Liberalism's Lost Script by Neal Gabler [View All]

[carolinayellowdog]

http://www.prospect.org/print-friendly/print/V15/4/gabler-n.html

Found this linked on Altercation. Earlier I've commented on the disparity between liberal domination of books about current events and conservative domination of TV news. Gabler contrasts books with movies as metaphors for alternate political perspectives,providing some recommendations for how to take back America. Excerpt:

Or to put it in more homely terms, conservatism has become a Hollywood movie, liberalism has become literature. Like the movie blockbusters, contemporary conservatives centralize action, extol the power of the individual to bend the world to his or her will, demonize enemies to the point where anything short of annihilation would be a surrender, operate from an absolute confidence in the hero's rightness while treating opposition to it as a form of treason, and promise the comforting catharsis of eventual victory that confirms everything that has gone before. Contemporary liberals, on the other hand, like the best literature, centralize thought and deliberation rather than action, fasten on human interconnectedness and the inability of any one individual (or nation) to command events, attempt to understand the complexity of life, operate from a decidedly wary position when it comes to absolute certainties, and promise no final victories.