November 2004: How Democrats must change their positions if they want to defeat the Republicans. They must become, in part, traditionalists.

On November 11, 2004, in a discussion of the Democrats’ deep trauma over Bush’s re-election victory, I wrote this comment:

Timegrid’s comment goes to the core of the difference between the right and left. As Jim Kalb put it recently at Turnabout, “The most important difference relevant to American politics, I think, is that Blues assume the world is made of constructions, while Reds are more likely to think it’s made of realities.” But the Blues’ constructions have now gotten so out of whack with reality that a sizeable part of the country rejects them. This is going to force the Blues, if they still have any residual rationality and want to survive politically, to pull back from the brink and return to the objective world.

The Democrats have a fundamental contradiction: they want a good, secure life for all, and they want everyone to be a self-created being, utterly free in his desires and lifestyles. Their demand for homosexual marriage is the ultimate symbol of this. The homosexual rights project is not compatible with a good and secure life for all, because a good life requuires cultural stability, which in turn requires stable families, which in turn requires traditional morality. Similarly, the belief in open borders, in treating illegal aliens as legal immigrants, in granting rights and social welfare benefits to illegals and even to illegal alien criminals, is obviously incompatible with a stable society. Similarly, the belief in multiculturalism, the idea that all cultures are of equal value and must be liberated and included, and that America has no authoritative common culture deserving of respect, is incompatible with a stable society. Similarly, their view of America as a uniquely guilty and racist country which owes a debt to all the minorities of the world, and their tendency always to side against America in any dispute with another party, is obviously incompatible with the nurturance of a healthy society with security for all. Democrats cannot go on simultaneously regarding America as Santa Claus and Satan, as the source of all benefits, and as the wicked force that withholds all benefits.

The Democrats’ contradictory adherence to both security and liberationism, to social welfare on one side and alienation from society on the other, to stability on one hand and inclusion of the cultural Other on the other, cannot be maintained. If the Democrats want to survive as a party, they will have to return to their core commitment, the commitment to a good and secure life for all Americans, and reject cultural radicalism. They would also have to reject multiculturalism, open borders, and group rights, and reaffirm America as a particularist and unitary society where in the public sphere we treat each other as Americans, not as members of racial groups. If they did all these things and became the party of American security and American well being, they could outflank the Republicans on social issues since the Republicans have become a radical party devoted to democratizing the world and treating every human on earth as an American.

Posted by: Lawrence Auster on November 11, 2004 1:26 AM

Posted by Lawrence Auster at October 13, 2011 01:28 PM | Send