What We Have Here is ... Failure ... to Communicate

We all know what happened last night, or at least we think we do. The pundits are dissecting the race, and the candidate.

The circular firing squad is preparing for the ritual execution of conservatism and Mitt Romney. The fingers are pointed. Wrong candidate, wrong message, wrong this and wrong that.

Wrong is right.

It’s simple. We moved from basic principles.

We stopped teaching. We stopped educating.

We told the huddled masses that Obamacare was bad. But instead of explaining, calmly, as if to a child, why it would result in less free stuff not more — we screamed. We berated.

We attacked.

Rather than teach basic economics, we belittled.

Rather than instruct the Constitution we condescended.

We acted as if all the truths we were espousing were self-evident. And so they were.

To us.

But to the more than half this country who have come to believe that the all-giving teat of government can be milked for all good things forever it was not self-evident.

For 40 years public education has indoctrinated and inculcated the barbarians and the dependent. For 40 years they have been sheltered in the all knowing bosom of government, insulated from the consequences of their actions and knowing that if they won’t be allowed to succeed, at least they won’t be allowed to fail.

Comes the conservative movement, and we talk to them like they are recalcitrant 4th graders. We talk about personal responsibility, about the rights which go with responsibility. These are wonderful things ,we say, without explaining why  — or understanding that these things are terrifying to people who, whatever their age, are children who have always been taken care of.

Rather than reassure, we threatened, and they reacted like frightened children and voted for the person who yelled “bangarang!” and promised them that — like Pan — they would never have to grow up.

We must return to first principles. We must educate. We must inform. Liberals can be converted, but it must be done one at a time. Individually. Slowly. Like taming a feral cat, you must move slowly and quietly, freeing their minds and teaching them to think.

It will be a laborious process. But it can be done.

It must be done.

It will be done.