Common Sense

Over at Washington Rebel, there's a "must-read" about the political climate today. Excerpt:

Glenn Beck is rapidly emerging as the most polarizing figure in American culture. His speech closing last week's Conservative Political Action Conference in D.C. brought down the house, inspiring an ovation even for his ubiquitous blackboard. Tracing the history of "Progressivism" in American political thought, Beck didn't spare Republicans, making it clear that the 20th century had a long and shameful record of the adoption of the the "principles" of Karl Marx, all in an attempt to curry favor among those who would be rescued by Government. The spectacle of a Conservative crowd erupting in applause at criticism of Theodore Roosevelt's contention, that wealth should be judged according to its demonstrated social value, amounted to cognitive dissonance. Are there really that many people willing to re-examine the positions of the hallowed Bull Moose?

Republicans are these days exhibiting what amounts to schizophrenia regarding their principles. On the one hand are those who would have it that winning is everything; on the other there are an increasing number of people who would appear to be asking with St. Mark, "For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?" The "pragmatists" fear that the splintering of the Right will lead to the inevitable triumph of madness, while the popular movement exemplified by the Tea Party activists views the current uproar as the first evidence of a return to sanity, and the healthiest development in the national dialogue in over a century.

~snip~

The triumph of the greatest unknown ever to gain the Oval Office has been almost universally regarded as a mandate by the Enlightened. The pundits of the world-wide Left continue to congratulate themselves on their prescience, and glory in the long-delayed vindication of their ideals. Their suicidal embrace of both Communism and Islam is dismissed with the justification "We won." In their hasty celebrations, they now expose themselves to a degree previously unthinkable to their greatest tacticians. By so doing, they have put the essential corruption that is Leftist politics on daily display, manifestly convinced that no one is listening. The resounding embrace of Glenn Beck should be sufficient evidence that the overstep may prove fatal.

For the first time in my life I regret not being younger. This will probably not play out in my lifetime, but it seems unavoidable that politics has been changed forever.

Read, as they say, the whole thing.