Liberalism at the Crossroads

The Dems lost bigtime. W won a three million plus majority and an overwhelming number of the individual states. The Republicans now hold 55 Senate seats and increased their majority in the House of Representatives. Moreover, state initiatives stopped radical social agendas pushed by renegade judges and local officials.

The Democrats now have an important choice to make: are they a political party, attempting to find a consensus from many points of view, and adapting to the will of the electorate? Or are they an ideological party, where they supress internal dissent and insist on intrepreting the actions of the electorate from a philosophical dogma?

I listened to the post-election cry-in on Air America. As a way to understand the crippling loss of the Dems, Al Franken claimed that Bush won by insessant lying, and repeatedly quoted some survey that "proved" Bush supporters - in other words, the majority of the American electorate - to be imbeciles. Randi Rhodes ranted about some bizarre conspiracy involving Ohio and Florida election officials (only the Republicans, of course) tampering with electronic voting machines. Robert Reich declared that the election proved that the Democrats needed become even more "progressive".

If the Dems would like the trust of the American people to provide national leadership, they must show the Hard Left the door. The Hard Left are those elements in the party that view the American government and Western society as immoral and corrupt institutions, which must be radically changed. The hardest of the Hard Left is committed to achieving this by any means necessary, including anarchy, violence, and deliberating subverting American interests. Some of the poster children of the Hard Left are Congressman-for-Life John Conyers, Noam Chomsky, and the assorted disciples of Ron Dellums. Their "useful idiots" include the usual gang of entertainers, college academics, radical social theorists, "anti-Zionists", anti-capitalists, and the barons of the Rights Industry. The Hard Left also views the American people as an ignorant proletariat that is to be led by the nose to Nirvana.

The Hard Left has bullied the rest of the Democratic Party for decades, starting in the aftermath of the '68 election. Under the pretense of diversity, the Hard Left has ruthlessly narrowed the philosophical scope of the party. It's hard to imagine Harry Truman, John Kennedy, or Henry "Scoop" Jackson (cofather with Reagan of the fall of the Soviet Empire) being allowed in the modern Democratic Party. Joe Lieberman was humiliated by the party activists in the primaries and convention for straying off the antiwar reservation. Lifelong Democrat Zell Miller tried to warn of this cancer growing on the Democratic Party, and he was treated by the Hard Left to a personal smear campaign.

The modern American conservative movement faced a similar crisis in the late fifties, weighed down by the John Birchers, anti-Semites, and like political flat-earthers. To their credit, men like Bill Buckley and Ronald Reagan threw them overboard, and modern conservatism flourished. If the Democratic Party wants to be a viable party of national leadership is must likewise rid itself of the Hard Left.