requiem for a dream

Stephen Green is angry.

To these guys, winning office is more important than the sanctity of elections. Holding power is more important than the Constitution. Much as I despise at least half of what most Republicans stand for, they don't seem nearly as willing to trash the system they're trying to run. Too many Democrats, especially at the national level, just don't care that our system, our nation is far more important than any single election.

I could mention the Lautenberg Trick in New Jersey. Or Gore's ballot shenanigans in Florida. Or the voter-registration fraud currently going on in Colorado, Nevada, and elsewhere. Or the Democrats' successful call to bring election observers into this country. Bring them in from where, Venezuela? Hey, no big deal sullying the reputation of the world's oldest continuously-functioning democracy, just so long as we can make the Republicans look bad, right?

The rules don't matter. The reputation of the country doesn't matter. The political health of the nation doesn't matter. Power matters.

I don't mean to say that Republicans haven't used dirty tricks, or won't in the future. But I have yet to see them pull anything as crass as replacing a losing candidate with a more-popular one just weeks before election day, and in violation of state law. I have yet to see Republicans calling on the world's most corrupt international organization, run largely by apparatchiks from the world's most brutal dictatorships, to pass judgment on how we run our elections. I have yet to see the Republicans encouraging their own to commit fraud by shouting “Fraud!” where none yet exists, putting at risk everything we've built here in the last 228 years.

Because, in the end, that's what the national Democrats are doing: They're trying, however inadvertently, to destroy the Republic in order to rule it.

I'm not going to impugn the patriotism of Democrats generally (although I do have a problem with the plurality who evidently believe that 9/11 was America's fault). But neither will I go as far as Green in allowing that the efforts of national Democrats are “inadvertent”. Many of them know exactly what they are doing.

From the 1930s through the 70s the liberal and progressive vision reigned supreme. Democrats controlled both houses of Congress, and the few times that they didn't hold the Presidency, they may as well have: neither Eisenhower nor Nixon did much against the prevailing current. But with Reagan's reelection in 1984, the tide began to change. Any such setback is a challenge to the left's doctrine of the inexorability of Progress; the past four years, in particular, have been a sore trial for that faith.

There is a difference between liberalism and the Left, even if I am sometimes guilty of blurring that distinction. Nonetheless, a belief shared by both camps is that they have the wisdom required to reshape our culture into something greater and more just. Not that there is anything wrong with idealism in principle, or with a desire to heal society's ills: but on the left these are often coupled with an elitist hubris and a denial of fundamental human nature. And so it is with the American version of the progressive movement. Little wonder, then, that it has become both intellectually vacuous and morally bankrupt.

That intellectual vacuity was hastened by the eager embrace of postmodernism, which teaches that truth—a mere convention—is defined by those who control the prevailing paradigm. And the moral collapse was hastened by decades-long monopoly on political power (one reason, incidentally, why the long-term prognosis for modern conservatism is not promising). Together these explain why the modern Democratic Party is characterized by little more than a quest for power—as a means to radically reshape society, and as an end in itself.

The Kerry campaign endlessly protests that we are alienated from traditional allies, though they remain curiously reluctant to name the countries so offended. Not that there is any great secret: the Democrats mean France, Germany, and that toy poodle of international diplomacy, Belgium. But why the reticence? The easy answer is that France is not terribly popular amongst Jacksonians. But there is something deeper at work.

The European Union is socialism with a happy face: statist, with an expansive welfare system, a burgeoning bureaucracy, and endless appetite for internationalism and process. It is already profoundly undemocratic, by design, and the proposed constitution would relegate national governments to tertiary significance, while concentrating ever more power into the hands of unelected and unaccountable technocrats in Brussels—again, by design. The resulting structure would have the form of democracy, but in truth the average voter in Warsaw or London or Venice or even Paris already has little means to resist the myriad of regulations and statutes governing life in the Union.

And again: all of this is by design. Moreover, given the exceedingly high value placed upon European approval by elites within the Democratic Party, there can be little doubt that they perceive the Continental model as something to be emulated—provided, of course, that the correct people hold the reins of power. But there is a fundamental difference in how authority is apportioned on the Continent and in the United States, one with deep historical roots. European governments—even democratic ones—during the past two centuries have placed a premium upon centralized power (Switzerland being the exception that proves the rule). Our Founders, on the other hand, recognized the danger inherent in such structures, and created the checks and balances which until recent times have served well.

But that was before the rise of the imperial judiciary. The strategy is devious but simple: elected officials appoint and confirm judges, who then are sheltered from even the most democratic pleadings of the little people. The most egregious recent examples of such overreach come from the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, which last November mandated full same-sex marriage, and for an encore then demanded that their edict be put in force more than a year before the people of that state could vote on the matter.

Hence social engineering on an EU scale seems well within reach: all that liberals need do is ensure the election of Democratic executives and legislators, then select from their inexhaustible supply of progressive jurists, and the deed will be done. And when those judges mandate sweeping social changes—when, say, same-sex marriage is ordered nationwide even as was abortion-on-demand—the politicians can weep crocodile tears while declaring how we must submit to our robed masters.

That is the profoundly undemocratic project of our national Democratic Party. The true believers know the desired end, that anything standing in the way of Progress is by definition illegitimate and ought be removed by any means necessary. And they damn well know exactly what they are doing.

But the strategy does have its weaknesses, a major one being structural: the cult of multiculturalism has given rise to tribalism, so that the Democratic Party is but a seething mass of interests and factions with little to form a coherent core. Senator Kerry's cultivated distaste for taking a stable position is merely a visible expression of the distemper running rampant in the Party. A decisive loss in this election may be shock enough to render the progressive movement little more than a twitching corpse.

Choose wisely.

First time coming here. After reading that, I have to say I'm rather shocked to see that you don't have more regular commenters.

Enjoyed the reading muchly.

Thanks for the kind words. You did happen to catch me while I was inspired—I'm in awe of some bloggers who manage to put out incredible stuff on a daily basis.

As for lack of commenters: traffic here is building. My visitors just tend to be quiet, is all.

Quiet, but still enjoyed this piece. Very well thought out. Lets just hope there is enough intelligence out there to see through the Democrats facade.

Thanks,
Justin