November 06, 2004
dreamers and "realists"
Steyn writes another great column.
...What was revealing about this election campaign was how little the condescending Europeans understand even about the side in American politics they purport to agree with - witness The Guardian's disastrous intervention in Clark County. Simon Schama last week week defined the Bush/Kerry divide as "Godly America" and "Worldly America", hailing the latter as "pragmatic, practical, rational and sceptical". That's exactly the wrong way round: it's Godly America that is rational and sceptical - especially of Euro-delusions. Uncowed by Islamists, undeferential to government, unshrivelled in its birthrates, Bush's redneck America is a more reliable long-term bet. Europe's media would do their readers a service if they stopped condescending to it."it's Godly America that is rational and sceptical" Yes. The "common wisdom" of the intellectual coastal elites is pounded into our heads non-stop. And it's Bush's American that is clear-eyed enough to see that it's mostly malarky. "Euro-delusions."
The stuff doesn't work. We see this every day. Appeasement and "give peace a chance" only make war more likely. Neither atheism nor the lifestyle of "urban singles" brings happiness. Big government can't create prosperity or innovation. Raising taxes is not "fiscal sanity." Banning guns doesn't decrease crime. Neither does more welfare. A "realist" foreign policy doesn't make us safer. Terrorists are not seeking sympathy and understanding. Or apologies.
And it's "Bush's redneck America" that sees that the Emperor has no clothes.
There's been lots of flapping and squawking about that Bush aide who said to Ron Suskind:
The aide said that guys like me were ''in what we call the reality-based community,'' which he defined as people who ''believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.'' I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. ''That's not the way the world really works anymore,'' he continued. ''We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.''...What's most funny is that this is obviously a JOKE, the aide is pulling Suskind's chain, rattling his cage, and several tens-of-thousands of liberals don't get the joke!
They are all huffing and puffing, sputtering, turning purple, and declaring that they will take pride in being "reality based," and start printing up their "reality based" t-shirts!.......But even funnier, they don't see the bigger joke hidden within the smaller one. Because the paradoxical statement is truer than they can imagine. It's the dreamers who create reality, who fight evil and change the world and start new things.
And it's the people who sneer at them, their heads full of Euro-rubbish, or science-as-religion, who are utterly paralyzed and stagnant. If you think I'm kidding, go to any Kerry supporter and try to extract from her or him their blue-state-ish compelling vision and plan for the future....I've tried, with no success. Or ask them what the are for. They never have much of an answer.
My friend Andrew, a fairly open-minded Dem, tried in a recent post.
So, this is an open thread. Tell me what the Democratic Party stands for. Give me a vision, and an example of a plan which furthers that vision.All he got was a "litany of complaints." (Speaking of which, wouldn't it be the right thing for Senator Kerry to release his plans now? You know, the ones he said he had, to solve things Bush couldn't? Since he has better plans, it is his duty as an American to make them public!) Posted by John Weidner at November 6, 2004 10:10 PM | TrackBack
Well, I'm sorry I wasted my time visiting that thread. You made a reasonable comment, using no curse words, and were vilely insulted by some creep. As for the rest of it -- "Oh! We are doomed! Doooomed!" It's more pathetic than funny.
Posted by: Andrea Harris at November 7, 2004 06:32 AMAt least one Democrat, Mayor Daley, gets it.
http://www.chicagoreport.net/archives/2004/11/daley_scolds_el.php
Mayor Daley scolded the Democratic Party and the Kerry campaign yesterday, reminding his party that all politics is local and that the Republicans out-networked the Dems.
"We always thought the Republican Party was Washington, D.C. The Democrats are Washington, D.C., politicians. They don't reach out to a mayor, a governor, or the state chairman. There's no local anymore," Daley said.
"If you watch the Republican Party, they're to the people. . . . They're more grass-roots than Democrats. We think we are. The Republicans outfoxed the Democrats. They became the party of precincts, a county, a city. Their strategy was to go to the people and not to the money people. . . . We're supposed to be the party of the people. We're the party of the money. . . . We've become the party of the insider."
Good post, John. That 'empire' quip has yet another level. 'We create our own reality' is a slam at postmodern cultural relativism. The unnamed aide is clever indeed.
Posted by: Alan Sullivan at November 8, 2004 04:10 AM"Neither atheism nor the lifestyle of "urban singles" brings happiness."
I hate to break it to you...but you're wrong. I used to be a fundamentalist Christian myself and I was not happy at all. I went to an evangelical church for many years, participated in several Marches for Jesus, and was a full-fledged baptized, literal-Word-of-God-believing Christian. Before I apostatized, that is, shortly after turning 20. That shift in worldview caused serious upset in my life, but now as an agnostic 'urban single' I am much happier. Life gets a lot easier when you don't have to constantly mentally defend yourself from the cognitive dissonance in your rational mind.
But feel free to tell yourself that people like me don't exist if it helps you sleep at night...
Posted by: Ben Larson at November 9, 2004 11:18 AMI'm very glad you are happy. Or rather, happier. I'm sure others are too. But we are probably not defining "happy" in the same way.
I was writing in a more general sense--about the way leftish people promote the notion that a life filled with charming and sophisticated delights is one that will bring satisfaction in the long term. Is worth lliving.
I'm right in the middle of it--life here in SF could hardly be more delightful--but I don't buy it. I often see people in their 40's, 50's, even 60's, still filling their lives with the latest. The latest book or restaraunt or art show. Still dating!
My wife and I have three kids, and our lives are often difficult and frustrating and sometimes even miserable. But we are sort of like pioneers on a difficult path to the future. We are concerned with things that will happen long after we are dead, and tied to ancestors who have already passed away.
But the Euro-trendy Blue-State world is literally on the path to extinction. It produces many fewer births than deaths. Individuals may well be happy, but as a group they have a death-wish. One that is paradoxically tied in with avoidance of death, with believing nothing worth fighting and dying for, and not having the moral seriousness to execute those who have murdered others.
"Individuals may well be happy, but as a group they have a death-wish. "
Only individuals can be happy or unhappy. Of course, there are things that make you happy in the short term, and things that make you happy in the long term. Small children are a pain in the rear. Grown children can be valuable allies and helpers in your later years. Grandchildren are a pure delight. Is the return on investment positive? It'll be at least a decade before I find out firsthand.
Posted by: Ken at November 15, 2004 03:15 PM
