samizdat

zuky:

[ Originally posted on my old blog on July 13, 2009 and cross-posted at Feministe, reposted now in the context of the Tea Party era and the resurfacing of “the immigration debate” and the DREAM Act Congressional showdown. ]

“Obviously every society requires laws, ethical norms, rules of social conduct. But law should elevate society rather than debase it, and the sleight of hand inherent in Nixonian enforcement rhetoric is the manner in which it truncates democratic dialogue and social progress by falsely representing a corrupt and outdated legal, intellectual, and moral framework as a legitimate foundation for reform, when in fact reform must begin with a new, revitalized framework. As the Clinton years demonstrated, liberals cannot adopt reactionary rhetoric as a political tactic and then expect anything other than reactionary social results.”