August 07, 2011 07:00 PM UTC

Best explanation of "progressive" anger yet?

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• by: ellbee

On August 6th, Paul Berkowitz of the Wall Street Journal penned an editorial that I really believe hit home with me in terms of the hypocrisy that I see from the very far left.  For all the vitriol I have seen aimed at the ‘Tea Party Movement’ (whatever that is, exactly), I would like to point out, via Berkowitz, that the truly radical extremists in today’s American political landscape are the “progressives”, and how it’s their platform that’s in almost direct opposition to public sentiment, and reality.

Update:  Hey, Guvs – can I put a hit counter on this so I can see how many Polsters read this but don’t respond?

🙂

How quickly things have changed.  Within moments of a deranged, non-political, sick man shooting a Democratic Congresswoman and other innocents, there was a predictable outrage aimed at the powers that had just swept to power in the House in resounding, unprecedented fashion.

We had blame being pushed at Sarah Palin (?), the Tea Party, the GOP in general, and we were given a campaign speech/rally in the guise of a cry for civility where the only thing missing was the mascot rappelling from the roof.  Anyone right of center, or anyone who had been angered by in particular the ACA process was chastised for having their temperatures go up at all, as we ‘all needed to get along’ – said the President at the time:

But at a time when our discourse has become so sharply polarized — at a time when we are far too eager to lay the blame for all that ails the world at the feet of those who think differently than we do — it’s important for us to pause for a moment and make sure that we are talking with each other in a way that heals, not a way that wounds.

After this debt debate, and the more embarrassing displays of incivility by the Democrats, I’ve been looking for the next scheduled rally but have somehow missed it.

Berkowitz:

[Regarding the debt negotiations]

But that’s not how progressives have tended to see things. They have ferociously attacked congressional Republicans, particularly those closely associated with the tea party movement, with something approaching hysteria.

Consider the unabashed incivility of progressive criticism, its tone dictated from the top. During and after the budget negotiations, we heard that tea party representatives were content with “blowing up our government” (Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne). Then came accusations that “Tea Party Republicans have waged jihad on the American people” (New York Times columnist Joe Nocera), while acting like “a maniacal gang with knives held high” (New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd). At the height of negotiations, Vice President Biden either said, or agreed with House Democrats with whom he was meeting who said, that Congressional Republicans “have acted like terrorists.”

How does one reconcile these statements with the condescending pleadings and scolding, and placing of blame for horrific murders on, for example, a map with targets or crosshairs on it, which is a metaphor used by both parties for years?  To wit:

How often they have haughtily lectured the nation on the vital importance of civility in public discourse, the urgency of constraining executive power under law, and the need for impartial expertise in public affairs to pragmatically weigh competing public-policy options. But in the debt-limit debate the virtues they profess could hardly have been more spectacularly absent.

In Berkowitz’ opinion (and mine), the point has been missed.

One might view the debt deal as evidence that democracy in America, though often unlovely in execution, is alive and well. After all, President Obama’s $800 billion-plus stimulus package was passed by Congress in early 2009 on a mostly party-line vote. It was followed in April by his $3.5 trillion budget, enacted without a single Republican vote, that contained sizeable across-the-board funding increases for federal departments and agencies. The president devoted the next 12 months to passing costly and unpopular health-care legislation that dramatically increased government’s responsibility for regulating approximately one-sixth of the nation’s economy. Employment hovered at approximately 9% and still does.

In the congressional elections of 2010, the electorate, led by the tea party movement and disaffected independents, rendered its judgment on the president’s priorities. The people dealt him and his party a historic midterm defeat, producing large Republican gains in the Senate and a comfortable majority in the House, including 87 freshmen.

The voters’ message was clear: Cut spending, compel the government to live within its means, and put Americans back to work. In short, the president and his party badly overreached in 2009 and 2010; and in 2011 the Republicans, to the extent their numbers in Congress allowed, have effectively pushed back.

In other words, you don’t get to call the majority of American voters “terrorists” because they’re angry about the direction the far left, in supermajority power for only two years (although in control of Congress from 2006), have taken the country’s finances and scope of government in the absence of being able to take the hearts and minds of most Americans in a big government, Euro-Socialism model.  Hence the mid-terms of 2010.

So perhaps the reason for the acidic vitriol, accompanied by an absolute lack of positive economic results is not anything that has been left behind by any previous administration, but a clash of “progressive” philosophy with reality, and certainly the majority American view of what makes our country exceptional.

Add to this the progressive belief that human beings can be perfected through the rule of experts, and you have a recipe-when the people make choices contrary to progressive dictates-for generating contempt among the experts for the people whose interests they claim to alone represent. And not just contempt, but even disgust at diversity of opinion, which from the progressive’s perspective distracts the people from the policies demanded by impartial reason.

The progressive mind is on a collision course with itself. The clash between its democratic pretensions and its authoritarian predilections has generated within its ranks seething resentment for, and rage at, conservatives. Unless progressives cultivate the enlightened virtues they publicly profess and free themselves from the dogmatic beliefs that undergird their political ambitions, we can expect even more harrowing outbursts to come.

Seemingly, a majority of Americans don’t like the ‘smart set’ telling them what to do, when common sense tells them that the ideas being thrust on them don’t make sense, being simple folk as they are.  Being told they are too dense to understand the true ‘brilliance’ of these ideas does little to allay these masses from concern and anger about the future of the country.

As an aside, and to head off the predictable response I’m sure is coming: that the progressives are allowed to take extreme measures and dialogue to save us from the existential threat placed on us by the Republicans (or whatever hilarious invective derivative one can come up with – Republican’t, GOTP, Rupugs, etc.), I  wanted to leave you with a chart, put together by Ed Morrissey over at HotAir.  

It uses seasonally-adjusted private-sector employment figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and compares that to control of Congress.  Job creation contrasted with the control of legislation that might affect said job creation.

The blue colors of this graph show when Democrats held complete control of Congress, while the white areas show when Republicans held complete control.  The two purple areas show when Democrats controlled the Senate, as York notes above, and when Republicans controlled only the House.  This gives a much different picture of when job losses occurred, and who controlled policy in Congress when it happened.

When Democrats talk about “eight years of job losses” during the Bush administration, just show them this chart.

I’d love to hear a civil defense of Berkowitz’ supposition, and of what, in my opinion, is hypocrisy regarding vitriol.

Also a defense of what I think is pretty good evidence that progressive policies hindering job creation, which really should be job number one right now, right?  

Is there anyone out there that thinks that this anger we’ve been witnessing is born of frustration that comes from seeing deeply held socio-economic beliefs not being supported by socio-economic reality?