The Left has lost its way and lost its voice

theTimesOnline ^ | August 17, 2002 | CAMILLE PAGLIA

[Always Right]

All evidence seems to lead to the opposite conclusion.

You must remember logic is not one of the lefts stronger points.

[Fenris3]

"You must remember logic is not one of the lefts stronger points."

Neither is intellectual integrity. Thats why I abandoned Liberalism. My activist youth minister taught us all to think for ourselves, but when we went to them with hard questions, they responded with rhetorical fallacy. The beginning of the end for me was the thesis that "all tyranical despots are BAD, except for the Socialist/Communist ones"...along with "if we get rid of our Nukes, the USSR won't threaten us with theirs". LOL
Thank God for Ronald Reagan (and Phylis Schafley) [sp?]

[SupplySider]

You make some great points. Another angle is that faced with the most prosperous economy in world history, Marxists have been applying their failed model to areas of the society that cannot be measured as easily as GDP and employment. Hence we see men "oppressing" women, heterosexuals "oppressing" homosexuals, whites "oppressing" blacks, etc. We are supposed to side with these proletariats, so to speak, in a quasi revolution against their bourgois masters.

I love Camille Paglia, but I think she falls in with the rest of the aging boomers in the academy, government, and the media who simply cannot give up the crusade of their glory days. She gave a great critique of the left, but I was left wondering why she doesn't simply drop it and vote Republican.

[Interious]

"That's been a persistent problemo with Camille's writing - her tendency toward affected constructs instead of the clean, crisp, concise sentences that would make her writing more powerful. One is rarely one's best editor."

I agree with this, but she still manages to express some germane observations. She, like Christopher Hitchens and Michael Walzer, are progressives that have enough clarity of thought to recognize the rot within their own ranks.

Regarding the Nader vote: Remember that this is Camille P, kookie Iconoclast, avowed aethiest and admirer of Paganism. That she would opt for the hopeless Nader vote as a protest and not GWB is understandable.

Check out Tammy Bruce on Frontpagemag.com! What a radical transformation of a once fire-breathing leftist Feminist.

[fire_eye]

I love Camille Paglia, but I think she falls in with the rest of the aging boomers in the academy, government, and the media who simply cannot give up the crusade of their glory days. She gave a great critique of the left, but I was left wondering why she doesn't simply drop it and vote Republican.

Abortion.

As with most otherwise nearly intelligent females, her intellect vanishes in visceral irrationality when that issue arises...

[beckett]

Paglia wants it both ways. She likes to preen about her glory days in the 60s and at the same time decry post-structuralism, the naive "misunderstanding of history" that flows logically from the very same period.

Paglia is a fun read, but she is wildly inconsistent. Like many of us, she bought into a whole lot of drivel in her youth, but even in late middle-age she can't bring herself to admit it. So she endlessly goes on about the hallowed 60s (it's a rare column when those days are not mentioned), but at the same time uses her rapier sharp mind to fillet the dunces who still take the politics of that time seriously.

Somehow Paglia's voice seems a little less forceful to me in these post-911 times. I'm not sure if it's because my perceptions of the world have altered radically, or if something in her voice has gone hollow. Maybe I just don't give a damn about fashionable straddlers like Paglia anymore.

[beckett]

...but at the same time uses her rapier sharp mind to fillet the dunces who still take the politics of that time seriously.

Should be: ...the dunces who try to take the politics of that time into the present.

[TopQuark]

Are you sure you are on the right board? Which particular points are good?

[SpringheelJack]

That's been a persistent problemo with Camille's writing - her tendency toward affected constructs instead of the clean, crisp, concise sentences that would make her writing more powerful.

Her biggest problem is that she always writes as though nobody has ever heard of her before. As a result just about every article she pens is burdened with formulaic "Who I Am" passages. I can't even count how many times I've heard her begin a sentence: "As a registered Democrat who voted for Ralph Nader for President in 2000 ....."

[VaBthang4]

I am surprised to hear a a Liberal with such a cogent understanding of the Modern left's suicidal dogma.

I'm gonna have to bookmark this one...

Bottomline she is saying that the left has to purge the old clique [They wont willingly change. That would be an acknowledgement of lifelong error.] in order for it to regain a powerbase. Her salience reveals the internal struggle that will keep the left hamstrung for the next twenty years while Conservatives appoint Supreme Court justices and federal judges across the land [The real power].

Prayerfully she will be attacked from her own ranks as opposed to embraced.

[VaBthang4]

Yep...it is a vicious, unforgiving hatred [ie. Hillary].

Another very real factor that cannot be shrugged off but by Contrarian Conservatives is the left's unwillingness to acknowledge God [As He is] and submit in anyway to him.

Not acknowledging the ultimate reality...God...leads you down a path where you become resentful of other realities until bitterness and eventually willful blindness sets in.

I believe it is from this well that their hatred ultimately flows.

[Rome2000]

Without the profit motive, few are inclined to work for long

I hear her next article is about the world being round instead of flat.

[cartoonistx]

Her stock in trade!

[07055]

Are you sure you are on the right board? Which particular points are good?

I guess you're right. No conservatives would agree with statements like this:

"The Left is wilfully blind to the enormous contributions that capitalism has made to democracy and individualism. Over the past two centuries capitalism has raised the standard of living and enhanced the health and life expectancy for untold millions in the West and elsewhere. It has stimulated new ideas and fostered free speech."

[YankeeReb]

Unless they are volunteering hands-on service in blighted neighbourhoods, however, most leftists are far removed from working-class life. Many are wordsmiths — journalists or academics who run in packs. Leftism has become wordplay — a refuge for bourgeois intellectuals guilty about their comfort and privilege.

Hear...Hear I've always noticed that beneath every liberal is an elitist snob.

[Leisler]

Charles Dickens had a term for it, "telescopic charity."

[lavaroise]

One problem is that too many leftist periodicals are run by callow cliques whose vaunted populism is a mask for snobbery.

Uhhhh??? Everyday Dems in congress and leftists speak despicable language. snobbery? hardly! Snottery it is, just like this article which in fact is a front for promotion of leftist snottery on TV and in mainstream (not even leftist) periodicals.

[betty boop]

BTTT

[summer]

Re your post #8 - My conclusion as well.

[summer]

Re your post #8 - My conclusion as well.