I have a few curmudgeonly musings on the pitiful sight of so many smart people being struck down by Capitulation Fever, the sight of Markos, Joan Walsh, Chris Bowers, Josh Marshall and others giving an enthusiastic thumbs up to a profoundly conservative, corporatist healthcare plan for America.

Maybe it was clear all along Rahm would be vindicated. Many people who call themselves progressive are not committed to a truly liberal vision of government. Those steeped in the political philosophy of the left, like Noam Chomsky, know that the essence of modern conservatism is "the transfer of public funds to private power," and what could better describe the current healthcare reform legislation, than a massive transfer of wealth from the public into private hands?
Liberalism, on the other hand, has a vision of a country in which people care about each other, and who know that no chain is stronger than the weakest link. They know that a country should be judged by how it provides for the less fortunate, and how every citizen should have the opportunity to live a full, healthy and productive life. They believe in government of, by and for the people. Being a liberal means going against the tide, being adamant, being determined and willing to endure sacrifice to struggle for worthwhile goals.

To liberals, the proper role of government to be on the side of the people, not the corporations who squeeze the lifeblood out of the poor and working class in order to make a few cents’ profit.We have to be grounded securely in our beliefs, so we are able to stand up to unfettered capitalism and the greed it spawns.

If the health insurance corporations and pharmaceutical companies try to extort money from the public, we should not roll over for them.

Here’s Howard Zinn, the old leftie, speaking about how we need to approach the struggle for a truly democratic healthcare system:

"I wish President Obama would listen carefully to Martin Luther King. I’m sure he pays verbal homage, as everyone does, to Martin Luther King, but he ought to think before he sends missiles over Pakistan, before he agrees to this bloated military budget, before he sends troops to Afghanistan, before he opposes the single-payer system, which you talked about earlier in your program. He ought to ask, ‘What would Martin Luther King do? And what would Martin Luther King say?’ And if he only listened to King, he would be a very different president than he’s turning out to be so far. I think we ought to hold Obama to his promise to be different and bold and to make change. So far, he hasn’t come through on that promise…
"…these people that I saw on your program earlier who were demonstrating for the single-payer health system, which Obama is very, very reluctant to endorse, they were doing what needs to be done. They were committing acts of civil disobedience. They were going into offices where they were told to leave, and they wouldn’t leave. They were doing what we were doing during the movement against the war in Vietnam. They were doing what the black movement was doing in the South. And this is what we will need. We will need demonstrative acts which dramatize the fact that our government is not responding to what the people need and what the people want."

Wow, demonstrating, civil disobedience, sacrifice. Strange words from a by-gone era perhaps. But I would like to see more of us care enough about the kind of country we want to live in, to step away from our computers, out of our comfort zone, into the streets and into the corridors of power. What else is there left to do at this point?