Within the last couple of days, a pair of articles by Peggy Noonan and Eric of "The Counterrevolutionary" are good enough to be required reading for my conservative colleagues. If you're a liberal - please pay no attention and move along. Nothing to see here.
I don't think many of you knew that Peggy Noonan, Reagan's speechwriter and the doyenne of right-wing columnists in America, grew up as a blue collar Democrat. Recently, Andrew Cuomo asked her for an essay in a book on the future of the Democratic Party. Suffice to say he got it. In summary:
As usual for anything written by Ms. Noonan, a list can't possibly convey the full experience of reading it. Go thee and do so.
Eric, meanwhile, has some advice for the Right in "Cultural Counterattack".
"While Iraq is the nominal reason for the internal conflict, the real ideological clash is over America. There are many people, internationally as well as domestically, who believe that America is the real threat to them. America in this confrontation represents the superiority of Western liberalism over the hate-sustained and tyrannical ideologies of socialism, fascism and Islamism. Unfortunately, the practical advantages that [the American system] holds over those systems has not translated into a similar ideological advantage. The reasons for this are numerous, but include the self-destructiveness of prosperous individuals and, as this essay will make clear, a poor strategy for debate."What follows is nothing less than a map for seizing the initiative and making a real, permanent dent in the Left. It's lucid, carefully considered, and strategically it makes an awful lot of sense. Eric has done excellent work before - when he's on, he's really on.
If the American Democratic Party followed Peggy Noonan's advice, Eric's recommendations would not be a threat to them. But they won't... so go read both!
I thought that Noonan's article was an excellent description of and prescription for the Democratic Party. However, I also thought that it applies equally as well to the Republican Party. The GOP is driven by an ideology that often ignores reality. It is captured by narrow interests that pursue their agendas no matter how much they damage others. It is both unwilling to compromise and contemptuous of the opinions of others. As much as the Dems can be criticized for their loyalty to Clinton, the Reps can be blamed for their rabid hatred of all things Clinton, and their willingness to damage any and all legal rights to bring him down.
Noonan cites the heroes of 9/11, and asks whether they'd have been better off with guns. Yet this administration is setting up an emergency system that would take away their ability to use their cell phones, as they don't trust citizens to act in an emergency without official orders.
She criticizes pro-abortion lobbyists for their unwillingness to give, yet gives a free bass to anti-abortion fundamentalists who will sacrifice everything else to that one agenda item. This, not the women's rights movement, she calls principled. Standing for what she agrees with is principled; standing for another idea is not.
Noonan mentions that many in America see these as the End Times. She fails to mention that many welcome that event, and will do whatever they can to hasten its coming. For that reason, they see no need to care for the planet, and no reason to safeguard our environment, economy, or security.
Ah, and she sees the Dems as a win-at-all-costs party. After the scorthed earth tactics of the Reps in the 2000 election and its aftermath, that's just laughable.
I think that Noonan, in short, is absolutely correct about the Temocratic Party's failings. It has tried too long to be a mirror image of the Republican Party, in order to mirror its electoral success. It does need to have an ideology based on reason rather than polls and lobbies, but the problem is convincing the politians to stop listening to their paid advisers and follow their heads and hearts instead. It also needs to be able to address an American public trained to hate new and different ideas by the Republican propaganda machine and convince them that there's a better way.