Yesterday Judith Weiss commented on a New York Times article describing the devolution of political discourse in interpersonal relations. Judith made the point that she long ago discovered that discussing politics with her liberal friends was impossible:
Everyone is buzzing about this article in yesterday's NYTimes which tells it like it is for me and all my Liberal Hawk/disgruntled Democrat/Republican/conservative friends. Everything we had been complaining about since 2003, acknowledged in ink on newsprint, by the former Paper of Record :
FOR years, Sheri Langham looked at the Republican politics of her parents as a tolerable quirk, one she could roll her eyes at and turn away from when the disagreements grew a bit deep. But earlier this year, Ms. Langham, 37, an ardent Democrat, found herself suddenly unable even to speak to her 65-year-old mother, a retiree in Arizona who, as an enthusiastic supporter of President Bush, “became the face of the enemy,” she said.
“Things were getting to me, and it became such a moral litmus test that all I could think about was, ‘How can she support these people?’ ” said Ms. Langham, a stay-at-home mother in suburban Virginia. The mother and daughter had been close, but suddenly they stopped talking and exchanging e-mail messages. The freeze lasted almost a month. “Finally, it hit me that if one of us got hit by a bus tomorrow, I don’t want my final thought to be, ‘She supports George Bush,’ ” Ms. Langham said.
This woman is a 37-year-old adult with a child, and she freezes out her child's grandmother over politics. 'Nuff said. (Maybe if she actually asks her mother about her views, and listens, her question will be answered.)
This situation is probably familiar to any apostate liberal who has had the temerity to re-examine his own positions and actually change his mind.
In the past I have commented on the difficulty in discussing politics with people who use their political postures to support their self esteem. A liberal who believes that liberals are smarter, more caring, and just generally better people than conservatives, who by comparison are evil or supporters of evil, is a person who will have trouble giving any credence to opposing view points.
There is an additional point that makes it much more difficult for a liberal to imagine there might be any value in a conservative position than for the opposite to take place.
The "Progressive" wing of the Democratic party has basically been in power for the last 50 years, since LBJ's Great Society programs of the 1960s. Some might even go further back to FDR and the New Deal, but certainly the Great Society was Progressive thought made policy. While there have been set-backs, the established order was essentially based on the quasi-socialist, liberal, progressive view of politics and the proper ordering of a society. The idea that there were many victims of our cultural imperfections, that such victims needed help from those who, if only inadvertently, oppressed them, animated much of the structure of the welfare state. The model eventually gave birth to Political Correctness and the pacifism qua anti-Americanism of the far left, ideas that have insinuated themselves into the very heart of the Democratic Party.
Until the attacks of 9/11, most people were tolerant of such policies, though there was a growing sense that some of the liberal policy prescriptions were not only failing, but were actually proving to be counter-productive. Affirmative Action seemed to harm many more people than it helped, including many minorities. Taxes designed to enforce large transfers of wealth from the most successful to the least successful seemed to be creating a drag on the whole economy, ultimately, again, hurting more than it helped. While much of this was changing through the 90s (Clinton signed Welfare Reform, for example, and Socialized Medicine was soundly defeated) again, until 9/11, these kinds of political battles could be fought out in elections, but the issues never really seemed important enough to cause vast numbers of people to become engaged or impassioned.
This all changed on 9/11, The anti-military, pacifist, appeasement philosophy which was a requisite conclusion of the Leftist position was seen as presenting serious risks to the future wellbeing of the United States and those who believed in her and loved her. Unfortunately for the Left, despite years of efforts in our schools, there remained too many Americans who were not ready to see us as being at fault for all the world's ills. This led to Bush, despite being widely seen as highly vulnerable for his responsibility for conducting an increasingly unpopular war, being re-elected with a record vote in a record turn-out election that was a clear repudiation of the Progressive agenda.
Now we are approaching a second mid-term election during the Bush years; 6 year mid-terms typically see tremendous losses by the incumbent's party and the left has been giddy in anticipation. The stakes for the left could not be higher; if they cannot win the Congress in a "wave election" in these circumstances, their future looks grim indeed.
Tom Maguire puts it in clear terms:
The Times explains that Democrats have recruited gun-wavin', Bible-thumpin' pro-lifers to run for Congress to help them pick up a majority. Hey, it may work and there is nothing wrong with winning. However, it will hardly be possible to interpret Democratic success as a mandate for their well-concealed agenda.
And here is the most salient point:
Defeated Republicans would surely engage in a bit of finger-pointing but they will remain the pro-life party of lower taxes and a strong defense. The key lessons they would take from an electoral defeat would be (a) don't start a war without a plan to finish it, and (b) don't nominate George Bush in 2008.
But if the Democrats lose, they will make a defeated George Steinbrenner look like a paragon of patience and restraint. In fact, the Dems are so eager to blame other factions of their party that the circular firing squad has already begun to assemble - Netroots guru Matt Stoller, embittered by the lack of support offered to Ned Lamont by Democratic Senate bigwigs, tells us that "it's very clear that the Democratic Party leadership is rotten to the core".
Republicans support their policies because they think and feel they are the right positions, not because such policies are required to support the idea that they are better people than the Democrats. In other words, their self esteem does not depend on being supported by like minded members of their identity group.
Progressive thought has crested and has been on a slow decline for many years. The decline is gathering speed. An unpopular war may give new life to their program, but only as long as they disguise their policies (which, after all, is what all the talk of re-framing amounted to). For liberals who believe that being a liberal makes them more compassionate and smarter than their opponents, to be repudiated, let alone admitting they might be wrong about their liberal positions, is simply intolerable, and that is the source of their despair and rage.
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