A Reading List For Democrats

The seemingly endless contest between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton is, among other things, a referendum on that perennial question: What ails the American left? Is the problem a failure to offer clear alternatives to the corporate coziness of the Republicans, or is it a lack of cultural and religious sympathy with the heartland? Is it a matter of substance or style, of insufficiently "progressive" policies or bicoastal swagger? To this stale discussion Susan Neiman brings a new thought: The problem with our liberal elites, she insists, is lame metaphysics a lack of philosophical nerve. What they need is a bracing dose of the Great Books.

My mother had saved this for me to read from her copy of the Journal. I realize it is couple weeks old, but I still think it is worth reading, so I looked it up for posting. Anyone care to comment?

Libs being told to read the dead white men to find moral clarity. Somehow I found that rather amusing.

I have been posting for years and at length that the left is devoid of new ideas. What they have plenty of are the Marxist nostrums defined and applied by The Frankfurt School. Part of the syllogism of THE FRANKFURT SCHOOL is the doctrine of "deconstruction" or of the "critical theory" which essentially says that everything should be torn apart and destroyed in the service of Marxism.

Here the author complains that the left has nothing affirmative to offer. Small wonder. So it resorts to the universally held belief on the left that the right is racist, bigoted, homophobic, and etc. and the left is not.

The author of the piece speaks of the author of the book:

Ms. Neiman points to many factors in the left's retreat from universal principles. The demise of socialism has played a role, as has despair over the Bush administration and the war in Iraq. But the real source, she suggests, is a "conceptual collapse," a self-destructive descent into identity politics, postmodern theory and victimology.

This is all correct, but both authors are wrong, these are not the cause but the symptoms of a cancer implanted by THE FRANKFURT SCHOOL.

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