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Only Liberals Can Save America (But They’re Not Going to Like It)
No one has to explain the broken nature of politics to people on the right. We’re locked in a civil war here. It transcends the issues of for Trump vs. against Trump. More than anything else it boils down to one side wishing to conduct politics in the civil style of the past versus another faction who wishes to wage war like the Democrats: full-bore, unapologetic, and without remorse.
This division is deep and exemplified by the US Senate race in Alabama. It has been so contentious that it’s being treated as nothing less than a religious schism. The anti-Roy Moore forces are accusing his supporters of abandoning their Christianity, while the just-hold-your-nose-and-vote-for-him crowd returns the volleys by questioning the others’ commitments to Christian tenets of charity, forgiveness, and basic fairness. Furthermore, what good is your Christian sense of propriety to give Jeff Sessions’s seat to a committed abortion activist?
Now, where do liberals fit into this equation? Primarily by living up to their own stated standards. Since the ascent of Donald Trump, first to the GOP nomination and then the presidency, the left has constantly lectured us about “country over party.” In the last couple of days and weeks the Democrats have been handed their own set of internal problems and how they deal with those will say a lot about how both parties move forward.
The sexual harassment charges that have poured forth have put many a liberal man in the spotlight. But, for the most part, those men have been in private industry and therefore totally expendable. It’s not hard to disown the likes of Harvey Weinstein, Matt Lauer, Charlie Rose, and others like them. Even the “soul searching” about former President Bill Clinton rings hollow considering that Clinton, Inc. is a spent force in the Democratic Party.
But the accusations against Rep. John Conyers and Sen. Al Franken are another matter. These are votes the left wants to keep right where they are. Admittedly, Conyers is in a 100-percent safe district, but a Franken resignation would present problems as ambitious DFL party types would start jockeying for position on the federal election chess board.
And with the acknowledgment of the existence of millions of dollars of payoffs being made to settle claims against other, up-to-now unnamed congressmen and senators, there are other shoes waiting to drop.
Here are four things liberals can do save America:
- Clean house. No matter what revelations are made, be they against backbenchers or the leadership, let the chips fall where they may. No elaborate defenses, no excuses, no victim blaming, just show them the door. All of them.
- Tell Elizabeth Warren to take a hike, too. She’s not a Native American. She lied to advance her career. Do you believe the things you say about sports mascots and all manners of “cultural appropriation?” Prove it.
- If you think everyone should apologize for the sins of the past, let the journey begin with you. Start by issuing a formal mea culpa about the lies you spread about your opponents especially, but not limited to George W. Bush and Mitt Romney. And then actively work to limit such tactics in the future.
- Cut the racism/sexism crap. If you think all Americans deserve to be treated with respect and dignity, you’re going to have to show that you understand it’s a two-way street.
There you have it, a simple plan for liberals to save America. It doesn’t even require them to surrender any of their beliefs. Those we can hash out at the water coolers, the ballot boxes, and the floors of legislatures across the country, just like we used to. And, as an upside, maybe rank-and-file Republicans can get beyond the real need for a gut-fighter like Donald Trump on our side.
Country over party. I’m just not going to hold my breath waiting for it.
Published in Politics
They have no interest in saving America. They don’t like what America is or stands for, which is why they take a knee, apologize for everything American, disrespect our laws and institutions. Obama said it: they want to fundamentally change this country and there’s nothing worth saving.
Perhaps. But they sure like the money.
The Democrats love our milk and honey, but preach about some other way of living…
You’re dreaming. I like your dream, but you’re dreaming.
So stop being Democrats? Living up to their own stated standards? There are none, or rather they change with whatever appears to help destroy their stated enemies, or enhance their power. That’s it. There is nothing more. Now of course the regular Democrats we know who do not hold power get their information by osmosis and go along with Democrat theme of the day because they’ve been taught to hate the same enemies. The left still controls almost all of the purveyors of culture, the media, education, foundations, entertainment and until we wrench these things away from them, probably beginning with education, they won’t change. The money and power are too good.
There is where we disagree. It isn’t about the money or power. It’s about the belief. That is where the corruption comes in.
One of my favorite Peter Robinson lines: The Left doesn’t know how to create wealth; they take it for granted.
I deeply respect Mr. Robinson but I am pretty sure he stole that from Mr. Sowell.
We need to get a honest to goodness Cherokee to run for MA Senate against Warren.
We need to hear. ‘Lady. Im a Cherokee. I come from a long line of Cherokees. And Senator Warren. Your not a Cherokee.’
This reminds me of liberals telling conservatives on what’s best for us.
When conservatives tell liberals how to conduct themselves, aren’t we being just as self-serving under the cover of solicitousness?
I think you misread. EJ is telling liberals how to conduct themselves for the good of America. That’s a wholly different matter than what’s “good” for (as in, what “works” for) liberals.
I don’t think most leftists who hold power believe the things they say. They live within false narratives about history, economics, culture, but it doesn’t rise above spin, that’s one of the reasons they cannot engage in debate or discussion. Marxism has always been PR, there is nothing there. Academics and those behind the protection of tenure may believe the things they teach and say, so may journalists but that’s because they are never accountable for being wrong and they live within their abstractions not the real world. Kids may believe because they don’t know anything, but people who exercise power and have been around long enough to see how it all works out? Their belief happens to serve their interests for power, prestige and money, not to mention sex. When it ceases to do so they change themes the only constant is power. Fascism is a quest for power, that’s why Lenin called it opportunistic socialism and why it was knowingly created in the first place.
Wrong. They believe in Will to Power and nothing else.
@ejhill Ha! Ha! that was pretty funny. Liberals living up to their own standards? I thought that job was reserved only for Republicans. The Dems never give up anything that would cost them power/control…ever. It’s their first rule and it is so golden that it is never written and only spoken by Sioux code talkers. That’s why Donald Trump had them over to the White House the other day–besides that other little thing about helping us win WWII. The POTUS is trying to crack their code.
Whether it’s true or not, I’ve read where Walter Lippman prior to WWI in the beginning of the Progressive era, championed a new definition of the word ” liberal” that eschewed any notion of “liberty” in favor of big government activism and control, and boy howdy I guess that definition stuck in the mind of millions of the new ‘liberals” for generations to come.
That said, I really like the idea of holding Democrats to the original meaning of the word “liberal”, and to smoke out their true intentions which I far as I can see are to be in reality authoritarian leftists bent on gaining unlimited power and asserting control over every nook and cranny of our society.
One of the best reasons to question whether these Democrats are really “liberal” is that deep down, psychologically, most Democrats need be known as “liberals” because that “liberalism” virtue signals they assume that they they are far superior morally to us bitter clinging deplorables – a very important psychological crutch to these so-called “liberals”. Many Democrats have a deep seeded need to think of themselves as our betters to justify the Left’s need to boss everyone around to the nth degree. Without that mantle of virtue signaled moral authority, their moral legitimacy and their personal vision of themselves collapses. So go ahead roundly criticize whether our viture signaled betters are really “liberal”.
What’s the analogous set for Republicans? Or no need for reform?
I agree. Imagine yelling to the jacobin horde nation-saving advice just before they cut you down. I agree with @mikelaroche, they just want the goods, and like someone said, (Robinson, Sowell, or Dangerfield) they chalk up wealth creation up to animal spirits that will always be around, which is all the accounting they need.
Yes, it is a great dream, but look at what a mess the right is at the moment.
That’s really the heart of the post. The Republican Party is in disarray primarily because of the way Democrats conduct themselves. Our internal debate is less about Trump the man and more about Trump the gut-fighter. If the Bushes and Romney had shown just a bit more gumption in fighting the Left’s gutter tactics then Trump may well have finished 17th in the primaries. (Hell, if Romney had shown any real fight there wouldn’t have been a primary.)
When the rank-and-file saw an establishment party unwilling to defend them they went looking elsewhere. The party and its supporters in conservative media do not like that but has decided to doubledown on their original stance. The Democrats don’t like the results either but they, too, are unlikely to change.
I’ve tried to convince the establishment GOP supporters to change with little success and my suggestions for the other side are just as likely to fall on deaf ears.
My consistent message of the last year has been this: If you believe that the Trump presidency represents a failure then there are two ways of tackling it. One, you can make a list of all the external factors that you have no control over or two, you can start examining your own role in the failure. So far both major parties have dismissed the second option out of hand.
There seems to be an utter fantasy that if they can Dump Trump, somehow the GOP will go back to how it was. Trump continues to have strong support among huge majorities of Republican voters. There is no way to purge those people and get a viable party.
I couldn’t agree more with this.
Early in the primary process, I remember feeling every bit as repulsed by Trump as the gang at NRO (for instance), but I put the blame for his success on the perennial fecklessness of the beltway GOP, not to mention their eagerness to capitulate to whatever idiotic demands spewed forth from the Left.
“give Jeff Sessions’s seat to a committed abortion activist?”
This drives me nuts. Just like when Scott Brown won “Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat.” It wasn’t Kennedy’s, it was the people of Massachusetts’. And it’s not Jeff Sessions’, it’s the people of Alabama’s. /end rant/
EJ:
Great post! I have a minor quibble and a couple of additions to your list. I’ll provide them in separate posts.
I’ll start with the additions to your list first, because it is more fun.
1. The Democrats should abandon any further public comments on the “Russia investigation” unless something unexpected that has not yet been leaked emerges from Mueller’s “investigation.” Early on I too thought there might well be fire given all the smoke — the strange affection for Putin, the hiring of Manafort and Flynn, etc. — but over one year has passed, and now it seems clear (to me at least) that there is nothing “there” there when it comes to Trump and Russia. Manafort is almost certainly unsavory but Trump was probably merely naive in hiring him rather than conspiring with the Russians.
There are plenty of legitimate reasons to criticize Trump, especially from a (Democrat-defined) liberal perspective. Why rely on what can now only be called far-fetched conspiracy theories instead?
The reason I suggest adding this to the list is that it is all too easy for liberals to now apologize for their comments about Romney and McCain. Indeed, I believe many have already done so. It’s really just the flip-side of their sudden willingness to throw Bill Clinton under the bus. To truly move things forward they need to come to terms with a current president, and stop alienating so many people on spurious allegations. Democrats can still oppose Trump on policy grounds and even other character grounds, and in the unlikely event that something of substance against Trump emerges from the Mueller investigation (which it is now too late to unwind) they are free to use it. Otherwise, move on. It’s almost like they want to drive people like me who have strong antipathy toward Trump into Trump’s camp.
2. In a similar vein, Democrats should stop all the unreasonable objections to court nominees. Unless there is a legitimate competence objection to a nominee, don’t block the nominee for partisan reasons, especially based on 20-year old law review articles, which are supposed to be philosophical. Stopping the partisanship in the courts would go a long way to restoring amity.
No, it really does belong to the person who won it until the next election. Otherwise, votes in the Congress would be replaced by direct votes from the people or by the results of opinion polls.
Edmund Burke once wrote, “Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgment; and he betrays instead of serving you if he sacrifices it to your opinion.” But, of course, that only works if the representative is honest in his intentions. That’s one of the government’s great failures on trade. They promised a level playing field on which the American worker could compete but instead delivered a systematic undercutting through foreign outsourcing and an open borders scheme that suppresses domestic wages. And that’s part of the self examination that both the GOP and the Democrats refuse to engage in and why both of them are in the throes of angst with Trump in the White House.
Uh, 17th Amendment not withstanding, the seat belongs to the state government of the respective states and not the people, at least that was the intent of the Founding generation. The people are represented by the House of Representatives. /end my rant/
http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2017/02/real-indian-take-fake-indian-elizabeth-warren-massachusetts-senate-race/
They’re walking on the fighting side of Merle.
Agreed EJ. Mostly. It’s not exactly that I wish to be uncivil or to even be at war; it’s that full-bore, unapologetic, and without remorse are not qualities which automatically exclude civility. Also you can’t unilaterally declare peace the same way you can unilaterally declare war.
Disagreement can be civil while also being clear and effective. Too many of our guys confuse timidity with civility; too many are too incompetent to be effectively civil. Still others are simply duplicitous and need to be primaried ASAP. Evidence being the spectacular legislative failures and general lack of initiative of the last year; that’s a result of all of the above: timidity, incompetence, duplicity. If any other reasonably charismatic R candidate had credibly offered implicit remedy for these basic deficiencies then I bet such candidate would have kept Donald Trump in the reality TV business instead of the in the presidency.
Yes, the Democrats can improve the country overnight simply by cleaning up their act in the ways you suggest. Republicans can do their part too, simply by actually representing effectively what they’ve been saying they represent. No more easy capitulation; no more opening bids which already give away more than half the store; no more talking out both sides of their mouth; no more running at the first hint of controversy since everything is always painted as controversial anyway. In short, no more accepting of the left’s framing.
Was wondering if someone would catch that. Great song. RIP Mr. Haggard
Now the quibble. You state:
I don’t think politics have ever really been conducted in a “civil style,” and while some Anti-Trumpers’ main concern may be with the purportedly “unpresidential” nature of Trump’s conduct, I don’t think that is true for all. Muckraking has always existed. While the offenders have gone back and forth between the parties since the founding, it has always been done. I think it’s a myth that things are less civil today. What has changed is the ease of access to information and the rapidity with which it is communicated.
Further, as an Anti-Trumper, I never opposed going against the Democrats “full bore, unapologetic, and without remorse.” Indeed, that is a big part of why I supported Ted Cruz in the primaries once Walker and Perry were out. My problem with Trump has always been personal distaste coupled with dislike of his policies (to the extent he has any) on immigration, trade, infrastructure, entitlement programs, etc. His presidency has definitely been less bad than feared and I give great credit to his staff, particularly the Generals. But it is still early so the verdict is still out.
So, “___ (fill in the blank) Amendment not withstanding” is a thing?