The big topic of conversation was the seemingly illegal contribution to Rep. Dave Reichert’s campaign by Media Plus. Did Reichert violate the letter of the law, or just the spirit of the law? Are Republicans like Reichert and Rossi ignoring election financing laws, and treating post-elections fines as the cost of doing business? From there, a heady discussion arose about liberalism and conservatism, and what liberals must do about conservatives.
Goldy was joined by Matt Stoller of OpenLeft, Seattle P-I columnist Joel Connelly, Publisher of the Group News Blog, Jesse Wendel, and Eat The State’s Geov Parrish.
The show is 56:26, and is available here as an MP3:
[audio:http://www.podcastingliberally.com/podcasts/podcasting_liberally_oct_21_2008.mp3][Recorded live at the Seattle chapter of Drinking Liberally. Special thanks to Confab creators Gavin and Richard for hosting the site.]
In two weeks all of this will be footnotes in history books. The Republican Racketeering Era is coming to an end. Hardly anyone ever talks about Al Capone anymore. Like Scarface Al, the whole crowd of corrupt Republicans will fade away into the mists of time and obscurity, forgotten and unmourned.
Wow, Joel Connelly is back after the aneurysm he shared with us during the podcast last week.
Matt Stoller made some excellent points in this podcast and clearly articulated what’s been nagging me about the right wing for years. I’ve been a big fan of Stoller’s for a long time.
The extreme right wing is hell bent on destroying liberalism and all post-enlightenment thinking. Their preferred way of being in this world is to lift up a charismatic strong man to which they pledge absolute fealty. This authoritarian impulse assuages numerous fears of rapid change in the world around them. The right winger is strongly fear driven and demonizes anyone who dares to disagree with them.
Of course liberal progressives support democratic principles and strong institutions to support those principles. Our loyalty is to the rule of law and we see it as a duty and a privilege to serve those institutions that uphold those principles: all men are created equal, even playing fields, no man is above the law and so on.
The right winger is in total thrall to rule of man. They want a king to bow on one knee to no matter how much they say otherwise. They’ll support endless wars as a matter of course because that’s a proven means of keeping a King in power.
Matt said the right wing will do anything they can get away with to achieve their goal of authoritarian rule or “democracy” in name only. As a result, we have to fight them tooth and nail until they are defeated utterly. I agree with this and it’s this realization that has animated my political consciousness.