“I want the people to know that they still have 2 out of 3 branches of the government working for them, and that ain’t bad.”
– Jack Nicholson as “President Dale” in Mars Attacks.
The far left has at least temporarily won the battle of ideas in the United States and taken over institutions by pretending to be “liberal.” Meanwhile, actual traditional liberalism, which ruled those institutions for many decades, has vanished. Suddenly, we are supposed to believe that “class warfare,” anti-capitalism, hatred of America, Stalinist-style treatment of opponents, the glorification of the extremist Occupy movement, a mass media all too devoted to propaganda, and a betrayal of Enlightenment values are normative liberal ideas!
During the 1930s, the Communist Party tried to take over liberalism but failed miserably. Today, however, the post-Communist left has succeeded in that effort to a remarkable extent, effectively wiping out the memory of what liberalism was actually like. For their part, many conservatives are quite willing to reinforce the left’s rewriting of history, suggesting that Barack Obama and the destruction of once-great institutions is a natural and inevitable outgrowth of people like Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, John F. Kennedy, and Lyndon Johnson.
Yet there is a sizable bloc of traditional liberals who have been repelled by the radical takeovers of institutions and the destruction of their own ideas. They have not yet found a voice but, if given proper treatment and leadership, they are about to far exceed the “Reagan Democrat” phenomenon.
According to a recent Gallup poll, 21 percent of those who considered themselves Democrats when Obama became president no longer do so. And if you add in those still calling themselves Democrats and who will vote loyally while being very disturbed with what’s happening, that number might total about half. These are people who never felt comfortable with the new radicalism, who have woken up in the last three years, or will do so very soon. That’s the constituency I want to speak to. And briefly here’s the message:
The Obama administration is a radical, not liberal, government. Its domestic policies will never get the country out of the current depression. Its foreign policy is a disaster. It is no longer 1911 or 1932 or 1945 or even 1961. The United States has dealt with the old bigotries to a remarkable extent. Environmental pollution has come under control. Conservatives have accepted these changes. Giant corporations are not controlling everything.
America doesn’t have seemingly unlimited funds to devote to achieving perfection and solving every social or environmental problem. The government may have been too small 80 years ago but now it is too big. Spending is too high and debt threatens the country’s future. Regulation is strangling business and impinging on personal liberty to a ridiculous extent. Stop demonizing conservatives. They are not a reincarnation of the Klu Klux Klan or mindless idiots.
Vote Obama and the leftists in Congress out of office. If the Democrats don’t provide you with good alternatives then vote Republican, if only to teach them a lesson and force the party back toward the center. Conservatives are far preferable to radical leftists, just as that was so during the Cold War. If a post-Obama Democratic Party moves back toward the center then you can return to it — and if not, then give up on it.
You shouldn’t have to be a conservative to be horrified by the contemporary situation. But while conservatives and Republican are going to lead the opposition to the status quo, they should seek to build a broad front rather than wage a campaign against historical liberals. This doesn’t mean they have to water down their program, but it should be presented in a way designed to broaden its appeal. The target should be the far left, and its camouflage as merely “liberal” should be exposed.
And if there is not going to be a bipartisan basis for cutting the size of government, reducing spending, rejecting the nanny state, undoing strangling regulation, and undertaking other such needed structural reforms, how will there ever be a working majority to get these things done?
A starting point is to remember what really happened in the course of U.S. history. Since the United States became urbanized and industrialized, there have been three broad positions in American politics: the left, liberalism, and conservatism.
Short answer to the question posed by the title of your post: no.
Or perhaps, more generously, not bloody likely.
This diseased group is in severe need of cauterizing.
Or would the left be able to hold on, using hatred and demonization to maintain control?
This is the central question.
And my short answer is – NO! – Or maybe.
Look at what is happening today. Even the most ignorant of the progressive supporters are starting to take notice as evidenced in the waning numbers for the alphabet soup nightly news and progressive stalwarts such as MSNBC and CNN. The death grip that the MSM has on what passes for ‘news’ is beginning to slacken. Certainly not fast enough for many of us – the chant is faster faster a la LeDeen.
My older sister – a lifetime ‘horse-blindered’ card carrying Union Member Democrat has begun the ‘awakening’ process. She has never voted for a Republican that I’m aware of other than a guy named Jack Metcalf – she was a student of his back in the day before he ran for congress (and won) – Metcalf was as left as any RINO today – but that’s Washington State politics! Anyway I’ve supplied her with article after article about the assault on our liberty and capitalism by the EPA – Holder & Co. etc etc ad nauseam. The ‘deferrals’ from Obama Care – support for ‘Arab Spring’ and the assault on Israel and other atrocities by these progressives assaulting our nation – culture and liberty. Articles about Obama’s defacto stop drilling notices in the Gulf – refusal to ok the latest pipeline that would certainly spawn job after job etc. She admitted to having made a ‘mistake’ by voting for Obama in 2008 and is on-board for whoever runs against him.
Its a start – but only that.
This is what it takes to begin to turn this nation around. One person at a time. Start by identifying the target – the most ignorant leftist in your life – and start chipping away the ignorance until you can get them to think for themselves. A thinking person that is honest with themselves will seldom turn to the left.
I appreciate the call for moderation, and tried to flesh out how that conception has been used by social psychologists here: http://clarespark.com/2010/11/06/moderate-men-falling-down/. Congratulations to Barry Rubin for his strong and frank statement.
I don’t see much hope for pushback in universities and many law schools. Extreme leftists have sucked all the air out of the room, and barring a cataclysmic economic collapse that uproots the tenure racket, they will continue inhaling for a long time. We’re simply past the tipping point in hiring committees.
The media provides an interesting contrast. Thanks to the internet, we now have a radically different media landscape, where competing ideas actually get to . . . Compete. Looking at the difference between the calcification of academia and the vigor of new media, I think it’s urgent to start paying more attention to what is happening in school, K-12 as well as higher education. We need ten David Horowitzes, because he’s fighting 10,000 tenured radicals. But I can’t be optimistic.
We’re simply past the tipping point in hiring committees.
Yep.
The radical left also had and continues to have a massive assist in promoting more radcial leftists into positions of power, influence, and policy making with Affirmative Action of protected groups who owe their success and good paying jobs to radical leftist policy. A self reinforcing feedback loop of assorted Anti Western European Christian radical left Identity Politics groups.
This is happening in all institutions, including private institutions, corporations.
The problem is not that radical left poses as liberal democrat, it is that crypto fascistic right tries to pass itself as traditional conservative. Horowitz is a perfect example of the latter. He exemplifies all the characteristics of a fascist: he has hatred against intellectuals, especially those with more social sensitivities. He hates muslims and to hide his animus, he intellectualizes that into something he call “islamism.” No one knows what that is except his comrades in Islamophobia, Pipes, Rubin, Spengler etc. He glorifies emotions and belittles rational discourse. This ex-Troskist neoconservative is a prototype of modern extreme right. He is dangerous to democracy as he destroys the civil rational discourse which is necessary for a consensual open society. B Rubin follows in his foot steps.
I take things like this more seriously if the writer has the backbone to sign his name. Don’t you agree?
Thanks, I needed a laugh.
LOL. Proving Rubin’s point eh?
Mr. Rubin does seem to have disdain for Arabs, Muslims and Egyptians. Saying that he sees such entities as anything but enemies is not persuasive. The only parliament Mr. Rubin would approve of in Egypt is one that apologized to Israel for everything and promised to do better in the future.
I cant see any connection between your comment about Arabs and Egypt and the concept being discussed.
Some people only come here to repeat certain memes time and time again in every opportunity, whether they are relevant to the topic or not, in the hope that constant repetition will make people believe they are true.
pnina, that is the method of your intellectually superior progressive elites. they follow the lead of joseph goebbels who said , you say it enough and you repeat the lie, repeat the lie, repeat the lie until eventually people believe it.
So let me get this straight: your position is that Mr. Ruben respects and admires Egyptians, Arabs and Muslims.
So what are you trying to say; that to criticize a political move one must respect and admire the people making it?
Well if you don’t create some distance between criticism and merely hating a people there would seem to be a question of credibility. Since Mr. Ruben clearly has a disdain for the subject of his criticism, his credibility is suspect.
This is a man who questions Egyptians obsessing on Israel and then obsesses on Egypt. One would think that the law of averages alone would result in Egyptians doing something right at least once in while and Jews doing something wrong. There seem to be no such scenarios in the man’s pen. “They” always being wrong and “we” always being right is just another word for militarization.
If we were living in the 30s and Barry Rubin was warning against the success of the Nazi party you would have said he has a disdain for the German people as such and should be seen as a racist. Of course, it was the exact opposite – it’s the Nazis and everyone who believed them who hated the Jewish people as such, and the Roma, and were racist. Those who warned against them did it out of concern about the outcome of such parties coming to power, not out of racism, and they were right to be concerned and warn, even if at the time they were called fear-mongers and war-mongers, and were marginalized and shunned.
Now we have Islamist parties winning the election in Egypt. These are radical parties who support a caliphate, which is an Islamic theocracy, are anti-American, anti-Israel, anti-Western and anti-Jewish. The Muslim Brotherhood was founded in the late 1920s as a reaction to the abolishment of the last caliphate by Kemal Ataturk a few years before. It was founded for the purpose of restoring the caliphate. This is its raison d’etre. Ataturk was influenced by Western ideas – he said the sun now rises in the west. Today’s Arab liberals are influenced by Western ideas like democracy, freedom of religion, free speech, gender equality etc. For those who want to restore things to how they were it’s clear that Western ideas and Western influence are the great threat to their vision and its realization. In addition the Muslim Brotherhood’s ties with the Nazis were not only a marriage of convenience that remains in the past with no bearing on the present – they’ve absorbed elements of Nazi propaganda into their worldview and ideology, which makes it a virulent mix of extremist interpretation of Islam with Nazi and neo-Nazi elements. And, as if that isn’t enough, during the Cold War the Soviets were disseminating their own propaganda and conspiracy theories in the region since they wanted them on their side against the Americans. The Middle East is brimming with conspiracy theories blaming the Zionists, the Jews, the Americans or Westerners for every ill and trouble, circulated in the mass media and by intellectuals, political leaders and clerics, and not limited to the fringe or to a minority. And the Muslim Brotherhood is now a dominant force. And in Egypt they and the Salafist gained a majority in parliaments. Yet people who are quite rationally very concerned about these phenomena that afflict the local culture, and about recent political developments, are portrayed as racist and Islamophobes, fear-mongers and war-mongers.
It’s not Rubin who is an anti-Arab racist. The truth is quite the opposite. Here’s, for instance, a “documentary” bit about Jews aired on Al-Rahma TV, an Egyptian Islamic TV channel (note the imam is also saying that this is what they hope will happen, but at the hands of the Muslims):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-fukddJfSs
And below is Yusouf al-Qaradawi, the spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, saying the same thing – Hitler was God-sent punishment for the Jews, and next time, inshaallah, will be at the hands of the believers – on al-Jazeera, the most poular Arabic TV channel, where his program has a viewership of tens of millions of people:
hxxp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HStliOnVl6Q
Note that we’re not talking about some fringe group or a minority – this cannot be equated with fringe groups and minorities elsewhere because this kind of genocidal propaganda, as well as conspiracy theories and other hate propaganda, are circulated in the mass media and therefore aren’t limited to a minority of extremists, and these movements now make the majority in Egyptian parliament. Yet people say the problem is not with such ideas gaining power, but with the people who point it out. It’s not those openly professing genocide against the Jews who are racist or problematic in any way, but it’s those who point it out who are the racits and Islamophobes!
bravo
Shall I assume that you similarly defend the attitudes shown by Israeli Jews towards Israeli Arabs in poll after poll after poll? Okay, Arabs are suspect as Israeli citizens because, well, they’re Arabs. Isn’t this the same suspicion Germany had towards Jews? Sometimes I find it difficult to perceive your overarching philosophy towards such issues since they seem to point like a weather vane until the approved, shall I say “chosen” people are in their proper “good” place and Arabs in their proper “bad” place. Saying that 85 million Egyptians have some philosophical connection to Hitler’s death camps is kinda crazy don’t you think?
Seeing as how Islam teaches that a golden age of justice will only come to Earth once it is rid of Jews to the point where the rocks themselves cry out, “Oh Muslim there is a Jew hiding behind me, come kill him”, I guess seeing Muslims as being an enemy is not so unreasonable.
All one billion Muslims believe that? I didn’t know that. That is naughty of them.
You said “Mr. Rubin does seem to have disdain for Arabs, Muslims and Egyptians. Saying that he sees such entities as anything but enemies is not persuasive.”
1. Either you don’t read Rubin’s work or you are trying to smear him or both.
2. I say that supporting, apologizing for, or turning a blind eye to the takeover of the mideast by religious extremists is the ultimate disdain of Arabs, Muslims, and Egyptians. This dogmatic view is willing to see millions of middle easterners (Arabs, non-Arabs, muslims, non-muslims, etc.) become slaves just to fit a foolish narrative.
The only parliament Mr. Rubin would approve of in Egypt is one that apologized to Israel for everything and promised to do better in the future.
Whoops. “The only parliament Mr. Rubin would approve of in Egypt is one that apologized to Israel for everything and promised to do better in the future” was your quote, not mine. (I forgot to add the quotation.)
Whoops. “The only parliament Mr. Rubin would approve of in Egypt is one that apologized to Israel for everything and promised to do better in the future” is your quote, not mine. (I forgot to add quotation marks.)
“He hates muslims and to hide his animus, he intellectualizes that into something he call “islamism.” No one knows what that is…”
Muslim – anyone who believes in the Muslim faith. This generally includes all schools and all interpretations and attitudes – radicals, moderates, reformists.
Islamism – a (currently strong) current within Islam that professes Islam also as a political ideology (which it has been throughout most of its history), aspiring for Islamic theocracy.
All Islamists are Muslims. Not all Muslims are Islamists.
People who oppose Islamism oppose its goal of Islamic theocracy, its extremism, many of its values that are opposed to democracy, freedom and human rights, and its expansionism (Islamists aspire for a caliphate system first in their own countries, and a global Islamic caliphate as the final goal. They don’t see that as imperialism. They really believe the word of Allah is the truth and the light and that it applies to all humanity. From their point of view it’s like bringing enlightenment to the ignorant barbarians. It’s not necessarily a selfish grab for power. Some Islamists are motivated by selfish lust for power just like there are selfish power-hungry politicians in other movement. Others might be really selfless – they want what they see as god’s law to be the law for all humanity because they really believe this is the truth, the light and universal justice, and don’t necessarily want any power or benefit from it for themselves).
Care to explain what “islamic theocracy” is? For the majority of muslim who follow sunni school islamic theocracy is an oxymoron, even to the salafist sauds. The caliphate you keep repeating was a figure head with very little authority. The Ottoman elite was largely secular and sultan saw himself as the ruler of not only muslims, but also christians (greek+slav+armenian and jews). Therefore, muslim “unity’ was an anathema until balkan wars when the empire started to loose its christian territories. Muslim solidarity, however, was not to be. Arabs joined the british in a revolt in the first war. Brits in turn set up monarchies to run every other oil well. Now, arab solidarity is a rare commodity as well. So, this business about caliphate and muslim unity are reinvented by some in the west to realign forces in the aftermath of 9/11. Some naively believed, (and some knew better but did not protest for self interest) that US can violently reorder middle east to its liking. This is not feasible.
Pnina – You have much too benevolent an opinion about Islam. It is not a religion, it is a totalitarian political ideology pretending to be a religion, and it is bent on world domination. Like the Nazis, anyone who is not a Muslim is subhuman, can be lied to, and can be killed with impunity. That’s you and me.
Mr. Rubin – I’m going to respectfully disagree with you as regards Theodore Roosevelet, Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt. They were not liberal in the original meaning of the word. The attempt to expand the space occupied by the government in the guise of helping the downtrodden is not liberalism, it is the opposite of liberalism. As Jonah Goldberg so aptly termed it, it is Liberal Fascism. Most attempts by government to assist people only serve to hurt them or some collateral group. Amity Shlaes in her book, The Forgotten Man, points out how the National Industrial Recovery Act hurt many groups, most importantly black businessmen. Blacks called the NRA (initials of the act), the Negro Runaround Act. Many of the ‘pro-labor’ acts and the minimum wage act passed by ‘liberals’ have only served to harm low-income workers (and particularly blacks).
Theodore Roosevelt’s assault on large corporations were akin to the current assault on Walmart – the large coroporations he assaulted were engines for low prices, but were accused of being monopolies (implying the prices should be lower) but all their competitors charged higher prices (like the Mom-and-pop shops do today with regard to Walmart). Splitting the corporation, e.g. Standard Oil, did not help the vast majority of people. It was a feel good thing with bad outcomes.
Woodrow Wilson got us into a war, the consequences of which we live with today. It was a war where we had no pony in that show and our presence only allowed the British and French to impose an execrable peace treaty on Germany that ultimatetly led to a far more ruinous war. Moreover, the kind of war economy Wilson ran was right out of Marx’s playbook. Wiilson was no liberal.
As for the Democrat Party in general, it has never been liberal. Recall which party was the party of the South and slavery? The Democrats were on the wrong side of the Civil War (and had the Democrat nominee, McLellan, won the election in 1864, there would be two or more countries here today). The Democrats were also on the wrong side of the civil rights struggle. Remember all the segregation laws passsed? They were passed in the South governed by Democrats. We live with the consequences of Democrat malfeasance today.
The only things liberals are liberal about is to spend other people’s liberally, and they only they are progressive about to expand the government’s reach progressively.
Elite gobbledygook for ‘I hate Rubin’.
Why can’t these people just say what’s on their mind?
> mstr wrote: no one knows what [Islamism] is…
You seem confused. You should read more.
Islamism is a global movement to establish a worldwide Caliphate that rules the entire body politic. This implies that the entire world must either be converted or dominated, with Sharia law imposed everywhere. This goal is to be achieved by any means necessary (incrementalism, political deceit and force, including terrorism when direct force is not possible).
Please try to pay a little closer attention to issues you care to debate.
There is no global movement to establish a world wide caliphate. You have to get out more.
The global group is called The Muslim Brotherhood and this is an extract from their Manifesto. Their poster boy janus is Tariq Ramadan, who used to peddle snake oil.
Original and translation:
http://www.investigativeproject.org/documents/case_docs/445.pdf
The quote below is from: An Explanatory Memorandum On the General Strategic Goal for the Group In North America, 5/22/1991, produced by the Muslim Brotherhood.
4- Understanding the role of the Muslim Brother in North America:
The process of settlement is a “Civilization-Jihadist Process” with all the word means. The Ikhwan must understand that their work in America is a kind of grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and “sabotaging” its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and God’s religion is made victorious over all other religions.
Without this level of understanding, we are not up to this challenge and have not prepared ourselves for Jihad yet. It is a Muslim’s destiny to perform Jihad and work wherever he is and wherever he lands until the final hour comes, and there is no escape from that destiny except for those who chose to slack. But, would the slackers and the Mujahedeen be equal?
Bow your head to a califate worse than death.
There are several extremist Muslim groups focused on worldwide jihad. The Muslim Brotherhood is probably the best organized of these, and has been getting a lot of attention since the overthrow of Mubarak in Egypt. They were outlawed under his rule, but now will rise to dominate the politics in that culture, IF the Egyptian military lets the ‘democratic’ part of the revolution succeed. Read their manifesto on infiltrating the West, posted by Huck Folder (thanks, Huck). If you read that and don’t think it’s subversive to freedom and secular society, you aren’t thinking right. It is the Muslim extremist equivalent of Mein Kampf.
I’m not saying all Muslims are united in this goal. I’m not saying it would be easy to unite them to the point where such a thing is possible. But you’re wrong to say there are no individuals working toward this goal, and no extremist Muslims who wish to subvert the political and social systems of the West and advance global jihad. In fact, you’re aping the position CAIR (Counsel for American Islamic Relations, itself a branch of the Muslim Brotherhood) wants you to say. They want every single suspicion of Muslim extremist behavior to be defined as Islamophobia. Wake up!
I’ve said for a long time that America’s political problem is the hijacking of the Democratic party by it’s left wing. Where are it’s serious people who can resist statist cronyism at home and rational support of freedom abroad? Very sad.
Serious people in the Democrat Party left long ago. The only ones remaining are office-seekers, rent-seekers, useful idiots, and communist apparatchiks.
Its, not it’s
Some readers seek concrete terms, rather than abstract ones. It would be helpful if you would define what you mean by conservatives. Is it social, as in anti-abortion and anti-homosexual marriage? Or is it the TEA movement, which has the objective of reducing the size of central government? Or is it economists like Thomas Sowell and Frederick Hayek? Also, what do you mean by liberal? Does it mean that the legislation and amendments passed in the first 29 years of the 20th Century was a reflection of liberal policies?
Generally speaking, today’s liberals see the world through a race-based credo and faith that minorities and the Third World would be exactly equal to the European West were it not for Euro-racism, colonialism, exploitation, oppression and imperialism. The Democratic Party is an excuse factory of coulda, woulda, shoulda.
Conservatives take things at face value and simply say Haiti and Mexico simply are and deny the idea that Haitians are unlucky rocket scientists who’ve never been given a fair shake by racists and fate.
This is why the Democratic Party is no closer today than 50 years ago to solving the problems of black Americans; it is because liberals see the solutions as outside the group (namely curing white racism) and Conservatives as inside the group by virtue of depraved values that place race before all else.
If the Dept. of Education started placing the emphasis on dealing with the value system of young black Americans rather than simply throwing money at the situation, I believe the problem would start to be solved. At least I don’t have a half century of failure working against the idea.
With all dues respect, the radicals have already taken over the Democrat party—or hadn’t you noticed?
I think he noticed. What he wants is for the real liberals to struggle to take back the party which used to be a liberal party, not the socialist party. The socialist party in the US had some moderate success in the past, but it ultimately failed to attarct enough following to gain real political power. The new leftist strategy was to call themselves librals, infiltrate the Democrat party and take over. The real liberals were disinherited of their own party. They were marginalized in the academia and media too. That’s why they end up writing on conservative websites… But too many liberals haven’t noticed yet that the radicals have taken over.
The radical Left will be just as successful at hijacking the American Democratic Party in 2012 as the radical Left was in hijacking the Israel Labor Party in 1977.
This is because they will drive out any moderates by whatever means necessary, and the few moderates that remain will toe the party line. Just look at how Shimon Peres and Yitzchak Rabin managed to find a way to remain loyal Labor Party members even though the new Amos Oz Labor Party was in opposition to everything they believed in.
The concept of liberalism was co-opted by leftists. Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. put it this way:
I translate this as: “We need to abandon liberalism in order to save it.” And thus they abandoned liberalism with abandon.
The easiest answer to this issues is one I’ve said before. That is to promote the Libertarian party as an alternative to the Democrat party. Libertarians are classic liberals. They share the same fiscal conservative and small government principles of The Republicans, and the social liberal principles of the actual liberal wing of the Democrat party. I don’t think there is any saving the Democrat party. Its become too infected with socialists, and I doubt that will change. The Libertarian party is already there and holds all the principles that should be important to all Americans.
In this country, conservatives are classical liberals. What is to be conserved is the ethos of the American Revolution.
In my experience, it is the “social conservatives” split from the other Progressives decades past–these who want to use government power to remake society to the lines they approve of–these are no conservatives at all.
Jacob, appreciate your principled stance.
But as a practical matter in a real and sometimes ugly world, we have to fight the fight where it’s at. And today, and for the forseable future, and whether we like it or not, America is a two-party nation. And it’s been quite a long time since any third party has implemented any executive orders, passed any bills, enacted any legislation or appointed any judges or justices.
In short, any third party efforts today will only split the vote, giving Obama the win. And in this cross-roads election… America as we know it today will not survive another four years of Obama. And the effects will quite likely be irreversible, especially with Obamacare.
The solution is really simple, and is already happening with an influx of Tea Partiers… a deliberate, and if necessary, a hostile takeover of the GOP from within.
Pass the word, November, 2012.
I think you misunderstand my idea. It isn’t that there should be three parties. I think it is possible to raise up the Libertarian party by siphoning away its social liberal base. A perfect example is Ron Paul. He is pulling in alot of socially liberal independants and democrats, because they are starting to realize that their party has been usurped by socialists. Most people in this country outside of the media, beltway, and academia tend to be more fiscally conservative. I believe that most of those people have voted Democrat purely on socias issues (or almost purely) Many of them are looking for an alternative to the Democrat party, Ron Paul has been capitalizing on this phenomenon to great effect.
The problem is that even if he succeeds, the Democrats will not move back towards fiscally sane policy. The Democrats need to go the way of the Whigs, and I think it is entirely possible to do it. I’n not saying this election cylce, but with a concerted effort to move social liberals away from the Democrat party to the Libertarian party, it is conceiveable to undermine the Demcrat party’s support. I would be a much better country if the two partys could at least agree on fiscal policy. I’m perfectly willing to argue social policy until the cows come home if the fiscal house is in order.
“For their part, many conservatives are quite willing to reinforce the left’s rewriting of history, suggesting that Barack Obama and the destruction of once-great institutions is a natural and inevitable outgrowth of people like Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, John F. Kennedy, and Lyndon Johnson.”
It would be good of the author to demonstrate where there is any daylight between what birthed the goals of these men which made them “liberal” and what is “radical”. I don’t think there is any.
I cannot be optimistic that there is any hope for purging the Democrat party of their radicalism. I have no Democrat friends or acquaintances who give a rip about the radical posture of their party. They simply deny that the apparent radicalism even exists. For them to be a liberal, and by extension a Democrat, trumps everything. They support their religious fervor for liberalism by making sure that they get all of their information from “clean” sources such as Brian Williams, NPR, MSNBC, and the like. They are simply too comfortable (and that is the operative word) to even consider abandoning the party and it’s advocacy of a compassionate government, tenure, unionism, universal medical care, and the heady emotional feeling that to be a liberal is to be a “thinking and caring person”. They don’t see America being marched over a cliff. What cliff? That’s silly conservative stuff, this talk of a cliff. In the meantime, the status quo leadership types in both parties are becoming filthy rich. So who are they to resist and reform? It’s a long way back. Only when the popular media becomes honest and informs with facts, and is no longer a propaganda machine, do we have any hope that radicalism can be defeated. There is where both the challenge and hope exits. But to indicate where we are now I would ask “has anybody heard about Operation Fast and Furious lately”. You know, the scandal that was going to bring down the Justice Department if not the administration. The whole thing has disappeared into the black hole along with Solyndra and a dozen others. Or just simply the economic peril we are now in. Does Brian ever mention that? Nope. That might reflect too badly on the radical Obama regime. First we must purge the MSM of their radicalism and then we have a chance to purge the Democrats of the same.
Excellent column today, Mr. Rubin.
Nice idea, but you’re about 40 years too late on this one.
Good article. The Obama phenomenon has been largely about Bush’s missteps rather than the long march of a bunch of below-the-radar leftists sneaking their way into every nook and cranny of American life. The mid-terms still say loud and clear that a sizable part of the electorate wants an end to it. As for the Democratic Party: it missed its chance to demonstrate principled opposition to the far left’s political Body Snatchers. Traditional liberalism in the dem party is dead.
I don’t buy the premise that there is a golden mean between limited and unlimited government that can be labelled “liberal,” and so understood as the actual heir to the founder’s construction of the United States and its Constitution. This was the belief of my parent’s generation, who were at pains to justify the largesse received since the administration of FDR, while simultaneously opposing communism during the cold war. A little socialism, it seems, is ok with many people, so long as they are the beneficiaries. But few will admit that is what they are advocating.
All the arguments detailing the nuances differing socialism from communism from big government liberalism are obfuscation of the truth that they all subordinate the rights of the individual to the demands of those in charge of the government apparatus, in contradistinction to the liberal founding principle that the rights of the individual are paramount.
Brett,
Yours was by far the best reply to what was a distorted and misleading article. To make the claim, as Rubin does, that there are fundamental differences between the so called “real” liberalism of FDR’s New Deal and the current Obama administration programs is a fantasy. Your reply certainly refutes that notion.
Mel
“A little socialism, it seems, is ok with many people….”.
That’s a very good point. A liberal relative of mine once said “what’s wrong with a little socialism?”. The answer is that, of course, there is no such thing as “a little socialism” anymore than just “a little cancer”. Neither remain little for very long and each have the same consequential result for the host.
I was reading the Canadian Liberals Isaiah Berlin Lecture of 2009: Liberal values in Tough Times just recently. In Canada, Liberals are taking steps to revive the party with a wider base as Dr. Rubin is suggesting the Republicans start doing south of us and drop the historical baggage – that won’t win voters with better ideas.
“A liberal Canada is very different from a liberal America, even under a Democratic administration. American liberals are still fighting for rights—public health care, a woman’s right to choose and a person’s right to marry the person of their choice —that are settled questions for most Canadians. Affirmative action programs created in the 1960’s by American liberal administrations are now under court challenge. In Canada, affirmative action is explicitly mandated in our charter of rights and freedoms.”
Canadian Liberals and Conservatives are somewhat closely linked by the charter, but both parties have limited neo-libs and cons on the back benches. We also have Red Tories and Blue Liberals; particularly in B.C..
Today there is a new challenge to the liberal idea of limited government. In order to avert systemic economic collapse, governments everywhere have intervened in markets, taking over banks, car manufacturers and insurance companies.
All governments are now recognizing the potential moral hazard of these interventions. Bailouts create the expectation among risk takers that they can return to risk-taking with impunity, because they will be rescued once again. When governments step in, ordinary citizens wonder why their taxes are being spent to rescue a foolish few from their mistakes.
The fact is that the mistakes of a few were threatening the livelihoods of the many. Governments stepped in to save the jobs of auto workers, to keep credit flowing for small businesses, and to preserve the pensions and investments of small investors.
Protecting the public interest in this way is what government is for. But these new demands for intervention leave the role of government in a free society anything but clear.
Socialists decry bank rescues as state bailouts of failed capitalist elites while conservatives decry intervention as creeping state socialism. Other conservatives, like the ones in power in Canada, have been forced to carry out liberal stimulus programs their own ideology previously rejected, only proving that it is tough to do something well when you don’t believe in doing it at all.
Liberals might be expected to welcome the interventionist turn. The problem is that we don’t actually believe in big but in good government. It is not obvious that we get good government when government is asked to do everything.
Market de-regulation may have led the global economy to the edge of disaster, but heavy-handed government intervention may only slow economic recovery. Further government bailouts may push the deficit up to unsustainable levels. Further government borrowing may push up the cost of credit and reignite inflation.
Liberals accept the necessity of deficit spending to get the economy going again. But we want the scarce resources of government to be invested strategically on public education, science and technology and the infrastructure, especially green energy, that creates long term growth.
In the short-term, governments may have to own banks, insurance companies and car manufacturers, but in the medium term, they should return these businesses to the private sector as soon as they have recouped the public investments necessary to keep them from going under.
Governments will need to regulate markets but will have to find a way to do so without stifling market innovation. Governments can require markets to be transparent to both buyers and sellers and they should set capital and collateral requirements for lending, backed by tough sanctions.
If the global economic crisis presents challenges for every liberal government, not every government handles them the same way.
The Canadian idea of limited government is also different from the American. Our domestic market—a weakly populated band of settlement a hundred kilometers deep and five thousand kilometers long– was too small and diffuse to mature without the fostering hand of government. With the most powerful nation on earth on our doorstep, Canadian governments had to master the complex balancing act of protecting a domestic market, maintaining our sovereignty and keeping our American border open to trade, ideas and peoples.”
Full Lecture can be found here:
Isaiah Berlin Lecture: Liberal Values in Tough Times
on your browser.
That Isaiah Berlin lecture is filled with logical fallacies.
First – he makes the false assertion that some points-of-view are not such but are basic human rights, eg, he declares that public health care, abortion (woman’s right to choose) and same-sex marriages are ‘human rights’. No they are not; they are points-of-view and subject to the social will.
And ‘affirmative action’ is not, in itself, good, but also, a point-of-view with many criticisms of its results.
The problem with the Liberal Party in Canada is that it long ago moved out of being a political party, i.e., promoting specific policies and programs – and moved into being a power-broker, i.e., desiring political power for the economic benefits to its powerful.
Berlin also ignores that the American focus on individualism and self-governing meant that the most important and numerous technological innovations have been found, in the majority, within the US – and other nations such as Canada have simply copied the results of all this input of hard research and investment money.
thanks barry, i am a liberal and i have been screaming for years that these people are NOT liberal in any sense of the word but no one listens. that is why, as a registered independent, i now vote republican
I am curious what is considered a moderate democrat or liberal. People on this site, and possible the author, think that Mitt Romney is too liberal. If a moderate Republican is too liberal, than everything left of him is too liberal by extension. People here tend to be so far on the right, that I think there is a skewed perception of what constitutes a moderate anything. I do see a push by some democrats to purge more conservative members out of the party, like Ben Nelson, but that is just chat on blogs, and there has been no movement within the actual Democratic Party to do so.
As to one of the Authors final questions.
“If Obama is defeated in November 2012 and the Republicans take Congress in a landslide, would that be enough to shatter the far left’s cultural-educational hegemony and liberate the Democratic Party from its grip?”
Did McCain getting stomped, and a landslide win for Democrats in 2008 purge the far right from the republican party? No, they came back in a fierce way, so it is a stupid question, just look to recent history.
The most rightist philosophy on earth today is Islam, and so it is natural that leftists support it, since extremes meet. Leftists are trying to take over the Democratic Party, and rightists are trying to take over the Republican Party. Both extremes are linked by blind faith, which is the cause of most of the violence that has taken place throughout human history. Hitler too had blind faith–in the need to eradicate Jewish genes from the face of the earth. Faith needn’t be religious.
by rightist do you mean totalitarianism / fascism? because that is what islam is.
I would love to see traditional Liberals rise up and throw off the yoke of these 18th century Marxian Socialists. The problem is that they do not know history or what is at stake. The traditional Liberal may well be as extinct as the Shaker.
“Anti-capitalism” should read “anti-free enterprise”
“Capitalism” is to free enterprise as “pharmaceuticalism” is to medicine. Don’t use Marx’s lexicon of gibberish to defend the principles of economic freedom.
no the democrat party cannot be saved.
…and the republican party may not be saved either. I see NO indication they are not on the same path.
“And if there is not going to be a bipartisan basis for cutting the size of government, reducing spending, rejecting the nanny state, undoing strangling regulation, and undertaking other such needed structural reforms, how will there ever be a working majority to get these things done?”
I think that we are turning more into a parliamentary form of government. Seems like nothing drastic will happen unless one party controls all of Congress and the White House. Like it or not, but when Pelosi and Reid controlled Congress, things got done. Of course they were horrible things, such as Obamacare, but it got done. And with a Democrat in the White House to sign every piece of Democratic legislation that came in, you were guaranteed that the left’s agenda would get passed.
So no major reforms will get passed in Washington unless the Republican conservatives control all of Congress and the White House too. The days of “bipartisanship” are long dead and I even doubt that someone like Gingrich could now reproduce the successes he achieved in the 1990s. No, as in a parliamentary form of government, the ruling party will call all the shots and pass all the laws while the minority party just watches and hopes for the best. So if you want some real change in Washington, it’s not going to happen unless the conservatives run the whole show. And after four years of Obama, I think the country is ready for some conservative reform.
I agree with Jacob, and I wonder if a third party candidacy by Paul will actually subtract votes from the Dems
Shout it from the roof tops, Prof. Rubin but I doubt it will do any good. Senator Lieberman complained about the leftists taking over the Democratic Party but he, not they, were forced out (remember he is an independent now).
Worse, if anyone comes out and states plainly that the new Democratic Party is pro-communist he can expect to be labeled a crank or McCarthyist. And give credit to Sean Hannity and others who use the term liberal and progressive interchangeably, thereby helping re-enforce a false narrative.
Unfortunately, the real villains are the public. I don’t recall any mass demonstrations demanding that Obama should be impeached for trying to replace a pro-American democratic government in Honduras with a communist dictator. For that alone he should have been thrown out of office. But everyone seems to want to pretend it never happened.
Every point made in this article is spot on, save one, I believe.
1)There are no liberals any longer politically, the radical leftists ate them.
2)The small communists hide behind the cloak of “progressive” or “liberal” or “elite”…and the non-leftists blissfully and ignorantly adopt the very language designed to deceive them.
3)Obama and Carl Davidson and the Midwest Academy and the New Party and Ayers and Jeremiah Wright and the Socialist Scholars conventioneers and Cloward/Piven and Soros, and ACORN/SEIU know EXACTLY what they are doing. However, when someone tries to connect these dots…the reflexive counter-attack is to scream “MCCARTHY!!!!!” from the top of their lungs…and the non-leftists cower in a corner and tremble.
4)The small c communists took over ALL the means of fact gathering and investigative inquiry in order to self-govern this land of ours nearly a half century ago. That coup was complete and drew a complete curtain over the information stream, such that…we were fed a steady stream of distortions and
eventually, outright lies. Photoshopped pictures, staged photos, forged documents, distorted and slanted stories dominated our “news”…which was no such thing.
5)Talk radio, the Internet and to an extent Fox News slowed down the onslaught of daily distortions, lies, propaganda. It caught some of the photoshopping, it disclosed some of the attempts to forge and fake documents, it revealed an occasional staged photoshoot. (Green helmet guy, Rathergate, McCain’s cover picture on a magazine). But, what we uncover is a grain of sand in an ocean of lies.
6)Liberals in the classic sense have been browbeaten into submission. There is nowhere for them to take a stand. Joe Lieberman was savaged, nearly all the Blue Dogs have been put down. The small c communists have seized the DOJ, the auto industry, unions, much of black America, the healthcare industry, banking and finance, real estate and mortgage, energy, the White House and the Senate. Right now, opposing them is an upstream swim.
7)With the vast empire of media, Hollywood, academia firmly in their pockets and dedicated to telling more blatant falsehoods, poisoning the information stream and polluting our “news”…it will be nearly impossible to get the truth to any remaining stalwarts who are objective enough to question their own “side”. Old habits die hard. The resistance to believing that your side is corrupt, evil, despicable and untrustworthy is too powerful for most. The peer pressure, blacklisting and shunning that would take place is an effective deterrent to change.
8)There simply is no reason to believe that the conspiracy to mislead the American public will not continue to enjoy its current run and that the Inversion Narrative will not continue to dominate the political landscape. Those small c communists who have brilliantly infused our collective mindset, who have framed the discussions, who have us parroting THEIR words and phrases (“mainstream” media, “elite”, “progressive”, “anti-war”) when they are NONE of those things, want not to transform this country, but a revolution that overthrows it and replaces it with radical leftist extremism…will not cease operations merely by our pointing at them and saying “peek a boo, we see you”.
9)Obama has a hard base camp and an attitude that he does not give a damn about our silly little rules, our silly little checks and balances and our silly little Constitution. We continue on, half blind, in half measures, half-heartedly …wondering aloud if the small c communists and their Fabian in the White House are “merely incompetent”, not intentional or conspiratorial. It’s much easier to suggest the latter…it induces less screaming of MCCARTHY!!!!! or TINFOIL HAT!!!!!
Pass massive legislation against the will of the people in reconciliation? Check.
Allow racist threats of murder at the polling booths? Check.
Place the unions/Workers Party at the head of the line in a manufacturing seizure? Check.
Push the global warming hoax to steal American wealth? Check.
Appoint czars and czarinas to circumvent our legislative checks and balances? Check.
Shut off the security card system to prevent foreign influence in our elections? Check.
Shut down energy production and instead throw our weight behind a Soros/Brazil production company? Check.
Force banks to make loans that will collapse the system, back them at Fannie and Freddie to ensure they are not stopped and then blame WALL STREET for the INTENDED result? Check.
What possible chance does anyone have of convincing the few remaining objective liberals that their side is corrupt and despicable?
Almost none.
And therein lies the whole of the problem. Propaganda is effective and we should never, ever forget what it has done to this land of ours. Or…those who engaged in it and still do to this day.
You are outlining two issues.
First is the effectiveness of political corruption, which is in essence all about power and greed.
Second is the effectiveness of propaganda.
Both have been a feature of human life since…forever. And both have been fought against by we same humans..forever.
With regard to them both, we have only to remember the very effective propaganda of the Soviet Union, of the Third Reich, of Japan, of N. Korea, of Islamism. They all begin at the periphery with some utopian ideology of purity and perfection and rapidly, as the incumbents gain power, implode into corruption, propaganda – and mass murdering of citizens and others.
Yet we humans do emerge from these trials; we do have the capacity for reason, for logic, for an awareness that utopian purity only exists in fictional tales and must never, never, never, be attempted on this earth.
Therefore, I am less despondent than you are. What we have now, is a corrupt and yes, evil, administration under a pathological narcissist, Obama. We, the people, are becoming more and more aware of this – and are, as we were not doing three years ago – making our awareness public.
Therefore, the task is to continue to speak out about this corruption and its agenda of depriving Americans of their constitutional infrastructure – and reject it.
Most certainly, the Obama Gang will not ‘play fair’; we’ve seen how Obama essentially has ignored the 2010 election by his governing by executive fiat and his denigration of Congress. And he’ll try to rig the presidential election as well – I’m not sure how, but he’ll try to inject some crisis this coming year that frightens people into staying with him. So- we must talk about this; don’t let him take us by surprise.
We must define Obama – describe him as he is: living in a fictional world, misinforming and manipulating us, lying about hard data. Rejecting Congress; rejecting our Constitution; spending all his time campaigning. Governing by Executive Fiat. Inciting racial, class, ethnic and political divisions.
Speak out; define him.
And define America as: individualist, entrepreneurship, innovation, small govt, low taxes…
ETAB, it is not merely the tactic, it’s the depth and breadth of the depravity to conceal it’s origins and to pit us against each other, divide us by race, class, gender, ethnicity, age, that is so depressing.
Race will be thrown like monkeys throwing feces by the small c communists.
In order to tear down capitalism, they will tear apart the country. (and the ego-maniacal buffoons on OUR side who constantly harp on “the bankers” and “wall street” and “vulture capitalists” simply throw out a few turds of their own because, heaven knows…”Johnny started it” isn’t puerile enough.
In the most important election of my lifetime, the Republicans stand in our stead to stare down the revolutionary liars, deceivers, distortionists and their fifty year head start on propaganda and deceit…and they send out the stumbling, bumbling, “B” team.
Of course I’m despondent. I can’t think of one key issue in which somebody in this stooge crew didn’t take a position to the LEFT of Obama. Think about it ETAB. Every single major issue and one or more of these clowns attacked each other from the LEFT of Obama.
How in the hell are we supposed to turn back the revolution when we send in a squad of second stringers who take the ball and move it toward the wrong goal post? The small c communists will stop at nothing. “By any means necessary” is their rallying cry. They will lie, cheat, steal, distort, stir false racial tensions, institute class warfare, trample the Constitution, ignore any rule, falsify legislation.
And our best and brightest are on the bench.
Can the Democratic Party be saved from radical takeover? No longer the question. Can we all be saved is the question. We should not underestimate those who mean to destroy us from within, ETAB.
I only disagree with you on one point; we have fielded the Republican A team. I’ve had the disappointment of having been a part of a couple of Republican administrations; sorry, they all are bush league on their good days. The ONLY, ABSOLUTELY THE ONLY one still on the bench that actually would have some hope for being able to do something would be Gov. Christie, but he wouldn’t be able to get the nomination because the “true conservatives” would slaughter him in the primary. And unlike almost all of her sycophants, I actually worked with Sarah Palin and have have no illusions about what she knows about policy or running a government; the reason she couldn’t answer Couric’s question was the only thing she’d read since college was the “People” at the dentist’s office. That one just has an amazing ability to fall in the sh*thouse and come out smelling like a rose. Frankly, nobody from the legislative branch is worth a damn as an executive; that’s where all that collegiality and “get along, go along” is inculcated. The skills that make you an effective legislative leader make you a lousy executive. I went out of my way to involve legislators and former legislator appointees in my contract negotiations and such so they could get some idea of what the switches and levers of the Executive Branch did; most are clueless. The greatest liability the Republican Party has with our elected officials is they have to be shown to their office and briefed on their agency’s mission by a Democrat. The greatest liability we have with our candidates is we insist on that “hail fellow, well met” that came up through the Rotary, the Chamber, the Trade Association and everybody likes him/her and s/he just has to be liked. The Democrats cultivate and elect really skillful a**holes, and our “nice people” can’t even believe what their eyes and ears tell them.
As I’ve watched the last two decades play out as the communists in the Democrat Party and in organized labor became more and more aggressive, even brazen, I kept thinking of Union troops in the Civil War; no finer men were ever led by worse men. Except maybe today’s Republicans and conservatives.
There has not been a Democratic Party in anything but name outside The South since ’72 – ’74. The Southern state parties sorta, kinda hung on to the Party of FDR for awhile until they threw in the towel and became Republicans by the late ’80s, early ’90s. The Clinton – Gore period at the DLC was a watershed, a later version of getting “clean for Gene,” but with leftists already in positions of real power. Make no mistake Bill and Hill were and are just as radical and just as communist as Comrade Obama and his cohorts, but they overplayed their hand and provoked a counter-revolution in ’94. Their accomodation to that counter-revolution is the primary reason HRC isn’t President today. But what Clinton and the Democrat leaders that came after him did so very skillfully was take advantage of the ruling Republicans’ profligacy and use it to bankroll their front groups. Republicans may have won the battle of outsourcing government services, but Democrats won the war by setting up the non-profits and service providers with which governments contract. Clinton used federal grants and contracts to set up federally funded sinecures for leftist activists in every state and local government. The massive transportation and infrastructure spending under the Republicans went straight to Democrat controlled union contractors and Democrat ally unions. All the education and training money to state departments of education and labor was just a money laundry to put tax funds in the hands of Democrat front groups and unions. Obama’s “stimulus” was nothing more than a naked grab of federal dollars to provide “walking around money” to unions and Democrat fronts. And if you say any of this out loud, you’re a paranoid reactionary, a McCarthyite, or both, or worse.
I think we need to address culture, not elections. Groseclose’s book “Left Turn” is an excellent scientific treatise on bias in the media and Shapiro’s “Primetime Propaganda” is an anecdotal account of bias in Hollywood. Multiple authors have written about bias in education. It is on these fronts that the battle of ideas must take place. I write editorial staff at my local newspaper whenever I see liberal bias, and this has actually made a difference over time. They have acknowledged it when I am right and they have run follow up stories to balance the coverage. I’ve written movie reviews at Netflix pointing out liberal bias (e.g., “The Conspirator”) and notice that several others do the same. One can do the same with television programming. In doing this, it is important to be fact-based and to focus on the bias,not one’s own ideology. And then to education – keep track of what is being taught in schools and be careful where you send your donations and college-age students. Such grassroots efforts can make a difference because conservatives are a very large part of the population.
Writing in the latest issue of Democratic Left, new D.S.A. national director Maria Svartre-affirmed her organization’s commitment to the Occupy movement.
http://www.dsausa.org/dl/Winter_2012.pdf
Trashing Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt may not be great election strategies (its something Libertarians like to do but they don’t make a very big habit of actually getting elected) but trying to be Democratic party lite is a loser. We do have deficits and can’t buy off the populace with government money the way it was done in the past.
How about a real effort to educate Americans about the New Left its origins and yes, racism. Much of the New Left was an effort to take Communism back from the slavs and restore it to the glorious Central Europeans who were the glorious true proletariat. The great book Main Currents of Marxism by LESZEK KOLAKOWSKI should give the right all the ammunition it needs to face up to Progressives. It also shows the extreme racial views that underlie Communism as well as fascism and the common intellectual origins of each. Education and effort will accomplish a lot more than trying to out Chuck Shumer, Chuck Shumer.
Aren’t you forgetting the public doesn’t care if someone is a communist who will work to take away their freedoms, what matters is whether the person is sexy. Do you think Obama would have been elected if he were fat? Morons voted him into office and the only to prevent a communist takeover (again) is to find someone to appeal to the moron vote.
True there is always the moron vote but the paradoxical thing is you need to create enough of a following to tug the morons along. Have you seen a Democratic club event in NYC? It is really hard work trying to herd morons! It only works if you have really large numbers of them and throw enough food and soda at them to keep their attention and wanting more.
You can’t build with morons. You can only hold onto the power you have and even then you need to register dead people.
We are not at the point where we can use the moron vote to our advantage. We need to make inroads with people who have minds. Only people who have minds can change them.
In the future I hope we have the moron vote. After all could Spongebob have a better friend than Patrick?
Answer to original question: No and who gives a flip. The essential and most salient question is: What are we going to do about it?
We all know Dear Leader will be re-elected and will continue to aggrandize power to the executive branch and then after four more years the take over will be complete.
Because half of the people living in the US will support him so what will we-you-do about it?
To 29. blotto “what will we-you-do about it?”
what about starting to write a new list of grievances ?
You are what you believe. The Bagavad Gita.
Why shouldn’t we disdain cultures and their religions when they are want to destroy our freedom to live our values? Why should we tolerate any totalitarian faith be it a religion or and ideology when it acts on those beliefs?
I personally don’t care what happens to Islam. Remember the near East was the center of Western Civilization before Islam. Now it is a desert, and Islam is the cause of that, being brittle and exploitative.
Do I hate Islam? No, hatred implies fear or envy. Hampered by its mores, it will soon be crushed under its own population. The only thing better for the West than one billion angry Muslims is two or three billion angry Muslims. Those numbers exist only because the rest of the world feeds them.
Americans who wish to maintain (or regain) a free Republic, whether they are Conservatives, Republicans, or confused traditional Democrats, do not have a concise and usable message that can be implemented to create a mass movement away from Socialism. Concerned, traditional Americans do not possess the benefit of being able to utilize deceit proficiently to compete with the Socialists. We discuss issues with each other, but the people who unwittingly support Socialism, the moderates, never hear us, since they have little interest in abstract issues beyond their personal economic survival. The notion of eventually getting a sufficient number of these unconcerned voters informed to the point of voting intelligently is not practical–they will never be interested enough to be informed.
If we are to win this battle for our freedom, we must approach it in the reality of which it exists. Clearly, the weakness of the American system is the democratic vote. Since we can’t change that, and shouldn’t want to, we must reach the realization that we need to win the majority vote in elections, which we are not effectively doing. And, since it is also clear that a very large number of voters have no idea of what they are doing on election day, we should focus on getting votes, with or without the ideals attached.
Why are we so insistent on a perfect and highly virtuous candidate when the opposition succeeds by being the opposite? If our high ideals aren’t selling to the requisite buyers, why do we keep trying? Why are we so mathematically challenged to not be able to calculate that we have our vote, and need the ones we don’t have–the ones who don’t care about quality in a candidate?
The need to create a mass movement away from Socialism is absolute, but it is not the same as the need to win elections. When we eventually are able to win the idealogical war with Socialism, we will still not have an avid majority of Americans who actually care. But, we must have a majority of voters who vote with us, or else we will all be Socialists soon.
I like Mitt, Newt, Ron, and Rick. Let’s have one of them win.
No the dems can’t be saved. If they could have nancy Pelosi would not be in the position she is in. Unless there is an overwhelming landslide like regan v mondale, the dems will contest every vote until they win just like they did when al franken became senator
The takeover of education by the “Progressives” will also fail as ideas like the Khan Academy and MIT’s free on line courses grow and prosper. Productive companies and people who want to live productive, independant lives will look here for education and educated vs credentialed personel.
While it is true that the brick and mortar schools have a huge political constituency and large endowments, the way to fight them is not to engage them directly, but rather shift the paradigm so their seeming advantages no longer count. If a Harvard grad cannot pass the standard test the company HR office gives to all applicants, then the Harvard degree is wasted time and money. Do this often enough and the enrollment dries up, while the prestiege of having such a credential as a Harvard degree becomes a liability.
This won’t take place overnight (look at how the Legacy Media is still hanging in there), and indeed they have the resources to continue for decades, but they will stumble along as zombie entities, living on past glories and luring the most credulous people into continuing to support their much smaller footprints…
Barry Rubin writes:
“Conservatives are far preferable to radical leftists, just as that was so during the Cold War. If a post-Obama Democratic Party moves back toward the center then you can return to it — and if not, then give up on it.”
I say that the Democ-rat Party is institutionally immune to moving back to the center. As soon as Clinton left office the lefties took over beginning with Howard Dean and culminating in the Obama nomination against the will of the Party’s working class voters. Today’s Democ-rat Party is the plaything of its elitist “new class” wing of overeducated pseudo-intellectuals–scum whose education is beyond their intelligence.
Bill and Hill are just as radical as Comrade Obama, they’re just more from the “Clean for Gene” tradition of leftist radical politics. Hill didn’t write her Master’s Thesis on Saul Alinsky for no reason. They overplayed their hand in the first two years and provoked the Counter-Revolution of ’94. Their accommodation to that counter-revolution in order to have power for themselves is the reason HRC wasn’t the Communist Party, err, excuse me, Democrat Party’s nominee in ’08.
You shouldn’t have to be a conservative to be horrified by the contemporary situation. But while conservatives and Republican are going to lead the opposition to the status quo, they should seek to build a broad front rather than wage a campaign against historical liberals. This doesn’t mean they have to water down their program, but it should be presented in a way designed to broaden its appeal. The target should be the far left, and its camouflage as merely “liberal” should be exposed.
I have no idea what this means. Because to water down a program means you HAVE a program when the real answer is – Eliminate a program.
The “Democratic” Party doesn’t exist. Its the DEMOCRAT PARTY!!!!!
The Republican Party is more democratic than the Democrat Party. Don’t take my word for it; Google it yourself.
But please; Quit calling the most corrupt gang of overt active socialists “DEMOCRATIC”. They’re not even close.
The modern-day legitimization and triumph of the far left in America can really be traced to the original sin of the liberal/conservative academic establishments’ surrender to leftist agitation in the 60’s, resulting in the takeover of our major universities – the generators and propagators of ideas – by the left (eventually leading to rule by the well-named “tenured radicals”). Since the establishment of the new “establishment” in the various universities, they have had a clear field (enforced by hooliganism and violence, as necessary) to indoctrinate generation after generation of the “educated elites” to spread and enforce their doctrines and ideals. Along with a hard core of ideologues that now permeate academia, the advocacy industry and government – and to a certain extent private industry – they created a vast pool of useful idiots, wallowing in facile righteousness and concern for the very latest identified “victim” group, and programmed to respond to every stimulation by the ideologues-in-place. Until and unless the left is removed from its strangle-hold position on our universities, fighting the leftist tide in a “battle of ideas” is hopeless.
The old academic liberal/conservative academic establishments surrendered without much of a fight, really. Imbued with race-guilt about the injustices of segregation – and frightened by the violence of their own students – they did the “liberal” thing of giving credence to the leftist “ideas” and accusations being hurled at them. Now the only remedy is the retaking of the universities by old-time liberals and conservatives. Since they are averse to using the same bully tactics of the left, the best approach is the defunding of the entrenched new establishment in the fields where they are most prevalent, the social sciences and humanities. This defunding approach would include, elimination of federal grants for all manner of “studies” in these fields – most importantly, any and all kinds of “identity” research and other multiculturalist drivel; restriction of awards of Pell grants and other scholarship monies to students pursuing only things that are useful to the United States (science, technology, etc.) for as long as it takes to “drain the swamp” of future generations of useless academic graduates – all manner of fodder for OWS and other “protest” enterprises. A tall order, true, but absolutely necessary to get the intellectual atmosphere in this country back on the right track.
Excellent comment.
More and more it is becoming apparent that the driving force behind modern-day Socialism in the US is the elitist class–those educated, but lacking knowledge, wisdom, common sense, and integrity. This has left the country without the benefit of a reliable source of educated counsel; but in its place, a band of screeching, howling narcissists, advocating weakness.
Isn’t it amazing that nobody ever mentioned the words “Middle East Oil” in all the comments they made. If you are talking about, the Arabs, Israel and the US it will be a cardianal sin to omit these words! Do you get me?