Posted on 10/13/2012 12:26:44 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
The dreams of liberalisms fathers dont move todays liberals. Whether in manic or depressed mode, they know liberalisms been mugged by realitythough they dare not acknowledge it. Has Obamas 2009 Cairo speech been overtaken, to say the least, by facts on the ground in 2012 in Benghazi? Dont acknowledge the facts. Does all the talk about a green energy future seem empty and ridiculous? Keep talking the talkwhile also taking credit for increases in oil and gas production you did nothing to make possible and that you, deep down, find distasteful. Is there a need for real tax reform? Ignore it, and just let the Bush tax cuts expire. Do decades-old programs like Social Security and Medicare need to be changed? Just attack the reforms Romney and Ryan have proposed. Roe v. Wade? Sacred scripture.
In the first presidential debate of 2012, we saw, up close and personal, what Harvey Mansfield called in last weeks issue the ennui of Barack Obama. Obamas ennui is related to his dislike for the real challenges of governing. More fundamentally, his ennui reflects his declinism. Whats exciting about governing for the next four years if its just going to involve managing austerity at home and decline abroad? Its a depressing prospect.
Obama is depressed because todays liberalism is depressing. Obama is world-weary because modern liberalism is world-weary. Hope and change was just campaign talk. The real existing liberal president lives in an atmosphere of reduced hope and hostility to needed change. As Mansfield puts it, Obamas air of ennui in the debate arises not just from his personal character of cool but more from his thoughts about the future. He sees America in decline. He does not say it, but he sees it, and it determines his politics as well as his demeanor.
In the vice presidential debate Thursday, we saw, up close and personal (too up close and personal), what we might charitably call the excitability of Joe Biden. If Obama is cool, Biden is hyper-caffeinated. But Obamas ennui and Bidens excitability are flip sides of the same liberal coin.
What gets Biden excited arent any particular plans for the future. Biden spent almost no time in his debate explaining how things would get better in a second term of an Obama-Biden administration. Democratic spinners tried to explain Bidens maniacal smiles and smirks as evidence hes a happy warrior. But the spirit of Biden is altogether different from the truly happy warrior of the -liberalism of another era, Hubert Humphrey. Humphrey bubbled over with enthusiasm for the future. Biden was agitated rather than enthusiastic, and his energy was entirely channeled into demagoguing a Romney-Ryan future. Nor was there any Bobby Kennedy in Biden. Kennedy used to claim, Some men see things as they are and say, Why? I dream things that never were and say, Why not? Joe Biden didnt do a lot of dreaming Thursday night. He spent most of the debate arguing excitably against change at home and explaining exasperatedly why we cant accomplish anything abroad.
The dreams of liberalisms fathers dont move todays liberals. Whether in manic or depressed mode, they know liberalisms been mugged by realitythough they dare not acknowledge it. Has Obamas 2009 Cairo speech been overtaken, to say the least, by facts on the ground in 2012 in Benghazi? Dont acknowledge the facts. Does all the talk about a green energy future seem empty and ridiculous? Keep talking the talkwhile also taking credit for increases in oil and gas production you did nothing to make possible and that you, deep down, find distasteful. Is there a need for real tax reform? Ignore it, and just let the Bush tax cuts expire. Do decades-old programs like Social Security and Medicare need to be changed? Just attack the reforms Romney and Ryan have proposed. Roe v. Wade? Sacred scripture.
To watch Obama and Biden on stage is to watch a liberalism that has lost its nerve, a liberalism that is the enervated and excitable residue of an earlier, energetic doctrine. Mansfield saw it coming over three decades ago: From having been the aggressive doctrine of vigorous, spirited men, liberalism has become hardly more than a trembling in the presence of illiberalism. . . . Who today is called a liberal for strength and confidence in defense of liberty?
But a decadent liberalism can do real and lasting damage. The United States can survivethe United States has survivedfour years of weakness and drift. Four more years would be another matter. Obamacare institutionalized, defeat in Afghanistan, the Middle East in chaos, a Supreme Court unmoored from the Constitutionthese would be the wages of four more years of Obama and Biden. The historic task of Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan is to bring home to Americans just how much damage could be done by another four years of a decadent liberalismand to make the case for a conservatism neither enervated by an acceptance of decline nor made excitable by a fear of change, a conservatism that shows strength and confidence in defense of liberty.
Articles that explain how modern liberals suffer from a mental disorder.
I recall my first and last Socialism class in college. I was too young to realize the purveyor of the repressive ideology deserved a severe beat-down for advancing Marxism in the United States. It was some really depressive crap, and “in all honesty”. we’re today negligent for not taking a more proactive stance against the ongoing abuse of free minds.
It’s a Catch 22. That whole PC thing about not beating up retards.
I was speaking figuratively of course.
Well, I was speaking figuratively about ‘retards’ too. Liberals not so much. Not now that I see how they’re destroying the country.
Ping for later. Thanks for the links.
JoMa
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.