Conservative, Liberal, Principled

[papau]

Conservative, Liberal, Principled

By E. J. Dionne Jr.

Tuesday, March 29, 2005; Page A15


Liberals have so little respect for conservatives these days that people on the left are genuinely astonished when people on the right have principled disagreements with each other. The left assumes the right marches in lock step under orders from the White House.

Conservatives have so little respect for liberals that they see every liberal action as inspired by hatred of President Bush, opposition to religion and contempt for people in "the heartland."

The paradoxical result of this mutual contempt is that each side is simultaneously underestimated and overestimated. As a result, current political arrangements are seen as permanent and the possibilities of political change are missed -- even when change is in the process of happening.

The right is widely assumed to have more coherence and discipline than it does. That means its dominance in our politics is exaggerated while its intellectual energy is insufficiently appreciated. Few outside its ranks acknowledge how many philosophical streams feed the conservative movement.

The left is widely assumed to be in a state of a perpetual disarray, inspired mostly by knee-jerk responses such as "political correctness" or "radical secularism." For at least a decade now, conservatives have gleefully called their political foes "reactionary liberals" whose main task, they say, is the preservation of a New Deal-Great Society status quo. Since the 2004 election gave narrow but firm control of Washington's two elected branches of government to a Republican Party committed to conservatism, the dominant political narrative has highlighted the right's effectiveness and the left's fecklessness.

Yet the liberals' opposition to many of Bush's policies -- in particular his Social Security program and his tax cuts for the wealthy -- cannot be dismissed as a blind rejection of whatever this controversial president proposes. If there is a principle that unites the left side of the political spectrum, it is a belief that an energetic government can effectively use progressive taxation to insure the poor, the unlucky and the elderly against undue hardship. Bush's embrace of the partial privatization of Social Security has thus united liberals and created a sense of momentum unusual for the left during the Bush years.<snip>

[GOPFighter]

1. A good read

I think it's nice when someone like Dionne can pull back and look at the bigger picture, but as long as people like DeLay, Limbaugh, O'Reilly, and Norquist make it their life's work to demonize and crush the left, I will hate the GOP.

And what the hell does he mean by "while its intellectual energy is insufficiently appreciated..."? I see lots of energy on the right, but very little intellect.

[The White Tree]

2. I think a lot of these conservatives are quite intelligent

Cheney, William Krystol, Wolfowitz, Rove. It's just that their intellect is directed completely and totally toward their self- interest as opposed to what is best for all Americans.

They have strong intellect but little empathy.

In essence the inteligensia of the right is like one big, old boys network where the principal that rules is - You scratch my back I'll scratch yours.

And I would disagree that there are many streams of philosophy amongst conservatives. I think there are actually very few - There is Judeo-Christian Fundamentalism, the Neo-Con world view of the US as the dominating superpower and the view that the Rights of Ownership trump the rights of everything else.

Everything else just seems to be posturing.

[Demeter]

3. Sorry, But the Characterizations of Democrats

are just so much bullshit. The only reasonable statement was that there is nothing in Social Security that is anti-family. In truth, there isn't anything in the arguments for Choice that is anti-family, either, but that fact is often buried under histrionic religiosity and patriarchical tendencies. What the Right needs is some good strong ego boundaries (in other words, Mind Your Own Business!)