units -- and that's pretty much all the Army did.

The Army only began to desegregate when it was forced to by circumstances created by the Korean War. The first phase of the war was perhaps the most catastrophic defeat of any American military force since the civil war. American forces were pushed out of almost all of South Korea to a small part in the southeast called, Pusan.

So many "whites only" units were being decimated that the replacement of troops became chaotic and the Army simply could not maintain fighting strength of white units without replacing personnel with black soldiers from rear black units.

That is how the Army began desegregating -- during the disastrous string of defeats in Korea.

Even then, the Army continued to drag its feet, and maintained segregated rosters and records in unofficially desegregated units. The Army only announced plans to desegregate officially in 1951 -- three years after Truman's order. The last officially segregated units were not abolished until 1954. And it wasn't until 1963, when Defense Secretary Robert S. McNamara issued Directive 5120.36, that the military began actively endorsing a civil rights agenda.

[Jakes Progress]

38. Your points prove mine.

Thank you.

[HamdenRice]

39. That useless grandiose symbolic action is better than well planned incremental action?

Is that the point I prove?

[Jakes Progress]

61. What was grandiose or symbolic

about the Emancipation Proclamation, Martin Luther King's battle, Truman's demand to integrate the services?

See, we can both play games with cornerstone events of progressivism. If the thread is to have any point, we should try to find agreement on the goals. Otherwise we are just pissing on each other's dogs.

If we have the same goals we can discuss how best to achieve them. I'm assuming that you also believe that we should end discrimination based on sexual preference and that America should have universal health coverage. If so, the we disagree about whether these could be best achieved by slow, small steps or by vigorous action.

To that end, I argue for the vigorous action. The incremental steps that you see in the history of positive progressive successes in the past, I see as a long period of struggle and effort. I see the fulfillment of those past goals as the work of a few years or less based on decisions to action by great leaders. We have had the years of struggle and suffering for the goals of equality rights and equal health care. Now is the time for the action. If you see the need for increments, then delineate them for us. Tell us what accommodations and half-steps will lead inexorably to the achievement of our mutually agreed upon goals. Give us a time line.

(Of course if you do not have the same goals -- get a towel for your dog.) :)

[BzaDem]

99. If you say so.

Of course, in reality, his points prove the exact opposite of your point. This thread is really you saying "up is down, left is right" in many different ways using flowery rhetoric. I normally wouldn't have the patience to argue with such a person, which was one reason why I am especially glad that others who have more patience have corrected the record for those readers who are actually interested in truth.

[HamdenRice]

101. "up is down, left is right"

Sadly, there's a lot of that going around on DU these days.

[Fire1]

74. Bradley AND Eleanor. n/t

:hi:

[Raksha]

51. I agree, and there are other examples besides the battle over health care.

Re I think what we are seeing now is not incremental change, but instead a well orchestrated hoax of only paying lip service to change.

Another hoax is the recently enacted credit reform bill. It was no such thing...merely a cosmetic, feel-good attempt to pass off fake reform as the real thing. I don't think it fooled anyone, though.

[Usrename]

86. Exactly!

They pretend to be doing something about predatory lending, but in the end they allow the usurers to proceed unchecked. I betcha it is fooling more people that you think. Ask around. It's scary. The disconnect between all this propaganda that the media is still pumping out and what is realy happening is staggering. We are just becomming more used to it. There won't be near as much fervor and intensity in the discussion about them doing nothing as there was when people were demanding action and they all agreed to do something to fix it.

Another thing, why wait a year to ship the detainees out of Gitmo? What is that all about? Are we expecting to learn something new during this next year, something that has escaped our observations so far, our observations that have been made through studying the issue for the last seven years?

Guantanamo is way beyond an embarrassment, it is a disgrace. It is like having dog mess in the livingroom. Why would anyone decide to wait a year to clean it up? How could someone choose to continue to entertain guests with a big mess like that stinking up the place? It is insane. Isn't it?

And the list goes on. From telecom immunity to executive bonuses paid out from the bailout funds, it all has the same flavor. Lip service for doing the right thing, while continuing to do the wrong thing.

Someone today told me that they were glad that Obama had gotten the Congress to pass a new law to fix the credit card companies because their rate just went up to 28% for no reason at all. They were trying to pay this card down quickly and all of the sudden their $500 payment became $350 for interest and $150 for principal, even though they were always paying much more than the minimum payment. She did not believe me when I told her that nothing has changed, that Obama has not done a thing for her. Her rate will stay the same, that the reason they raised it was because of this new legislation. Congress actually made things worse for her. The credit company basically told her as much afterwards, when she called to ask why her rate had been raised. Because they can, no other reason was given. She still doesn't believe it.

And yesterday someone else was telling me how glad they were that Obama is fixing health care and how much that was going to help out their medical issues. They were also in disbelief when I tried to explain that Obama has locked single-payer advocates out of the discussions and that he is going to let the insurance companies and big pharma write the new health care legislation.

Disbelief I tell ya.

[Jakes Progress]

35. Here is your error.

That an injustice exists for a long time does not mean that ending it should go on forever.

In your plan, just when do we get universal health care? What year? When do we make it illegal to discriminate based on sexual preference?

If there is, as you suggest, a clear and perfected plan for achieving these two goals, what is the end date?

Just saying, we have to plan and take baby steps is not a good answer unless you are a heterosexual with company paid health insurance.

Every major change was made by a leader who suffered for his righteous action. Just because something worthwhile will cost something, doesn't mean you don't do it.

[HamdenRice]

102. Once again, you seem to be responding to things that are in your own mind, not in this thread

You wrote:

"If there is, as you suggest, a clear and perfected plan for achieving these two goals, what is the end date?

Just saying, we have to plan and take baby steps is not a good answer ..."

Can you point to any place where I "suggest" that there is "a clear and perfected plan"? I'm sure you can't because I didn't.

Can you point to any place where I said we "have to plan and take baby steps"? Again, I'm sure that you cannot.

My posts have been about the historical record. I am finding it increasingly strange that you don't seem able to discuss what did and did not happen in history without assuming that I have some alternative plan or policy proposal. Do you think that every historian who has documented slavery or the civil rights movement has a detailed plan for health care reform?

[Jakes Progress]

29. Posts 9 and 12 are not wrong.

Just because you say so doesn't make it so. See post 28.

What you see as history is a version of an idea of a concept for a thesis. Sounds like someone's dissertation.

[Fire1]

75. Now you sound like an idiot. Who else would discredit facts? n/t

[Jakes Progress]

90. Not much of a historian, eh? Sounds stupid. nt

[Fire1]

92. What exactly is your dispute? It's not clear.

You rage on about challenging people. Challenging indisputable truths? You are not the only one who marched and heard Dr. King speak. Others also marched, heard him speak and lived discrimination on a daily basis. Indeed, there are countless discrepancies in history that are open to interpretation, but Dr. King and the civil rights movement does not happen to be one of them. Most historical accounts I've read and heard over the years seem to be consistent, as memory serves.

[Jakes Progress]

110. If that is your position,

just what was the purpose of your post? What indisputable truths? What the hell are you talking about. What facts are being discredited? Did you read anything before you called me an idiot?

Just where did I say that I was the only one who marched with Dr. KIng? Just where did I say that no one lived discrimination? And mostly, just where did I say that Dr. King and the civil rights movement did not happen?

Before you start calling people an idiot, you need to be clear what you are reading. You post would indicate that you believe that Dr. King argued for holding back the civil rights movement, that progress is best made by small steps, that those suffering from discrimination should just hush and wait for change that may or may not come. You refer to most historical accounts. Most of them indicate that brave people made progress by progressing, not waiting.

[Fire1]

125. For the sake of what I think is your position on 'incrementalism'

your argument would be better served describing this concept in terms of political dynamics, i.e, feedbback, agenda, policy, rather than using the historical-institutional approach. I say this b/c despite having mandates and evidence of pressure for ending discriminatory practices AND laws that declare such practices unconstitutional, many would consider the CR movement a continuing work in progress that did not end in 1968. The incremental progress that has been made in this area, however, started at the beginning of the 20th century and remains on-going. Not to say this will be the case with DADT or other GLBT issues, as laws have already changed in several states, but the CR movement is a primary example of gradualism/incrementalism, imo.

BTW, didn't call you an idiot. I said, 'sounding' like....,' which is quite different.

[Land Shark]

55. Confusing baloney at best. MUST distinguish between DEMANDS made and GRUDGING gains!

The DEMAND must always be for the full measure of rights. Just google Martin Luther King Jr quotes for the "Tranquilizing drug of gradualism" and his conclusion:

"This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy."

MLK: "‘Wait’ has almost always meant ‘Never.’"

Half a right, like every other day off from torture, is NO RIGHT AT ALL. Half a right, an incremental gain in non-torture, is just a continuing violation, IF the right is Fundamental (the key distinction of the OP)

The GAINS may sometimes be "incremental" or claimed to be incremental progress (even if not at all progress) because they are only grudgingly given up by the status quo.

But make no mistake, DEMANDS for incremental gains on fundamental rights like voting are ethically, politically and even TACTICALLY highly mistaken, self-defeating and wrong, because it's wrong to ADVOCATE publicly in favor of injustice. Only with public regret and caveats can such be accepted, and even then only if it's not a fundamental right like voting, voting systems, torture, etc.

Even teenagers know to ask for the car for the whole night or weekend and then "compromise" UNDER PROTEST AND COMPLAINT with an agreement for 3 hours on Friday night. Even teenagers don't PUBLICLY (in front of parents) celebrate or approve such "incremental" wins. Possibly, they may privately amongst themselves still have a great time and be happy they can get out just a little, but they'll be back for more.

And they'll be UNDERSTANDABLY back for more. FREEDOM and the yearning for it, even if at too young an age, is human, necessary, and should never be shackled in chains.

[Phoebe Loosinhouse]

56. Absolutely fantastic post ! MLK - "the tranquilizing drug of gradulism"

You completely conveyed what I was trying to express, but far more eloquently. The "tranquilizing drug of gradulism" MLK quote is completely new to me.. That is absolutely one for the ages and I have never heard the thought so well said. I might have to change my sig line. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

[Land Shark]

71. Thanks kindly. OK incrementalists, come and get it. YOU'RE BEING CHALLENGED (See below)

ala Keith Olbermann's challenge/reward, let's have a debate over the wisdom, rightfulness, tactical merits and propriety of incrementalism specificially in the area of fundamental rights, as suggested by the OP which is incorporated by reference herein.

Should anyone accept, We'll select a jury of 100 by an agreed procedure, and tape it for streaming over the internet. The LOSER of the jury's vote will pay $1,000 to the CAUSE of the WINNER's choice. Any takers? For a thousand bucks to some progressive cause, no matter what? (But it has to come out of the pocket of the speaker because this is the device to help guarantee only serious inquiries. If one can't afford that, we can probably negotiate an agreed procedure so you/we can raise most of the funds.)

Some disclosure, which may not be necessary or relevant (certainly nothing personal is relevant to the debate, only IDEAS and politics can be debated, but this may or may not be relevant to whether someone wishes to accept the challenge, or not):

I used to be a business law and consumer protection lawyer before I got into election law. I'm proud to be the best kind of lawyer, a former one, now I write for encyclopedias and such on the political philosophy of democracy, federal and state election laws, Bush v. Gore, and the like. In the past I've litigated a congressional election contest (CA50, california) and was a supporting part of a successful death penalty defense team with my law partners at the time.

I also helped get two people out of the mental hospital who were detained there after a finding of NGI (Not GUilty By Reason of Insanity). But the craziest shit I've EVER SEEN is folks ADVOCATING for an "incremental" approach in the area of their own rights. A compromise of a right is a VIOLATION of that same right.

So, I therefore challenge incrementalists out there to publicly accept the above debate with a jury and web streaming video (so all DU can watch if they wish, and vote in a nonbinding plebiscite with the jury making the final decision on who pays money to the cause of the winner's choice). Isn't this i a win/win way to gain a fuller understanding of the issues here?

Any takers??

[Starry Messenger]

83. I'm replying to kick your post here.

Great work in this thread.

[Land Shark]

94. Starry Messenger, what a great name! and thanks... nt

[Starry Messenger]

96. =)

Thank you. Galileo was most definitely not a person who would have approved of incrementalism. He's also a great hero of mine.

[Land Shark]

104. Forgot to mention that I like your autosig quote as well! :)

Back at you with a little Thomas Paine (the architect of the American Revolution) to help us all orient ourselves toward the stars rightly:

"Be free, set up for yourselves, a great destiny is before you, show yourselves worthy of it."

[ProudDad]

67. And Single-Payer Health care

has been "incrementally urged" in the U.S. since 1948 (and probably way before or Truman wouldn't have had the idea) and achieved in the civilized world...

What's wrong with us -- we've had over 61 years of "incremental" to do it right and instead have the "sick care" system brought to you by USAmerican Capitalism...

Single-Payer NOW!

[Jakes Progress]

91. This is what incrementalists refuse to acknowledge.

What they call careful steps to a goal are the struggles and suffering that lead to action. We've already had those for these issues. Now we need a Truman or King to actually do something.

[leftstreet]

95. "Now we need a Truman or King to actually do something."

:applause:

[bluedawg12]

105. Single payer is the way to go - get the profit out of not paying for illness.

Health insurance is an oxymoron. They have nothing to do with health and everything to do with profit.

It should be called: Profit From insurance Premiums Companies, Who Lose Money When People Get Sick.

Insurance companies profit from pooled risk.

They can’t control illness among members of the pool, but they can control paying for services, restricting services and fine print denial of coverage language.

With a hybrid, we will all still be paying the middle man big premiums. They are inefficient for health care delivery. Medicare works just fine, Sen. Kennedy is right about that.

[blindpig]

23. k&r

Incrementalism, like reformism, just allows the Man to set the terms of the conversation.

[bluedawg12]

106. Insurance companies running health care policy? What a joke!

They will merely control the cost of paying benefits by more case review and "case management," to watch dog their profits and not your health care.

Evidence based medicine is great, but it would be better in the hands of non-profits, like a single payer government plan. Just wait till your friendly commercial insurer puts the hurdles on front of your physician to fight to prove why you need that important test or treatment. Guess who wins and who loses and suffers from delay?

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

24. Fortunately, the troublemakers who wanted those "changes" weren't "patient".

[Starry Messenger]

27. k&r

[xchrom]

32. recommend

[Greyhound]

42. Error: You've already recommended that thread. n/t

:thumbsup:

[hfojvt]

43. so that means you are willing to lose now and fight for another 40 years?

slavery was battled, by those who battled it for decades and was finally settled not by Congress or an election, but by four years of war.

Women's suffrage, from the Seneca Falls convention to its enactment was what 1870-1919? Over 45 years.

Civil rights. How long was that battle? I am showing 20 years from Truman's signing executive order 9981 and the enactment of the civil rights act, but this is for problems that existed from the 1870s.

There's no way we are gonna get one fell swoop now, so you are apparently in favor of doing nothing right now because there's no point to small steps in the right direction.

[Phoebe Loosinhouse]

47. I am saying we are at a tipping point where great change could be effected

particularly if we had Democratic leaders willing to lead.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x5747506
http://www.alternet.org/politics/140307/the_results_are_in%3A_americans_are_now_more_closely_aligned_with_progressive_ideas_than_at_any_time_in_memory
The Results Are In: Americans Are Now More Closely Aligned With Progressive Ideas Than at Any Time in Memory
By Joshua Holland, AlterNet. Posted May 30, 2009.


The persistence of the center-right narrative, even in the face of piles of evidence suggesting it's little more than a myth, has very real consequences on our political discourse.

Aside from coloring the way the media covers -- and the public views -- the vital issues of the day, it impacts progressive activists, who even when they have the wind at their backs often feel the need to move slowly, cautiously and in ways that will minimize direct confrontation with the conservative movement.

[hfojvt]

52. seems to me that on all those issues

that the leadership came from outside elected officials and the elected officials followed only several years later.

[ProudDad]

68. particularly if we had Democratic leaders willing to lead.

Aye, there's the rub.

Until quite a few Dems learn the hard way and lose their jobs for not doing the right thing or firmly believe that they will lose their cushy jobs in 2011, there won't be any "willing to lead".

We're working on giving our blue-dog here in AZ an ultimatum -- Single-Payer or find another job in 2011.

[BlooInBloo]

44. lol!

[anonymous171]

45. Gay Marriage is a legal imperative, not a moral one. nt

[ProudDad]

69. Gee, I think it's both (n/t)

[ProgressIn2008]

48. Strongly agree -- all the more so because "incrementalism" can turn into a smokescreen

for boiling the frog towards imperial aristocracy soup.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

49. I think this is flawed in at least two ways.

Firstly, as is pointed out in several other posts in this thread, all three of the examples you cite provide precedents *against*, not for, your case - they were all arrived at incrementally. If you're trying to make the case that gay marriage and single payer health care should be all-or-nothing issues requires you to explain why they are different to the precedents you cite, not to highlight similarities with them.

Secondly, I think that there is a massive difference between slavery, women's suffrage and civil rights (and, to be fair, gay marriage, so you're half right there) and health care.

The first four are all simple "yes/no" issues. The latter has a whole range of possible answers - "single payer" does not uniquely define a system. There are lots of different countries with different forms of free-at-point-of-use or subsidised health care; which system delivers it best is not a simple question, and putting any such system in place will not simply be a matter of passing laws, whereas all the examples you cite (and gay marriage) are.

[Jakes Progress]

57. I can help with that.

Your first "flaw" is a matter of distinction. The OP never said that the examples happened all at once without struggle. What you see as incrementalism, I see as a matter of people striving. They strove for years. Regardless of the striving or planning, without a leader or leaders who demanded all or nothing, the striving would still be happening. I hope you don't want to say that equal rights for gays or universal health coverage are brand new ideas. There has been suffering and effort and planning for both of these also. But until a leader will be willing to risk popularity and loss, they won't happen. Ending slavery in America was in idea and a goal from before the revolution. It did not occur until a president called for it.

If the plan is to just keep accommodating and compromising until the whole country wants it, there is no leadership. It is not leadership to wait to see what the people want and then jump in front.

For your second "flaw", you make the OP's point, but not on purpose. You toss "single payer" into the mix when the OP discussed universal coverage. So that makes it a yes/no. It is either universal or it isn't. (My belief is that single payer is the cheapest, most effective, and most democratic form and the only one that stands a chance of being universal in this very capitalist, corporate nation.)

See. Your two flaws are simple miscommunications.

[pleah]

50. K&R

[Greyhound]

53. Another kick. Maybe a few of us can keep the real issues in front of the distracted.

Sotomayor is a done deal, she's in so you can all stop clogging the info source now. Pay attention to what they're trying to distract you from.
:eyes:

[Land Shark]

54. K&R --- ALSO INCLUDES TRANSPARENCY IN VOTING SYSTEMS (no secrecy holes allowed) nt

[Senator]

60. Torture is the "huge issue."

Both domestically and internationally. That is our point in history.

Sorry, but IMO we've no right to "torture our way" to solving other more selfish concerns. Which is not to say that more than one thing can be done at a time, but simply to lament that our first priority seems to have been relegated to the pooh-pooh pile.

--

[Phoebe Loosinhouse]

63. We can multi-task and in fact we have to multi-task.

I am more horrified, shocked and embarrassed than you can imagine that as a nation we are "discussing" the efficacy of morally repugnant, internationally reviled, and domestically illegal practices and are not investigating, prosecuting and ultimately punishing the miscreants who put these practices in place.

The difference is: we ALREADY have the laws in place, we just don't have leaders with the moral authority to execute them. I see your point that it abrogates entirely the Rule of Law that our entire system is founded upon and makes almost everything else small potatoes.

[Senator]

78. Of course. But to the point of your OP.

It is the same failure of leadership that is at the core of all these things.

---

[ProudDad]

66. It's unfortunate

when people are more interested in arguing some marginal fringe "fact" or "opinion" or "history"...

To the exclusion of applying pressure to get the RIGHT THING DONE!

Single-payer is the ONLY right thing at this moment. There is no Plan B that's "being considered" that will work!

As long as for-profit is left in any part of Health Care financing, IT WON'T WORK!!!

Compromise on this WON'T WORK!!!

Time to apply pressure for a solution rather than allow the corporations to screw us again.

Stop the circular firing squad!

[Land Shark]

84. Winner: {some} "more interested in arguing .. {details of} "history" than GETTING RIGHT DONE. nt

[DissedByBush]

76. It is not accepting or rejecting moral imperatives

It is accepting or rejecting whether they are moral imperatives.

The religious right sees stopping gay marriage as a moral imperative. They see banning abortion as a moral imperative.

We don't see these as moral imperatives and reject them. We reject them as being moral imperatives in the first place.

[Phoebe Loosinhouse]

85. I think you just defined the tipping point.

In retrospect, it's hard to believe that anyone could have ever defended slavery, or the subjugation of women or the lack of civil rights, except that all were culturally accepted norms, but given enough time and enough people, a critical mass rejected the norm.

I think we call that "progress".

And, of course, that process may not always be benign and can work in reverse. I think we can say we see that happening now with the torture "debate"

[bluedawg12]

107. The laws are in place - it's the misuse of laws and justice framed in moralistic terms

using subjective notions of morality that reflect the view of the ruling majority.

Our laws were set up to protect the little guy from the tyranny of the majority.

Gay rights are everyone's rights.

AA civil rights are everyone's rights.

Women's rights are everyone's rights.

Once we see that rights are universal truths then moralistic counter arguments would discredited by the understanding of the universal application of rights, justice and laws.

[DissedByBush]

108. They'll see your logic and raise you

The unborn's rights are everyone's rights.

We also have the issue of so-called "positive" rights vs. "negative" rights. Delve into that and it gets scary.

[lumberjack_jeff]

114. I think that we're confusing incrementalism in achieving a goal

With a process of evolution of deciding upon a goal.

We achieved women's suffrage through incremental steps toward a pre-established principle; women are as capable of governing their society as men are. The goal was not arrived at incrementally, but the steps toward implementing it were.

You make a really good observation in that we are not going about universal health in the same way. We haven't yet accepted the basic principle; health care as a human right. Until we abandon the belief that it's simply a commodity, we're not likely to make incremental improvement on reaching it.

[redqueen]

115. The goal was not arrived at incrementally?

Women's Suffrage took 72 years.

[lumberjack_jeff]

121. Re-read please. I think it took 140 years.

The basic principle of equality was accepted as a general goal long before each incremental step (suffrage being one) was taken. The country was founded on the essential idea of equality, the subsequent milestones were incremental steps toward realizing that goal. Those steps have taken generations.

The basic principle of health care as a human right is still being debated. It should be no surprise that our incremental steps are often not in the right direction.

The Big Ideas (equality, human rights) don't occur through incrementalism, but the application of them does.

Here's what bothers me about "72 years". It is either
a, ignorant) presumes that the idea of equality was first contemplated during the civil war, or
b, childish) presumes that equality for women is only important as a reparation-equity issue; "Slaves have been freed, so when do I get to vote?" or
c, self serving) presumes that emancipation was premature, because women couldn't yet vote.

Excluding women from governance was a problem prior to 1865, and it took a very long time to fix it. Other segments of society are still waiting for their fix.

Suffrage and emancipation were rungs on the "big idea" ladder called legal equality. We haven't yet reached the top. I see the last couple of steps being equality for GLBT people and the disabled. History shows that success doesn't happen overnight or even in a lifetime. I wish the rungs could be closer together, but I'm confident that if we don't backtrack on The Big Idea, the steps on the ladder will all eventually be reached.

[redqueen]

122. So this is about the idea, not the fight?

Hasn't Obama already stated that healthcare is a right? Maybe I'm remembering wrong.

[lumberjack_jeff]

124. Debatable.

I think "the huge issue" is the human right to health care. Equality is an established idea to a far greater degree than a basic human right to health care is.

"Created equal" is in the declaration of independence. "Humans deserve..." is not.

If Obama truly believed that healthcare is a human right, his preferred steps would take us inexorably in the direction of universal access. "Optional" wouldn't be a selling point. His actions don't suggest he really buys into the big picture except to the degree that the words sound good.

I think you might be able to implement a vision in piecemeal fashion, but I don't think you can increment yourself into the big idea.

[Orwellian_Ghost]

116. There has never been...

...anything called "reform" in American history. Every "reform movement" has been a reaction to the prospect of revolutionary upheaval. Hillary Clinton is exactly wrong. LBJ had nothing to do with any kind of "reform" in the U.S. ...or, more properly, he had as much to do with it as FDR or Abe Lincoln, which is precisely nothing. Unlike the countries of Western Europe, "reform" in America has always been of the same class as a pay raise in a non-union shop whenever a union rep shows up. The Social Democratic wet dream has never existed here and never will. The Civil War was prosecuted by abolitionists, the progressive era came about because of socialists, anarchists, strikers, and the IWW, the New Deal was because of the Communist Party, the CIO, and the TUEL, and the 1970s "reform" was because of of the Civil Rights and Anti-War movements (and, yes, Panthers, Malcolm, and SDS).

Anyone who doubts this is invited to point to the moderate "reform" party at the root of any "reform" which is ever claimed to have occurred. No Democrat has ever done jack and neither has any Republican. It has never happened... not once... nada.

Anyone who claims otherwise is profoundly ignorant of history and profoundly obstinate that things don't work the way they would like... OR... they are perfectly happy with things as they are, despite their protests.

[HamdenRice]

120. "No Democrat has ever done jack"

I'll remember to revise the Wiki entry on Franklin Delano Roosevelt accordingly.

:sarcasm:

"There has never been....anything called "reform" in American history."


This kind of post is why it can be extremely embarrassing trying to post on DU while also claiming to be a member of the "reality based community."