In the midst of liberal defeat, liberals’ core conceit about liberalism lives on
The reflections by ur-liberal
Michael Kinsley on the current Democratic
dégringolade, and especially his continuing justifications for the liberal cause vis à vis the ascendant conservatism, bring my thoughts back to Jim Kalb’s seminal article,
“The Tyranny of Liberalism.” As Mr. Kalb explained, liberals such as Kinsley believe that they, the liberals, are not exerting or seeking to exert coercive power, that all they want is a neutral society, with equal freedom for everyone. Meanwhile, they think that conservatives do want to exert coercive power: liberals believe in true equality, conservatives believe in forcing their beliefs on others. This, for liberals, is the essential difference between liberalism and conservatism. The truth is that the liberal regime is itself highly coercive and that liberals remain complacently blind to this fundamental fact of modern society. Indeed, by concealing its power under a veil of phony “values-neutrality,” the liberal regime is more unaccountable and more dangerous than a frankly non-liberal, authoritarian regime would be.
Am I Blue?
I apologize for everything I believe in. May I go now?
Michael Kinsley, Washington Post, November 7, 2004
… I mean, look at it this way. (If you don’t mind, that is.) It’s true that people on my side of the divide want to live in a society where women are free to choose abortion and where gay relationships have full civil equality with straight ones. And you want to live in a society where the opposite is true. These are some of those conflicting values everyone is talking about. But at least my values—as deplorable as I’m sure they are—don’t involve any direct imposition on you. We don’t want to force you to have an abortion or to marry someone of the same gender, whereas you do want to close out those possibilities for us. Which is more arrogant?
We on my side of the great divide don’t, for the most part, believe that our values are direct orders from God. We don’t claim that they are immutable and beyond argument. We are, if anything, crippled by reason and open-mindedness, by a desire to persuade rather than insist. Which philosophy is more elitist? Which is more contemptuous of people who disagree?
Posted by Lawrence Auster at November 07, 2004 01:33 PM | Send
I think the fact that just today a man committed suicide at the World Trade Center Site in NYC speaks to the degree of desperation many Kerry supporters and liberals are feeling after their defeat.
It does give some degree of satisfaction to see the liberal Democrats in full melt-down mode after four years of playing every dirty trick in the book and spreading every possible division imaginable to destroy Bush. From class warfare to fear mongering to near traitorous accommodation of the enemy’s perspective on the war including the ludicrous idea to give Teheran nuclear fuel and subjecting America to a global test, nothing was beneath them.
Liberalism is a relentless foe, a danger to traditional American values, something the left has been attempting to dismantle for the last 30 years.
The left need not despair, for as we speak they are strategizing a new banzai charge, whose suicidal desperation may either be repelled, or finally triumph in breeching the last bastions of logic and common sense holding together the remaining recognizable constructs of American identity together.
Mr. Kinsley might very well make the same arguments for downtrodden people who want to force the Boy Scouts to accept gay councilors, practise polygamy, or have sex with children. And pornography…we haven’t even gotten to that yet. Obviously, if such people are being denied their “rights,” someone needs to speak up for them, do they not? Meanwhile, we detestable right-wing fanatics have the gall to remain immutable and instransigent…and to even bring God into the equation!
“Dégringolade” sounds suspiciously like it could be the French for “reconquista”.
One of my management courses said, “If you keep doing the same thing in the same way, you will keep getting the same results.” The Left lost big last week, but since they don’t understand why and they never learn, they will keep on doing the same things in the same way. Incredibly, they have already started:
“First Lawsuit Filed to Overturn Voter-Approved Marriage Amendments” http://www.cnsnews.com//ViewNation.asp?Page=\Nation\archive\200411\NAT20041104e.html.
This reaction is a perfect example of the Left’s problem: refusal to accept the will of the majority. They are so caught up in the righteousness of their beliefs that they are just as narrow minded as the religious right that they hate. And they accuse some conservative “vast right-wing conspiracy” of trying to force their beliefs on everyone else. Maybe they should look in a mirror, and realize if they don’t change, they are going to continue losing. They never consider that group knowledge distilled down through thousands of generations just might be better than a few elitist ones, in this case, that the idea of gay marriage or gay civil unions as civil rights being just rediculous.
The ACLU’s crusades to destroy the Boy Scouts and rub out every innocuous vestige of Christianity are other examples.
Brian McGrory of the Boston Globe is another, who poses the question, “Is Ohio stupid?” and admits he “just doesn’t get” how we re-elected Bush http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2004/11/05/the_bitter_aftertaste/.
He goes on to say, “Ohio isn’t stupid, just different.” But he never answers the question, “Different from what?” The Northeast liberal elitist view of how the world should be? And why only Ohio? Just because they were the last to finish counting their votes? But there were many other states that voted for Bush. This guy must be related to the extreme liberal political pundit, Mary McGrory, who once admitted, “I don’t know of anybody who voted for this president [Bush].” Anyone who limits his exposure to only those of Leftist liberal elitist persuasion would necessarily have an extremely limited view of the thinking of the American people. Brian McGrory never considered the possibility that HE might be different. Instead of Ohio, I would propose that the state of New York is different. Now, there is a state that suffered the worst terrorist attack ever in American history, and voted against the president who is out to make sure it doesn’t happen again. Now THAT’S different! Perhaps he needs to live in the middle of the blue area for a while.
Democrats can’t keep thwarting the majority and expect to win. I don’t care how right they might think they are in the constitutionally abstract.