Party of the Past

Professor Bainbridge comments on Ted Kennedy's speech on the future of the Democratic Party, and he asks one question:

"Is there anything you believe government should not regulate other than abortion?"

If you read the speech, you'll discover that Senator Kennedy uses the word "reactionary" a lot to describe anything that Republicans propose. Yet, the policies that Kennedy advocates are all the dried-up, failed socialist policies that were in vogue in the 60's.

Shhhhhh. Don't tell him.... He thinks his ideas are progressive! This man and his party are so damned stuck in the decade of love, that they are incapable of even thinking about a new, or really progressive idea, let alone acting on one. I'm not even sure that Kennedy would recognize a new idea if it was a hammer and it smashed him on the head.

These days progressives want to make sure there is no change in social security--even if it will go bankrupt; they want to return to the "good old days" when Clinton was in power and all was right with the world (except that everything we have to deal with these days began during the blindness of those idyllic days); they want to copy the antidiluvian policies of the pathetic regimes that we bested in the Cold War; and they want to pretend that the most significant event in American history since Pearl Harbor didn't happen and that the war on terror is not important or relevant to American interests. They want to ignore the success in Afghanistan and, having failed to prevent that success, they hope to prevent one in Iraq.

My God, if the leaders of the Democratic party had been around when FDR went to war in 1941, I truly believe they would have found his actions treasonous and ranted and raged that he was no better than Hitler. They would have used their poisonous words and rabid appeasement in much the same way they are using them now.

Their thinking and behavior today is inextricably bound up in the glory days of their opposition to the Vietnam war. I was only a teenager then, but I remember with great clarity how they enjoyed the spectacle of a defeated America. Now they believe they have a chance to see it all over again, and they know--as well as the terrorists--that the only way America can lose this war is if they weaken our will to succeed; if--like Sauron's minions in Middle Earth--they encourage every weakness; highlight every mistake; downplay every success.

The Democratic Party is not progressive. They are the reactionary party now--the Party of the Past. They have become the Grima Wormtongue of American Politics.