Posted on 09/11/2009 9:48:08 AM PDT by Kaslin
WASHINGTON -- In 1950, Lionel Trilling could write, "In the United States at this time liberalism is not only the dominant but even the sole intellectual tradition." In 1980, as the Reagan revolution was starting, Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan concluded, "Of a sudden, the GOP has become the party of ideas."
Where now is the intellectual center of gravity -- the thrill of innovation, the ideological momentum -- in American politics? Not in the party of Obama.
This failure of imagination was on full display during Barack Obama's address to Congress. In a moment that demanded new policy to cut an ideological knot, or at least new arguments to restart the public debate, Obama saw fit to provide neither. His health speech turned out to be an environmental speech, devoted mainly to recycling. On every important element of his health proposal, he chose to double down and attack the motives of opponents. (Obama was the other public official who talked of a "lie" that evening.) Concerns about controlling health costs, the indirect promotion of abortion and the effect of a new entitlement on future deficits were dismissed but not answered. On health care, Obama takes his progressivism pure and simplistic.
(Excerpt) Read more at townhall.com ...
Gerson is on-point here.
The Left isn’t progressive. They are the most regressive thinkers in the political spectrum. Every one of their proscribed policy theories are so 19th or early 20th century.
Tried, tested and failed.
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