Politics, power, ideology, and hatred

by Paul Mirengoff in Democrats, Liberals

In response to a post I wrote called “Politics, power, ideology, and hatred,” my friend Bill Otis offers these remarks:

It seems to me that what unites the Democrats is not primarily either ideology or the will to power. It’s their turn of mind: Envy, principally, which accounts for their hatred of the One Percent — and others who their way to a successful life — and, [secondly], anti-Americanism.
Question: What’s the one thing every single Democratic policy, foreign and domestic, does? Answer: Produce a weaker USA. [This is true] no matter where you look: from indulging criminals, digging us deeper into unpayable debt, retreating from Iraq and Afghanistan in a way that emboldens Iran, hostile treatment of essential allies and obsequious treatment of enemies, increasing dependency at the expense of self-reliance, punishing producers with higher taxes to reward takers with more benefits, obsession with race and the culture of whinerism and victimization, and cracking down on the institutions Americans admire most (the military and the family) while snuggling up to anything weird, vulgar and offensive.

All these substantive “accomplishments” are accompanied with, and significantly facilitated by, the Democrats’ main strategy, to wit, lying. Lying does more than make it politically possible to put over programs promoting decay and decline, see Obamacare. Lying is a good unto itself, because ultimately it undermines trust, and, far more than is commonly understood, trust is the glue that makes a wholesome civic and commercial life in this country possible — at least civic and commercial life as it had been known pre-Obama.

I tend to view the leftist agenda described by Bill, along with its strategy of systematic lying, as means to ideological ends — not as means to the end of ruining the U.S. out of envy and hatred. Stated differently, I view the left as breaking eggs to make an omelet.

But maybe it really is all about breaking the eggs.

JOHN adds: I agree with Bill that it is mostly about breaking eggs, but I disagree that hatred of the 1% is the right diagnosis–envy, in some cases, but not hatred, except for the minority of rich people who happen to be conservative. Most rich people who are active in politics are on the left, which shouldn’t be a surprise. The left has never lacked for money. I think it is the mainstream–normal Americans, an America that above all else empowers “ordinary” people–that the left hates. Their constant chatter about rich people, like the Koch brothers, is a smoke screen.

 

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2013/11/politics-power-ideology-and-hatred.php