Nation-Building >> Dialog with Dan Darling | return to front page

Dan Darling is a blogger I highly respect. He has extensive experience writing about and analyzing Islamic fanatacism, without a trace of anti-Muslim sentiment. His writings at Winds of Change.NET about the war on Terror have always been informative and thought-provoking (even when I disagree, it's educational). And he is also a devout Catholic who welcomes, as I do, the influence his beliefs have upon his domestic political opinions.

He also probably won't be voting for Howard Dean - and in a post on his blog written as a response to comments at mine, he lays out the primary reasons why. In a nutshell, he finds Dean's comments that southerners vote against their economic interests to be unconvincing and condescending. He also has specific gripes about Liberalism as a whole (mainly driven by his religious convictions).

I'm highlighting it because while I doubt there's any point in trying to convince Dan to vote Dean (or for him to try and convince me to vote Bush, despite the fact that he and I share almost 99% of our religious-driven social concerns), I do think that dialog on these issues is critical. Not to win over voters per se, but to ensure that the perceptions of voters who disagee with Dean are still represented and have their views taken into account when President Dean takes office.

The promise of Dean's candidacy is that policy and facts, not ideology, matter. As many have pointed out (most recently, David Neiwert in a must-read essay titled "The Political and the Personal"), civil discourse is impossible under GOP rule. But what is the point of Democratic rule if discourse and debate remain closed?

So let's try and make a good faith response to Dan's points. Here's our chance for dialog with a principled opponent. It should not be wasted.