Yesterday’s Republicans vs. today’s Democrats: Watergate vs. Benghazi
David Gelernter nails it:
It is the Democratic Party that’s on trial today; and to a lesser extent, America’s mainstream media. For Democrats (and especially Democratic senators) it is put-up-or-shut-up time: are they Democrats or Americans first?…
How would Republicans act if a GOP administration were under this sort of cloud? We know exactly how. It was the radically partisan Edward Kennedy who proposed that a senate select committee investigate Watergate””but in February 1973, the Senate voted unanimously to create that committee. Republican Senator Howard Baker was vice chairman, and asked the key question: ”What did the president know and when did he know it?” Which Democratic senator will ask that question today, now that the issue isn’t breaking-and-entering but lying about four murders, including the murder of an American ambassador? Which cabinet member will be Eliot Richardson and resign rather than continuing to be part of a coverup? Will John Kerry rise to the challenge?
The answers, unfortunately are “none” and “no.”
The name of David Gelernter, the author of the piece, struck a bell with me, so I went to Wiki to discover whether I remembered correctly. Sure enough, there it was:
On June 24, 1993, Gelernter was critically injured opening a mailbomb sent by the Unabomber. He recovered from his injuries but his right hand and eye were permanently damaged. He chronicled the ordeal in his 1997 book Drawing Life: Surviving the Unabomber.
Win at all costs and by any means necessary. Dems are a party of sociopaths.
Gelernter frequently writes op-eds for the Wall Street Journal. Smart guy. He’s always worth reading.
You can tell the Donks value party ahead of country by how often and how loudly they accuse their opponents of doing exactly that. Just count the number of times they scream how “RethugliKKKans” place party loyalty before “The Common Good” (that’s the latest meme: apparently holding policymakers responsible for their epic policy failures is now striking a deadly blow against The Common Good) while circling the wagons around their beloved Next President. Projecting their personal failures onto anyone who disagrees with them (preferably with overwrought emotionalism) is an important part of their institutional sociopathy.
Neo,
I am surprised that this is the first piece of writing that has made you aware of Gelernter.
He’s a rara avis: a technology guy who is conservative by temperament.
And he may be the only conservative on the Yale faculty, alas.
Jamie Irons
I add my endorsement about the thoughtful commentaries of Gelernter. Although he was a target of the anti-technology Unabomber because of his position in the vanguard of computer scientists, his interests are wide-ranging, including politics, philosophy, education, and the arts.
I was impressed by a comment he made in the first thing I read by him: in refusing to think of himself as a victim of the Unabomber, he said “to define yourself in terms of what some random thug did to you. I would never sink so low as that.”
John Kerry?!? Is he serious? John m- f- Kerry!
Click on Neo’s Amazon link and check out Gelernter’s America-Lite: How Imperial Academia Dismantled Our Culture.
Quoting an Amazon review:
American society in general and America’s universities in particular were led before the war by WASPs. Their orientation was more social than intellectual. They celebrated patriotism and duty. Their training grounds–the universities–prepared people for leadership that included, e.g., significant participation in the OSS and, later, the CIA. Ivy league men were routinely members of the officer class in the military, fighting side by side with blue-collar enlisted men. One way of thinking of this (not the author’s words) is that the nation was more English, with firmer class lines, a greater sense of noblesse oblige, a higher regard for tradition and a culture that, to put it plainly, was far less crude than today’s. That does not mean that it was perfect. Far from it, but it enjoyed certain advantages that are now largely lost.
Then, a change occurred and the change was in the colleges and universities. They became more intellectual and less social. They became more left-leaning than right-leaning. They spawned a society of post-religious, global intellectuals, one driven by left/liberal ideology. Interestingly, the author argues that this was not the `60’s’ phenomenon that it is often seen to be. The changes came earlier, just after the war, and were then given further impetus and energy by the civil rights movement, the anti-war protests of the Vietnam era and the women’s movement. He notes that the university vanguard was often Jewish (so was the anti-war movement, as Todd Gitlin and Diane Ravitch, e.g., have reminded us). [As is Gelernter, who also takes the opportunity to give us his take on the Jewish political outlook – KBK]
The underlying ideology of the PORGIs, as he terms them, has led to the depreciation of literary, religious and especially historical study in today’s universities. In turn, that has led to the creation of several generations of ephebes who are, essentially, airheads, parroting the theories of those who have indoctrinated them. The `theory’ element is crucial; he argues that the humanists and social scientists who now dominate the universities are largely theoretical in their thinking. If inconvenient facts get in the way, they are simply dismissed. The theory is everything, whether true or not, whether successful or not when put into practice. Hence, the imperial academics pay no attention to their failures (in education theory, e.g. or in social engineering) and simply proceed as if nothing happened.
The antidote to all of this is the use of the internet, where the playing field is level and where the older, more traditionally-educated might strike an alliance with the young, who are chronically anti-authoritarian. In some ways this reprises the argument that cable news and the blogosphere have freed us from the ideological shackles of the mainstream media; we might be able to achieve such a success again, with education at all levels. (It is interesting that he includes K-12 as well.) It is also interesting that he believes that this battle is actually winnable.
James said…
John Kerry?!? Is he serious? John m- f- Kerry!
Well, he does play a long game, doesn’t he? So, perhaps if he sees a chance to grab the nomination again in 2016…
“For Democrats (and especially Democratic senators) it is put-up-or-shut-up time: are they Democrats or Americans first?…”
That is the question but we already have the answer.
The great majority are Democrats, first, last and always. One of the left’s fundamental tenets is that America is a fundamentally unjust society unworthy of loyalty. Only worthy of redemption if America embraces the left’s memes, otherwise it will remain a force for evil in the world.
Such a fundamentally twisted view can never extend loyalty to an unrepentant society. Privately, their view is, if that be sedition, then so be it.
Their loyalty is to what they demand America become, rather than to what it is and has been. That is why the celebrity leftists declared that if McCain had won they would have left the country.
The split appears irreconcilable, should America become what the left declares, it certainly won’t have my loyalty.
It’s important to note that many liberal low-information voters are not of the left but its unwitting dupes. Unknowingly indoctrinated into the left’s memes, where the line of culpability lies between willful blindness and ‘knowing not what they do’, only God can judge.
Anne,
“Well, he does play a long game, doesn’t he?” He certainly does and I remember all 40+ years of it, the pompous self regarding son of a bitch. Sorry neo for the cursing, but I hate the rat bastard pos.
Jamie Irons: I didn’t say this was the first piece of writing that had made me aware of Gelernter. I’ve read some of his stuff before, and made the connection with the man who was injured by the Unibomber, but I hadn’t read Gelernter’s work in a while. But his name still rung a bell because I had in fact read some of his pieces a while back, and thought I also remembered he was one of the Unibomber’s targets.
Said it before:
Obama’s supporters, the dems, the left, the lo-fo voters, will go to some very dark places, some of them the innocent dupes would have abhorred, before they’l abandon The One.
The innocently ignorant, the lo-fos, the emotional voters, those whose view was that voting against a republican made them Good People, cannot acknowledge what they’ve done. The only solution is to go with it, go further and further. Like going into business with the Mob.
KBK, thanks for that excellent excerpt from the Amazon review. It puts in perspective many things I have believed about the arc of our society from the 50s to today, but could not express so well.
I pray that the internet is beginning to make a difference. At least we now have many outlets where conservative thought is on view and defended. I remember well back in the 70s when Bill Buckley and National Review stood alone as a bastion of conservative thought.
The Republicans of the 60s wanted to do the right thing. Much as most of them do today. I have never understood how the democrats maintain such strong party discipline. The party is an amalgam of disparate interest groups. The only thing they seem to have in common is an interest in power over the treasury. Even so, you would think there were a few among them with a yen to do the right thing. Four dead public servants and obvious dereliction of duty don’t seem to move any of them. It is to weep!
When they destroy America, they will be Democrats only. It will be a simple fix to the problem.
“I have never understood how the democrats maintain such strong party discipline.”
That’s like asking how do cults enforce such strong discipline and loyalty.
…from that quote to G-d’s ears.
The Jim Jones effect + “for the children” + blinders = resultant X^sui-patri-matri-fratri-fili-cide
Gelernter was probably trying to avoid saying what he really must feel. There has to be an overwhelming public demand for answers. This is unlikely to happen because Obamas supporters, those few who are aware of the story-most think Ben Ghazi is a ball player, will look for and find a way to rationalize his behavior. We all know that it does not matter that a narrative be obviously false if there are enough people who want it to be true. There will be more support for an acceptable lie, no matter how obvious, than there will be for an honest inquire. Terms like witch-hunt, fishing and of course McCarthyism will be offered as alternatives to punishing the clearly guilty. After a number of obstructing and misleading stories are tendered we can expect the MSM to bury the story. FOX will follow it but no one will pay attention. The media will not report a public outcry, even if there is one, except as the work of deranged Tea Party racists.
Meanwhile any MSM reporter who pursues the story will find career and social life threatened.
An electorate who empowers someone like Obama is in no condition to evaluate either moral compass or competence.
Treason is no longer called treason when it propers.
Those who allowed the Left to prosper, will find it just a bit expensive to reverse things by now.