Democrats Do Too Stand For Something

REPUBLICANS have been enjoying for some time the idea that Democrats don’t stand for anything. It goes along with the idea that Republicans are thinkers and Democrats are feelers.

Even Peggy Noonan agrees, sort of. She criticizes the Democrats for obsessing about Bush.

[I]f you're going to turn away from [Bush], you'd better be turning toward a plan, and the Democrats don't appear to have one.

Actually, the Democrats do have a plan. It’s just that they can’t talk about it. Rush Limbaugh understands them when he says that Democrats can’t admit who they are, because if they admitted who they are they couldn’t win the support of the American people.

The Democrats’ plan is to defend their turf. The problem is that it is huge. After a century of the welfare state they are strategically extended like the Germany Army in Russia in 1942.

You want to know how huge? Take the government share of GDP today and substract the government share in 1930. Start with all the New Deal legislation, all the Great Society legislation. Then add the huge expansion in education and health care. All this is Democratic dollars and Democratic votes.

If you are a Democrat your job is to defend this. All of it.

That’s why Democrats aren’t much interested in growing the economy. They aren’t much interested in fighting for freedom, justice, and the American Way. They have concerns much closer to home. They must fight to defend the funding for the government programs that keep them in yeasty Victorian houses, Toyota Priuses, and soulful weekend retreats.

Don’t forget that President Bush’s Ownership Society is a strategic project, a Schwerpunkt, aimed at the heart of the Democratic project. If it ever gets seriously off the ground then the American people will start to say: why do I need all these Democrats eating their heads off at my expense? What have they done for me lately?

When we say that the Democrats don’t have a plan, we mean that they don’t exactly know how to counter the encroaching Ownership Society, except to oppose it. All of it.

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

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Francis Fukuyama, Trust

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Liberal Coercion

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Herbert Spencer, The Man Versus the State

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David Cameron, Conference Speech 2008

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Pope Benedict XVI, Speech to European Peoples Party, 2006

Never Trust Experts

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Conservatism's Holy Grail

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Danny Kruger, On Fraternity

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