"Democrats Losing the Lease on Their Old Kentucky Home"

Here is an article in the Los Angeles Times, Dec. 30, which is, I surmise, designed to strike heart-stopping, mind-numbing fear into Hollywood Vacuumheads: a state traditionally Democratic, in which voter registration is still 60% Democrat, is starting to vote Republican.

O the agony!

I'll intersperse a few comments. I hope you don't mind.

Dethroned Democrat John Black stands on his front porch and gazes ruefully across the street at the City Hall building that had been his life. The longtime public official was voted out of office last month — just one victim of a Republican fervor that has galloped clear across this horse-breeding state.

"It's over," he says softly, pacing in his socks on a cold Kentucky morning. After serving 10 years as mayor and two terms as judge executive, an office similar to county supervisor, Black sighs, "My political career is history, all because I'm a Democrat. And that's just a crying shame."

Kentucky is among a handful of states close to the Deep South — including West Virginia, Tennessee, Missouri and Arkansas — that Bill Clinton carried in 1992 and 1996, but that George W. Bush won in 2000. Experts predict that the Democrats probably need to win some of them back to capture the presidency in 2004.

Wow. I suppose you have to be some Real Big Esoteric Intellectual to be able to figure that out.

Democrats once held unquestioned sway in Kentucky. But no more. The state recently elected its first GOP governor in 32 years. The GOP also has made gains from the coal fields in the east to the white-fenced horse stables of suburban Lexington. And this political transformation in Kentucky illustrates the hurdles Democrats will face as they battle to win moderate-to-conservative states in next year's presidential election.

Politicos like Black now view their national party as a liability. They have a stern word of advice for a Howard Dean or any other Democratic presidential nominee who might come calling to reclaim a state that went for Bush: You're in trouble.

The state's 4 million residents — 91% of them white, many the direct descendants of the original 18th century pioneering landowners — have rallied behind the Republican agenda of tax cuts, a well-funded military and increased domestic security.

Whoa. Ninety-one percent white. Descended from "18th century pioneering landowners" — who were slaveholders, of course. Gee. You don't think this is supposed to obliquely imply that this defection to the Republican camp is happening because those Kentuckians are closet racists, do you?

Meanwhile, local Democrats say they have been hurt by the positions their national leaders take on divisive social issues, such as support for same-sex unions and abortion rights.

Ah. Not only racists, but "gay" bashers and women haters, too. It must make their blood boil out there on the Left Coast, just reading about these horrible people.

"The Republicans are strong in many of these states and becoming increasingly so," said Hastings Wyman, editor of a bimonthly newsletter, Southern Political Report. "These places are conservative on social issues, hawkish on foreign affairs — and that plays into Republican hands."

Ooooh, those dastardly Republicans. Winning on issues. How underhanded can you get!?!

Even loyal Kentucky Democrats predict that Dean, the former Vermont governor broad-brushed by Republicans as an East Coast liberal, would turn off voters here if he emerges as the party's nominee. They say more moderate candidates, such as retired Gen. Wesley K. Clark or Sens. John Edwards of North Carolina and Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, would fare better, but still lose to Bush.

"George Bush is more popular in Kentucky than any state outside Texas," said Paul Blanchard, formerly of the Center for Kentucky History and Politics at Eastern Kentucky University. "Nothing he does with the economy or in Iraq seems to diminish his popularity here."

See the link to Discriminations, below, for an obvious reply to that.

In Gratz, tobacco farmer Ricky Fitzgerald gives voice to such attitudes, saying the Republicans speak his mind. "I'll be a Bush man until the cows come home. I was so sick of Clinton and the Democrats who ride that same donkey."

Cows and donkeys? For heavens' sake, they couldn't have scripted this to make him sound more like a knuckle-dragging hick to them so-phisti-cates out there in the Land o' Sunshine.

Kentucky's religious bent also seemingly works against the Democrats. The state ranks eighth nationally in the number of churches per person, with 18 for every 10,000 residents. And surveys in recent years have shown that church attendance has become an indicator of voting preferences — those who go to services at least once a week are far more likely to back Bush than those who rarely attend.

It is to be understood, of course, that these Kentucky hicks are of the disapproved — that is, "right-wing" instead of "left-wing" — religious type, and are therefore to be considered first-amendment shredding, racist, homophobic, women-hating Neanderthals who can't wait to outlaw Judaism, Islam, atheism, and (especially) liberalism.

In 1992, Clinton was able to win in Kentucky by capitalizing on a faltering national economy. He won it again in 1996, but by a narrower margin.

"Clinton talked about a middle-class tax cut and presented himself as a political moderate," said Wyman. "He was a Southern candidate with a Southern running mate. That played well in Kentucky and elsewhere in the region."

But Kentucky residents soured on Clinton and, more recently, Democratic Gov. Paul E. Patton after well-publicized sex scandals. "The Democrats have worn out their welcome," said La Grange resident Meredith Recktenwald. "It started with Clinton and continued right on through ex-Gov. Patton."

Patton's last year in office was clouded by controversy after he first denied, then acknowledged, an affair with a Kentucky businesswoman.

A Democratic fiefdom for roughly 100 years after the Civil War, Kentucky became more receptive to the GOP in presidential elections and some Senate and House races in the 1960s, when the national Democratic Party shifted to the left. But for the most part, state and local offices remained solidly Democratic.

How did that get in here? First, it's made quite clear that these boobs are racist, women-hating homophobes (who would probably hate The Poor, too, if they weren't The Poor themselves). Now, it's admitted that the state had been Democratic since, like, the beginning of time. It follows that slavery, racism, segregation, and anti-civil rights were Democratic policies. Surely, this realization must trouble the intellects out there in Lala land. But, of course, I jest.

Registered Democrats, in fact, still outnumber Republicans in the state 60% to 40%. But now, many of those Democrats routinely cross party lines when casting their ballot.

"People here didn't leave the Democrats — the party deserted the people of Kentucky," said Paducah Mayor William F. Paxton, a registered Democrat who regularly votes for Republican presidential candidates and in November voted for the new Republican governor, Ernie Fletcher. "With their gay rights and abortions, they just became too darned liberal."

Yep. Just in case those Hollywood Vacuumheads didn't get the message the first time: these Democratic turncoats are women-hating homophobes.

Kentucky state Sen. Tim Shaughnessy, another Democrat, plans to disassociate himself from the national party during his run for reelection next year. "The Democrats are beginning to look like an extremist fringe group," he said. "There's no clear message being delivered — not here and not on the national level."

Shaughnessy is now in the minority in the state Senate, something that would have been hard to imagine in 1988, when Democrats controlled the chamber by nearly a 5-to-1 margin. Republicans now outnumber the Democrats 22 to 16. The GOP took over the chamber in 1999, when two state senators switched parties to join the Republicans.

Democrats still enjoy a comfortable majority, 65 to 35, in the state House. But with help from their new governor, Republicans are confident they can chip away at that margin.

At the federal level, the picture looks bleak for Kentucky Democrats. The state's two senators and five of its six congressmen are Republicans.

Rep. Ken Lucas, the sole Democrat, recently decided not to run for reelection. If they lose that seat next year, Kentucky Democrats will have no voice whatsoever in the nation's capital — ending an era that has seen the state elect at least one Democrat every year since 1828.

Running for Lucas' seat is Democrat Nick Clooney, a newspaper columnist and father of actor George Clooney. The elder Clooney is already being skewered for his family's leftist politics. Carped one state Republican voter in an Internet political chat room: "Given how far left George Looney is, I'm betting Daddy is also a kooky liberal."

Oh. my. God! Those ignorant bastards don't even like George Clooney. They must be inhuman!

On the national front, Kentucky Republicans claim Dean is so far out of line with voters here that he'd lose a "whisper campaign" on just his support of civil unions for gay couples.

Just in case the Vacuumheads didn't get it the first two times, the Kentucky rubes are homophobes. I guess it must have been assumed that the HV already got the message that the hicks also hate women.

"The Democrats' Hollywood left-wing party isn't registering a geehaw with our voters," said Ellen Williams, chairwoman of the Kentucky Republican Party.

Geehaw? The author must have taped hundreds of individuals for thousands of hours until he came up with one word that would make the Filthy Rich Liberal Communist Hollywood Hypocrites realize just what kind of backwoods, mediaeval ignoramuses we're talking about here.

"The only way a Howard Dean could win votes here is not to speak — to just smile and shake hands. The moment he opens his mouth, he loses voters."

The moment he opens his mouth, he loses voters? That might be because the notion that Howard Dean is smart is nothing but a Democratic Establishment lie.

One voter Dean himself says the Democrats have lost is the middle-class Southern white male, a defection party loyalists acknowledge could loom large in next year's presidential race.

The "middle-class Southern white male"? As often as this column brings up whites, one could almost suspect the author of being racially motivated — except, of course, he must be a liberal Democrat and, therefore, racial motivation is impossible for him, by definition.

"Howard Dean was right — we need that good ol' boy in the pickup truck. Especially in Kentucky," Shaughnessy said. "Because that guy lives in every county across this state. The Democratic Party used to be his party, but not anymore. And we've got to find a way to get him back."

Dean was right — and he's still going to lose. Even in Kentucky.

The Democrats haven't lost John Black — not yet. Since leaving office, he's tried selling real estate. But he's not happy. "I want to stay in public service, but it seems the only way to do that is to change parties," he said.

"John Black"? Surely, I fantasize to think that this man was chosen for this article because his name is emblematic of the average African-American. Surely, I fantasize. Surely.

"People tell me to move to another county, but the way I see it there is no place to go. They're all turning Republican."

Could a campaign by Sarandon, Robbins & Garofalo save this strange, foreign land called Ken-tuck-ee — or is it too late to keep them from the clutches of the evil Rethuglicans? Tune in next time........

The Blog from the Core asserts Fair Use for non-commercial, non-profit educational purposes.

(Thanks, John.)

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Fri. 01/02/04 10:17:45 PM
Categorized as Media & Political.

Poor Democrats; They Lost Their "Intellectual Leader": Bill Clinton

Democrats in Self-Destruct Mode LXXVIII

An amusing article in yesterday's New York Times.

When Democratic Party officials devised their primary calendar for 2004, they produced a rapid-fire voting schedule intended to quickly produce a nominee who could escape the battering that has hobbled so many presidential candidates over the years.

But less than three weeks before the first vote in the nominating process, the caucuses here on Jan. 19, it appears possible that the party has achieved just half of its goal. The Democrats may get their early nominee, party officials say, but it now appears likely to be someone bruised by the nominating fight and confronted with the challenge of uniting a deeply divided party.

In a classic case of unintended consequences, a process intended to produce unity, a strong candidate, and a compelling platform to take against President Bush has so far produced a campaign that many Democrats describe as strikingly harsh and marked more by daily bickering than sweeping themes or compelling new ideas on where to take the country.

While it is hardly unusual for political contests to get rough, it rarely happens this early. And it almost never happens in the Iowa caucuses, a state where Democrats say, or at least used to say, that voters punish candidates who engage in negative campaigning.

At one point here this week, Howard Dean, a leader in many polls in Iowa and New Hampshire, begged the party's national chairman to step in and end the attacks against him that he said could end up serving only the White House, should he be his party's nominee. The plea earned him mocking rebukes from his opponents, including a sarcastic warning from Senator Joseph I. Lieberman that Dr. Dean would "melt" in the glare of a White House attack.

At the same time, in what Democrats described as a matter of rising concern, none of the candidates have managed in this harsh environment to become identified with the kind of sweeping election theme or signature proposal that has been central to successful presidential campaigns for the past 20 years, though Dr. Dean did rise on an antiwar stance.

Bill Clinton captured the White House in 1992 with a platform of "opportunity and responsibility" and a promise of health care for all, while George W. Bush won on a pledge of "compassionate conservatism" that included education reform.

"The nastiness of this campaign makes it difficult to go to an overarching message," said Bob Kerrey, a former Nebraska senator who ran for president in 1992 on a pledge for national health care coverage.

This verdict comes after a long year of preliminary skirmishing. Now the battle among nine candidates moves into a critical phase with the start of the new year and with a rush of contests that Democrats say is likely to produce a nominee by mid-March.

By many measures, Dr. Dean, who a year ago was dismissed by his opponents as little more than a vanity candidate, enters this most visible stretch of the contest as the dominant contender. He has a significant lead in most polls in New Hampshire, which has a primary the week after the caucuses. And many Democrats say they believe he is, at least today, positioned here to defeat Representative Richard A. Gephardt, a strong contender in Iowa. Mr. Gephardt, from the neighboring state of Missouri, won in Iowa in 1988 when he made his first presidential bid.

Should Dr. Dean score successive victories here and in New Hampshire, he may prove difficult to stop.

That said, Dr. Dean has, rolling into this high-scrutiny period, made a number of statements that underscored concerns among many Democrats about how he would hold up against Mr. Bush. Most recently was a quickly retracted suggestion that he would withhold any judgment on the punishment Osama bin Laden deserved pending a determination by the judicial system.

In Iowa and New Hampshire, Mr. Gephardt and Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts are hoping that the questions about how strong a candidate Dr. Dean would be against Mr. Bush will benefit them by unsettling Democrats who have said that unseating the president is their priority.

And in the event that Dr. Dean still emerges strongly from those two states, three other Democrats are looking to become his main opponent as the race swings South: Gen. Wesley K. Clark, Mr. Lieberman and Senator John Edwards of North Carolina.

Terry McAuliffe, the Democratic national chairman, dismissed the concerns about the tenor of the race. In an interview, Mr. McAuliffe predicted the party would rally around the winner and the candidate would wind up with the kind of big ideas needed to make a case against Mr. Bush.

"Listen, we will be unified," he said. "All the candidates are going to come together. There is a visceral dislike of George Bush and it's going to bring these guys together."

"I am telling you, with the new calendar we are going to have an early nominee," he said. "We could not have a food fight going through the spring of 2004."

Yet the evidence here to date — a typical e-mail message sent out on Tuesday was headlined, "Gephardt Responds to Dean's Latest Outlandish Assertion" — suggests that the food fight started early this year. And some Democrats expressed concern that this would undermine both the eventual nominee and the party's hopes of unity.

"Dean continues to run essentially a negative campaign, and most of the others except for Edwards are chasing him down that hole," said Bruce Reed, the president of the centrist Democratic Leadership Council and a frequent critic of Dr. Dean. Mr. Edwards has methodically sought to avoid engaging the other candidates.

"Rank-and-file Democrats, whatever frustration they have with their party leadership, they don't like all this internecine warfare," Mr. Reed said. "Most of them want to see a positive vision."

Dr. Dean's complaints notwithstanding, many Democrats said it had been his campaign — the hard-hitting outsider mocking the Washington Democratic establishment candidates to approving cheers — that set the tone.

Those attacks have rankled his opponents, and raised, or lowered, the bar on campaign discourse, several Democrats said. At the same time, this fast-moving calendar has turned up the pressure on Democrats to move earlier rather than later to discredit him.

And many Democrats warned that the combination of these early attacks, and the failure of any candidates to stake out dramatic new ground, could prove a problem to whomever the eventual nominee is.

The most dramatic policy speech of the year, several Democrats said, was Mr. Gephardt's proposal to provide health care to all Americans, a speech that took place eight months ago.

Some campaign officials argued that it remained early in the race, and that there was plenty of time for a candidate to come up with the kind of campaign appeal to take to victory this November.

"I think a lot of this has to do with the calendar," said Eli Segal, the campaign chairman for General Clark, who played a similar role for Mr. Clinton 1992.

"It's very hard to develop substantive ideas to distinguish yourself in the crowd with the rush of early primaries and all these debates," Mr. Segal said. "It's made for commonality of views."

General Clark's communications director, Matthew Bennett, called back later to say that the general would soon break the ice. "Wait one week and we'll have a big idea coming out," Mr. Bennett said. "I can't give it out yet, but it's not quite cooked."

Others suggested that the overriding concern this year with national security and the war in Iraq had forced Democrats to be responsive and made it difficult for them to break through with the kind of issues that might play to their strength.

"The nation's focus has been so much on foreign affairs that it's pretty difficult to come up with a domestic issue that is going to trump invading Iraq or finding Hussein," said Gov. Tom Vilsack of Iowa, a Democrat. "I think that will happen."

But others suggested that the state of the race reflected the difficult situation the Democratic Party faced being out of power in the White House and both chambers of Congress and without any clear new intellectual leaders to replace Mr. Clinton.

At the same time, the White House has made a systematic — and some Democrats said successful — effort to blunt the edge on such traditional Democratic issues as prescription drug benefits for the elderly. In that case the White House signed into law a program passed by the Republican-led Congress.

"The Democratic debate doesn't feel fresh because the terms so far have been set by Clinton and Bush," said Simon Rosenberg, a former adviser to Mr. Clinton who now heads the New Democrat Network, a group of moderate Democrats. "It has been derivative of Clinton and reactive to Bush."

The Blog from the Core asserts Fair Use for non-commercial, non-profit educational purposes.

"Listen, we will be unified," he [Terry McAuliffe] said. "All the candidates are going to come together. There is a visceral dislike of George Bush and it's going to bring these guys together." Yep. The Nine Dwarfs have a "visceral dislike" of a president whose approval rating regularly polls around sixty percent.

And they're just gonna keep on keeping on and on and on........

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Fri. 01/02/04 09:32:17 PM
Categorized as Democrats in Self-Destruct Mode & Political.

Howard Dean is a Sanctimonious, Condescending Prig

And he shows it almost every time he opens his mouth anymore.

Democrats in Self-Destruct Mode LXXVII

The Democratic front-runner takes steady aim and fires at his foot again in the Boston Globe, today.

HOWARD DEAN SAID, "I'm trying to gently call out the white population." His genteel example was a story he tells to voters about how his chief of staff as governor of Vermont was always a woman. After two or three years, Dean noticed that she had a "matriarchy" in the office. When the chief of staff was going to hire a new person, Dean said, he told her, " `I notice we have a gender imbalance in the office, and I wonder if you could find a man.' She said it's really hard to find a qualified man. I got everybody laughing about that."

That is Dean's icebreaker to get audiences to understand institutional racism. "The punch line of the story that it's so hard to find a qualified man is everybody does it. Everybody tends to hire people like themselves. And I get them all nodding, including the African-Americans in the audience."

He went on to talk about a consultant who runs political campaigns in Washington. The consultant was kept on to hire the staff for one of his candidates who won a city council race. "In the first staff meeting before the guy took office, they looked around and said, `Oh-oh.' Everyone was male, and everyone was African-American."

This was a softer Dean than the one excoriated by his competitors for the Democratic presidential nomination for saying he wanted to appeal to white guys with Confederate flags on their pickup trucks. For all the fire of that moment, Dean said the Democrats cannot run away from a blunt, if gently blunt, discussion about race.

"Dealing with race is about educating white folks," Dean said in an interview Tuesday on a campaign swing through the first primary state where African-American voters will have a major impact. "Not because white people are worse than black people about race but because whites are in the majority, and therefore the behavior of whites has a much bigger influence on hiring practices and so forth and so on than the behavior of African-Americans." It is unknown whether Dean's style of education will have a big influence on either white or African-American primary voters at the expense of, say, Wesley Clark's experience with affirmative action in the military or John Edwards's Clintonesque folksiness. While the Republicans have baldly capitulated to racism in modern presidential campaigns, such as appearing at Bob Jones University and claiming we are so close to a "colorblind" society that affirmative action programs can be dismantled, the Democrats have struggled to find a message that attracts swing white voters and loyal voters of color at the same.

The last Democrat in the White House, Bill Clinton, who was hugely popular with African-American voters, started a national discussion on race but abandoned it during the Monica Lewinsky scandal. Clinton also never challenged Republican-inspired laws that had a disastrous impact on young African-Americans and Latinos, such as mandatory sentencing and much harsher jail terms for possession of crack cocaine than for powdered cocaine.

Dean would not discuss the Clinton era. He did say that as president, he would try to end disproportionate drug sentencing and mandatory sentencing. He said he is a firm supporter of affirmative action. He said perhaps preferential points could be given to companies seeking federal contracts who can demonstrate diversity.

Dean said proactive measures are still necessary to counteract the unconscious biases that confirmed by many studies showing that job discrimination continues to be a major problem. "One generation does not make up for 15 generations of slavery and Jim Crow," Dean said.

Dean said his own education about unconscious racism began at Yale, where he graduated in 1971. He was trying to get a child from the inner city of New Haven that he was tutoring to talk "proper" English. One of his African-American roommates told him, "Why don't you leave him alone?" He said he had the "traditional white liberal idea that if black people were like us then we'd all be fine. Sort of like the Republican idea. If we all played golf at the same country club, then there wouldn't be any racial problems."

Another seminal moment was during his freshman winter. One of his roommates became a leader in the black student alliance, which resulted in frequent, large gatherings of African-American men in his dorm room. At one of these gatherings, Dean said, "I suddenly realized I was the only white person in the room, and literally the hair went up in the back of my neck. 'Cause I thought, what if it was always like this? What if everywhere in your world you were the only white person and everyone else was black? For one instant I had some tiny inkling what it was like to be black in America."

Now Dean wants to get white Americans to ask those same questions without raising the hair on their necks. If he succeeds, that would really turn the tables on America's most difficult subject.

Derrick Z. Jackson's e-mail address is jackson@globe.com.

© Copyright 2004 Globe Newspaper Company.

The Blog from the Core asserts Fair Use for non-commercial, non-profit educational purposes.

You know what's even more hilarious than Dean talking as if every living white person is a closet racist? That the Boston Globe thinks they're doing him a favor by telling us so.

Ain't it sweet? :-)

See also JunkYardBlog.

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Fri. 01/02/04 09:17:34 PM
Categorized as Democrats in Self-Destruct Mode & Political.

Religion in Politics This Week

This week, two articles were published on religion and politics.

First, a column by Raymond Flynn, former mayor of Boston and former US ambassador to the Vatican City State, in the Manchester Union-Leader, Dec. 30:

.... I watch and read about this year’s Presidential candidates staking out their positions on everything from the war in Iraq to health care, jobs, education and the economy, I do not see any attention or direct appeal being given to the all-important Catholic voter.

I’m not saying Catholics aren’t passionate about these issues or that they necessarily vote as a bloc. What I am saying is that some of the most pressing issues of our time, which are of vital importance to Catholic voters, are being downplayed or ignored.

What are these issues?

I’m talking about the respect for human life, protecting the institution of marriage, parental choice in education, protecting Social Security, the poor, economic justice, human rights, workers’ rights, welfare reform and immigration, to name just a few.

These issues are neither Republican nor Democrat. They are issues of importance to millions of Catholics who are faithful, hard working, patriotic — and who vote....

With all due respect, Ambassador, let's get real here. The problem is not that the Democratic Party has written off the Catholic vote. The problem is that (1) the Democratic Party has written off the Catholic conscience because (2) it can do so with impunity, counting on millions of Catholics to deny in the voting booth what they purport to profess in the pew. I think you would do much better to address some pointed remarks, not to politicians of any party, but to Catholic pastors of all stripes.

(See also Bettnet.com.)

Second, a remarkable lament — make no mistake about it, that's what it is; not a report, not an analysis: a lament — over the collapse of what would be called the "religious left" except nobody calls it that, in the Orlando Sentinel, Dec. 31:

Heading into a presidential election year, the Republican Party faithful are already rolling up their sleeves -- and passing the collection plate. In church social halls, they are raising money for voter registration, "issue" advertising and "Christian scorecards," which rate candidates on their positions on key cultural issues such as abortion and homosexuality.

By contrast, there is little activity at the other end of the ideological spectrum. Left-wing religious efforts at political mobilization -- where they exist -- seem puny, aged and marginalized.

After decades of riding popular social movements such as civil rights, the left splintered and now seems unable to regroup. Conversely, the GOP has co-opted the support of religious voters by focusing their attention on cultural and lifestyle issues -- such as gay marriage.

On economic issues, another mainstay of the left, the outlook is no brighter.

Unless they are directly affected, people in the pews seem unwilling to grapple with economic disparity and job losses, which defy simple solutions. Despite the loss of 3 million jobs since 2001 and falling retirement and investment portfolios, they are more likely to object to teaching Darwin in the classroom than to struggling in an economy increasingly based on survival of the fittest.

The poll numbers are ominous for Democratic candidates, who seem to have written off voters with strong religious convictions. A survey by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press found that nearly two-thirds of Americans who attend religious services at least once a week vote Republican. For those who say they seldom attend a house of worship, that figure is reversed: Two-thirds vote Democratic....

Funny, isn't it? When it's left-wing religion, we're supposed to be saddened because it's not influential; when it's the Democratic Party that abandons people of faith, we're supposed to be alarmed. On the other hand, when it's right-wing religion, we're supposed to be alarmed if it is influential, and when the Republican Party doesn't abandon people of faith, we're supposed to be alarmed. Funny, isn't it?

This kind of flaming hypocrisy in mainstream media would be almost blinding if it hadn't become so utterly predictable.

(Thanks, Kathy.)

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Fri. 01/02/04 09:01:15 PM
Categorized as Political & Religious.

"The Collapse of Liberalism"

A classic editorial by Robert L. Bartley, Oct. 14, 1968:

.... Liberalism finds its old appeals faltering, then, just as it comes under powerful attack for its management of both foreign affairs and domestic policy. If present form holds, that will be the meaning of the 1968 election. Naturally we do not know how the forces involved will finally work themselves out. Present form may not hold on election day. Even if it does, how much of a watershed the election will prove depends on the skill and luck of the incoming Administration.

One thing we do know, however. The reasons liberalism are in trouble are ones its critics have long predicted. The naive view of man, the search for frantic short-cuts, the devotion to commitment ahead of effectiveness, the excessive materialism. All these are not happenstance. Liberalism is collapsing not by chance or bad luck. It is collapsing under its own deficiencies.

Too unrealistic? Or distantly prescient?

See also Robert L. Bartley, RIP.

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Fri. 01/02/04 12:15:08 PM
Categorized as Social/Cultural.