The Problem With Democrats

The big problem with the Democrats today is they lack any purpose, apparently, other than pursuing power at all costs, even to the detriment of the country.



That's because they succeeded marvelously in enacting all their major socially progressive programs that were their prime raison d'etre over the last century, and have simply outlived their usefulness.



Workers' rights? Check. Social Security? Yep. Unemployment? Civil Rights? Education programs? We've got it all.



And we thank them for it. Really.



These programs are imperfect, but they function in the real world, given finite resources. No, all poverty and misfortune and injustice have not been purged from society, but they never will be. Conservatives, distrustful of large government programs, are satisfied with "good enough"; idealistic revolutionaries are never happy until perfection is achieved, even if it means fascistically stomping on people "in the way" of "progress".



It is a combination of this partial success, along with general American optimism, that makes class warfare a losing issue for the Democrats, even with many of the working class. Not everything in life is economic, and even then, many harbor the desire to become rich and don't want to find that being rich has been outlawed once they get there!



This is described at a bit more length in this Peggy Noonan article.



The social programs in place may be tinkered with, but they are not going away. And pushing them further and making them bigger just leads to prohibitively high taxes and regulation that drags down all growth and expansion.



The one thing the Left has never come to grips with is where production comes from.



What, stuff just falls from heaven everyday, does it?



In physics, it's a Law of Thermodynamics that useful work cannot be extracted from a heat engine unless a temperature differential exists: you get heat energy to flow from the hot place to the cold place, and in the process can divert some of it into work.



I believe a similar concept must apply in Economics: useful economic activity cannot take place unless there exist differences in wealth across which money will flow. The richer person has the disposable cash to spend, the poorer person has an incentive to do work to get that money.



It's an unpleasant system, but otherwise there's no incentive for any economic activity.



And then everyone's equally poor.



One might wish otherwise, but that's reality.



The small businessman -- not an elite, country-club figure at all -- is more likely to identify with Republicans once they find the tangle of laws and taxes and hoops and red-tape they have to go through just to try to start up their business!



So just "more of the same" from the Democrats is not welcome. And they are not needed to preserve what has already been won.



Unable to reinvent themselves, they seem to be simply grasping for power for its own sake, and it's quite unbecoming.



I listen to these Democrat attack dogs making insane proclamations that Iraq was never a threat, and we're less safe now, and only turned Iraq into a terrorist "haven" by invading.



Even assuming that last point were true, isn't that exactly what we'd like, to create a high concentration of terrorists in a country other than our own, that also just happens to host half our army with free reign to strike the terrorists whenever they are found?



I can't believe these people truly believe the illogical nonsequitors they spout. They can only be engaging in sophistry and rhetoric for the sake of winning debating points, and they have to know it.



And to do so in the middle of a war, with lives on the line every day, merely for their own ambitions, is the very definition of disloyalty.



Yes, the Democrat party is disloyal to America.



Disloyal! Seditious! Traitorous!



In the present circumstances, I can't possibly understand how anyone can justify a vote for a member of this party, let alone for positionless Kerry-Kerry-Quite-Contrary. Nostalgia isn't a good enough reason. What have Democrats done for us lately?



Their behavior is disgraceful and unjustifiable -- except in their own minds because their "cause" is "good".



Ever notice that the Left is always about Motive? That's all that matters. Purity of Motive. They strive for some social Utopia, so any atrocity or dirty trick is allowed, nay, even demanded, in pursuit of that Greater Good! Witness trying to steal the 2000 election by corrupt recounts, or the willful use of forged documents in Rathergate.



But the obvious good of freeing 50 million people from terrible, oppressive totalitarians of the very worst sort is derided by the Left, simply because they don't trust Bush's Motives. The tangible outcome for the liberated is less important to the Left than the pleasure of refusing to give credit to Bush because he has to be driven by oil or Halliburton or Karl Rove, rather than by high-minded ideals of social justice.



What miserable, useless people!



Some, however, have seen the light: witness this interview with former Lefty Christopher Hitchens, in which the interviewer is appalled at his 9/11 conversion to neo-conservatism, when the scales were finally burned from his eyes by what happened that day, and he saw that mere political points were less important than, you know, fighting real Evil.



And this Evil isn't Capitalism or "the Man", it's Islamic Fascism.



And it's new ally, the anti-bourgeoisie (and hence anti-American) Left.