Pity A Poor Democrat

DON’T think it’s easy being a Democratic officeholder. Here she is, after solemnly assuring the voters that she’ll support our troops as patriotically as any Republican, now recklessly using the lives of our fighting men and women as poker chips in a high-stakes political game with President Bush.

Where will it all end? Why, with all those billions we could really solve the health-care problem.

But after opposing President Bush on behalf of the reality-based community for so many years, how can she do anything other than continue opposing and obstructing his every act, especially now that Democrats have gained control of Congress.

For Democratic voters really do believe that wars ought to be a thing of the past. In the modern age, what with social programs and all, there really is no rational basis for conflict. That’s why the present war is so obviously a result of President Bush’s incompetence or his debt to the oil companies.

It’s not just Democratic voters that think this way, you know. We conservatives and Republicans believe something similar. In the modern age, what with markets and free exchange of goods and services and all, there really is no rational basis for conflict. That’s why the present war is so obviously a result of 30 years of Democratic appeasement, starting with President Carter’s weaselly response to the Embassy hostage-taking in 1979, not to mention President Clinton’s radical aversion to any risk other than sexual.

Anyway, we should certainly not judge the Democrats as cowardly caving to their extremist base. As Charles Moore advised his readers, a politician is not a Martin Luther bellowing his integrity to the world from a rock.

A better model for politics is being at sea in a frail boat. You cannot control the weather. You cannot rebuke the waves. All you can do is learn to sail with skill.

And that means catching the wind, he writes.

For Democratic officeholders the problem is not so much catching the wind. That is seldom a problem sailing along in the Roaring Lefties. As any sailor knows, the roaring winds in the southern Peaceful Ocean create huge following seas and an extremely challenging task for an anxious helmsman.

Over the next two years as Democrats run down their easting towards the distant Cape, they can think of nothing except getting there first. Only then can they enjoy all the benefits of being first in port with a cargo of progressive notions for the political market of Washington DC.

Our Democratic friends want desperately to get back to what they do best, meeting human needs with other peoples’ money. So here they are, cracking on sail, driving towards the Cape, dreaming of the Fortunate Isles that lie beyond it.

Maybe their hopes will be realized.

But the world is very different the good old days. How simple it all seemed when FDR told us that we had nothing to fear but fear itself, or when Michael Harrington wrote convincingly of The Other America and launched a War on Poverty. How easy it seemed to the Clintons in 1993 when all we needed was one more Big Push to bring universal health care to every American.

In Europe, reports Janet Daley, the trans-national elite is discovering the virtues of patriotism and socialist presidential candidate SÃƒÂ©golÃƒÂ¨ne Royal is playing the Marseillaise rather than the Internationale at her campaign rallies.

Something of the same kind is likely to confront the Democrats as they come roaring through Drake Passage south of the Cape. They’ll find that after a generation of Reaganomics, ten years of welfare reform, and five years of Bush’s war they can’t ever go back home to “Happy Days Are Here Again.”

Progressive people have taken comfort for many years in the old notion that generals are always fighting the last war. This is supposed to demonstrate the immense superiority of the progressive approach to life and politics.

But it reflects a larger truth. A war, such as the one we are now embarked upon, is a struggle that forces us to abandon the certainties and the lessons of an older, simpler time. And a war, such as the one we are now embarked upon, also exposes all our little weaknesses and frailties, for wars are initiated by ruthless, ambitious men with an instinct for the weaknesses of the people in their way.

Democrats have yet to decide whether we face a real threat, the kind of threat met so heroically by the 300 Spartans at the pass of Thermopylae, or whether we are dealing with nothing more than bunch of young rich kids from the Middle East intoxicated with jihad.

By the way, a warning to progressive mariners. Don’t veer to far to the right in Drake Passage or you may run ashore on Elephant Island.

Christopher Chantrill blogs at americanmanifestobook.blogspot.com.

Buy his Road to the Middle Class.

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Faith & Purpose

“When we began first to preach these things, the people appeared as awakened from the sleep of ages—they seemed to see for the first time that they were responsible beings...”
Finke, Stark, The Churching of America, 1776-1990

Mutual Aid

In 1911... at least nine million of the 12 million covered by national insurance were already members of voluntary sick pay schemes. A similar proportion were also eligible for medical care.
Green, Reinventing Civil Society

Education

“We have met with families in which for weeks together, not an article of sustenance but potatoes had been used; yet for every child the hard-earned sum was provided to send them to school.”
E. G. West, Education and the State

Living Under Law

Law being too tenuous to rely upon in [Ulster and the Scottish borderlands], people developed patterns of settling differences by personal fighting and family feuds.
Thomas Sowell, Conquests and Cultures

German Philosophy

The primary thing to keep in mind about German and Russian thought since 1800 is that it takes for granted that the Cartesian, Lockean or Humean scientific and philosophical conception of man and nature... has been shown by indisputable evidence to be inadequate.
F.S.C. Northrop, The Meeting of East and West

Knowledge

Inquiry does not start unless there is a problem... It is the problem and its characteristics revealed by analysis which guides one first to the relevant facts and then, once the relevant facts are known, to the relevant hypotheses.
F.S.C. Northrop, The Logic of the Sciences and the Humanities

Chappies

“But I saw a man yesterday who knows a fellow who had it from a chappie that said that Urquhart had been dipping himself a bit recklessly off the deep end.” —Freddy Arbuthnot
Dorothy L. Sayers, Strong Poison

Democratic Capitalism

I mean three systems in one: a predominantly market economy; a polity respectful of the rights of the individual to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; and a system of cultural institutions moved by ideals of liberty and justice for all. In short, three dynamic and converging systems functioning as one: a democratic polity, an economy based on markets and incentives, and a moral-cultural system which is plural and, in the largest sense, liberal.
Michael Novak, The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism

Action

The incentive that impels a man to act is always some uneasiness... But to make a man act [he must have] the expectation that purposeful behavior has the power to remove or at least to alleviate the felt uneasiness.
Ludwig von Mises, Human Action

Churches

[In the] higher Christian churches... they saunter through the liturgy like Mohawks along a string of scaffolding who have long since forgotten their danger. If God were to blast such a service to bits, the congregation would be, I believe, genuinely shocked. But in the low churches you expect it every minute.
Annie Dillard, Holy the Firm

Conversion

“When we received Christ,” Phil added, “all of a sudden we now had a rule book to go by, and when we had problems the preacher was right there to give us the answers.”
James M. Ault, Jr., Spirit and Flesh

Living Law

The recognition and integration of extralegal property rights [in the Homestead Act] was a key element in the United States becoming the most important market economy and producer of capital in the world.
Hernando de Soto, The Mystery of Capital

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