Posted on 06/22/2007 8:56:37 AM PDT by oblomov
from the July 9, 2007 issue]
For as long as I can remember, there's been a generally accepted story about the recent history of Democratic Party fortunes, a neat little morality tale that goes something like this: The New Deal majority fell apart when the party was taken over by forces outside the mainstream of American life. Getting blindsided by Reaganism was the party's just deserts. And if Democrats wanted the country back, they would just have to learn to become mainstream again.
For as long as I can remember, liberals have been complaining about awkward, self-conscious attempts to recover this "mainstream" sensibility and how they have paradoxically weakened the party. They forced Democratic politicians to become obsessed with polls. That, in turn, boxed Democrats into an identity the public--the mainstream--found the most off-putting of all: Democrats became timid. They couldn't pursue a bold public agenda because they were too hemmed in by polls. Very recently, among progressives, a new dictum has emerged: Hug close to the polls, worship the polls, be the polls.
Trends in Political Values and Core Attitudes: 1987-2007, a massive twenty-year roundup of public opinion from the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, tells the story. Is it the responsibility of government to care for those who can't take care of themselves? In 1994, the year conservative Republicans captured Congress, 57 percent of those polled thought so. Now, says Pew, it's 69 percent. (Even 58 percent of Republicans agree. Would that some of them were in Congress.) The proportion of Americans who believe government should guarantee every citizen enough to eat and a place to sleep is 69 percent, too--the highest since 1991. Even 69 percent of self-identified Republicans--and 75 percent of small-business owners!--favor raising the minimum wage by more than $2.
(Excerpt) Read more at thenation.com ...
We have to decide whether we are adults, capable of free existence and self-government. I want no part of a nation of hapless squatters on the dole queue.
How do Perlstein's small business owners think the minimum wage got raised? Is it magic? The minimum wage is still zero, after all the bloviating. Or can we really legislate ourselves into prosperity?
A "Progressive (liberal/marxist/socalist/leftist) Majority" only exists in the minds of those who still believe in the easter bunny.
Teddy Roosevelt Progressive okay. Any other kind not okay.
“They couldn’t pursue a bold public agenda because they were too hemmed in by polls.”
Sure they could pursue a bold liberal agenda. They accomplished it through activist judicial rulings instead of the Legistive Branch, but they’ve pushed the agenda through by and by.
The problem is that too many people who don't consider themselves "liberal/marxist/socalist/leftist",or don't even understand what that means, continue to vote for and elect those who are.
A totalitarian “majority”. They don’t want the numbers, they just want the power.
They “know what’s best” for the rest of us.
Liberal professors have done their job well. If you call Jane Fonda a “communist” you are using loaded words to demonize your political enemies just like Sen. McCarthey did.
Never mind that she was a proud naked Communist who urged that we would all LOVE Communism if we only knew what it really was nor that she posed for enemy propaganda seated on an anti-aircraft cannon during wartime.
So when you mention Communist/Socialist/Marxist, yellow dog Democrats roll their eyes and hurl back “Fascist Republican”.
"The Roman Republic fell, not because of the ambition of Caesar or Augustus, but because it had already long ceased to be in any real sense a republic at all. When the sturdy Roman plebeian, who lived by his own labor, who voted without reward according to his own convictions, and who with his fellows formed in war the terrible Roman legion, had been changed into an idle creature who craved nothing in life save the gratification of a thirst for vapid excitement, who was fed by the state, and who directly or indirectly sold his vote to the highest bidder, then the end of the Republic was at hand, and nothing could save it. The laws were the same as they had been, but the people behind the laws had changed, and so the laws counted for nothing."
--Teddy Roosevelt on the Fall of the Republic
Then why don't they raise the pay of their employees, themselves?
And at this point in the article, I headed for the exit ramp.
Hasn’t The Nation figured out that they have already emerged? The emerged are mostly dummies.
But now that welfare has been reformed, the social welfare safety net is not as threatening to the social fabric as it used to be. So people are naturally more inclined to support increasing government spending. And like it or not, this will probably mean increased government spending even beyond Bush's level.
The most disconcerting is the rate of secularization. But as a former atheist who lives in New England, I think it is spot on. We are going to see more and more atheists and skeptics in the future. However, I doubt they will support progressive policies, since most atheists are selfish. They will instead become libertarians (socially liberal, economically conservative). In other words, they will probably be people who want to smoke pot, have sex, and pay low taxes.
The battle over social mores has already been fought and won amongst the youth. Young people are pro marriage and increasingly favor traditional gender roles (the great irony of feminism is that it forced women to work for themselves, their kids, and their lazy bum of a live-in boyfriend). So I think in the medium term, secularization will halt and ultimately reverse itself. Add in the fact that in the past 30 years Christian philosophy has become dominant, and this knowledge will ultimately trickle into the middle class collective unconscious, and I think secularization will reverse itself.
Good quotes.
The Left lost power because its ideas became discredited and weak, yet they continue to embrace them. Their catastrophic failure happened in 1968, when the radicals took control of the party apparatus, and they ceased to be “progressive” at that point, instead becoming reactionary to failed socialistic ideas.
Properly, their way to regain major momentum is by embracing libertarianism, the idea that progress, “progressivism”, is actually *away* from government control. “Progressive Populism”.
Imagine how the right would collapse if the left suddenly became anti-big government, anti-internationalist (if not isolationist), civil libertarian, pro-privacy, and strongly anti-authoritarian?
By embracing those things that “true conservatives”, not the “far right” wants, the Republican party would be gutted by desertions. What would remain would only be what could be called the “Barry Goldwater” Republicans, the “Pat Buchanan” republicans, or those used to be called “black Republicans”.
In turn, the Democrats would have to spin off or cut loose their utter Moonbats, which would do them a world of good. And they would be left with probably better than a 2/3rds majority nationwide.
Strangely enough, they could actually do this while keeping a Democratic, not Republican “flavor” to their agenda. It would have to be a concise and disciplined program working on the failures of the Republican party.
Ask yourself how you would view the Democrats if they would be able to do the following, that the Republicans wouldn’t?
1) Creation of a flat tax, and the reduction of the size of the federal government (non-military) by one quarter.
2) An information control act, that would require all personal information about individuals to be registered and secured by the individual States and the federal government, restricted as to content, and correctable.
3) A “sunset law” provision to all treaties entered into by the United States, so that once a decade they would have to be re-approved by the Senate.
4) That all non-military decisions reached by international bodies to which the US belongs be published.
5) That no US military personnel can be involuntarily assigned to service under foreign command.
6) Securing all US borders.
etc.
“...But as a former atheist who lives in New England...” ~ Jibaholic
You may find this interesting:
Friday, June 22, 2007
In the Wake of the Impossible Dream
http://onecosmos.blogspot.com/
“... reminds me of one of Bion’s books, Second Thoughts. Between the 1950s and mid-1960s, Bion underwent some sort of profound transformation in which he changed from being an ordinary, if gifted, psychoanalyst, into an unorthodox visionary mystic philosopher. The book is a collection of scholarly essays written by his old self, looked at from the perspective of his new self. Thus, “second thoughts” has a double meaning, in that one naturally has second thoughts about things written by a self that is effectively dead and no longer exists except insofar as the tracks left on the printed page.
In a way, it is as if one has the responsibility of being one’s own literary executor. The first half of Second Thoughts presents the essays, while the second half is a commentary in which Bion essentially deconstructs himself, almost as if — no, exactly as if — the earlier Bion were “dream material” presented for the purposes of the later Bion’s analysis.
For most people, they don’t undergo sufficient growth in their lifetime for this to be an issue.
I was thinking about this the other day, when I made the comment about my own past being so radically disconnected from my present. ...one of the downsides of radical change is that it necessarily creates a kind of alienation — from one’s past, from previous relationships, from the culture, from any number of things. One dies to the world, and with it, one’s previous self. Through the mid-1990s I had undergone a lot of change, but I was still more or less myself. I could draw a continuous if winding road from there to here.
Looked at from this angle, I can understand why so many of my generational cohort of baby boomers are so stuck in the progressive past.
They’re all still basically caught up in the dream of the 1960s, with no new self to critique the dream — which is why the dream turned into a nightmare.
... my generation has got to be the most un-introspective and un-self aware in American history, but I suppose it happens with every generation, which has difficulty seeing outside its own narrow reality tunnel.
This came up just yesterday with the bulletin about how 90% of the journalists who give financial support to political candidates are leftists. At the same time, these people are so clueless that they don’t even know how biased they are.
Ignorance is one thing, but unconscious ignorance masquerading as sophistication is another thing entirely.
But that’s our MSM: self-congratulating unreflective ignorance on stilts. Increasingly they just * speak to themselves, ensuring their own lack of growth — like an animal that tries to live on its own excrement. * http://www.americanthinker.com/2007/06/the_incredible_shrinking_new_y.html
To the extent that you have undergone significant growth, you must necessarily look back at your past and cringe at the moronic things you thought, said, wrote, and did.
You must interpret the dream from the standpoint of being awake. It’s painful, in part because one must essentially “write off” a good portion of one’s life as having essentially been a waste — if not actually harmful — or at best, a series of inevitable lessons, given the inclinations and architecture of one’s particular soul. One did one’s best with the knowledge and materials at hand.
But the New York Times still proudly displays the Pultizer Prize awarded to Walter Duranty, who was Stalin’s greatest mouthpiece in the West. Rather than speaking Truth to Evil, the Times was the latter’s stenographer.
But do they have any “second thoughts?” Obviously not. The left hasn’t undergone sufficient growth to be capable of that kind of self-reflection.
For the left, nothing changes, since leftism is an abstract pseudo-religion uninfluenced by the ravages of time. Indeed, that is one of its central appeals.
It is “effective” not in the world, but in the soul, so to speak. That is to say, like Islamism, it is believed because of the transformative — even intoxicating — effect on the personality (emphasis on the toxic). I always think this while reading most any leftist writing: how intoxicated they are! ...” ~ Robert W.Godwin [Gagdad Bob] , Ph.D - a clinical psychologist whose interdisciplinary work has focused on the relationship between contemporary psychoanalysis, chaos theory, and quantum physics.
bttt-Continued: http://onecosmos.blogspot.com/
Absolute truth on parade!!!!!!!!!!!!!
LLS
If you take away all of those you would remove most of the current Dem political platform. That would mean the Dems would have to throw out many of their beliefs keeping only their name. You would have something ideologically more similar to the Libertarian party. There is no way the current Republican party could stand up to that because a lot of its members including me (depending on the specifics of new new party's platform and actions) would leave it.
There would be an interesting dynamic between the politically homeless socialists abandoned by the new Democrat-Libertarian party and the remains of the Republicans. Would the social/religious conservatives and big business merchantilists be able to ally with the socialists to form another 45-55% party? Or would the a three party system become temporarily stable? The utter moonbats wouldn't fit into that second combined party either, but imagine a party where Ted Kennedy and Pat Robertson could both feel at home.
“(socially liberal, economically conservative). In other words, they will probably be people who want to smoke pot, have sex, and pay low taxes. “
Yeah! Who do I vote for to get that? Work hard/play hard, and if you can think of it, keep the government out of it!
There is nothing progressive about the democratic party, they use ideas and concepts from 70 years ago. They think government is supreme to private markets and capitalism, at a time when markets have never been more efficient and run circles around anything that the government can do. Their foreign policy is relying on the UN, which is the most unproductive organization ever created.
You’re preachin’ to the choir. I just think he’s right in his analysis that although the younger generation tends toward more socially conservative lifestyle choices, they aren’t going to see that as a duty of the government to enforce.
Thats the whole enchilada with socialism. First you’re stuck paying for people who make mistakes, then you have to come along and outlaw personal mistakes to save money. Get rid of the handouts and you don’t have to legislate morality/ethics/good personal life decisions. Then the market of individualism sorts it out.
“For as long as I can remember, liberals have been complaining about awkward, self-conscious attempts to recover this “mainstream” sensibility and how they have paradoxically weakened the party. They forced Democratic politicians to become obsessed with polls.”
If they were truly in tune with the mainstream, they wouldn’t need to worry about polls. Common sense would be all they needed. But since they are out of the mainstream and lack common sense, they always look to the polls to try to figure out the most expeditious path to power.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.