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Deadly Effects of Future U.S. Heat Waves Predicted

a comment I made in ljdemocrats

Both of my parents are Democrats. My father used to volunteer at the polls when I was growing up.

My family is African-American and poor, originally from the South. But my grandfather and other members of my family moved to Detroit in the '40s, when the city was booming with opportunities. By the time I was born, my family was living in a rural part of Michigan but still in Wayne County (where Detroit sits). I was fortunate enough to get early education through Head Start, and I was bussed to a good school system due to the anti-segregation laws that were passed years before I was born.

In essence, I've reaped what all the efforts of the '60s promised: while my family was poor, we survived on public assistance (Head Start, WIC, food stamps, free school lunches), and eventually I was able to secure a spot at an exclusive private college based on my scholastic excellence. Due to public assistance, I was able to concentrate on my studies, and I was rewarded for that.

I support the idea of a public safety net because I know it works. The Great Depression taught us that lesson: that we can't blame people for being in abject poverty, especially for reasons beyond their immediate control. If a child is born into poverty, there is a substantial chance that he or she willl remain in poverty in his or her adult years. I can't cite my source here, I'll have to dig around for it, but I recently read that nearly 3 out of every 5 African-American children are born into poverty. How do you deal with realities like that?

I believe that a democratic government, even a democratic republic (as America is), has a basic covenant with its electorate. It has to provide for the basic welfare of its citizens. We cannot be a nation where only the wealthy reap the rewards of the system. It flies in the face of the underlying philosophy of democracy. A standing army is not the only service a democratic government is supposed to provide.

I'm also a Democrat because I believe that personal liberty is one of the highest values we hold, and historically it's been the Democratic party that has advanced policy that corresponds to that value. The right to free expression, free speech, the right to public education (because what is the alternative? Poor people just don't get to go to school?), the right of bodily autonomy--all of these have been advanced by liberals. And while the Republican party was originally the party of Lincoln, if Lincoln were alive today, I daresay he would be a Democrat because the Republicans sold themselves to the rich between 1880 and 1930. The two parties did a flip, and that is why it's so odd to learn that Lincoln was a Republican. Their values changed, and so the electorate had to seek a change in the limited two-party system that we have.

I am a Democrat because I believe in progress. Personal progress as well as social progress. Tradition is valuable insofar as where would we be if knowledge wasn't passed down from generation to generation, but to be rigid in respect to tradition is to be tied to dogma and to become calcified. I am a Democrat because I am interested in growth.

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(The original thread is here.)

(no subject)

GodDAMN, it's cold.