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My personal musings about anything that gets on my radar screen--heavily dominated by politics.

2004-11-16

In Case You Missed This

On Friday there was a very thoughtful and, in my opinion, important op-ed in the Rocky Mountain News, written by the Chancellor of the Archdiocese of Denver.
The money lines:

California's Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein warns cluelessly that gay marriage was pushed too fast - as if the troglodytes in the red states (and, oh yeah, in Oregon) need more time to see the light. Others point to Bush's personality, or Karl Rove's evil genius, or John Kerry's bumbling campaign team. The list of excuses is endless.

The 2004 election wasn't about "personality." It was about character - the Bob Casey, moral values kind. Democrats used to be able to tell the difference. That they no longer can is why my Democratic wife, and millions of people just like her, had no trouble at all pulling the lever for Republicans on Nov. 2.

George Will echoes many of those thoughts, but delves deeper into the root cause of that problem: arrogance.

It is passing strange. As the American public has become more educated, American intellectuals have become more disparaging of the public's intellectual incapacities and moral shortcomings. In 1940, more than half of the U.S. population had only an eighth-grade education, or less. Now that 85 percent are high-school graduates, 53 percent have some college education and 27 percent are college graduates, it is an article of faith among the progressive intelligentsia that the public is becoming increasingly obtuse, bigoted and superstitious.

There was a time—say, from the early 1930s to the mid-1960s, the period of the Democratic Party's ascendancy—when progressives thought their job was to increase the material well-being of ordinary Americans. It is not mere coincidence that the Democratic Party's strength has waned as its intellectuals' disapproval of ordinary Americans has waxed.

Of course, the post mortems on the Dems continue, and will likely for some time (including, laughingly, a "strategy session" at the opening of the Clinton Library). But until they come to grips with the fundamental fact that they hold in contempt that which more than half the population holds dear, the Dems will not re-occupy a majority position in this country.
Posted by: Michael / 11/16/2004 01:52:00 AM

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