I was out in flyover country over the weekend, and I got to talk to some real middle-class women. You know the kind, working at ordinary jobs like paralegal and supermarket merchandising manager. They are the kind of people that the politicians ought to be thinking about when they implement their grand plans for the fundamental transformation of America.
They ought to pay attention because those ordinary middle-class folks are the ones that will pay the price for the political mistakes of the politicians, and will reap the reward if the politicians actually do something to benefit the nation.
Then I ask myself what the Obama administration has done for people like that. Because I suspect that what good honest middle class women want is enough prosperity so they can raise and educate and establish their children in peace.
And I ask myself what the IRS scandal and the NSA scandal and the Benghazi scandal have to do with that?
The big problem with the Obama era liberals is that they are not governing for the interest of the average American. They are crusaders trying to bring the true religion to a nation of unbelievers. In the battle of good against evil, you can't worry too much about collateral damage. Not if you can keep the Tea Party groups at bay long enough to win reelection, or swing the EPA to win your war against coal.
In this I think that the Obamis are doubly wrong. First of all they are wrong tactically. It just isn't good politics to keep your supporters riled up in a permanent campaign. What happens is that they start to use government in blatant ways to help your political agenda. That helps recruit people for the opposition, for a governing party is never more than a clique. The more you divide the nation with your politics and the more you hand out goodies to your supporters the more you will create malcontents that got hurt by one of your myrmidons or that didn't get a share of the loot.
But the bigger issue, that goes beyond tactics and strategy, is the separation of church and state. The great gaping flaw in progressive politics is that it ends the separation of church and state. That is, it joins together the defense of the nation from enemies foreign and domestic with the question of the fight of good against evil. We see this clearly in the IRS intimidation of Tea Party groups.
If you are a Lois Lerner that has gone through a normal education K-12 through law school, you have probably had over a dozen teachers that believed that conservatives were nothing more than racists, sexists and homophobes.
Lois Lerner was apparently quite happy to be putting the Christian Coalition through the regulatory wringer when she served at the Federal Election Commission. And she did an equally enthusiastic job at the IRS exempt organizations unit. How does a Lois Lerner get her beliefs and her enthusiasms? She doesn't have to do anything. It is in the very air she breathes as a Susie Goodgirl getting good grades from her liberal teachers in the government schools.
Here's the problem. It is one thing to win the battle of ideas. It is another thing to march through the institutions of government and turn the bureaucrats into partisan supporters of your progressive religion.
The argument is not that you shouldn't bother to try it because it won't work. It may work all too well. The problem is that you get civil war at the end of it, because you create enemies out of the people that you intimidate and dominate. And then your wonderful vision of the future collapses in war and mayhem.
There seems to me to be a kind of crude ignorance of all this in the modern progressive liberal. They really don't get how they are wrecking their own cause by cutting corners and self-dealing. I am talking of everything from the aggressive pursuit of leaks to the pervasive waiving of the law in the treatment of illegal aliens to the nod-nod-wink-wink looking the other way in the whole welfare culture.
The reason for the government to follow the rules is to avoid giving people the idea that the only way they can obtain justice is in the streets. Liberals think they own the streets: just yesterday Sen. Chuck Schumer threatened demonstrations if Congress didn't pass his immigration reform. But I think liberals are wrong. I think they completely underestimate how thin the ice is. They think they own the culture, own the politics, and they are above the rules.
I am here to say that the liberals are wrong on all that. But we will all have to pay for their mistake.
They ought to pay attention because those ordinary middle-class folks are the ones that will pay the price for the political mistakes of the politicians, and will reap the reward if the politicians actually do something to benefit the nation.
Then I ask myself what the Obama administration has done for people like that. Because I suspect that what good honest middle class women want is enough prosperity so they can raise and educate and establish their children in peace.
And I ask myself what the IRS scandal and the NSA scandal and the Benghazi scandal have to do with that?
The big problem with the Obama era liberals is that they are not governing for the interest of the average American. They are crusaders trying to bring the true religion to a nation of unbelievers. In the battle of good against evil, you can't worry too much about collateral damage. Not if you can keep the Tea Party groups at bay long enough to win reelection, or swing the EPA to win your war against coal.
In this I think that the Obamis are doubly wrong. First of all they are wrong tactically. It just isn't good politics to keep your supporters riled up in a permanent campaign. What happens is that they start to use government in blatant ways to help your political agenda. That helps recruit people for the opposition, for a governing party is never more than a clique. The more you divide the nation with your politics and the more you hand out goodies to your supporters the more you will create malcontents that got hurt by one of your myrmidons or that didn't get a share of the loot.
But the bigger issue, that goes beyond tactics and strategy, is the separation of church and state. The great gaping flaw in progressive politics is that it ends the separation of church and state. That is, it joins together the defense of the nation from enemies foreign and domestic with the question of the fight of good against evil. We see this clearly in the IRS intimidation of Tea Party groups.
If you are a Lois Lerner that has gone through a normal education K-12 through law school, you have probably had over a dozen teachers that believed that conservatives were nothing more than racists, sexists and homophobes.
Lois Lerner was apparently quite happy to be putting the Christian Coalition through the regulatory wringer when she served at the Federal Election Commission. And she did an equally enthusiastic job at the IRS exempt organizations unit. How does a Lois Lerner get her beliefs and her enthusiasms? She doesn't have to do anything. It is in the very air she breathes as a Susie Goodgirl getting good grades from her liberal teachers in the government schools.
Here's the problem. It is one thing to win the battle of ideas. It is another thing to march through the institutions of government and turn the bureaucrats into partisan supporters of your progressive religion.
The argument is not that you shouldn't bother to try it because it won't work. It may work all too well. The problem is that you get civil war at the end of it, because you create enemies out of the people that you intimidate and dominate. And then your wonderful vision of the future collapses in war and mayhem.
There seems to me to be a kind of crude ignorance of all this in the modern progressive liberal. They really don't get how they are wrecking their own cause by cutting corners and self-dealing. I am talking of everything from the aggressive pursuit of leaks to the pervasive waiving of the law in the treatment of illegal aliens to the nod-nod-wink-wink looking the other way in the whole welfare culture.
The reason for the government to follow the rules is to avoid giving people the idea that the only way they can obtain justice is in the streets. Liberals think they own the streets: just yesterday Sen. Chuck Schumer threatened demonstrations if Congress didn't pass his immigration reform. But I think liberals are wrong. I think they completely underestimate how thin the ice is. They think they own the culture, own the politics, and they are above the rules.
I am here to say that the liberals are wrong on all that. But we will all have to pay for their mistake.
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