Panning "The Plan"

"The Plan" is a new book by Democratic Representative Rahm Emanuel and Democratic Leadership Council president Bruce Reed that purports to provide "Big Ideas For America" and that obviously hopes to be a rallying cry for Democratic candidates in this election and in 2008. MyDD takes down the books tone here.

"The Plan," really stinks. Not so much for the ideas they put forward but for the ideas they completely ignore.

Nowhere in the book do they support the rights of same sex couples to marry.

The few words they give to cultural issues are ridiculous:

"We should regulate market aimed at children and make sure those in the entertainment industry understand that although the First Amendment is sacrosanct, they have a special responsibility to enrich the culture, not to make it more corrosive, and to make art worthy of their talent and worth their own children watching."

What a load of crap. An artist's responsibility is not defined by the needs of children.

What Emanuel and Reed seem to want is to avoid the culture wars entirely, but by doing so, they're actually giving in to the other side of that war. Are the culture wars a distraction from real economic and foreign policy issues? Sure. But that doesn't mean that it isn't a real war with real consequences.

Emanuel and Reed seem unconcerned with keeping people safe from domestic religious zealots who don't want evolution taught in public schools, they never advocate a homosexual's freedom to marry and they can't seem to bring themselves to tell the prudes of the cultural right to either grow up or learn not to watch what they don't like.

Where are the Democrats who stand up for cultural liberty and even some healthy libertinism?