LOSING OUR DELUSIONS: Not Much Left (Despondent Liberal on state of Liberalism)

New Republic ^ | 2/17/05 | Martin Peretz

[pissant]

Interested read from one of the more responsible Liberal publications.

[expatpat]

Ask yourself: Who is a truly influential liberal mind in our culture?

Karl Marx.

[Darkwolf377]

" an archaic doctrine proclaimed by spoiled swells. William F. Buckley Jr. comes to mind, and a few others whose names will now resonate with almost nobody. Take as just one instance Russell Kirk"

Both of whom were more prominent and thoughtful than any liberal thinker of the same era.

[pissant]

And I would add Ronald Reagan to the conservative intellectual circle, even back in the 1960s. In fact he is the giant among them all.

[RBroadfoot]

Very interesting. Apparently, some liberals -- a very few -- are capable of honest self-appraisal.

Meanwhile, the majority of liberals appoint Dr. Dean head of their political party ... the guy who said, "I hate Republicans and I hate everything they stand for" ... and openly proclaim their hatred of President Bush.

At least we know which is indeed the party of hate.

[JFK_Lib]

Good article.

Why is it that al Sharpton, every bit as racist as David Duke, continues to get equal treatment in the press?

[IronJack]

Russell Kirk, an especially prominent conservative intellectual who, as Clinton Rossiter (himself a moderate conservative) wrote, has "begun to sound like a man born one hundred and fifty years too late and in the wrong country."

And yet the ideas of Russell Kirk, or more accurately, his analysis of the ideas of others compounded with his own insights, resonate today with a whole new generation of conservatives.

What's old is made new again, while the stale, obsolete ideas of the "progressive" movement are embarrassingly out of date, kind of like an over-the-hill former cheerleader who insists on wearing the clothes from her salad days. Problem is, what looked good on a supple 18-year-old in 1960 just looks silly on a sagging grandmother in 2005.

The rest of the world grew up. The Left didn't.

[blanknoone]

That is an extremely limited view. There is also Lenin. Stalin. Trotsky. Mao.

[expatpat]

Sorry, I stand corrected.

[Darkwolf377]

"This patronizing attitude is proof positive that, as deep as the social and economic gains have been among African Americans, many liberals prefer to maintain their own time-honored patronizing position vis-à-vis "the other," the needy. This is, frankly, in sharp contrast to President Bush, who seems not to be impeded by race difference (and gender difference) in his appointments and among his friends. Maybe it is just a generational thing, and, if it is that, it is also a good thing. But he may be the first president who apparently does not see individual people in racial categories or sex categories. White or black, woman or man, just as long as you're a conservative. That is also an expression of liberation from bias."

It's nice to see a liberal giving Bush credit in this area, though of course the then dives into the "we still need Affirmative Action" spiel.

I think the whole point of this article is sound but he gives no real solutions, and should not. You can't plan where a party is going to end up after everything falls apart, but I think many DU-MoveOn-Deaniacs are so sick of being losers they will be unwilling to back a Dem who will be almost as bad (to them) as Bush, and will create a new Progressive Democrat party or something--maybe even a Green party of some substance. Problem is it's going to take at least a couple decades to get anywhere electorally so that winning a presidency is going to have meaningful support in congress and the state level.

[JennysCool]

Here and there, of course, a university personage appears to assert a small didactic point and proves it with a vast and intricate academic apparatus.

Ward Churchill?

[Ace's Dad]

Take as just one instance Russell Kirk

I agree. I knew Dr. Kirk, and no liberal writer except, perhaps, the before mentioned Niebuhr was in his league.

[Darkwolf377]

Kirk wrote excellent short stories, too.

[HowlinglyMind-BendingAbsurdity]

How about this - liberal secular humanism is just wrong. Wrong ethically, historically, ontologically, culturally, spiritually, and psychologically. It is a war against nature, the nature of man, and God. It can never work because it goes directly against the needs and true ends of man. It creates false images and false hopes. It derails civilization from the noblest ideals and virtues of humanity. It reduces man to the level of an animal and then sets about caging him in in an artificial social engineering zoo.

[DoctorMichael]

Its getting late. Bump for later reading.

[filbert]

A Good Start.

The vibrant, rough-and-tumble but generally civil discussions here on Free Republic and elsewhere between conservatives, libertarians, etc. is a sign of the health and vigor of "the right."

An indication that the left is getting past the politics of hate and emotion would be the success of similarly robust and thoughtful sites discussing and debating the day's events from their world view.

Certainly DU ain't it.

[JennysCool]

The vast majority of the public doesn't realize that the labels "liberal" and "conservative" don't mean what they did 30 years ago. Today, it's the "liberals" who trample over freedom, in their zeal to have an ordered society where no one smokes, no one overeats, and no one says anything which might remotely offend anyone. It's the "conservatives" who'll light your smoke for you, tell an off-color joke once in awhile, and throw barbecues featuring fat hamburgers and intoxicating cocktails.

Most of the public, which doesn't pay as much attention to these things as we do, still believes the "liberals" are the free-wheeling, fun-loving bunch, rather than the stormtroopers they are at heart. We "conservatives" need to educate them. At our next barbecue.

[filbert]

Well, yes, there is that that the Left needs to get past, too. . .

[pissant]

I would love nothing more than to see the dem party split between the far left (greenies/Move-on types) and the "moderates". Their malfeasance has earned them 50 years in the wilderness.

[blanknoone]

I would actually like the opportunity to ask the author, 'what does it mean to be a 'liberal'?

My perspective is that political philosophy is rooted in the more foundational aspects of philosophy. Metaphysics and epistemology give rise to ethics and aesthetics, and ethics gives rise to group ethics/politics. The conservative movement is rooted in Judeo-Christian philosophy. The left is rooted in Kantian philosophy and its communist extensions.

My take is that the author bought all of the touchy feely propaganda designed to simultaneously mask and advance communism without ever realising what it all really meant. Now it seems he has seen his entire perspective stripped of its veneer, and he realizes that he is either a communist, which he has been telling himself for years he isn't and is an obviously failed ideology, or he is nothing. He is staring into both the mirror and the abyss at the same time.