Why has the Democratic Party become so arrogantly detached from ordinary Americans? Though they claim to speak for the poor and dispossessed, Democrats have increasingly become the party of an upper-middle-class professional elite, top-heavy with journalists, academics and lawyers (one reason for the hypocritical absence of tort reform in the healthcare bills). Weirdly, given their worship of highly individualistic, secularized self-actualization, such professionals are as a whole amazingly credulous these days about big-government solutions to every social problem. They see no danger in expanding government authority and intrusive, wasteful bureaucracy. This is, I submit, a stunning turn away from the anti-authority and anti-establishment principles of authentic 1960s leftism.(via Maggie's Farm)
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
QOTD
Camille Paglia on Salon:
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3 comments:
"Why has the Democratic Party become so arrogantly detached from ordinary Americans?...This is, I submit, a stunning turn away from the anti-authority and anti-establishment principles of authentic 1960s leftism." Paglia
It's only a contradiction if you posit that baby-boomers in their teenage and early 20's weren't always 'arrogantly detached'.
Isn't it the height of arrogance, hubris and condescension to imagine that your generation, (in their teenage yrs and early 20's!) 'knows better' than ALL the other generations that came before it...?
I'm a baby boomer and that's exactly what we did and those of a liberal bent, still do.
GB- yup.
We have an entire political party with father issues.
Also:
> This is, I submit, a stunning turn away from the anti-authority and anti-establishment principles of authentic 1960s leftism.
I cite once more Truman's description of professional liberals:
Professional liberals are too arrogant to compromise. In my experience, they were also very unpleasant people on a personal level. Behind their slogans about saving the world and sharing the wealth with the common man lurked a nasty hunger for power. They'd double-cross their own mothers to get it or keep it.
- Harry S Truman, pp. 55, American Heritage 7/8 1992, from a 1970 interview --
This applies first to the "handlers" of the Young Nascent Libtards and thence to them directly, as they matured (if such is the correct word, I grant) in such an environment.
Born in 1959, I'm technically a Boomer, but I've always identified much more with Gen-Xers than with Boomers. Even as a senior in HS, in a class which had a loosely constituted BS session for about half the school year, I continually found myself on the "conservative" (actually libertarian, but I did not know that then) side of the debate. I usually wasn't alone, but there was no question I was the only one who consistently wound up on that side of any issue.
My own take on it is that the boomers looked on Watergate as saying "You can't trust Republicans".
The Gen-Xers looked on Watergate as "You can't trust government".
The Dem/Libs were NEVER really anti-authority. They just didn't believe in the EXISTING authority (i.e., "the establishment"), and wanted to replace it with one more to their liking... not to abolish it.
See the Truman quote, again, in that context.
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