Elitism, Marxism and Moonbats

I have been saying that the Democrats need to purge Leftism from their party. Because I like to hear myself say the same things over and over in slightly different ways, I offer this:

Paul Conkin (The New Deal, 1967), a reasonably typical representative of younger radical scholars, emphasized capitalism’s ugliness and spiritual poverty ... The problem lay not so much in the inadequacies of the New Deal as in the inadequacies of the American system. Conventional democratic politics, he said, is "a perennial interim accommodation with ignorance." The final blame for the New Deal’s failure lay with the "appalling economic ignorance and philosophic immaturity of the American electorate." FT October 2004: Articles

Sound familiar? The Left has made very little real progress in their thinking since the sixties, other than calling themselves Progressive. As evidence, I introduce the charming modern Marxist Tom Frank who wrote What's the Matter with Kansas. You may have seen him recently on Harball or O'Reilly (he also op-eds for the NYT). Now, I rather like this guy, but he is deeply wrong. He professes moderation, but still talks in terms of workers and management. It is my belief that the rest of us, the not-Leftists, have made intellectual progress since the good ole days. We have come to realize that classifying people in terms like workers is anachronistic. People are individuals. The Founders set the stage with their still revolutionary notion that each individual has inalienable rights. The rest of the Law flows from this. It is wrong, and possibly immoral, to treat people only as members of a class. This is what Conservatives mean when they cry Class Warfare!

It is true enough that in the early part of the 20th century America needed to be corrected, and that the Left did the correcting -- the free market is also subject to the moral code. People should be free to enter into whatever working arrangement they want, but their individual rights should also be protected. One problem is that the Left has an immoral code. Specifically, they do not believe in personal freedom and individual inalienable rights. If they could, they would institute social justice policies that violate these rights. One simple example, of which my wife, here Ben and Clover, is fond: charity by means of the state is impossible and in fact evil. (Walter Williams is the most famous proponent of this idea).

Laurin has recently complained about the barking moonbat Jeneane Garofalo. For some reason most of these idiots accept the basic assumptions of the Left. This is weird since they make all their money from capitalism. I would love to see their tax returns. If they are like Kerry's it would be revealing. I mean if you are going to preach about giving money to the less fortunate, you had better give more than you pay in taxes or you are a hypocrite. Of course, red states actually are more generous than blue states; and that is after subsidizing liberal programs and with the market burdens of stupid liberal restrictions.

America dominates the world in freedom and goodness despite the appalling economic ignorance and philosophic immaturity of the American Leftists. Imagine a world without them.