Leaving the Left

[Tiger in Spain 0]

Since someone posted an article earlier about how the race for dog catcher or whatever out in Kansas was an indicator that democrats were going to win big in 2006, I thought I would post this as in an effort to counter the grim news coming out of Chapman, Kansas (the official barometer of the 2006 election)

Leaving the Left

by Seth Swirsky

<snip>

I used to be a liberal. I was in one of the first "open" classrooms growing up in very progressive Great Neck, New York, in the 1960s. In 1971, when I was 11, I wrote vitriolic letters to President Nixon demanding an end to the Vietnam War. My first vote, in 1980, was for Independent John Anderson, followed by Mondale, Dukakis, and Clinton-Gore. I read Thomas Friedman in the NY Times and tried to "understand" the "root causes" of the "despair" he said the Palestinians felt that drove them to blow up innocent Israelis. I wasn't an overtly political person - I just never veered from the liberal zeitgeist of the community in which I was raised.

But when I was about 27, in the late 1980s, cracks in my liberal worldview began to appear. It started with an uproar from the Left when Tipper Gore had the audacity to suggest a label on certain CDs to warn parents of lyrics that were clearly inappropriate for young people. Her suggestion was simple common sense and I was surprised by the furor it caused from the likes of Frank Zappa (and others) who felt their freedoms were being encroached upon. It was my first introduction into the entitled, selfish and irresponsible thinking I now associate with the Left.

In 1989, I remember questioning whether Democrat David Dinkins was the best choice for Mayor of New York City (where I lived) over Rudy Giuliani. After all, Dinkins' biggest claim to fame was as a city clerk in the Marriage License Bureau while Giuliani, as a United States District Attorney, had just de-fanged the mob. But, racial "healing" was the issue of the day, Dinkins won, and the city went straight downhill. When Giuliani beat Dinkins in a rematch four years later - Surprise! - the crime rate plummeted, tourism boomed, Times Square came alive not with pimps but with commerce. Since 1993, the overwhelmingly liberal electorate in New York City has voted for Republicans for Mayor. Yet, to this day, many of my liberal friends refer to the decisive and effective Giuliani as a Nazi, even as they stroll their children through neighborhoods he cleaned up.

After moving to Los Angeles in the early 90s, I watched from the roof of my apartment building as the city burned after the Rodney King verdicts were handed down. I thought what those four cops did to King was shameful. But I didn't hear an uproar from my friends on the Left when rioters rampaged through the city's streets, stealing, looting, and destroying property in the name of "no justice, no peace." And it was impossible not to notice the hypocrisy when prominent Hollywood liberals, who had hosted anti-NRA fundraisers at their homes a week before the riots were standing in line at shooting ranges the week after it.

<snip>

Still, I approached the 2004 primaries with an open mind. I was still a Democrat, still hoping that leaders like Sam Nunn and Scoop Jackson would emerge, still fantasizing that Democrats could constitute a party of truly progressive social thinkers with tough backbones who would reappear after 9/11.

I was wrong. The Left got nuttier, more extreme, less contributory to the public debate, more obsessed with their nemesis Bush - and it drove me further away. What Democrat could support Al Gore's '04 choice for President, Howard Dean, when Dean didn't dismiss the suggestion that George W. Bush had something to do with the 9/11 attacks? Or when the second most powerful Senate Democrat, Dick Durbin, thought our behavior at the detention center in Guantanamo was equivalent to Bergen Belsen and the Soviet gulags? Or when Senator Kennedy equated the unfortunate but small incident at Abu Ghraib with Saddam's 40-year record of mass murder, rape rooms, and mass graves saying, "Saddam's torture chambers have reopened under new management, U.S. management"? What Democrat could not applaud the fact that President had, in fact, kept us safe for what's going on 5 years? What Democrat - even those who opposed the decision to go into Iraq - wouldn't applaud the fact that tens of millions of previously brutalized people had the hope of freedom before them?

What made me leave the Left for good and embrace the Right were their respective reactions to 9/11. While The New York Times doubted that we could succeed in Afghanistan because the Soviets in the '80s hadn't, George W. Bush went directly after the Taliban and Al Qaeda and crushed them in short order. Although many on the Left claim to have backed the President's actions, the self-doubt leading up to it, crystallized my view of the Left as weak and terminally lacking in confidence.

Link

[DKW 86 7,426]

I am/was a Seth Swirsky Democrat. Where are the Dems with backbones? Why are they systematically driven from the National Democratic Party? (Leiberman)

[Captain Liger 0]

Where are the Dems with backbones? Why are they systematically driven from the National Democratic Party?

242181[/snapback]

Because all the looney fruitcakes have taken it over.

[GoAU 1,600]

Thy're all Republicans now!!!

"Come on in, the waters fine!"

[Ranger12 46]

The democratic party of our fathers is not the democratic party of today.

[AUloggerhead 2,238]

The democratic party of our fathers is not the democratic party of today.

242334[/snapback]

There's an Olsmobile ad in there somewhere:

"Democrats Today -- as relevent as your father's Oldsmobile!"

[Tiger in Spain 0]

What I find piquant is the democrats finding some town out in the middle of nowhere to use as proof that average Americans are jumping over to the left in droves. Actually, they should be commended for being able to find Kansas on the map. I always assumed that the liberals considered New England and California to be the United States.

I'm sure the DNC even had a brainstorming session to come up with a strategy to reclaim "the average, ignorant American red state voter." Some strategist brought forward the idea of finding one district out in the middle of those insipid conservative states that put a democrat in office. They found it, so voila, the whole country is turning blue.

Until the democrat party cures itself of idiots like Kennedy, Kerry, Pelosi, etc; it will be extremely hard for me to consider voting for one of their candidates for a national office. These people are cancers on the party, and until the moderates within the party realize this and take back their party, the average American voter is not going to support them.