Wednesday, September 9, 2009

Camille Paglia rips the Democrats again

Camille Paglia must be one of the last critical thinkers left in the Democratic Party. Excerpts from her must-read column:


As an Obama supporter and contributor, I am outraged at the slowness with which the standing army of Democratic consultants and commentators publicly expressed discontent with the administration's strategic missteps this year. Had more Democrats protested, the administration would have felt less arrogantly emboldened to jam through a cap-and-trade bill whose costs have made it virtually impossible for an alarmed public to accept the gargantuan expenses of national healthcare reform. (Who is naive enough to believe that Obama's plan would be deficit-neutral? Or that major cuts could be achieved without drastic rationing?)
It is theoretically possible that Obama could turn the situation around with a strong speech on healthcare to Congress this week, but after a summer of grisly hemorrhaging, too much damage has been done.
Why did it take so long for Democrats to realize that this year's tea party and town hall uprisings were a genuine barometer of widespread public discontent and not simply a staged scenario by kooks and conspirators? It was on talk radio, which I have resumed monitoring around the clock because of the healthcare fiasco, that I heard the passionate voices of callers coming directly from the town hall meetings. 
Democrats have increasingly become the party of an upper-middle-class professional elite, top-heavy with journalists, academics and lawyers (one reason for the hypocritical absence of tort reform in the healthcare bills). Weirdly, given their worship of highly individualistic, secularized self-actualization, such professionals are as a whole amazingly credulous these days about big-government solutions to every social problem.

Affluent middle-class Democrats now seem to be complacently servile toward authority and automatically believe everything party leaders tell them. Why? Elite education in the U.S. has become a frenetic assembly line of competitive college application to schools where ideological brainwashing is so pandemic that it's invisible. The Democratic brain has been marinating so long in those clichés that it's positively pickled.
I post this because the strength of her logic and observations makes me realize that Obama and the Democrats in Congress are hopelessly adrift. Thus the chances of them advancing their current big-government, big-taxing agenda are slim. Since this agenda is largely responsible for the market's angst and the projections of meager growth in the years ahead, this is very important and encouraging news. There is light at the end of this tunnel.

7 comments:

fboness said...

"I always thought that the Democratic Party is the freedom party -- but I must be living in the nostalgic past."

She is in a Democratic party that doesn't exist and probably never did.

Scott Grannis said...

Both parties have lost their way. Both have been proponents of big government, which comes only at the cost of reduced freedom for the individual.

Public Library said...

If the Dems are hopelessly adrift, The Republicans are in deeper trouble than ever.

The entire Republican strategy revolves around refuting Democratic policy.

There is a complete lack of leadership in this country and the Republicans are at the bottom of the heap.

The best strategy they could muster up was Palin who now falls under the quitter ranks. That's quitter, not twitter.

Brian H said...

People talk about swinging of pendulum, but where has the swing to the right been occurring? With Bush's prescription drug deal? When the GOP is in power they at best hold the line, it is the left that progressively moves policy. Conservatives are debating on liberal turf - its devolving into an argument about who can best run big government, not whether government should be big!

Scott Grannis said...

I should have mentioned that Camille also attacks the Republicans mercilessly. Both parties have lost touch with the mood of the country and the vision of the Founding Fathers.

Slingblade9119 said...

I have said it before and I'll say it agian - Camille Paglia is a breath of fresh air. I think I would actually enjoy debating and discussing issue with her - even though we disagree on many fundemental issues - I deeply respect her and her opinions. She uses reason and logic to formulate her opinions which are devoid of self-interest and always intellectualy honest!

Public Library said...

"Both parties have lost touch with the mood of the country and the vision of the Founding Fathers."

I think this pretty much sums up the tone of America these days.

Well said Scott.