The Democrats complain about their own Hegelian Mambo

Meanwhile, in this Alice-in-Wonderland universe we live in, as we write incessantly about how the conservatives fail to hold to their own principles and keep moving ever more leftward as they adjust themselves to an ever more extreme left, Democrats are equally convinced that the exact opposite is happening—that it’s they who are abandoning their principles and moving to the right. From an article in The Age (Australia) about former Clinton Labor Secretary Robert Reich:

Reich’s message is that parties such as the US Democrats and Labor must reject the view that “the only future for the left is to move to the centre”. It doesn’t work, he argues.

“Every time the left moves to the centre, then by definition the centre moves to the right. What you end up with is a continuously shifting position by the party of the left towards a centre that itself keeps becoming more and more right-wing. You’d think the left would learn the obvious lesson.

“It’s more likely that you will win an election by sticking to your own values, having the courage of your convictions, and revealing the sharp distinctions between your positions and those of your opponents.”

In response to this item, VFR’s own Matt, the coiner of “Hegelian Mambo,” wrote me the following clarification:

Reich is wrong; or he is right only in a very local, limited sense in which “the right” refers not to traditional conservatism but to right-liberalism. Objectively liberalism has become far more dominant in the last century, and the transcendent mediated by tradition has become far weaker. But subjectively, for someone sitting on the left wing-tip of the liberal dragon, it is going to look like all the activity is on the right. What Reich is witnessing isn’t an actual step toward tradition; it is just the “twirl around, synthesize” step in the dance where the latest dose of advanced liberalism gets mixed in, where the poison takes mainstream root. From Reich’s perspective it looks like a constant dillution of the left because from the pure left’s perspective it is a constant dillution.

One can only wish that all liberals would see things the way Reich does though, take back all of their unprincipled exceptions, and insist on a consistent liberalism. We would then see liberalism disappear, imploding in its internal incoherence and denial of reality.

To which I replied:

Excellent explanation. But on your point that you wish they would drop their unprincipled exceptions, isn’t their problem lately that they have indeed dropped more of their UEs, and that’s why they’ve been more extreme and are losing elections? And, further, isn’t it the case that from their more extreme position, which is the result of their dropping their UE’s, any remaining UE’s look like a cha-cha to the right?

Posted by Lawrence Auster at December 13, 2004 09:39 AM | Send