fbpx
12.27.2012 0

Liberalism’s Petty Agenda

By David Bozeman

The idea that the American left would delight in the political demise of conservative white males certainly comes as a shock to no one.  That theme has animated talk radio since the election.  And let’s give the Democrats their due — they have, with the assistance of media and entertainment, mastered political warfare and left the GOP flailing, unsure and uninspired.

But New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd recently laid bare the cynical, shallow, juvenile mindset that secured President Obama a second term.  In a recent piece “The Lost Civilization,’ she writes that the world did, indeed, end on December 21 — for “arrogant, uptight, entitled, bossy, retrogressive white guys.”

Citing demographic trends not typically favorable to conservatives and Republicans, she surmises that someday a National Geographic special will profile this “lost tribe” and feature such relics as film footage of Clint Eastwood and the empty chair and recorded ramblings of “a tall, stiff man, his name long forgotten, gnashing his teeth about the 47 percent moochers.”

And she prattles on, with no vision or intellectual engagement — these are tauntings more believable in a Mean Girls sequel. Conservatives and libertarians predicate their movements on ideas, always pondering what America will look like twenty years hence.  Maureen Dowd, who, sadly, speaks for millions, doesn’t even feign interest in the implications of policy — she’s one of the cool cats shooting barbs at “Whitey” and she wants you to know it.

We are now seeing the Balkanization of America at its most sophomoric, and the realization of why our founders fought to safeguard future generations from the dictates of unlimited, group-against-group majority rule.  Dowd is correct in that white conservative guys are no longer deemed important electorally, while Hispanics and others are now flexing their political muscles and can expect to be wooed with sickening excesses before 2016.

We on the right are not consumed with group identity.  We share the vision of our founders of individual autonomy and limited central power to promote the general welfare.

Only a liberal is granted such wide latitude in snidely dismissing entire population blocs.  But the greater truth is that conservatives, in all their pasty, white-maleness, are not the American anomaly (bear in mind, Obama won roughly 50 percent of the vote this time, down from 2008).  Liberal elites such as Maureen Dowd are.  They can champion the benevolence of the progressive agenda, knowing that they, in their posh New York townhouses and Malibu estates, will remain largely untouched by the excesses and uniformity sure to follow.

Obamacare will one day affect every individual American, but most liberal elites harbor no vision beyond their next MSNBC appearance.  In the meantime, they live in secure communities, their children attend private schools and they need never feel guilty about coast-to-coast air travel provided they purchase carbon offsets.

As Mark Steyn has so brilliantly observed, warnings of societal decline fall on deaf ears — after all, New York still boasts Broadway, Lincoln Center, fine dining, Greenwich Village, etc. So what if the rest of the country is run like Detroit?  And besides, we haven’t formally discarded America’s defining values and traditions, and only European nations ever really face bankruptcy.

Truth is, the left seldom engages those concerned with financial and social collapse, they simply demonize them and finally discard them as irrelevant.  Dowd doesn’t even earn points for originality — whole cottage industries have been predicting the demise of conservative thought for at least fifty years.

Some say that demography is destiny.  I believe that character is, both for individuals and nations.  Let us hope that America’s character is never defined by the likes of Maureen Dowd.

David Bozeman, former Libertarian Party Chairman, is a Liberty Features Syndicated writer.

Copyright © 2008-2024 Americans for Limited Government