Let’s not forget that Right populism is generally not what we are often told; for the most part, it is a reasonable stand for classic liberal values and a response to the left’s abandonment of these same values.
The left's woke project has completely failed on fundamentals, not just electorally:
- defunding the police was wonderful for white liberals, but terrible for the law-abiding majority of black people
- education scores like NAEP have plummeted after holding steady or rising since the early 90s
- the gap between blacks and whites in test scores has also widened under the Woke left's watch
- Harvard and other universities offer remedial math - not just in high school math, but middle school math
- the open borders have been devastating to the working class, whether black, white, or legal Hispanic immigrants. Lower wages, higher housing costs, and cartels driving rising crime in poor neighborhoods.
- apropos of immigration, college-educated white liberals only allow about 60k H1B workers per year. They've decided we have a moral duty to allow open border immigration, but only for the working class.
- their latest push to fight "oppression" has resulted in heterosexual males, often predators, into women's locker rooms and prisons.
edit: forgot to mention that every year, hundreds of thousands of people migrate from blue states to red states. If liberal welfare policies actually worked, the net migration would be in the other direction. People would move to blue states to enjoy these "wonderful" programs. Instead they just drive up the cost of living.
Consider an alternative view of the Left's governance and belief system, that it has been very successful in promoting policies that harm and diminish us as a nation. It would be naive to think that decriminalizing crime, opening the borders, cancel culture, DEI, failing schools, and so on are well meaning policies which have unfortunate negative effects.
As always , if only the Left would listen to Ruy . . . In Dem defense, Right populism is not just ascending in the US. By 2030, at least 2 of the European Big 3, England, Germany and France, and other EU nations, will likely have Right populist leaders. A universal truth, along with death and taxes being inescapable, appears to be most voters detest mass migration, worldwide.
In the US, it seems Dems cannot let go of the permanent single Party rule fantasy, Obama birthed. It was sooooo close, then Trump ended their "whole US as CA" dream, just as it was about to be achieved. Dems plotted their revenge. Enter Covid and Biden.
The sleight of hand was impressive. How many voters, Rep or Dem, would have supported Biden, had Dems admitted their intention to import 10-12 million 3rd World migrants into the US? Likewise, Covid was the excuse to increase federal spending by 50%, where it has stayed. The migrants, now dwelling in an expensive knowledge economy, are a kinder, gentler slave caste for the wealthy, that will forever be largely tax payer dependent. 2 birds, 1 stone.
Dems expected Hispanic American citizens to be thrilled. Dems were wrong, but the optics of Trump's forced deportations are giving Dems a 2nd bite at the apple. And while Ruy is right about all of it, migrants are now the Dem political lifeline.
Americans self sorted as never before during Covid, and mainly the traffic only went one way. Blue States bled millions of American citizens, very unlikely to return. Nor are the Uhauls likely to stop their parade, even with periodic pauses. NYC and Seattle will soon be ruled by Communists, regardless of the Socialist label. LA will not be far behind. Only a longstanding Somali clan feud, saved Minneapolis from the same fate.
2030 Reapportionment would be a Congressional blood bath, without millions of migrants propping up CA, NY, IL and other Blue State population numbers. Reduce Blue State populations by the number of residents dwelling illegally within their borders, and Reps might never again lose control of the House. "Abundance" is a great slogan, but the real Dem priority is fighting migrant deportations. Dems act as if their lives depend on ending deportations, because electorally, they do.
The left has failed but the right hasn't succeeded.
Our debt has jumped, there have been reductions in subsidies for a very imperfect health care system, including those on Medicaid. Wages for the lower quintiles which grew for the first time during covid are back to their decades long downward trajectory. Loan delinquencies up, car repos up, academic achievements for K-12 in decline. The deportations as portrayed by the media make me uneasy. I'm not supportive of any sort of low wage immigration but there needs to be a more efficient and less disruptive way, like E verify enforced, and fines on employers. I'd like to see some headline grabbing stories of Joe and Jane in the suburbs getting busted for hiring illegal contractors.
To Trump's credit rent across the country is flat or headed down. If low income wages could increase it would probably be enough to blunt any electoral momentum from the left. What I'd really like is to see both parties compete for the working class vote.
The Right has been trying, at least under Trump, to fix or block the excesses of the hard Left, but the leftists are fighting every single thing with every tool they have, including outright lying, filing lawsuits and requesting injunctions against even the most trivial actions, activating the violent factions of the Left, blocking any and all votes in Congress for almost every bill, and anything else they can think of. With all that, it is a wonder that there have been any successes in beating back the forces of the Left.
A comment on the health care subsidies: Obamacare was designed to be a very expensive and dysfunctional way to deliver health care because it was intended to herd everyone into single-provider government care. That didn't happen because the cost for that was even more and the majority of the people who had reasonably good insurance didn't want to give it up. The dysfunction has only grown, requiring ever growing subsidies, and producing high profits for the insurance companies, who were in on the Obamacare deal from the start because of those profits. And like every other giveaway program it was vastly expanded during Covid, and it's the expansion that the Dems are so worried about "saving", not even wanting a basic re-assessment of whether the recipients need the subsidy anymore.
And you do know who is responsible for the dismal declining academic achievements in our schools....it isn't the Right.
Agree, and I'd also like to learn about how woke Joe and Jane are, then read an interview about the struggles of people who live here legally and how hard it is to compete with illegal cash labor. And maybe some headlines about meatpacking companies (and other large organizations) getting busted for hiring illegal immigrants.
I'd love to see the Dems compete for the working class vote, but first they have to stop insulting working class people.
Oh, okay. I got my wish. The employers in the news story below stole jobs from 247 Americans, while housing 247 illegal immigrants in poor living conditions.
"A Michigan couple is accused of employing more than 240 undocumented workers for their commercial plumbing business and housing them in overcrowded homes and hotel rooms while taking in $74 million in revenue, according to federal prosecutors."
After the left’s new campaign of you don’t have to follow “illegal” orders to the keepers of peace and security in this country, they have truly become Frankenstein’s monster with no part of it being rational nor compassionate. Ideology over everything is what they are. And it is the process, not any results, that matter. And if results or outcomes don’t matter, then nothing is too radical an action to take. And as we have seen, burn it all done is not something the left is afraid of. After all, they live behind the walls of the castle. Communisms purge of the left and academia we saw in the 70s and 80s in SE Asia, looks more and more like the path the left is forcing the world to turn too as the only and final solution.
From what I have been reading, mainly on the Free Press, the Brotherhood and other Muslim "groups" have a 100 year plan. Bloodless yes. Military action, they don't want to get into that. Thus the slow take over so one day we wake up and they are in charge. They always play the long game.
When I was in Ethiopia our tour guide was an evangelical, so we connected over our faith. He said that Saudi oil money is being used in a 100 year plan to make Ethiopia a Muslim nation. They pay Muslim men to be wealthy enough to take poor women, who are Christian, as extra wives. The women are allowed to practice their faith, but their children will be raised Muslim.
Having said that, I don't consider Islam a serious threat to Christianity. It does seem to be a serious threat to atheism in Europe though - I'm not actually sure what the secular elites in Europe are actually thinking but they made a big mistake.
Edit: I should also add that the guide considered Orthodox Christianity essentially a dead man walking and it would give way to either evangelical Christianity or Islam.
Christians greatest growth happens under the most sever persecution. The biggest growth area at this time is China.
Whether or not the Muslims are successful, the ending remains the same and it doesn't include them.
Trying to predict the end times is a losing proposition and indeed, we are told not too.
The goal of the 100 years fits well into the Great Tribulation. From one religion to if you are not a believer then you will be ostracized from the human race, oppressed and basically on your own while be persecuted.
I'm not predicting anything or saying what the Tribulation will be or how it will look. But the Muslim 100 plan year shows that there is a plan that is being implemented to show it is a realistic possibility.
I don't think there is any method to their madness. Purity spirals drove them to increasing radicalization as they tried to morally one-up each other, and they remain trapped in it.
We voted Democrat for 50 years, then switched to Trump. Not because we like him (he's done some good things and some awful things) but because it was our little message to the Democratic Party that it had lost its way.
We would rather be governed by Republicans than by Progressives. If our old beloved Democratic Party ever comes back, we'll be front and center joining.
The modern day Democratic Party is exactly what CS Lewis was talking about when he wrote:
“ Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. This very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be "cured" against one's will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals.”
A little hard to look at big DEM picture today when one of our few Congressional DEMS in Florida has been indicted for FEMA fraud. Congresswoman Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick--what were you thinking? !!
Our local rag had a one-sentence blurb on this story today. I had to play the "find the political party" game, because the fact that she was a democrat was never mentioned. And no one has made a peep over that Mensa candidate Stacey Plaskett taking advice from Mr. Epstein during a Congressional hearing. Imagine if that was Ted Cruz, MSM would be going crazy.
I was quite active in FL DEMS but they have really chosen terrible legislators. The state was BLUE when I moved here. I won't tire you with poor decisions but a lot had to do with insider selection of candidates including a R turned D now I (Charlie Crist) who eventually made many of us lose confidence. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick holds Alcee Hastings' seat (served 1992-2021). He had also been impeached as a federal judge in 1989 before he ran for Congress. So, it's been a very strange D. district for a long time.
I agree that a lot of this true and that the left has lost a lot of the electorate. In some cases, though, I don't think they are wrong, just that their opinions aren't popular. The fact that most people don't care about climate change doesn't mean it isn't a huge sword hanging over our heads. (And, no, I don't put much value in Gate's backtrack. He needs to placate Trump for business reasons. And his new opinion is that it will effect "other" countries, i.e. poor countries far away, and future generations more than it will effect us so why should we care?) Some people see AI as having huge economic potential and others see its energy demands as putting us on a high speed train heading for a brick wall of climate collapse. Both things can be true; it's a matter of which you prioritize. But still, the left's positions on many things are far removed from the bulk of voters. I think Dems need to seriously backtrack to where people are (the economy, opportunity, a believable path to personal betterment, limited immigration focused on the skillsets we need, a predictable criminal system, etc.) and slowly rebuild trust by focusing on those things. Their horse galloped far, far ahead of the cart, and they need to go back, get the cart, and start doing some hard hauling if they want to be able to create the kinder world they envision sometime in the future.
Climate change is a textbook example of liberal virtue signaling while having no empathy or compassion for the poor.
- the US was on track to have a green energy base because of nuclear power back in the 1970s. But environmental laws (NEPA and Calvert Cliffs decision) brought nuclear energy to a screeching halt. The main legacy of the environmental movement is to harm the environment.
On the subject:
- there are 350 million people in the US, 450 million in the EU, and about 120 million in Japan. Call it a billion
- there are perhaps a billion more people in less-developed nations who enjoy a first world lifestyle
- there are 6 billion remaining people who are desperately poor even compared to the poorest of the poor in the US, and they want to enjoy a first-world standard of living.
And although global warming is real, the consequences are trivial compared to a lifetime of poverty, but the left will fight like hell to keep the rest of the world poor in the name of "climate justice."
“ As a result they have mostly set the terms of “respectable” discourse in elite circles.”
This is arguably the root of the left’s problem. They have closed and shifted the Overton Window to the point where they are never directly exposed to opposing viewpoints. Then like Vizzini they find it “inconceivable” that reality differs from their perception. They haven’t “failed to stop right populism” so much as they have promoted it by allowing right populists to be on the popular side of almost every 80/20 issue again because they never knowingly encounter anyone who is on the 80% side.
Great column. The only place you don't go, is the biggest question of all - why? The self evident, seeming suicide of such policies begs the question. Why? The ostensible goals never materialized; in fact the opposite, did. Are these people collectively stupid, and apparently not done yet, or is there another, alternative agenda leading to a different goal?
So what did come out of all this? A more centralized, controlled, censored, siloed society, split between those who do and those who won't. All paving the way for a strongman to end the stoked chaos. Will it be a dictator or a tyrant? Was this the intended showdown? From the alt right or the Marxist left?
They are not collectively stupid so much as they are collectively ignorant, naive, and most importantly generally completely shielded from the negative consequences of the policies they promote.
I suspect they've trapped themselves in ideology bubbles and can't escape out of a desperate need to be ON THE RIGHT SIDE OF HISTORY (whatever that means) with all the other cool kids. Or worse: the mob might start snarling at them. See: Gavin Newsom, Seth Moulton, Ro Khanna.
And yes, most of them are shielded from the consequences of the policies they promote.
Though I'm at loss to understand women who advocate for males in female spaces or parents who advocate for gender-affirming therapy for children (that is, drugs and surgery).
True, the parents won't have to live with being sterilized at 14 or face a lifetime dealing with the consequences of pseudoscientific "therapy." But in an icky place deep down, they'll suffer when their kids grow up, realize what was done to them, and start screaming "HOW COULD YOU DO THIS TO ME? I WAS ONLY 14 YEARS OLD!!"
I've found many on the left to be extremely intelligent. As we all know, it's the party of the college educated. IMO, the issue is wisdom and humility. The humility to bow down to Our Creator so that He can impart wisdom upon them.
“Some regard private enterprise as if it were a predatory tiger to be shot. Others look upon it as a cow that they can milk. Only a handful see it for what it really is--the strong horse that pulls the whole cart.”
― Winston Churchill
Where should Democrats stand? They just seem to be trying to figure out which way the parade is going, so they can get out in front.
(Left parties, including the Democratic Party, have succeeded in building strong bases among the educated and professional classes__) which is part of the problem. The 'educated ' class is not as educated as they like to think of themselves. (As George Orwell put it: “One has to belong to the intelligentsia to believe things like that: no ordinary man could be such a fool.”) These two statements kind of sum it up.
As usual, Ruy hits the nail pretty squarely on the head when it comes to where the Democrats went wrong--completely wrong. I do not embrace rapid economic growth or 'progress' as some sort of panacea, though. I think _thoughtful_ growth, a worldwide reduction in human population, and judicious use of resources, coupled with invention _and_ natural habitat preservation might be very wise.
Fear and revulsion about what Big Tech has wrought crosses the left-right divide. I can see the benefits of many technological advances and would rather have a basic level of comfort than not. At the same time, the digital revolution, which is on the cusp of AI-fueled exponential expansion, has dehumanized me and made my life and my community worse in so many ways. People of all ideological stripes can see and feel the colonizing, destabilizing, anti-social, and totalizing effects of the virtual world. We've watched helplessly as it's sucked in our kids, our spouses, our friends and, against our own resistance, ourselves.
Texieira suggests that it's a liberals' duty to embrace all these new technologies. I couldn't disagree more strongly.
Excellent summary. But Ruy copped out on his "Economic Growth" critique. The problem with 21st century leftists isn't that they failed to embrace techo-optimism. It's that they rejected the free market in favor of government solutions - overlapping special interest regulations that stiffle economic growth; subsidies that distort the market and lead to supply/demand mismatches; government "industrial policy" focused on supporting the left's climate policies and other agenda items; hostility toward and over taxation of business; etc. Mamdani reflected this best during his recent victory speech, when he pronounced: "There is no problem too large that government can't solve." Government solutions will never produce broad-based prosperity, abundance, and affordability. The history of the US (and the world) during the 20th century shows beyond doubt that free market innovation and competition (subject to reasonable regulation) are the best means to create those economic conditions.
Agreed! And the crony capitalism with rigged systems favoring certain players is not real free market capitalism at all. It's no wonder that young people have turned away from what they know as "capitalism" in favor of the feel-good empty promises of socialism.
Let’s not forget that Right populism is generally not what we are often told; for the most part, it is a reasonable stand for classic liberal values and a response to the left’s abandonment of these same values.
The left's woke project has completely failed on fundamentals, not just electorally:
- defunding the police was wonderful for white liberals, but terrible for the law-abiding majority of black people
- education scores like NAEP have plummeted after holding steady or rising since the early 90s
- the gap between blacks and whites in test scores has also widened under the Woke left's watch
- Harvard and other universities offer remedial math - not just in high school math, but middle school math
- the open borders have been devastating to the working class, whether black, white, or legal Hispanic immigrants. Lower wages, higher housing costs, and cartels driving rising crime in poor neighborhoods.
- apropos of immigration, college-educated white liberals only allow about 60k H1B workers per year. They've decided we have a moral duty to allow open border immigration, but only for the working class.
- their latest push to fight "oppression" has resulted in heterosexual males, often predators, into women's locker rooms and prisons.
edit: forgot to mention that every year, hundreds of thousands of people migrate from blue states to red states. If liberal welfare policies actually worked, the net migration would be in the other direction. People would move to blue states to enjoy these "wonderful" programs. Instead they just drive up the cost of living.
Consider an alternative view of the Left's governance and belief system, that it has been very successful in promoting policies that harm and diminish us as a nation. It would be naive to think that decriminalizing crime, opening the borders, cancel culture, DEI, failing schools, and so on are well meaning policies which have unfortunate negative effects.
As always , if only the Left would listen to Ruy . . . In Dem defense, Right populism is not just ascending in the US. By 2030, at least 2 of the European Big 3, England, Germany and France, and other EU nations, will likely have Right populist leaders. A universal truth, along with death and taxes being inescapable, appears to be most voters detest mass migration, worldwide.
In the US, it seems Dems cannot let go of the permanent single Party rule fantasy, Obama birthed. It was sooooo close, then Trump ended their "whole US as CA" dream, just as it was about to be achieved. Dems plotted their revenge. Enter Covid and Biden.
The sleight of hand was impressive. How many voters, Rep or Dem, would have supported Biden, had Dems admitted their intention to import 10-12 million 3rd World migrants into the US? Likewise, Covid was the excuse to increase federal spending by 50%, where it has stayed. The migrants, now dwelling in an expensive knowledge economy, are a kinder, gentler slave caste for the wealthy, that will forever be largely tax payer dependent. 2 birds, 1 stone.
Dems expected Hispanic American citizens to be thrilled. Dems were wrong, but the optics of Trump's forced deportations are giving Dems a 2nd bite at the apple. And while Ruy is right about all of it, migrants are now the Dem political lifeline.
Americans self sorted as never before during Covid, and mainly the traffic only went one way. Blue States bled millions of American citizens, very unlikely to return. Nor are the Uhauls likely to stop their parade, even with periodic pauses. NYC and Seattle will soon be ruled by Communists, regardless of the Socialist label. LA will not be far behind. Only a longstanding Somali clan feud, saved Minneapolis from the same fate.
2030 Reapportionment would be a Congressional blood bath, without millions of migrants propping up CA, NY, IL and other Blue State population numbers. Reduce Blue State populations by the number of residents dwelling illegally within their borders, and Reps might never again lose control of the House. "Abundance" is a great slogan, but the real Dem priority is fighting migrant deportations. Dems act as if their lives depend on ending deportations, because electorally, they do.
The left has failed but the right hasn't succeeded.
Our debt has jumped, there have been reductions in subsidies for a very imperfect health care system, including those on Medicaid. Wages for the lower quintiles which grew for the first time during covid are back to their decades long downward trajectory. Loan delinquencies up, car repos up, academic achievements for K-12 in decline. The deportations as portrayed by the media make me uneasy. I'm not supportive of any sort of low wage immigration but there needs to be a more efficient and less disruptive way, like E verify enforced, and fines on employers. I'd like to see some headline grabbing stories of Joe and Jane in the suburbs getting busted for hiring illegal contractors.
To Trump's credit rent across the country is flat or headed down. If low income wages could increase it would probably be enough to blunt any electoral momentum from the left. What I'd really like is to see both parties compete for the working class vote.
The Right has been trying, at least under Trump, to fix or block the excesses of the hard Left, but the leftists are fighting every single thing with every tool they have, including outright lying, filing lawsuits and requesting injunctions against even the most trivial actions, activating the violent factions of the Left, blocking any and all votes in Congress for almost every bill, and anything else they can think of. With all that, it is a wonder that there have been any successes in beating back the forces of the Left.
A comment on the health care subsidies: Obamacare was designed to be a very expensive and dysfunctional way to deliver health care because it was intended to herd everyone into single-provider government care. That didn't happen because the cost for that was even more and the majority of the people who had reasonably good insurance didn't want to give it up. The dysfunction has only grown, requiring ever growing subsidies, and producing high profits for the insurance companies, who were in on the Obamacare deal from the start because of those profits. And like every other giveaway program it was vastly expanded during Covid, and it's the expansion that the Dems are so worried about "saving", not even wanting a basic re-assessment of whether the recipients need the subsidy anymore.
And you do know who is responsible for the dismal declining academic achievements in our schools....it isn't the Right.
Agree, and I'd also like to learn about how woke Joe and Jane are, then read an interview about the struggles of people who live here legally and how hard it is to compete with illegal cash labor. And maybe some headlines about meatpacking companies (and other large organizations) getting busted for hiring illegal immigrants.
I'd love to see the Dems compete for the working class vote, but first they have to stop insulting working class people.
Oh, okay. I got my wish. The employers in the news story below stole jobs from 247 Americans, while housing 247 illegal immigrants in poor living conditions.
"A Michigan couple is accused of employing more than 240 undocumented workers for their commercial plumbing business and housing them in overcrowded homes and hotel rooms while taking in $74 million in revenue, according to federal prosecutors."
https://www.cbsnews.com/detroit/news/michigan-plumbing-company-undocumented-workers-charges-conspiracy/
After the left’s new campaign of you don’t have to follow “illegal” orders to the keepers of peace and security in this country, they have truly become Frankenstein’s monster with no part of it being rational nor compassionate. Ideology over everything is what they are. And it is the process, not any results, that matter. And if results or outcomes don’t matter, then nothing is too radical an action to take. And as we have seen, burn it all done is not something the left is afraid of. After all, they live behind the walls of the castle. Communisms purge of the left and academia we saw in the 70s and 80s in SE Asia, looks more and more like the path the left is forcing the world to turn too as the only and final solution.
Do you think they are hoping for a carnation revolution like Portugal?
From what I have been reading, mainly on the Free Press, the Brotherhood and other Muslim "groups" have a 100 year plan. Bloodless yes. Military action, they don't want to get into that. Thus the slow take over so one day we wake up and they are in charge. They always play the long game.
When I was in Ethiopia our tour guide was an evangelical, so we connected over our faith. He said that Saudi oil money is being used in a 100 year plan to make Ethiopia a Muslim nation. They pay Muslim men to be wealthy enough to take poor women, who are Christian, as extra wives. The women are allowed to practice their faith, but their children will be raised Muslim.
Having said that, I don't consider Islam a serious threat to Christianity. It does seem to be a serious threat to atheism in Europe though - I'm not actually sure what the secular elites in Europe are actually thinking but they made a big mistake.
Edit: I should also add that the guide considered Orthodox Christianity essentially a dead man walking and it would give way to either evangelical Christianity or Islam.
Christians greatest growth happens under the most sever persecution. The biggest growth area at this time is China.
Whether or not the Muslims are successful, the ending remains the same and it doesn't include them.
Trying to predict the end times is a losing proposition and indeed, we are told not too.
The goal of the 100 years fits well into the Great Tribulation. From one religion to if you are not a believer then you will be ostracized from the human race, oppressed and basically on your own while be persecuted.
I'm not predicting anything or saying what the Tribulation will be or how it will look. But the Muslim 100 plan year shows that there is a plan that is being implemented to show it is a realistic possibility.
I don't think there is any method to their madness. Purity spirals drove them to increasing radicalization as they tried to morally one-up each other, and they remain trapped in it.
https://unherd.com/2020/01/cast-out-how-knitting-fell-into-a-purity-spiral/
That is a terrifying article and so very sad. KNITTING? YA FICTION? Interesting that the BBC shows it links to are no longer available.
We voted Democrat for 50 years, then switched to Trump. Not because we like him (he's done some good things and some awful things) but because it was our little message to the Democratic Party that it had lost its way.
We would rather be governed by Republicans than by Progressives. If our old beloved Democratic Party ever comes back, we'll be front and center joining.
Another great article in TLP.
The modern day Democratic Party is exactly what CS Lewis was talking about when he wrote:
“ Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. This very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be "cured" against one's will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals.”
Wow. This really nails it, doesn't it?
A little hard to look at big DEM picture today when one of our few Congressional DEMS in Florida has been indicted for FEMA fraud. Congresswoman Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick--what were you thinking? !!
Our local rag had a one-sentence blurb on this story today. I had to play the "find the political party" game, because the fact that she was a democrat was never mentioned. And no one has made a peep over that Mensa candidate Stacey Plaskett taking advice from Mr. Epstein during a Congressional hearing. Imagine if that was Ted Cruz, MSM would be going crazy.
I was quite active in FL DEMS but they have really chosen terrible legislators. The state was BLUE when I moved here. I won't tire you with poor decisions but a lot had to do with insider selection of candidates including a R turned D now I (Charlie Crist) who eventually made many of us lose confidence. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick holds Alcee Hastings' seat (served 1992-2021). He had also been impeached as a federal judge in 1989 before he ran for Congress. So, it's been a very strange D. district for a long time.
I agree that a lot of this true and that the left has lost a lot of the electorate. In some cases, though, I don't think they are wrong, just that their opinions aren't popular. The fact that most people don't care about climate change doesn't mean it isn't a huge sword hanging over our heads. (And, no, I don't put much value in Gate's backtrack. He needs to placate Trump for business reasons. And his new opinion is that it will effect "other" countries, i.e. poor countries far away, and future generations more than it will effect us so why should we care?) Some people see AI as having huge economic potential and others see its energy demands as putting us on a high speed train heading for a brick wall of climate collapse. Both things can be true; it's a matter of which you prioritize. But still, the left's positions on many things are far removed from the bulk of voters. I think Dems need to seriously backtrack to where people are (the economy, opportunity, a believable path to personal betterment, limited immigration focused on the skillsets we need, a predictable criminal system, etc.) and slowly rebuild trust by focusing on those things. Their horse galloped far, far ahead of the cart, and they need to go back, get the cart, and start doing some hard hauling if they want to be able to create the kinder world they envision sometime in the future.
Climate change is a textbook example of liberal virtue signaling while having no empathy or compassion for the poor.
- the US was on track to have a green energy base because of nuclear power back in the 1970s. But environmental laws (NEPA and Calvert Cliffs decision) brought nuclear energy to a screeching halt. The main legacy of the environmental movement is to harm the environment.
On the subject:
- there are 350 million people in the US, 450 million in the EU, and about 120 million in Japan. Call it a billion
- there are perhaps a billion more people in less-developed nations who enjoy a first world lifestyle
- there are 6 billion remaining people who are desperately poor even compared to the poorest of the poor in the US, and they want to enjoy a first-world standard of living.
And although global warming is real, the consequences are trivial compared to a lifetime of poverty, but the left will fight like hell to keep the rest of the world poor in the name of "climate justice."
“ As a result they have mostly set the terms of “respectable” discourse in elite circles.”
This is arguably the root of the left’s problem. They have closed and shifted the Overton Window to the point where they are never directly exposed to opposing viewpoints. Then like Vizzini they find it “inconceivable” that reality differs from their perception. They haven’t “failed to stop right populism” so much as they have promoted it by allowing right populists to be on the popular side of almost every 80/20 issue again because they never knowingly encounter anyone who is on the 80% side.
Amen.
The left is betting that it can ride Trump hate to victory.
Great column. The only place you don't go, is the biggest question of all - why? The self evident, seeming suicide of such policies begs the question. Why? The ostensible goals never materialized; in fact the opposite, did. Are these people collectively stupid, and apparently not done yet, or is there another, alternative agenda leading to a different goal?
So what did come out of all this? A more centralized, controlled, censored, siloed society, split between those who do and those who won't. All paving the way for a strongman to end the stoked chaos. Will it be a dictator or a tyrant? Was this the intended showdown? From the alt right or the Marxist left?
They are not collectively stupid so much as they are collectively ignorant, naive, and most importantly generally completely shielded from the negative consequences of the policies they promote.
I suspect they've trapped themselves in ideology bubbles and can't escape out of a desperate need to be ON THE RIGHT SIDE OF HISTORY (whatever that means) with all the other cool kids. Or worse: the mob might start snarling at them. See: Gavin Newsom, Seth Moulton, Ro Khanna.
And yes, most of them are shielded from the consequences of the policies they promote.
Though I'm at loss to understand women who advocate for males in female spaces or parents who advocate for gender-affirming therapy for children (that is, drugs and surgery).
True, the parents won't have to live with being sterilized at 14 or face a lifetime dealing with the consequences of pseudoscientific "therapy." But in an icky place deep down, they'll suffer when their kids grow up, realize what was done to them, and start screaming "HOW COULD YOU DO THIS TO ME? I WAS ONLY 14 YEARS OLD!!"
I've found many on the left to be extremely intelligent. As we all know, it's the party of the college educated. IMO, the issue is wisdom and humility. The humility to bow down to Our Creator so that He can impart wisdom upon them.
“Some regard private enterprise as if it were a predatory tiger to be shot. Others look upon it as a cow that they can milk. Only a handful see it for what it really is--the strong horse that pulls the whole cart.”
― Winston Churchill
Where should Democrats stand? They just seem to be trying to figure out which way the parade is going, so they can get out in front.
(Left parties, including the Democratic Party, have succeeded in building strong bases among the educated and professional classes__) which is part of the problem. The 'educated ' class is not as educated as they like to think of themselves. (As George Orwell put it: “One has to belong to the intelligentsia to believe things like that: no ordinary man could be such a fool.”) These two statements kind of sum it up.
As usual, Ruy hits the nail pretty squarely on the head when it comes to where the Democrats went wrong--completely wrong. I do not embrace rapid economic growth or 'progress' as some sort of panacea, though. I think _thoughtful_ growth, a worldwide reduction in human population, and judicious use of resources, coupled with invention _and_ natural habitat preservation might be very wise.
Fear and revulsion about what Big Tech has wrought crosses the left-right divide. I can see the benefits of many technological advances and would rather have a basic level of comfort than not. At the same time, the digital revolution, which is on the cusp of AI-fueled exponential expansion, has dehumanized me and made my life and my community worse in so many ways. People of all ideological stripes can see and feel the colonizing, destabilizing, anti-social, and totalizing effects of the virtual world. We've watched helplessly as it's sucked in our kids, our spouses, our friends and, against our own resistance, ourselves.
Texieira suggests that it's a liberals' duty to embrace all these new technologies. I couldn't disagree more strongly.
Excellent summary. But Ruy copped out on his "Economic Growth" critique. The problem with 21st century leftists isn't that they failed to embrace techo-optimism. It's that they rejected the free market in favor of government solutions - overlapping special interest regulations that stiffle economic growth; subsidies that distort the market and lead to supply/demand mismatches; government "industrial policy" focused on supporting the left's climate policies and other agenda items; hostility toward and over taxation of business; etc. Mamdani reflected this best during his recent victory speech, when he pronounced: "There is no problem too large that government can't solve." Government solutions will never produce broad-based prosperity, abundance, and affordability. The history of the US (and the world) during the 20th century shows beyond doubt that free market innovation and competition (subject to reasonable regulation) are the best means to create those economic conditions.
Agreed! And the crony capitalism with rigged systems favoring certain players is not real free market capitalism at all. It's no wonder that young people have turned away from what they know as "capitalism" in favor of the feel-good empty promises of socialism.