CRACKING NUTS:

Leaving the Left (Seth Swirsky, June 19, 2006, RealClearPolitics.com)

[W]hen I was about 27, in the late 1980s, cracks in my liberal worldview began to appear. It started with an uproar from the Left when Tipper Gore had the audacity to suggest a label on certain CDs to warn parents of lyrics that were clearly inappropriate for young people. Her suggestion was simple common sense and I was surprised by the furor it caused from the likes of Frank Zappa (and others) who felt their freedoms were being encroached upon. It was my first introduction into the entitled, selfish and irresponsible thinking I now associate with the Left.

In 1989, I remember questioning whether Democrat David Dinkins was the best choice for Mayor of New York City (where I lived) over Rudy Giuliani. After all, Dinkins' biggest claim to fame was as a city clerk in the Marriage License Bureau while Giuliani, as a United States District Attorney, had just de-fanged the mob. But, racial "healing" was the issue of the day, Dinkins won, and the city went straight downhill. When Giuliani beat Dinkins in a rematch four years later - Surprise! - the crime rate plummeted, tourism boomed, Times Square came alive not with pimps but with commerce. Since 1993, the overwhelmingly liberal electorate in New York City has voted for Republicans for Mayor. Yet, to this day, many of my liberal friends refer to the decisive and effective Giuliani as a Nazi, even as they stroll their children through neighborhoods he cleaned up.

After moving to Los Angeles in the early 90s, I watched from the roof of my apartment building as the city burned after the Rodney King verdicts were handed down. I thought what those four cops did to King was shameful. But I didn't hear an uproar from my friends on the Left when rioters rampaged through the city's streets, stealing, looting, and destroying property in the name of "no justice, no peace." And it was impossible not to notice the hypocrisy when prominent Hollywood liberals, who had hosted anti-NRA fundraisers at their homes a week before the riots were standing in line at shooting ranges the week after it.

I watched carefully as Anita Hill testified during Clarence Thomas's Supreme Court nomination hearing, claiming Thomas - once head of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission - sexually harassed her after she rebuffed his invitations to date him. At the time, I rooted, as did all my friends, for Miss Hill, hoping that her testimony would result in Thomas not getting confirmed. In retrospect, I'm ashamed that I was ever on the "side" of people who so viciously demonized a decent, qualified person like Judge Thomas, whether you agree with his judicial philosophy or not. Condoleezza Rice, during eligibility hearings for both National Security Advisor and Secretary of State, also had to deal with rude people like Barbara Boxer, who seemed not to be able to fathom that a black American could embrace conservatism.

I voted for Al Gore in 2000. When he lost, I was disappointed, mostly in my fellow Democrats for thinking that the election had been "stolen" and in having forgotten their American history. The Electoral College has elected three other Presidents in our history: John Quincy Adams in1824, Rutherford B. Hayes in 1876, and Benjamin Harrison in1888. The rush to judgment by the now conspiracy consumed Left put me off. Where, I asked, were all the "disenfranchised" black voters who would have given Gore a victory in Florida? No one could produce a single name. And how exactly were the voting machines in Ohio "rigged" in 2004? I now refer to the Democrats as the Grassy Knoll party.

Still, I approached the 2004 primaries with an open mind. I was still a Democrat, still hoping that leaders like Sam Nunn and Scoop Jackson would emerge, still fantasizing that Democrats could constitute a party of truly progressive social thinkers with tough backbones who would reappear after 9/11.

I was wrong. The Left got nuttier, more extreme, less contributory to the public debate, more obsessed with their nemesis Bush - and it drove me further away.

Except that Rodney King only got what he deserved.

Posted by Orrin Judd at June 19, 2006 4:47 PM