Posted on 12/07/2005 8:01:13 AM PST by .cnI redruM
Liberals have been suffering from conservative envy for several years now. Oh, they don't envy us our evil ways, our penchant for extreme cruelty or the fact that we smell like cabbage. They envy us our toys and success.
The liberal Center for American Progress was founded explicitly to be the Left's answer to the conservative Heritage Foundation. The lefty radio network, "Air America," was launched to copy the success of Rush Limbaugh & Co. Today, deep-pocketed liberals are scrambling to copy conservative foundations, even though liberal foundations have always had more money.
Most conservatives I know snicker at all this. It's not that talk radio, think tanks, and foundations haven't been essential to the rise of American conservatism in the last five decades. They have been (see my colleague John Miller's excellent new book, A Gift of Freedom: How the John M. Olin Foundation Changed America, for a window into that effort). But liberals are emphasizing hardware because they don't want to question the validity of their very outdated software.
Look, conservatives would love to switch places with liberals. We'd get the universities, Hollywood, the Rockefeller, Ford, Carnegie and Pew Foundations, the Sierra Club, Greenpeace, the New York Times, National Public Radio, Time, Newsweek, The New Yorker, CBS, including 60 Minutes and Dan Rather's thousand-fingers massage chair, and so forth. Liberals, meanwhile, would get the Washington Times and Fox News, along with a few conservative foundations. I guess National Review and The New Republic would switch offices, which is fine by me. It'd make my commute easier.
And that sort of makes the point: Not only does the Left have better stuff, but even if that weren't the case, the Left's problem isn't a lack of mechanisms to "get their message out." Megaphones matter, but not as much as what you say into them.
If liberals really want to emulate conservative successes, I have some advice for them: Get into some big, honking arguments — not with conservatives, but with each other. The history of the conservative movement's successes has been the history of intellectual donnybrooks, between libertarians and traditionalists, hawks and isolationists, so-called neocons and so-called paleocons, less-filling versus tastes great. Liberals would be smart to copy that and stop worrying how to mimic our direct mail strategies.
Liberals have a tendency to mistake political tactics for political principles, and vice versa. Exhibit A is the Left's fascination with "unity." Unity is often useful in politics, but it's often a handicap if you haven't figured out what to be unified about. Just as the Socratic method leads to wisdom, big fights not only illuminate big ideas, but they force people to become invested in them. Unfortunately, liberals define diversity by skin color and sex, not by ideas, which makes it difficult to have really good arguments.
Of course there are arguments on the Left and there are individual liberals with deep-seated convictions and principles. But most of the arguments are about how to "build a movement" or how to win elections, not about what liberalism is. Even the "Get out of Iraq now!" demands from the base of the Democratic party aren't grounded in anything like a coherent foreign policy. Ten years ago liberals championed nation-building. Now they call it imperialism because George W. Bush is doing it.
A good illustration of the fundamental difference between Left and Right can be found in two books edited by Peter Berkowitz for the Hoover Institution, Varieties of Conservatism in America and Varieties of Progressivism in America. Each contains thoughtful essays by leading conservatives and liberals. But while the conservatives defend different ideological philosophical schools — neoconservatism, traditionalism, etc. — the liberals argue almost exclusively about which tactics Democrats should embrace to win the White House.
Bill Clinton was the only Democratic president elected to two terms since Franklin Roosevelt. One of the reasons for his success was that he was willing to pick fights with his own party. One can argue about the sincerity of some of those fights. But we remember the Sista Souljah moment for a reason.
Right now Washington is marveling at how the Democratic party has simultaneously made the Iraq war the central and defining political issue of the decade while at the same time having no clue what it is they want to do about it. Worse, it's looking increasingly like the Democrats' position on the war is based largely on the polls, not principles.
One of the most important events in the rise of conservatism was the 1978 Firing Line debate over U.S. control of the Panama Canal. William F. Buckley favored giving it up. The governor of California, Ronald Reagan, favored keeping it. Reagan's side lost the argument, in Congress at least, but conservatives once again demonstrated our willingness to duke it out on such issues. And Reagan's career hardly suffered. If liberals were smart, they'd do something similar. Have Joe Lieberman debate Nancy Pelosi, or John Murtha. Make liberals get past their passion and explore what they think. My guess is it would be good for liberalism in the long run — and even better for America.
Or could they have honest, and stimulating intellectual discussions amongst themselves?
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Never happen. Critical thinking is totally absent. Care for preserving and strengthening America is totally absent. How does a Marxist debate a Marxist? The real agenda of the left cannot be openly debated...it would be their end. The fools and dupes that still believe these people are there to help them, are what they are. The socialist agenda of the left is no longer hidden -- it sprays us from the lying MSM, it sprays on us from the mounth of dysfunctional people like Howard Dean and John Kerry. And the standard modus-operandi of criminality, lying and deceipt of the left smacks us every time we see, hear, analyse and review the Clintons.
I think Rush's latest encouragement to the libs to BE EXACTLY WHO AND WHAT THEY ARE is working. To their detrement, but they are too isolated from rationality and reality to realize it.
The problem with the liberals is that they base all their politics on their emotions, not reason, logic, or any kind of principle or policy. Hence, they cannot have an intellectual argument and debate, even among themselves. Someone is always offended or *feels* wrong about something. No rational thought or weighing of solutions at all.
"War is bad, because I feel bad about killing people. Even if they were going to kill me."
"Big corporations are bad because I feel slighted that Exxon made billions but I don't have a big screen TV."
etc etc
Yes, it would be good for the Democrats to really debate some of these issues.
But it would simply destroy their party. There is no "there" there, as Gertrude Stein once said. A serious debate within Democrat ranks would expose abortion as indefensible. It would expose same-sex marriage as destructive. It would demonstrate that tax policy for the Left is intended to be more punitive than anything else. None -- I say None -- of the principles of the Left can be fought for openly without bringing the whole edifice crashing down around their ears.
They live on lies and double-talk. They cannot afford to have their positions questioned. They know this. At best, their "internal debates" would look like Professional Wrestling. "Looks impressive, but I think they're faking it."
All the Dems I know have several things in common. Number one: they believe everything told to them by their far-left leaders....without exception. Number two: they're bone ignorant on major issues thanks to their reliance on Big Media and their leftist instructors who only give them as much info as they think their stooges need.
I think it would have been impossible for the author to have been further from the mark. Ask Joe Public what Republicans stand for, and they'll have an answer, even if they're in California. Ask him what Democrats stand for and you'll get a blank stare. The Democrats problem isn't that they don't have debate. The problem is that they don't have agreement.
You just beat me to it... It's so obvious the critical thinking is completely absent on the liberal side. And they think themselves intellectually superior ? All-knowing as what is best for the rest of us ? All based on their "I feel this is right". Noooo thank you. They can go "feel" somewhere else. Like France. Or Canadia.
Exhibit B. If it please the court. Clinton Bush 41 debate. A young african american woman at the 'Town Hall Meeting' format debate asked a question. Bubba looked at her then walking like a passo-fino one toe in front of the other sidled up to her warmly making direct eye contact and offered to share her pain. The scene was repeated over and over for the next 72 hrs on the MSM along with praise for Clinton for having won the debate.
Liberals are idealists - They dream of what can be (in their minds) a perfect world and they let nothing stand in the way of their dream.
Conservatives are realists. We recognize that not all people are good and we make 'accommodations' for them. We have awakened from our sleep and are living life in a real world.
Has anyone ever known a conservative to turn liberal? But all of us have known the reverse to be true, many times over.
"Make liberals get past their passion and explore what they think."
That would be a long walk in the wilderness.
Emotions and party line thinking, if it can be called thinking. As the party line is paramount one doesn't have to think about or its ramifications. One just shouts it out and shouts it louder if someone calls the shouter on a point.
Since they can't listen and can't learn, I'll give the libs advice.
If you want to impeach Bush, take him down over his plans for shamnesty and his refusal to uphold his oath in protecting America from enemies, foreign and domestic, with his open borders/lose the war with Mexico policies.
But you can't/won't do that because you want to destroy the country more than he does. Face it, the only left wing agenda that's moved forward is the parts he has championed.
We don't need democrats anymore, we have republicans to spread socialism.
My final word of advice to libs.
Drop dead.
I think that the Left suffers from the fundamental intellectual dishonesty inherited from their Marxist forebears -- they simply cannot have an honest debate about what is true because their whole view of truth is that it is to be constructed as propaganda in service of the Leftist cause. They are not the "reality"-based community they claim, but specialize in constructing their own fantasy "realities" based on their biases, fears and emotions.
They will not. The one rule that ALL liberals live by is not to criticize another liberal no matter how stupid, anti-American or unpatriotic they sound. Unless, of course that liberal happens to endorse a conservative view. Witness the attacks on Lieberman for supporting the WOT and the silence at the treasonous statments by Kerry and Dean.
"Witness the attacks on Lieberman for supporting the WOT and the silence at the treasonous statments by Kerry and Dean."
Witness also the pure, venomous racism directed at any black American in the public eye, who dares venture away from spouting the socialist line.
That is party line thinking. They learned it from the Communists and NAZIs. Belief is irrelevant. Something is to be shouted because it should be true, because the Party says it is the correct position. "Trưe" does not relate to fact. That is why the term "Politically Correct."
Truth ad Fact are mental constructs. I don't understand why a lefty has to strive so hard to remake the world. By his own definitions of reality all he has to do is think it and it is so.
The problem with the soccer moms is that they base all their politics on their emotions, not reason, logic,
Supreme Court judges.
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