Do what is possible, one issue at a time? Of course — there's no realistic alternative. But you will most likely soon reach conclusions about the patterns of opposition and support that shape each and every one of these issues and connect them together. You may well decide that the persistent general reactions behind that specific pattern also need to be understood and changed. You will start to see not just a random pattern of problems, but a system underlying them.
Every leftist, at some level, believes and acts on this insight: there are ways of explaining not just the individual problems but the connections between them. Once grasped in thought, these connections have to be transformed in reality. To tackle even one problem — eliminating HIV/AIDS, preventing global environmental meltdown — means struggling to puzzle out why that problem arose in the first place. As soon as you start pursuing the process of figuring each problem out, and connecting it with other problems, you have started down the road to leftism.
I'm not sure that I'd agree with all the implications of the piece - surely it's possible to have a reasoned, unified right-wing (or centrist) view of the world based on different founding assumptions, and it's obvious that many right-wingers use very similar language to McKay's in justifying some of their policies.
That said, I naturally agree with McKay that the leftist view is the more plausible of the options once one takes a look at the bigger picture. Give it a read.
(Edit: typo.)
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