House of Eratosthenes

Back in September, Sam Tanenhaus published a slender book titled, in a note of hopeful optimism, The Death of Conservatism.
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What Tanenhaus really delivers is an in-print liberal temper tantrum, trashing Palin up, down, and sideways, sinking frequently to the level of the high school “in crowd” savaging the non-cool kid from the not-rich family who got above herself. Carried away by his indignation at the nerd Palin, from the wrong side of the nation’s geography and class structure, daring to sit down at the lunch table reserved for the cultural equivalent of cheer leaders and football players, Tanenhaus openly reveals what liberals really think (in their most secret little hearts): Sarah Palin represents the erasure of any distinction between the governing and the governed. [emphasis in original, but I’d add it in if it wasn’t there.]
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Today’s liberals are a strange combination of the Secret Six, the Narodnaya Volya, and every high school’s ruling clique. Like the 19th century radical Abolitionists with whom they explicitly identify, Liberals believe they are morally and intellectually more enlightened than Americans generally, and perceive grave and fundamental sins blemishing America, which they feel entitled to correct regardless of what any or all of the rest of us happen to think about it…

On a more mundane level, like any high school clique, they feel entitled to rule, and they demand deference, on the basis of status. Tanenhaus refers to “distinction,” which he summarizes as consisting of skill, experience, intellect but, as we saw in the 2008 campaign, in which the record of the most popular and successful governor in the nation was compared disfavorably by every liberal evaluator of “distinction” to a candidate whose only meaningful accomplishments were a (possibly ghost-written) post-Law School memoir and the campaign then still underway, that skill, experience, and intellect tend to be qualities varying greatly in the eye of the beholder. A captious critic could easily observe that the election of Barack Obama proves just how easily the top lunch-table clique can be seduced by such superficialities as glibness and a good announcer’s voice.

Here is one of the most formidable and insurmountable contradictions of the liberal worldview. It is egalitarian in nature…but at the same time, not.

It is dedicated to the proposition that all men are not created equal. The title “death of conservatism” itself is just another example of this. It doesn’t mean Death of Conservatives, does it? Perhaps not. But perhaps the lack of a stated answer to that is more ominous than any stated answer possible. Convert; die; just stop voting. One way or the other, the opposition is to be deprived of a voice. Not to be bested in debate, but deprived of a place at the debating table.

This has happened rather quickly, hasn’t it? The primary thrust of Al Gore’s campaign in 2000 wasn’t that he was a better sort of person than George W. Bush; sure he and his followers thought so, and occasionally said so. But Gore and Bush debated on matters of policy. Four years later, John Kerry said “I have a plan!” He didn’t say what the plan was. And on other issues, the selling point wasn’t quite so much that Kerry’s idea was better than Bush’s idea, or that it was more compassionate. It was, rather, that Kerry had thought of it, which is a decidedly different thing. Our “allies” would respect this plan because Kerry had the “moral authority” to command their deference whereas Bush had “squandered” whatever remained of that authority he ever once had.

Fast forward to 2008 and the transformation was complete. Very little was discussed about policy. We were told whatever policy there was in the McCain camp had to be a Xerox of whatever would be done by President Bush, and this was double-plus ungood.

No, we sunk deeply into the swampland of personality politics. Barack Obama was just one of the cool kids. Captain of the football team, ASB President, the kid all the girls wanted to date…versus the Principal who should’ve retired long ago, and smelled funny.

It’s worse. When the elections are over, the problem continues. What will our leaders do tomorrow, next week, next year? What’s in that health care bill everyone’s arguing about, anyway? Will anything get decided in Copenhagen, and if so, what?

Nevermind. We have our brightest people in those talks, that’s what matters. They are the cool kids. Football champs and cheerleaders.

They’re entitled to rule. Who cares about what they’re deciding? “Rule” means never having to explain it to anyone.

On a more mundane level, like any high school clique, they feel entitled to rule, and they demand deference, on the basis of status.

The entire post could probably be distilled to just this sentence. It really cuts to the heart of the problem, no?

Here’s what I find the most amusing. They write (or simply live by an unwritten) standard which separates those who are “fit to rule” from those who are not.

Then they turn around and point to that standard when they’re actually ruling! See, it says it right here in the book. How handy.

My contempt for such people doesn’t end with Democrats or even liberals. It also extends well into the ranks of what Rush calls “country-club blueblood Rockefeller Republicans.” I’ve got no patience at all for anyone who wants to “rule” me or my country rather than serve it, and certainly none for anyone who has no concept of his own limitations or those of government as an institution.

The arrogance of our political class boggles the mind. One of these days, they’re all going to get a long-overdue lesson in humility, one way or another. If not in this life, then in the next one. If not by human hands, then by God’s.

Someone wise recently wrote, “America is at an awkward phase. It’s too late to work within the system, and too soon to shoot the bastards.”
- cylarz | 12/16/2009 @ 00:11

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“Entitled to Rule, Demanding Deference”Tuesday, December 15th, 2009

“Entitled to Rule, Demanding Deference”
Tuesday, December 15th, 2009