Some Links

[e_juliana]

calligrafiti - A Plan for the Left

pix_kristin - America, Let's Just Be Friends

jmhm - Go Ahead and Feel Rotten

serasempre - A Born-Again Christian Persepective

paperdol - No Time For Whiners

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stephl - A Ray of Light

The person under discussion is one of the most beautifully-souled people I know. If we had more Nillys in the world, humanity would be much better off.

And finally, from jonquil - A Parable:

Once upon a time there was a man named John Woolman. He was a Friend, which made him quirky, but even by Friends standards he was odd. John believed with all his heart and soul that God did not approve of slavery, and John lived by his beliefs. He would not wear dyed clothes, because indigo was made by slave labor. He would not wear cotton, because cotton was grown by slaves. Year-round he wore undyed woolen clothes. Think of him as a vegan Birkenstock-wearing radical.

When John Woolman was alive, Quakers as a group were unusually wealthy -- it didn't hurt that going bankrupt could get you read out of Meeting, because it was seen as dishonesty. This meant that some Quakers owned slaves.

Every year Quakers hold a Meeting for Business. Most of the Friends I knew dreaded this meeting. Every Friend who is present and has a leading must be allowed to speak, generally at length. No decision can be reached until the meeting has a consensus, which means that every single person present accepts (or at least will not openly reject) the decision. By the time it's all over, you start wondering if you'd have been happier in a more authoritarian Church.

Every year, for years on end, John Woolman came to Meeting for Business and denounced slavery. There he was in his weird funky clothing, standing up and insisting that slavery was wrong and that the Friends should witness against it. And all the tired cranky Friends listened to him and said, "Oh, there's John again. Can we please close the meeting?"

Eventually, after years of John Woolman, the Friends denounced slavery. After that, the Society of Friends became the heart and soul of the abolitionist movement in America. And eventually slavery was made illegal.

That is the story as they tell it in Richmond, Indiana. Like any good story, it changes in the mouth of each generation. However, there are three things in the story that I know to be true.

There was once a man named John Woolman.
He fought a long and hopeless battle for justice.
He changed the world.

And my thoughts - I sincerely wish we had a viable third party. A Moderate party, drawing from the Left and the Right. But we don't, and we can't for a while. The Right is too powerful and unwilling to let go of many of its constituents. If the Left went along with this plan, it would weaken it so much that the result would effectively be a one-party system. The problem is, it's already happening to an extent. Liberal and progressive thinking are the hallmarks of my party, and that mindset is by definition open to new ideas and in favor of group action over central authority. We have organizational problems built right in.

So, the third party is not an option right now. Okay, then what? We focus on 2006. We take back Congress. We become just as loud and just as organized and just as passionately focused as our opposition.

Bruce Springsteen is right: "It is time to move forward. The country we carry in our hearts is waiting."

Let us not slide into despair. Rather, let us feel rotten and punch our pillows for a bit, and then get up, dust ourselves off, and plunge back into the fray. Once more into the breach dear friends, once more.