Liberals--God Love'm--Somebody Should
Nothing is sacred to liberals
JIM WOOTEN
12 October 2004
The Atlanta Journal - Constitution
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Copyright (c) 2004 The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, All Rights Reserved
The national Democratic Party, its voice now distilled to the undistinguished liberalism and anti-war cynicism of John Kerry, is the outgrowth of decades of the radical assault on American institutions.
The left that now dominates the national Democratic Party evolved from the campus radicalism of the '60s, when all institutions perceived as inhibiting individualism came under assault --- universities, the church, the family, capitalism, the military and the political system. The assault came without any responsibility for preservation of social order or for offering workable alternatives.
The result of this assault on --- to choose one institution --- religion is, ironically, that many churches and some denominations have become more distilled in their beliefs, more conservative.
While I'm not Catholic, I watch the attacks on papal authority on moral issues and the gleeful assertions of hypocrisy in the priesthood, and sense among many of its critics shrillness and a cavalier unconcern about the institution's survival. It's not the pope or the cardinals who count; it's me. The church will survive, of course, and perhaps emerge stronger.
The church's problems occur in an age where hostility and cynicism have become defining features of the nation's bend-to-me cultural wars. Recent decades have brought rebellion against any institution that enshrines any rigid moral or religious code premised on a certainty about right and wrong or about good and evil.
The high religion of much of the left today is tolerance and relativism. The only fixed truth is that we should never be judgmental, that we should, for example, look at all lifestyle choices as equally meritorious. And if we don't, it's because we are intolerant, and if we are intolerant, it's because we are mean-spirited, insensitive or don't personally know anybody from the group.
For decades, Southern Baptists have been engaged in intense debate about core beliefs. Just as the split within the Southern Baptist Convention over the inerrancy of the Bible distilled the denomination's conservatism and prompted the departure of some of the more moderate churches and believers, Jimmy Carter among them, the doctrine of the national Democratic Party has been distilled by a split as well.
Moderates and conservatives --- like the Sam Nunn Southerners who are disappearing from the U.S. House and Senate, or like U.S. Sen. Joe Lieberman (D-Conn.), who was thrashed in this year's primaries --- have ceased to be diluents. The resulting strain of liberalism is, therefore, purer and more toxic.
It is the self-absorbed '60s liberalism that manifests itself in the demand of an individual sitting in a 50,000-seat football stadium that no prayer be allowed, despite the preferences of others, because he feels "uncomfortable."
It is the shakedown liberalism around which the constituencies of the Democratic Party have coalesced: the trial lawyers, the grievance-bearers and the modern civil rights hustlers.
And it is, most assuredly, the remnants of the anti-war left who see America as an imperialist whose lust for domination and destructiveness has to be held in check by external forces, the United Nations and the Kyoto treaty among them. The only quagmires the left would invite on the U.S. military are those launched for humanitarian relief, such as Sudan.
And it is the controlling liberalism of those who distrust the political process and believe that power should be exercised from the bench and from the bureaucracy because, left to their own instincts and preferences, the hoi polloi would legislate with "intolerance" and against their own best interests.
Who constitutes the left? Not most rank-and-file Democrats, though they would be sympathetic. It is, by and large, a group spawned by '60s radicalism who gravitated to fields where they could indulge their passions --- academia, journalism, the law, politics, the bureaucracy and especially regulatory agencies such as the Environmental Protection Agency, and advocacy.
That is the intellectual core of John Kerry's Democratic Party.
Jim Wooten is associate editorial page editor. His column runs Tuesdays, Fridays and Sundays.
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The Democrats laughed. "I was talking about the minimum wage," Pelosi said. "The American people sent a message this past election, and that message was that they wanted their government to pretend there is no terrorist problem and instead focus on inane crap and entitlements... and who better to do that than we Democrats?"
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