More writing on the wall

I disagree with most of the nitty-gritty particulars of this article on progressive politics. But the overarching message - that "progressives remain paralyzed because they literally can't decide what they think" - represents one more (small) voice in the swelling chorus that holds that American liberalism needs a new focus and direction.

The writer (the marvelously named Thomas de Zengotita) starts his short list of progressive contradictions with a good point:

Are progressives pro-union, for example? How does that fit with immigration policy--really, in detail? Imagine the discussion between the the AFL-CIO and Latino groups on that one.

But after that, he offers little in the way of real internal conflicts in liberalism; Iraq, his other example, is among liberals less a disagreement over priniciple than over strategy. And he fails to note that the conservative movement, which suffers from its own closet full of contradictions (fiscal restraint vs. corporate welfare, economic growth vs. religious anti-science, etc.) has managed to do just fine in the last two decades.

In my mind, liberalism's real deficit isn't so much one of unity as one of vision. It's not that liberals disagree, it's that they have no central guiding purpose to allow them to shove their differences under the rug. If liberals dissolve into factional infighting, it's only because there was no umbrella to unite the factions. It seems to me that the writer realizes this fact, but fails to make the argument, because it's difficult to prove a negative - you can't muster many facts to show that a unifying liberal philosophy doesn't exist.

But all the same, it doesn't.