Sitting Next to a Liberal

I just finished Harry Stein's I Can't Believe I'm Sitting Next to a Liberal. It's a quick read, and full of fun and frolic.

But underneath is the rather grim truth. Liberals don't want to hear from the loyal opposition to them, the ruling elite. The educated progressive class ditch friends that disagree with them. They ditch academics that disagree with them. And they think it is perfectly OK, as the book's title says, to embarrass a conservative at the dinner table.

Conservatives can get mad at this, but getting mad rather misses the point. Because it is worse tham that.

One of the key things that any political elite must do is keep in touch with the plebs. Any ruling class--and the progressive educated elite is one such--will commit injustices and will be corrupt. Power corrupts, as Action wrote.

So if you are serious as a political elite you must make sure that you are listening to the people. Not because it is the right thing to do, but because it is the necessary thing to do.

By keeping in touch with the people you get to know what is bothering them. That means that you can figure out how to diffuse their anger and perpetuate your power.

If the liberals have stopped listening then they are shortening the life of the Liberal Era. Because they are raising the odds that some day soon, some conservative will raise a head of rebellion against the liberal power elite. And if liberals are blindsided by the rebellion, they won't be able to react appropriately and decisively, as a power elite must do. So maybe one day soon a routine injustice will spark a major movement and end up toppling the liberal elite from its perch.

Or maybe liberals will wake up just in time.

But according to Harry Stein, liberals are so deeply embedded in their liberal enclaves that it is probably too late for them to wake up. Their ideological conformity is so deep that nothing can disturb their dogmatic slumber.