The Upside of Anger
The case for progressive rage.
By Asheesh Siddique, Princeton University
Wednesday August 23, 2006
Does an angry base of liberal activists, embittered by the fiasco in Iraq and consumed with Bush-hatred, spell disaster for progressives in the immediate future?
“Yes,” concluded pundits as fire-breathing anti-war candidate Ned Lamont trumped moderate incumbent Joe Lieberman in the Connecticut senate primary on August 9, riding a wave of resentment at Lieberman’s closeness to the Bush administration. Conservative columnist Cal Thomas warned that Lamont’s win “completes the capture of the Democratic Party by its Taliban wing . . . willing to ‘kill’ one of their own, if he does not conform to the narrow and rigid agenda of the party’s kook fringe.” Others weighed in against the presumed dangers of “anti-war fever and anti-incumbency rage.” The Washington Post’s David Broder said political anger was alienating “the broad swath of centrist voters who feel they have no voice.” “The Democrats are angry at the Democrats,” intoned CNN talking head Glenn Beck. “What does the average person do?”
Join in, I hope. Progressive anger is the key to improving our democracy- and taking back America from the radical right.
After all, America wouldn’t be the great nation it is today without incensed inhabitants demanding progressive change. Resentment against undemocratic “taxation without representation” motivated colonists to dump British tea into Boston harbor in 1773, putting us on course toward nationhood. Rage against the injustice of slavery fueled abolitionists to agitate successfully for emancipation. The umbrage of suffragists led to the enfranchisement of half the population in 1920. Disgust at exploitative labor conditions led to progressive era reforms. And the anger of gay rights activists in 1970s against the criminalization of homosexuality means that today anti-sodomy laws are a thing of the past.
Today, we’re the freest, most democratic society on earth because our predecessors got mad back then.
But accepting that America in 2006 is the best our country can be sets expectations too low. For all our country’s phenomenal progress, Americans should be outraged about the massive problems still demanding our attention: a misguided war in Iraq needlessly taking the lives of fellow Americans and squandering our national treasure, high schools where white students are 22% more likely to graduate than their black peers, and forty million Americans without health insurance. We don’t believe this is an acceptable state for a country with America’s potential. Today’s progressives possess a social rage well-suited to our national condition: a constructive refusal to hold nothing short of the highest expectations for the country, and the politicians in Washington who should be working harder to fulfill them.
True, anger about the injustices still plaguing these United States might seem a bit much considering how well many of our vital statistics measure up against other’s. Millions of people around the world live on a dollar or less a day, while our minimum wage ensures that even our lowest paid workers make more than forty times that. Hurricane-ravaged Louisiana’s per capita income of $24,820 in 2005, lowest among all states, was higher than that of every single nation in Sub-Saharan Africa. And, all the anger on cable TV and the blogs notwithstanding, Americans generally settle our political disputes without violence, whereas bloody civil wars have persisted in many parts of the world.
But no nation in the world holds as much potential for improvement as the United States. Americans are uniquely positioned – thanks to our system of government, economic strength, and open society – to make their country not simply good, but great. Progressive anger has always pushed us closer to fully realizing this potential- as it does today. The real problem, it seems, is that our counterparts on the right are angry about the wrong things.
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We’re the freest, most democratic society on Earth? Doubtful.
— Ryan - Aug 25, 10:43 PM - #I love me some progressive anger, but I also agree with Ryan. It’s unlikely that we’re the freest, most democratic society on Earth—and I think it is equally unlikely that the freest and most democratic societies on Earth exist in the same place. A democratic government can, and this is in its nature, pervert freedom.
— Amy - Aug 26, 12:58 PM - #