California Conservative

Over the sunny weekend, liberals came out to bathe in the warmth of their own self-absorbtion.

S.F. Chronicle reports: “In Berkeley, they explored the spiritual side of being liberal. In Oakland, they blasted the Bush administration over the war in Iraq at a town hall meeting with Rep. Barbara Lee. And all over the region, Bush bashers heard former Ambassador Joseph Wilson rip into Karl Rove via conference call.”

Such a harmonic convergence of activism could almost be dubbed “liberal bliss” day — if everyone weren’t so fighting mad.

“Just because they run the show doesn’t mean we’re not going to put up a fight,” said Lee, D-Oakland, who spoke to a standing-room-only crowd of 850 at the Grand Lake Theater. “We will demand answers, we will demand accountability, and we won’t stop until we get them.”

Predictable rhetoric: Bay Area liberals speak out

“People are dying because of the lies that Bush is telling, and it’s just repugnant,” said John Glynn, 54, an Oakland health care consultant at the town hall meeting. “It’s got to be stopped.”

“It feels like you can’t sit by and do nothing,” added Sheryl Lipari, a 50-year-old mother who is trying to prevent military recruiters from visiting her son’s high school in Castro Valley. “Slowly I’m seeing our freedoms taken away.”

What freedoms are being taken away from Ms. Lipari? God only knows.

Speaking of faith, over in Berkeley, liberals are trying to find a new religion.

Chronicle reports: “Liberals have complained for two decades that conservatives misuse religion for political gain, but it wasn’t until well-organized evangelicals powered President Bush’s election in November that some decided that they had to do more than gripe.”

The latest post-election attempt at transforming the spiritual energy of the left into political clout began Wednesday at UC Berkeley, where 1,200 people attended the opening of a conference on “Spiritual Activism.”

The goal of the four-day conference is to create a spirituality-based platform to counter the religious right, but organizers are also intending to connect with “religio-phobic” liberals through seminars such as, “I Don’t Believe in God, But I Know America Needs a Spiritual Left.”

“This is not an attempt to put spiritual words on the old liberal agenda, ” said conference organizer Rabbi Michael Lerner, an antiwar activist in the 1960s who is now editor of the Tikkun magazine in Berkeley. “This is about transforming the society away from materialism and selfishness.”

What’s the point?

“The right has developed a network of churches that gives people love, whether we agree that it is a real love or an imperfect one,” said Peter Gabel, a longtime activist and professor at New College of California in San Francisco. “Progressives have not developed the same world view that speaks to that pain.”

God help them — and give us the strength to endure their folly.

This entry was posted on Monday, July 25th, 2005 at 10:50 am and is filed under Activism, Berkeley, California, Elections, Liberals, Media, Religion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.