Posted on 11/10/2002 10:55:10 AM PST by Davis
Under the pungent headline, Brain Dead Democrats, Charles Krauthammer offers his analysis of the recent election--last Tuesday, remember? He must be mainly right because he advances along a line similar to one set by me here in these Conning Towers. MMTU and Anne Couter's revenge.
The spectacle of the television talking heads and the Democratic operatives, Carville, McAuliffe, and Begala among them, discussing only the marketing of candidates, election tactics, without for a moment considering ideas, was revealing and amusing. Where did we go wrong, they cried, ostensibly seeking answers (and a paddle). But the one answer they could not hear was: you, the Left, that is, are intellectually and morally bankrupt. You have nothing to say, and the people are catching on.
Not a surprise, some of the indefatigable Left pointed to the Leftist legacy of Senator Paul Wellstone, olav hasholem. An honorable man, by all accounts, and celebrated for his concern for the little guys, miners, farmers, factory workers, the usual Leftist professed concern. But, as Chris Caldwell astutely noted Wellstone's constituency was the professoriat, academe, from which he sprang. The professors indeed share his views of America. They are notorious for thinking themselves God's gift to the cosmos. But for years--decades--the professoriat has promoted doctrines and policies which enrich professors and treated ordinary Americans--yes, us little guys--with overwhelming contempt.
It is their contempt for us ordinary Americans' sense of fair play which has committed them to a program of unequal treatment before the law. They parade proudly under the banner of affirmative action despite a referendum to the contrary. The people be damned, what do they know!
Similarly, time has exposed the Left's vision of personal freedom as seriously flawed. The Left's insistence that it be allowed to trash the values of ordinary Americans, to trash their notions of right behavior, of belief in God and allegiance to country without cost seems to have penetrated the noggins of the electorate.
More, sufficient numbers of the electorate have begun to doubt the fundamental Leftist premise that social and personal ills are best addressed through some governmental program. We have become skeptical of government's ability to make us prosperous through coerced contributions, to make us free by regulating our peaceful behavior, to make us kind and wise through patently false speech that requires us to not call a spade a spade.
We have learned, I think, that the Left's idea that criminal behavior, individual and national, has somehow been caused by us is absurd and destructive. To the contrary, we are not the cause of domestic crime nor is America the cause of misery in the world. And we have learned, too--actually, always knew--that the proper response to criminal behavior starts with a wallop upside the haid of the miscreant. .
If the Lefties come out of their coma, they may have something to say worth hearing, and they just might offer candidates worth voting for.
I find that omission significant in itself because it alludes the degree with which this value has been successfully denigrated by the Left; the author didn't think to, or didn't want to even mention the word.
It is the value that makes all the other values that the author lauds possible. We should mention it in glowing terms far more often than we do.
The value is capitalism.
Yeah, that situation with Elian made me angrier than I had been in a long time. I wrote congressmen and senators and I hadn't done that in years.
The idea of the Feds going into a private home at gunpoint where no crime had been committed, or even alleged to have been committed, stands in direct opposition to everything that this nation is supposed to be founded upon and stands for.
But you raise a point that hadn't occured to me before, How much of the recent election losses by the Demos is due to a belated reaction to this event and others like it. My anger hasn't lessened when I think of that event, and I have been more politically active since then. I'm probably not the only one.
That certainly appears to be Trentino's intention, as you can gather from reading Mene Mene Tekel Upharsin at http://www.atrentino.com/Mene.html
Yes, I see your point. I had seen the link earlier but was too lazy to read the article, this is a Sunday on a 3 day weekend after all. But he makes the case quite well, very clearly, only using the word 3 times, twice in reference to negative connotations from others.
I also found the J.K Galbraith link interesting. He, like Keyenes, are the Left's fraud economists who have built the foundation for the con now for decades. There was an interview article with Galbraith recently in People or something my wife had laying around the john and when I read it I couldn't believe that this old clown was still holding to the same dying ideas as they decayed around him. Some people will just never learn, ohh but the damage they do on the way down.
Thanks for the link, I shouldn't have skipped it.
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