Only four days ago Charles Krauthemmer said that we may be seeing the “death of Liberalism”, which only goes to prove:
Words mean things.
For in my tea leaves I see the return of true liberalism after a hiatus (some said death) of at least forty years. What was it, the ’72, or ’76 convention the radical Left hijacked the Democrat Party and booted honest liberals to the curb?
Indeed, many of the liberals of that day became conservatives—not moderates, but conservatives—because they saw that the principal failing in honest liberalism to be its belief that big government can do good things. This liberalism was not based on an insidious desire to engulf people in government, and to then become one of government’s overseers. Honest liberalism was a world view, not a career choice, and mine hasn’t changed in 50 years, except of course, I quickly learned big government is not the path toward achieving the freedoms I want all people to enjoy. Small government is.
Moderates are different beings entirely.
(I won’t go into specifics here but there is a great difference between liberals who converted to conservatism on fundamental premises such as the inability of big government to do good, and left-leaning liberals of the day who just deepened their fall into Me-ism and the leftist mantra of the state-above-all, which, as we ‘ve seen, instead of liberating African-Americans, debased and enslaved them worse than Jim Crow could ever have dreamed.
In the process honest liberals, disillusioned, disoriented and alone, slipped into a corner, or they became conservatives, where, as Malcomb Muggerridge once scolded William F Buckley (“But Bill, I am a liberal. I am just not of the Left.”) they had to listen to their once-proud name defamed as it was hung out as shingle on some of the most repugnant people and philosophies imaginable.
(Why I mention this is to point out that RINO’s are not liberals and never were. From the Nelson Rockefeller days on they have been MODERATES, and Truth cannot tolerate moderation in truth. They were squishy about communism, about taxes, about society and its norms—after all they were mostly rich, and didn’t particularly need morality to get through their own lives—sort of like little-l Libertarians today. The dirty truth is that Democrat liberals Not of the Left were far superior to the craven cowards who called themselves moderate Republican. This is why Bill Buckley despised them more. And I do today.)
True liberalism, for whatever its demerits as a political philosophy, is fundamentally honest. It despises deceit. And it despises tyranny, that the state can come between the citizen and freedom. Krauthammer should know, he used to be one too. And some of his best friends (e.g, Fritz Mondale) were also honest liberals, albeit also of the Left.
I used to believe there was a clear line of demarcation between Liberals Not-of-the-Left (NOL) and Liberals of the Left, but Obama has proved me wrong on that…not that this proves Beck or Limbaugh right because they lump all
progressives and liberals into the same bread dough.
Many liberals are just friends we haven’t met yet, and Obama is bringing us together…again.
Actually these old ideas about old liberalis don’t matter, for what we are seeing today is not the resurrection of a bunch of musty old anti-commie corpses, Scoop Jackson-like liberals, but a new generation, arising out of the morass the Left has assumed was its own public school plantation.
These are kids who have been taught to be anti-war in the best tradition of all liberal traditions, only now to see their “liberal” president running guns to drug cartels in Mexico, Syria, and Libya (who just shot 55 protesting civilians in the streets yesterday.) and generally supporting anti-freedom Muslim regimes who everywhere make war on every part of a woman, not just her reproductive organs.
These are kids (mostly under fifty) who have been taught they should be given a free ride, but have suddenly found out this free ride is not an equal swap for personal privacy, because OBAMA, not Bush, not Cheney, but OBAMA is spying on their every secret message via email, Twitter and Facebook. In true liberal fashion, they give give greater weight to one over the other.
And now, after two failed tries, when millennials are usually one-and-done, they are being told they have to sign up for Obamacare in order to cover uninsured are beginning to look more like deadbeats than unfortunate, needy and disabled.
Why? Because Ashton Kucher is telling them “work is good”.
Suddenly we are
learning that John Stewart doesn’t like being lied to any more than I do. And John’s telling his viewers about it. And Kutcher, what 34 years old?, is telling his fans, not once but several times, that work is good for you. It builds, dare I say it, self-confidence, accomplishment, pride, not to mention a few spendable bucks in your pockets. Kutcher has done what two generations of public schooling either couldn’t do, or has refused to do, that Work=Money=Stuff=Self-esteem, and in that equation nowhere is found Mom, Dad or Teacher.
And even some members of the media, yes that media, have found themselves so “used.” Actually this is where I turn cynical, knowing that what runs through the veins of most media people is not a belief in honesty per se, but in the anger at being duped, at having been played, not “lied to” but “lied to as gullible fools” —-which involves an entirely different set of character values.
Many of these Obama can woo back into the fold, but there are several he cannot. It’s not for me to say which, just to point out they are there, and the wedge, previously invisible, now exists. Expect it to widen.
You’ll see all this develop over the coming weeks. Obama’s people will look upon this as Hitler did when a new front was opened in the Balkans, just one more battle group to organize and deploy. But after Obamacare, we all know how well they fight on the run. Obama has no Rommels, only toads like Keitel.
So Rejoice, Dear Hearts! (Brother Dave Gardner)
This is war inside Obama’s own camp, and we don’t have to do a thing about it, except to reach out and touch those things that define both the honest Liberal and us, and see if we cannot make common cause. Unless Obama goes all Stalin, with gulags and such, he will not be able to manage this growing mob of Liberals now nipping at his heel. And the Democrat Party, who has entirely different ambitions than Obama, will feel the heat first.
Give it time.
