Old-Fashioned Democrats Hopelessly Out of Style
Posted in Political Parties by Julie Ponzi
Daniel Henninger writes a biting and inspired column today in the
WSJ. Oh, the irony! Democrats caught hopelessly in the out-moded and tired ways of the past? In an age of iPhone apps and de-centralizing trends, Dems are pushing a miserable model of government that should have been left in the 1930s where it originated. Obama rides on a false reputation as a hipster. He's actually a crusty throw-back. As Henninger puts it, it appears irrefutable.
2:49 PM / October 29, 2009
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Peggy Noonan says we are governed by callous children who do not understand the relationship between golden eggs and the goose that lays them. Maybe this is why the message sounds old-fashioned? I know I have been hearing the same impossible utopian things all of my life. As a few people have put it lately, what is proposed, in case after case, is foolishness because there is no sense of the consequences. Everything is about the short-term fix and nothing about what endures.
Perhaps it is that short-sightedness, too often of both parties, that leaves both the sense of hopelessness and the distrust of all who claim to be leaders in the minds of the general population.
The Noonan editorial: https://online.wsj.com/article/SB20001424052748703363704574503631430926354.html
This may also relate to that McGurn article about ungraciousness. Children always seem to be looking for who to blame, as if solutions, or even survival, had to do with that.
Henninger's column is right on the mark.
For me, one of the most jarring, vexing things about Obama's ascendancy is how out of place it felt. I'd spent the past 15 or 20 years feeling like our lives were getting naturally more and more liberated. Technology, culture, all the phenomena he describes in his piece -- it all added up to this sense that liberty and individualism were being validated like never before.
Then suddenly... BOOM. We get FDR incarnate, empowered by an eager electorate and accompanied by a Congress that can fuel his mega dreams. And it's as if this grave shadow abruptly got cast over everything. I suddenly had to reassess: Wow, maybe liberty wasn't the natural trajectory, after all.
It was like get knocked backwards, out of the blue.