Friday, April 15, 2005

A Lefty's Advice to the Left

Originally I was planning to write a longer post about this Dissent article from Michael Walzer, who made a few waves with "Can There Be A Decent Left" (also in Dissent, and well worth reading). However after reading it became clear that this is another article that can be condensed down to : if the liberal left wants to ever gain power in this country, those who represent it will need to convince Americans that the Left a) understands how to defend this nation better than the other guys, and b) is actually willing to do so. In other words look back to the attitude of the Truman Democrats. He uses a lot more words to say it, though. It's good advice, as far as it goes.

The thing about the article that bugs me is the way he makes a lot of the usual leftist accusations about the right and the Republican party without anything to back them up. The ones about the right and it's henchmen being only about greed, fear, religious fanaticism, only about ideology while the left is pragmatic, yada yada yada. It's dull, boring, and insulting, and I'm not even a Republican (not conservative enough). What is it about the lefties that causes them to view those who disagree with them to be not just wrong, but bad people? I mean, what is it that prevents many lefties from at least conceding the other side also wants to make America better, but disagree on the methods? Yes, some on the right do the same thing, but in my humble opinion it is more common on the left.

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