Dean's weirdness a frightening portent for America

Dean’s weirdness a frightening portent for America

In a Lucianne.com thread several days ago on the increasing weirdness and irrationality of Howard Dean and the other Democrats, I came upon this comment which sounded as if it came from VFR:

Reply 111—Posted by: mgfree2be, 12/6/2003
Anyone who has hope that this situation is going to take a turn for the better, at this point, is delusional. We have been working toward this point, as a country, for several decades. The dumbing down of education, the vacuousness of our immoral culture, etc. has reached a point of no return. The time for recovering is over. We have waited too long to change/do anything. People in positions of authority who could have done something, did nothing for too long.

We are in big trouble. Like Rome, we are in the process of falling. We are disintregrating from within. We are on the verge of anarchy—or a totalitarian government. The Supreme Court is no longer wise. The degree of hatred for Bush, a good man, is evil. It is a sign of the degree of degradation of our government. It is rotten through and through.

Osama is working toward the Big Bang. He will succeed. There is nothing we can do about it but duck for cover and repent on our knees before God.

I am not being pessimistic. This is reality.

I would only add that the people on the Republican side who take delight in the lunacy of Dean and other Democrats, because it means Bush will win the 2004 election, are not seeing the terrible things this lunacy portends for our country. The fact is that a significant part of America, or at least of the elites and the middle class, have lost their minds when it comes to politics. This doesn’t spell only the short-term electoral defeat of the left. It threatens the long-term breakdown of America itself.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at December 11, 2003 07:52 PM | Send

Comments

Mr. Auster,

Don’t forget that Republicans are liberals, too, at least the establishment ones. True even when they call themselves conservative and can’t see how liberal they have become. President Bush’s plan, such as it is, for governing is essentially Leftist, whether or not the president himself sees it in those terms.

The danger is that a Democratic Party that strays even farther into Leftist looniness leaves the way open for a landslide reelection of President Bush. A landslide on those terms would leave those who advise Bush (Karl Rove, assorted neocons, affirmative action mavens like Powell and Rice) free to push the Republican Party’s positions ever farther to the Left. As a number of people have written here, traditional conservatism is so absent from the major parties that the best we can hope for is that our false friend, the Republican Party, is broken and defeated by our declared enemy, the Democrats. The only reason to hope for that is a belief that such a defeat would alert more conservative people to the need to create a truly conservative force in politics, instead of being gulled into accepting every Republican betrayal simply because Republicans are not Democrats. While I still have that belief, it is weakening. HRS

Posted by: Howard Sutherland on December 12, 2003 8:55 AM

We should all be studying our St. Augustine, the great saint who observed the decay and ruin of Rome and then set about to construct the Christian civilization which followed it — or maybe St. Benedict, who plunged into the desert to conservative civilization. Or maybe Erasmus, who leveled the peerless wit and satire against all the folly of a decayed civilization. Or age cries out for its own _In Praise of Folly_.

Posted by: Paul Cella on December 12, 2003 9:09 AM

I agree with Mr. Sutherland, and that is another reason why the total looniness of the Dems is not something to celebrate but dread, because it means there is no plausible or viable alternative to the Republicans. The rise of the loony left spells the enduring ascendancy of Bushism. That was why, earlier in the year, I had some hopes about the Clark candidacy, because it seemed to me he might represent a less loony type of Democrat who could beat Bush yet not ruin the country. But of course Clark has turned out to be such a blatant ridiculous opportunist that no one can take him seriously.

To Mr. Cella,

In addition to Augustine another example would be Plato. Meyer points out that Plato’s own attempt to restore the lost order of the polis failed; yet it succeeded in the long run in creating an understanding of the soul and its disorders which can be used to resist the disorders in every time and place.

Posted by: Lawrence Auster on December 12, 2003 11:37 AM