Quote:
Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield
This is a different discussion. We've been over that ground endlessly. There is nothing constructive to be discussed there. We will never agree.
But the bleating folks of the moment are not Hillary Democrats. Those moderates are also adrift.
The battle of the moment is between two groups with authoritarian bent. The Trumpkins wish to take us back to a '50s that never was. The progressives who've supplanted liberals and moderates as the bullhorn of the Democrats are busybodies who want all of us to live according to their rules. The latter is far more benign than the former, but does anyone wish to live under the tyranny of any group that thinks "it knows best"? I know I don't.
Buckley once said he'd rather be governed by random names in the phone book than Harvard faculty. (That's not anti-intellectual, as he was saying it as a "boorish Yalie" [hat tip, Montgomery Burns]). I find this sort of thinking persuasive when I consider some of the policy suggestions I hear from modern progressives. There's a definite air of, "We're smart, and we know what policy will work." Ah yes... and then the law of unintended consequences rears its head years later.
The fastest road to hell is paved with good intentions, with asphalt rollers driven by bright young kids with degrees who are sure they've got life figured out at 30, and their pure academic mentors who've never left the Ivory Tower.
I'm adrift because I do not wish to be governed by know it alls or know nothings. And I don't seem to be offered anything in the middle right now.
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Actually, the Hillary forces are pretty much winning everything in sight on the Democratic Party side these days. The Berners are falling flat. Have you missed the last 18 months of elections?
Of course, you know by now that Buckley was a fixture of my childhood, and someone I interacted with quite a bit. He was an elite and effete snob, and an out-of-the-closet racist, who would have been quite comfortable with the authoritarianism expressed by Trump. He wasn't complaining about the Harvard faculty thinking they were better than him, he was pointing out that he was better than them, and fully capable of manipulating random names in the phone book.
