Lessons for Lefties

I recommend that all Democrats (and interested others), particularly those in places of power, read and digest and absorb and act on: A Letter to the American Left by Bernard-Henri Lévy, just published in the Feb. 27th issue of The Nation magazine. I’m already starting to see some of the snarky commentary by various bloggers re: the “intellectuals” who haven’t been addressing the issues iterated in this “letter”… namely that Susan Sontag has been dead since 2004, but forgive the man for not being able to name any lefty intellectual writers who are currently having work published, I find I’m in the same boat… who ARE the big lefties who can speak out on these issues? The only ones I can think of are already labeled as loonies by the conservative mainstream media pundits, including genius Noam Chomsky.

The fact of the matter is, if the Left is to regain all the lost ground of the last 5 years, they’re going to have to do some serious rethinking of both their platform AND their narrative. It’s time to start taking some of the criticisms to heart and reforming the entire party platform so that it is relevant to today’s working families / voters… else they risk losing even more ground in 2006 and 2008.

If you don’t like what Lévy says, maybe you should read: Finding Spirit Among the Dems by Evan Derkacz and Michael Lerner over at AlterNet. There’s lessons to be learned here, folks, and those who aren’t listening and remain apathetic are going to make themselves irrelevant in the very near future. These articles speak to what is wrong with the American Left, and how to fix it. Listen and learn, or keep losing ground… your choice.