April 14, 2005
YOLK OF TYRANNY:
My Party Is Leaving the Faithful Behind (Kevin Starr, April 10, 2005, LA Times)
Perhaps the outpouring of admiration for Pope John Paul II last week will at long last alert those at the helm of my political party — the Democratic Party — to a truth that has yet to sink in despite the whack to the head administered by last year's election: Cultural values count.Those of us who label ourselves Democrats have stood for economic fairness since the New Deal, but in the last three decades our once-majority party has embraced a take-no-prisoners cultural agenda that now threatens to relegate Democrats to permanent minority status. The hostile takeover driving this drift to irrelevance is especially painful to cultural moderates, who remember that social democracy was born of traditional values.
Politics, Aristotle tells us, is the art of the possible. Politics is about the shaping and control of government toward practical ends.
Government serves society, a much larger entity. And society, in turn, is structured and animated by a complex interaction of beliefs, values, symbols and socio-economic forces which, taken cumulatively, we describe as culture.
The chicken-and-egg relationship between society and culture is intricate enough to have kept three millenniums of philosophers and social scientists busy. Now even economists are beginning to acknowledge that culture is a more powerful social force than politics — Harvard's Amartya Sen, for instance, won the 1998 Nobel Prize in economics because he demonstrated how social values and structures born of culture affect the ability of a society to take care of its impoverished, even in times of economic boom.
Today's Democratic Party leaders have apparently forgotten, however, that the social programs that came of age during the New Deal had their origins in Judeo-Christian tradition, even more than in secular humanism.
The secular rest secure in the delusion that you can strangle the chicken but still find eggs every morning. Posted by Orrin Judd at April 14, 2005 8:40 AM
It would be interesting to see how the Democrats and the media would handle the elevation of Cardinal Ratzinger to pope, since they've spent the past half-decade or so portraying him as the Tom DeLay of Vatican City. I would doubt there would be much of a chance for a rapprochement there.
Posted by: John at April 14, 2005 10:01 AMJohn:
which is why it would be so much fun.
"Today's Democratic Party leaders have apparently forgotten, however, that the social programs that came of age during the New Deal had their origins in Judeo-Christian tradition, even more than in secular humanism."
Highly moral Atheist friends of mine have the same problem acknowledging where their personnel morality originated, virtually dismissing those who came before them, even within their own families.
Posted by: Genecis at April 14, 2005 11:01 AMIt is precisely because they have lost their moral compass that the leftists have gotten themselves in such a deep hole. Desparate for an alternative to Christianity to rationalize their distaste for extermination of the unfit, they seized upon Rawlsian inanities setting up the interests of the unfit as the end of society.
The result has been rule of the worst, the "Worst-off class" usualy being so for a very good reason. Well, that game is about played out. They have enjoyed abnormal influence for a number of years, precisely because it is the Catilinarian who goes into politics, education, the media and the like, but this could not go on forever. Eventually the sleeping giant wakens.
It is too late for them to go back, as the writer would like to see. Their queers and "minorities" will not allow it, and they cannot say no to these people.
Posted by: Lou Gots at April 14, 2005 12:03 PMDidn't Rod Dreher say essentially the same thing--two years ago?
Posted by: Ed Driscoll at April 14, 2005 1:43 PMA more appropriate title for the article should be "The Faithful Have Left My Party Behind". How can a party that thinks that going in ever narrowing circles is "MovingOn™" and leaving anyone behind? If anything, The Faithful are being shed centrifugally.
Posted by: Raoul Ortega at April 14, 2005 3:57 PMRaoul: Great word picture.
Posted by: John Resnick at April 14, 2005 4:11 PMSpeaking of word pictures: strangle the chicken? Maybe it's time to patch things up with The Wife.
Posted by: joe shropshire at April 14, 2005 5:17 PMheh, heh
Posted by: h-man at April 14, 2005 6:14 PM