The Next Batch Of Rejects

But there was a bunch of unfamiliar faces there. People who looked like they ought to be Democrats. And they were all for Ronald Reagan. It turned out we were all for Reagan.

The Reagan Democrats were the last lot expelled from the Democratic Party. In 1960 the Democratic Party was unequivocably the party of the working stiff and the lunch-pail crowd. By 1980 it had become the party of elite liberals and identity client groups. University professors obligingly produced a political philosophy of identity. It more or less amounted to the marginalization of mainstream America as racist, sexist, classist, and homophobic.

In an Orwellian twist, this meant that Americans who didn’t think exclusively in terms of race, gender, class, and sexual orientation were in fact the racists, sexists, etc.

Not surprisingly, most people didn’t take too kindly to this. They still don’t.

It seems that this year the Democrats are intent on expelling the last few remaining old-line Democrats, the ones that believe in God and the First Amendment. For it seems that while the post-Sixties Democratic Party could tolerate having a few religious crazies and gun nuts around if they kept quiet, the new Obama Democrats really can’t be bothered to be polite to them any more.

“Change,” it seems, means completing the transformation that began with a bang in 1968 when the “kids” took over and marginalized the mainstream FDR coalition.

This year is shaping up to be a bad year for Republicans, and deservedly so. So the special conditions of this year’s election may mask the underlying trends. The moment of truth will come in 2010 and 2012, when the American people have to decide if they really want the federal government to be exclusively a government of liberals, by liberals, and for liberals—and their client groups.

My nickel says they won’t.

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Christopher Chantrill blogs at www.roadtothemiddleclass.com. His Road to the Middle Class is forthcoming.

TAGS

Chappies

“But I saw a man yesterday who knows a fellow who had it from a chappie that said that Urquhart had been dipping himself a bit recklessly off the deep end.” —Freddy Arbuthnot
Dorothy L. Sayers, Strong Poison

Civil Society

“Civil Society”—a complex welter of intermediate institutions, including businesses, voluntary associations, educational institutions, clubs, unions, media, charities, and churches—builds, in turn, on the family, the primary instrument by which people are socialized into their culture and given the skills that allow them to live in broader society and through which the values and knowledge of that society are transmitted across the generations.
Francis Fukuyama, Trust

Hugo on Genius

“Tear down theory, poetic systems� No more rules, no more models� Genius conjures up rather than learns� ” —Victor Hugo
C�sar Gra�a, Bohemian versus Bourgeois

Education

“We have met with families in which for weeks together, not an article of sustenance but potatoes had been used; yet for every child the hard-earned sum was provided to send them to school.”
E. G. West, Education and the State

Faith & Purpose

“When we began first to preach these things, the people appeared as awakened from the sleep of ages—they seemed to see for the first time that they were responsible beings...”
Finke, Stark, The Churching of America, 1776-1990

Conversion

“When we received Christ,” Phil added, “all of a sudden we now had a rule book to go by, and when we had problems the preacher was right there to give us the answers.”
James M. Ault, Jr., Spirit and Flesh

Postmodernism

A writer who says that there are no truths, or that all truth is ’merely relative’, is asking you not to believe him. So don’t.
Roger Scruton, Modern Philosophy

Faith and Politics

As far as the Catholic Church is concerned, the principal focus of her interventions in the public arena is the protection and promotion of the dignity of the person, and she is thereby consciously drawing particular attention to principles which are not negotiable... [1.] protection of life in all its stages, from the first moment of conception until natural death; [2.] recognition and promotion of the natural structure of the family... [3.] the protection of the right of parents to educate their children.
Pope Benedict XVI, Speech to European Peoples Party, 2006

China and Christianity

At first, we thought [the power of the West] was because you had more powerful guns than we had. Then we thought it was because you had the best political system. Next we focused on your economic system. But in the past twenty years, we have realized that the heart of your culture is your religion: Christianity.
David Aikman, Jesus in Beijing

Religion, Property, and Family

But the only religions that have survived are those which support property and the family. Thus the outlook for communism, which is both anti-property and anti-family, (and also anti-religion), is not promising.
F.A. Hayek, The Fatal Conceit

Conservatism

Conservatism is the philosophy of society. Its ethic is fraternity and its characteristic is authority — the non-coercive social persuasion which operates in a family or a community. It says ‘we should...’.
Danny Kruger, On Fraternity

US Life in 1842

Families helped each other putting up homes and barns. Together, they built churches, schools, and common civic buildings. They collaborated to build roads and bridges. They took pride in being free persons, independent, and self-reliant; but the texture of their lives was cooperative and fraternal.
Michael Novak, The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism

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