The following is a based on a comment exchange between me and Will Cain in this post on the GOP's plan for a bait and switch campaign.
Will Cain asked: "But surely you don't disagree with my pining for ideologues?"
Yes. Yes, I do.
As an ideologue, myself, I understand that I agitate for a particular point of view, but only one of thousands of competing points of view.
As a pragmatist, I also realize that I am one of almost 400 million people in this country, and it is the height of solipsism for anyone to believe their particular view is the one that needs to be in sole control of everything.
I guess what it comes down to is a balance between fighting hard for your team, while realizing that in America not everyone gets everything they want all the time... and perhaps that's a good thing.
Common ground is what I am looking for. However conservatives in this country seem to be interested in anything but. By definition, government is choosing and Democracy is compromise. I would refer you to an earlier wire post by our redoubtable Dr. S9: What's Dangling from the end of all our forks (part 2) for a more complete and better written explanation of my take.
You see, I put (N.Y. Rep. Peter) King in the same category as Rahm Emanuel (who has been on my list for a while). That's a kind of self-serving political pragmatism that is devoid on anything other than self-perpetuation and expediency, and for them labels like "left" or "right" are mere conveniences to be either worn like phony crowns or discarded like yesterday's fashion depending on the mood of the people...
But at the same time, a country of ideologues is equally as dangerous, if not more so. Exhibit A: Alleged Freeway Shooter Was Targeting ACLU.
According to the cops, the guy who got into a shootout with California Highway Patrol officers on the 580 in Oakland the other day had a car full of guns and ammo and a ballistic vest on his way to shoot the shit out of the ACLU of Northern California offices in San Francisco and the Tides Foundation, a progressive support organization.
A political party or philosophy that not only encourages, but demands, utter adherence to a point of view with no allowance for reflection and an essential world view of existential threat from all "others," is going to invite, if not promote this kind of behavior.
We saw this in the leftist form of Weathermen of the 1960s, people who's ideology knew no compromise and in a pluralistic society, they simply could not function.
It is in this vein that the movement conservatives can be seen as the new Marxists. No, I'm not saying they are communists or adherents of Marxist philosophy, except in one specific: there can be no proletariat disagreement with the cadre. The cadre gives the received party line and the lumpenproles must accept it. To do otherwise is a criminal act of counter-revolution.
This is what the movement conservatives have become, the only difference is what they think they are nominally fighting for. And whether it was the communists in the old Soviet Union or today's movement conservatives, or even crazier fringe types like the New Black Panther Party, it's their unrelenting hatred of and war against a pluralistic society that makes them a danger to the Republic.
mojo sends
