Are The Democrats For Real

WHAT IS it that really worries Republicans and conservatives as we lick our wounds after November? It is the nagging fear that the Democrats didn’t just win because it’s an off year election and the voters are in a foul mood.

Not that the voters don’t deserve to be a foul mood, mind you.

But what if the Democrats were executing a secret plan, a grand strategic concept, a new approach to politics and we right-wing foot-soldiers didn’t have a clue what hit us? That is what keeps us awake at night.

Fortunately an evil Republican spy has come up with the answer. She sneaked into the Pelosi victory party with all the heavy hitter Democratic contributors.

And everything is ok. There’s no "there" there in the new Democratic Congress.

Writer Lisa Schiffren talked to a contributor, a real-estate developer, at the party.

I asked the real-estate developer what he thought of Pelosi. “I spent a lot of time with her. She told me she could win. She said she had a plan.” What was the plan? “The idea was that they would just criticize whatever plans the Republicans put out there”. They would tear them down -- like they did with Social Security -- and not put out their own plans. They have been very disciplined.” Indeed. No stray substance at all -- and this sharp businessman had forked over $25 grand in support.

So that’s all right. That six point plan was just what it seemed to be, a lot of nothing.

Of course, the assembled party faithful had some interesting things to say. Take a load of this. Here’s what Schriffen’s real estate developer had to say about the issues.

“All the wealthy people I know, they only care about having their taxes cut. I don’t think that’s right.” “What are the issues you really care about?” I asked. “Rich and poor in this country. It’s not right,” he said, as if it was obvious what that implied.

OK, conservatives, stop laughing and get back to work. When are you going to come up with the next brilliant conservative idea to reform the Democrats’ corrupt and unjust welfare state?

You can’t beat nothing with nothing, you know.

Christopher Chantrill blogs at americanmanifestobook.blogspot.com. His Road to the Middle Class is forthcoming.

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Responsibility

Seeckt: "to make of each individual member of the army a soldier who, in character, capability, and knowledge, is self-reliant, self-confident, dedicated, and joyful in taking responsibility [verantwortungsfreudig] as a man and a soldier."
MacGregor Knox et. al., The dynamics of military revolution, 1300-2050

Living the Virtues

When recurrently the tradition of the virtues is regenerated, it is always in everyday life, it is always through the engagement by plain persons in a variety of practices, including those of making and sustaining families and households, schools, clinics, and local forms of political community.
Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue

Moral Imperatives of Modern Culture

These emerge out of long-standing moral notions of freedom, benevolence, and the affirmation of ordinary life... I have been sketching a schematic map... [of] the moral sources [of these notions]... the original theistic grounding for these standards... a naturalism of disengaged reason, which in our day takes scientistic forms, and a third family of views which finds its sources in Romantic expressivism, or in one of the modernist successor visions.
Charles Taylor, Sources of the Self

US Life in 1842

Families helped each other putting up homes and barns. Together, they built churches, schools, and common civic buildings. They collaborated to build roads and bridges. They took pride in being free persons, independent, and self-reliant; but the texture of their lives was cooperative and fraternal.
Michael Novak, The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism

Society and State

For [the left] there is only the state and the individual, nothing in between. No family to rely on, no friend to depend on, no community to call on. No neighbourhood to grow in, no faith to share in, no charities to work in. No-one but the Minister, nowhere but Whitehall, no such thing as society - just them, and their laws, and their rules, and their arrogance.
David Cameron, Conference Speech 2008

Faith and Politics

As far as the Catholic Church is concerned, the principal focus of her interventions in the public arena is the protection and promotion of the dignity of the person, and she is thereby consciously drawing particular attention to principles which are not negotiable... [1.] protection of life in all its stages, from the first moment of conception until natural death; [2.] recognition and promotion of the natural structure of the family... [3.] the protection of the right of parents to educate their children.
Pope Benedict XVI, Speech to European Peoples Party, 2006

Never Trust Experts

No lesson seems to be so deeply inculcated by the experience of life as that you should never trust experts. If you believe doctors, nothing is wholesome: if you believe the theologians, nothing is innocent: if you believe the soldiers, nothing is safe. They all require their strong wine diluted by a very large admixture of insipid common sense.
Lord Salisbury, “Letter to Lord Lytton”

Conservatism's Holy Grail

What distinguishes true Conservatism from the rest, and from the Blair project, is the belief in more personal freedom and more market freedom, along with less state intervention... The true Third Way is the Holy Grail of Tory politics today - compassion and community without compulsion.
Minette Marrin, The Daily Telegraph

Class War

In England there were always two sharply opposed middle classes, the academic middle class and the commercial middle class. In the nineteenth century, the academic middle class won the battle for power and status... Then came the triumph of Margaret Thatcher... The academics lost their power and prestige and... have been gloomy ever since.
Freeman Dyson, “The Scientist as Rebel”

Government Expenditure

The Union publishes an exact return of the amount of its taxes; I can get copies of the budgets of the four and twenty component states; but who can tell me what the citizens spend in the administration of county and township?
Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America

Conservatism

Conservatism is the philosophy of society. Its ethic is fraternity and its characteristic is authority — the non-coercive social persuasion which operates in a family or a community. It says ‘we should...’.
Danny Kruger, On Fraternity

Postmodernism

A writer who says that there are no truths, or that all truth is ’merely relative’, is asking you not to believe him. So don’t.
Roger Scruton, Modern Philosophy

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