As Tony Blankley writes at Real Clear Politics, “It is insufferable (and will not long be suffered) to be lectured to and imposed upon by a ruling class that loathes our nation’s history, values and accomplishments; by those who are not, in fact, our genuine betters. They are neither better educated nor more profoundly morally versed:”
In fact, they are our intellectual and moral inferiors — not superiors. Constantly grinning Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan didn’t think the Declaration of Independence’s proclamation that human beings “are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights” should in any way affect her understanding of our constitutional rights — presumably, if any.
Part of the building danger derives from the fact that Americans now tend to self-select our news, opinion and entertainment sources based on our political beliefs and cultural and religious preferences. As a result, the nation no longer shares a common database of civic reality. Many liberals have no sense of how deep and roiling this no-longer-just-conservative passion is. Or they assume it involves some small, mendacious, ideological faction rather than a broad-based, nonideological, building national majority, which it does.
Just one trivial example of the disconnection between the elites and the nation was the Newsweek headline “We Are All Socialists Now,” published last year (before the magazine was sold for $1 to the billionaire husband of a leading Democratic congresswoman). Two months ago, though, a poll by the Democracy Corps, a polling group run by Democratic operative James Carville and Democratic pollster Stan Greenberg, asked how well the term “socialist” fit President Obama. Fifty-five percent of all Americans said “well” or “very well.” In that same month, the Gallup poll reported that Americans self-identify themselves as 42 percent conservative (a historic high), 35 percent moderate and 20 percent liberal. That would seem to leave 3 percent for socialists, communists, anarchists, fascists, monarchists, Nazis, ultramontanists, Falangists, klansmen, etc.)
I guess that Newsweek headline’s meaning depends on what the definition of “we” is. As military experts would say, the upcoming struggle for America’s future between the socialist powers and the rest of us would seem to be “asymmetrical.”
Meanwhile, at Ricochet, Pat Sajek outlines “The Bill of Rights, 2010 Style” — which looks a lot like 1984-style, needless to say.
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