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An Integral Democrat: As a Democrat, I Must be a Republican?

Posted September 5th, 2008 by jseav19 in Integral Politics

 

As a Democrat, I can be a Republican.  Can this statement be true? Is there any point of view that can allow for this statement to be true? I challenge you, me, and us to find the perspective that allows you to answer this question affirmatively. 

What an amazing and curious time election time is! Every four years we choose sides, donate, volunteer and pour our hearts into being right, correct, and ritcheous about things. We are determined to be right about which problems in the world are the serious ones, the causes of these problems, the company we keep, the values we hold dear, and leaders we chose to follow.  
 
If, as Democrats, we have the correct point of view, the correct, policies, and the correct leadership, then we ought to be able to do everything that the Republicans can do and yet not stop there. We ought to be able to do everything the Republicans can do as well as the Republicans do them.  We ought to be able to do everything the Republicans do, and yet do more. We ought to be able to include more people, more ideas, more emotions, more of the world as we consider problems and their solutions. For this reason, we ought to have answers that solve all our frustrations, Republican and Democratic. To take it further, we ought to have solutions to frustrations that are primarily Republican frustrations, and that satisfy these frustrations even better than the proposed Republican solutions to these frustrations.
 
As a Democrat, I often tend to see Republicans as - not like me.  They are ignorant, wrong, evangelical, religious fanatics.  They are so many things, just so long as they are not like me.    
 
So, what is a Republican, anyway?  And what are their values?  What is so important to them that as Democrats we haven’t seemed to quite get?  What is it about our fellow Americans that leaves us so stumped in our campaigns, in our rhetoric, and in our leadership that we can’t include nearly half of the American voting population in our inclusiveness? Why are we unwilling to connect with nearly half of the American population, in a caring, convincing, and authentic way?  What are the needs of our Republican brothers and sisters that we have lost touch with? Can we return to an embodiment of those needs? If so, can we communicate our appreciation of those needs?
 
So, let’s take a few issues on for size and see how we can acknowledge some Republican frustrations, connect with them, and then try them on for size. 
 
  1. Abortion – Obama said it well. I don’t remember the exact quote, but I think I can capture the spirit of his communicated sentiment. We would all rather reduce the number of abortions. Republicans are vociferously Pro-Life. Correct? Correct. So let’s see if we can reach out and reach into that sentiment. Feel that Republican standing in front of you with a “Democrats are Baby Killers” t-shirt on. Feel into the fellow american, neighbor, or relative who feels this way toward you’s sentiment. Feel it. Now take a deep breath…and imagine that you are that Republican. Imagine how it feels to know so strongly, deep down in your soul that you are right about this issue, this one issue. Maybe the Democrats are right about everything else, but you know for sure, beyond a shadow of doubt, that you are right about this. Feel it. How does it feel to look back at that Democrat who so stubornly gives you excuse after excuse why its really okay to murder innocent human life after innocent human life…
Wow, I don’t know about you, but for me that’s heavy.
 
So, now let’s apply this idea that we can actually fully embody the frustrations of a Republican. Let’s fully agree that abortion is equal to murder. Now what?... Eeewww… That’s tough. 
 
But, if we’re going to commit, then we have to commit. No turning back. Commit yourself, down to you heart, and soul. Now what happens? I’ll tell you what happens for me.
 
Abortion is wrong, it is bad, and should be discouraged at all costs. Our aim is to reduce the number of abortions. Agreed. We can all agree. The next question is then: “what is the best strategy for achieving this goal we share?” 
 
Think about it and feel into it. 
 
What does making abortion illegal do for us? It gives us one more law. It gives us a sense of solidarity and union with Republican values and frustrations. Now let’s look a little closer. Does that mean that abortions are going to go away? Murder is illegal and has it made murder go away?  Killing is wrong in the eyes of the lord and has it stopped us from going to war, or executing criminals? Will making abortion illegal be any more effective at eliminating its practice? Perhaps. But let’s think about some other more creative ways to reduce abortion that might come along with the illegality of it. Here are some ideas:
    1. We sanction birth control, we actually provide it to people liberally, as a government. We pass it out like candy. It happens to be free and addictive and good for us. If we want to reproduce we have to have the self discipline to overcome our addictions. This will ensure that strong willed, disciplined people will reproduce and most likely at a sustainable stable rate. Sarah Palin will have a hard time aruing with this contingency since she has just had a grandbaby who was born out of wed lock.
    2. We sanction a new understanding of sex and sexuality. We accept the growing sexual liberation trend in our culture, including gay civil unions, and other transgender explorations amonst adults.
    3. When women do get pregnant, the government supports them for the first three years of motherhood, including the pregnancy period, regardless of their station in life, rich or poor. 
 
Now, because we have conceeded the abortion debate, we’ve done several things.
a.       We’ve won a lot of moral ritcheousness.
b.      We haven't even conceeded that much.  Think about it. Smoking marijuana is illegal in Amsterdam. Driving drunk is illegal. Beating you husband, wife, or children is illegal. Drugs are illegal. Suicide is illegal. Anal sex is illegal. Jaywalking is illegal. Speeding is illegal. How many things are there that are illegal that are disregarded. It’s human nature, I believe to extend care and conscientiousness for one another and as long as that’s being achieved I think police and officials and authoritarians have a tendency to forgive one another as humans. As Democrats, can we allow for abortion to be illegal? I think so. Can we extend our care and conscienciousness to an unborn fetus? I think so. Why not? What is so scary about it? Can we not simply see it as taking responsibility for our actions? I think we can. Can we trade extending universal human rights to an unborn fetus for extending universal human rights to prisoners of war, and criminals, and homosexuals, and people of all race, color, or creed? Would that be so bad?
 
  1. Now let’s move on to some other seemingly irreconcilable differences between me as the Republican and me as the Democrat.  How about gun control?  Republicans like military strength.  Democrats like Europeans, peace, and diplomacy.  The Swiss embody these things.  How about two years mandatory military service from every American, man or woman just like the Swiss, who are also know for the great watches, the Red Cross, diplomacy, neutrality, and peace.  Within that two years, we will all be exposed to rigorous training in discipline, ethics, global responsibility, democracy, love of country and countryman and woman, and empathy, as well as military skills and tactics.
  2. How about drilling for oil? All the oil we burn in the U.S. gets used for the sole purposes of getting off oil.  We burn up all the oil and coal we can find in order to create sustainable, renewable, healthy, earth-friendly alternatives. We’ve already burnt so much oil. What’s the last 600 billion barrels that we have in Alaska going to hurt us. What’s the worst that could happen if I the Democrat agree to drill and I the Republican agree to go oil independent, green, sustainable, and earth-friendly?
  3. Small government? We share governmental responsibility with communities. We encourage strong families and community organizations. 
  4. Health care. Republicans like accountablility. We hold insurance companies accountable to the impressions they give. We require them to have straightforward contracts and agreements that anyone reading at a fifth grade level can understand. Straight forward policies, straight forward agreements. Same goes for malpractice insurance. We also allow for doctor’s to have immunity by contract with patients if they enter into a hold harmless agreement with the patient. This will reduce the operating costs of doctors and allow free market competition to drive prices down. Or perhaps the government provides the insurance against malpractice.
  5. Welfare. We help them up when they’ve fallen, but we don’t hold them up once they’ve gotten back on their feet. Limited time periods. Demonstrated attempts to regain balance.
  6. Nationalism. We strike up a friendly competition with the rest of the world. Namely, China, India, the European Union, and Russia. Hell, we might as well throw the rest of the world in there while we’re at it. Let’s challenge them all to a race to see who can be the first country to become zero waste, and zero emissions, the highest level of biodiversity, the highest intelligence, the highest standard of living measured subjectively. We challenged Russia to become the first ones to the moon and we both made it. What’s so bad about that? Was Russia a whole lot worse off for making it to the moon second? Do we think of Russia as failures for getting to moon second? Would it be terrible if we were the second ones to become zeo-waste and emissions?
 
The list goes on. I think I found out that I am a Democrat and a Republican. I actually think that if I work it out just so, then as a Democrat, I can actually be a better Republican than most Republicans. Now, the question is, can a Republican be a Democrat. Maybe not, but maybe that’s just fine, maybe they don’t have to be.

 

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integrating conservatism

Posted September 14th, 2008 by David Marshall

I agree with a lot of what you are saying here, Jseav19. Yes, it is very important to understand that integral politics includes conservatism. Amber and Orange are very important building blocks for the spiral--everything above it depends on them--and if we neglect them as Green Democrats have often negelected them we will pay a price.

However, we can only integrate so much of the Amber platform, and much of the time we will have to stand up to people who identify with that worldview and by all means keep them out of our highest offices, particularly the presidency and vice presidency. This may sound like us-and-them thinking to some, but Amber does not even like our Orange constitution and will simply try to impose its religious order on everyone else. We want to adopt what is good and important about their positions, but beyond that we will have to stand up to them and sometimes even throw them in jail (as with Christian terrorists, for example).

1) "Now, because we have conceeded the abortion debate . . . "

I don't think that simply conceeding the abortion debate and adopting the Amber position on it can be considered integral. It doesn't integrate Orange and Green feminist perspectives, for one thing. Orange and Green women demand the right to have control over their own bodies. Not everyone agrees that ensoulment occurs at conception, so it's a little premature to simpy equate abortion with murder. At any rate, making abortion illegal would simply be turning back the clock. We've been there, and a lot of women were killed or injured trying to get an abortion, among other things. We need to honor the feminist perspective and take the more difficult route of education and birth control, perhaps with a ban on late-term abortion as a compromise.

2) "We sanction birth control, we actually provide it to people liberally, as a government. We pass it out like candy. . . We sanction a new understanding of sex and sexuality. We accept the growing sexual liberation trend in our culture, including gay civil unions, and other transgender explorations amongst adults."

 I agree with these positions, but of course we would have to fight Amber on most or all of this as well. These positions won't stand a chance if Amber has positions of power, so integral would have to fight them politically. It's possible to imagine Amber wanting to make an alliance with integral some day as it is doing now with Orange (and vica versa), but from Amber's perspective such an alliance would only be a last resort as the lesser of two or more evils.
 

"Can we trade extending universal human rights to an unborn fetus for extending universal human rights to prisoners of war, and criminals, and homosexuals, and people of all race, color, or creed? Would that be so bad?"

Even if we were to get all of Amber America to agree to this trade off, I am not sure they would be able to stick to it. It sounds like an Orange contract, and Amber's contract is with the mythic God and their religious texts. They might say yes so that abortion could be made illegal, but eventually they would resume fighting for their other positions.

 3) "When women do get pregnant, the government supports them for the first three years of motherhood, including the pregnancy period, regardless of their station in life, rich or poor."
 

A lot of mothers are already getting support. Some may need more, but of course that would be difficult with the kind of deficits we have now. Also, I don't see why we would want the government to support even those mothers who can support themselves. 

I like the idea about two-year-mandatory service. We might say either military or civilian service, as there is a great need for civilian service as well, but I like the idea: it would really change our culture quite a bit.

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Include and transcend

Posted September 8th, 2008 by Helen Davis

Yes, I think this speaks to the essence of 'include and transcend' rather than 'reject and transcend'.

Helen

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A little bit to simple

Posted September 6th, 2008 by Sebastian

 

I dont know buddy

I say: It needs maths to determine if you are right or not, a little calculation concerning the percentage of amber in the US, and how stable it is.

Green view:

It is very brave of you to touch one of the hottest issues, abortion, but besides showing how the whole of society could benefit from possibilities arising with this compromise, you dont touch the feminist argument that EVEN SPEAKING OF ABORTION IN A POLITICAL, THAT MEANS: MIGHT-CONTEXT is away of forcing half of us to be objectified and instrumentalised, WHATEVER you say, just talking about sth. that is a privat choice is, technically fashism.

Further speculations

Thats a very green view, but as 99% of all greens see it like that, you loose the green voters completely, and that will result in the politicians not even trying to talk green in the next vote, and you will be a co-operator of a "destroy all higher memes than orange" mainstream.

And that would be the end of integralism too. So watch your steps ; )

This is pure fantasizing and speculation, but I guess you see my point.

You didnt touch the strongest knot, the real problem green feminists make out of it, which is what you have to argument against

 

 

 

 

As a european(germany), i am getting more and more nervous seeing that the USA is becoming sth like pakistan or Iran with all those christians becoming so important.

I think this is problem, also concerning the nationalism-thing you wrote about.

I can not say that europe is doing much better,  still I do think that while our mainstream level is higher, the US have, f.ex. a much higher rate of progressive geniuses(leading edge!), at least at the moment, but these evangelicals are really strange,  reality to us is that the US is influenced by a bunch of fundamentalist fashist freaks, and to me it seems kind a strange how serious you take these people, though I know they are so many in their strange villages, but still.(/if you ask me, I would take internationally co-ordinated military action ; )

Is there no transformational point of view you, as a US citizen, could take on the ambers, instead of accepting these clowns?(sorry, but imagine, as an american, to take an integral look on djihadists in your country wishing to kill women

who leave the house without a burka, and you know how a european sees evangelicals, hahaha, they just need free pills, man!)

Cheers

PS. I very much appreciate the general concern of your post and though I now took a "us or them" stance, I am absolutely sympathetic to the spirit of positive green and constructive yellow/truquoise your posting glares with.

 

 

 

 

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Green Democrat Flatlanders...

Posted September 16th, 2008 by stevenscott

Great post.  I see so much hatred between the democrats and republicans.  It really takes an integral view to appreciate both sides.

Regarding abortion I think we can look at human life through a variety of angles.  Scientifically speaking (upper right), what defines an individual?  It is their unique DNA.  When does a person acquire their own unique DNA?  It is at the point of conception.  At conception a baby does not have their mothers DNA so it is wrong to say that the baby is just a part of the mother as like a limb or internal organ for example.

Interiorly, we can not know what a fetus feels, perceives, or apprehends.  We do know however that upon conception it will develop its own holoarchy of trancend and include (molecules, to cells, to organs, etc...).  The fetus will have their own interior that is apart from the mother.

Then culturally, we can look at different perceptions that people have about abortion.

And socially, we can look at the laws about when a human starts to have their own individual rights. 

And each of the four ways of viewing also have their own levels, of course.

Outside of abortion there are many other things we can learn from the republicans such as personal responsibility.  Also the concept of the ownership society.  Historically societies have flourished and advanced rapidly when the following 4 things are present in their culture.  They are:

1.  Property Rights - Creators must have proper incentives to create.

2. Scientific Rationalism - Innovators must possess the proper intellectual tools in order to innovate and must be able to do so without fear of retribution.

3.  Capital Markets - Entreprenuers must have access to sufficient capital to pursue their visions.

4.  Transportation/Communication - Societ must be able to rapidly and efficiently move information and finished products.

Studies conclusively show that when societies have all 4 of these factors they flourish.  More jobs are created, quality of life increases, and level of living increases.  When I say level of living increases, I mean for all people.  There is absolute poverty and relative poverty.  Even if the number of people in poverty increases, the standards of living also rises.  Many people today who are considered poor would actually be considered wealthy in other countries and in centuries past.

Green Democrats tend to level the playing field by promoting good things such as health care for all, income distribution to help those who are struggling and other socialistic tenets.  In doing so, however, they tend to repress and disassociate with the individual rights and freedoms that were won by earlier levels of development.

Steven