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January 16, 2006

Monday reading

After dropping a few well-chosen hints on his own website, today Jeff Harrell debuts as a regular Monday columnist for Wizbang. Excellent first column and, oh my, a few commenters are already frothing in the thread.

Want to further understand why the Left of Center is increasingly desperate? Why the "woe-unto-us" attitude? Take a gander at James Carroll's column in "honor" of Dr. King's holiday. It is a perfect illustration of too many of the Baby Boomer generation refuse to live in any other era than the 60's and 70's. In the closing paragraphs

In honoring King today, America knows full well how far short the nation still falls of the vision he articulated. In the year that he died, a federal commission convened to examine the roots of urban riots declared that the United States was, in fact, two societies, separated by race. Nearly forty years later, that remains true, and it did not take Hurricane Katrina to show it. The effective segregation of schools is as stark as ever. Incarceration rates of African-American males are astronomical. Gunplay in cities overwhelmingly targets young people of color. An institutional triage writes off huge proportions of poor black youth. Among middle and upper classes, social interaction between the races is rare. Even as "race" has been recognized as an artificial social construct at the service of a dominant class, it remains as much a marker of identity as ever.
And who is it that makes "race" the be-all of political identification?? Look, too, at the wording of the LATimes readership poll on Alito running on its editorial page. The question is:
Should Supreme Court Justice nominee Samuel Alito's 1985 memo on abortion be a determining factor in the decision to confirm him to the Court?
The first option is
Yes, the fact that he believes Roe v. Wade is not protected under the constitution hinders his ability to judge reasonably.
Leave aside that Roe v Wade has been written about as really bad legal reasoning by people who self-identify as pro-choice, but here is the Left hubris in a nutshell. That mere questioning of the sacrosanct Roe v Wade is proof of a psychological condition that renders a person unable to reason.

The Left is scared. Scared that without indoctrinating and brainwashing the younger generation that they HAVE to consider race that they are going to lose votes. Scared that if the courts actually start deciding per rule of law rather than "social justice" ideology they will actually have to go to the people and use PERSUASION to get their ideas through the legislature.

For outright belly laughs, don't miss Mark Steyn on the Dem's grilling of Sam Alito

I find it, as grave somber Senate Democrats like to say, "troubling." Indeed, I find it not just "troubling" but sad that a party once so good at "the politics of personal destruction" has got so bad at it. [...]

It's a tragedy to watch once-fearsome attack dogs spend a week chasing their tails because they're "concerned" about the "Concerned Alumni of Princeton" -- though, of course, these days one's heartened to find Sen. Kennedy still capable of chasing tail. [...]

Even smear tactics require a certain plausibility. When you damn someone as a big scary mega-troubling racist misogynist homophobe and he seems to any rational observer perfectly non-scary and non-troubling, eventually you make yourself ridiculous. The boy who cried "Wolf!" at least took the precaution of doing so when there was no alleged predator in view. If he'd stood there crying "Wolf!" while pointing at a hamster, he'd have been led away for counseling. That's the stage the Senate Democrats are at.

Yes, being scared of hamsters is not the way to go through life.

And it's not confined to merely Dems of the Senatorial persuasion.

Later.

Posted by Darleen at January 16, 2006 09:37 AM

Comments

The crazy 60's and weird, gloomy 70's were the highwater mark for the boom generation; it was during those decades they came closest to creating the society they longed for (which should be an object lesson for the rest of us.)

Those were also the decades when the media was most forgiving and approving of the views of the "Beautiful young people" so "courageously" protesting Vietnam, the injustices of the world, etc. There were no radio talk shows or snarky bloggers back then to nail them with hard questions, or expose them for what they are.

Unfortunately for the boomers, they're no longer young and/or beautiful, their children haven't turned out the way they'd like and they haven't gotten the society they dreamed of. They've never really liked the America-that-truly-is as opposed to the America-of-their-progressive-fantasies, and I'm afraid some of them, at least, see the current conflict as their final chance to strike a blow against the society they seem to hate. . .

Posted by: TalkinKamel at January 17, 2006 08:30 AM

Problem is that the Boomer's kids have turned out to show no love for their progessive agenda.
We og GEN X and Y want to go to College to get a better job than flipping burgers, and do not like having to take women studies courses as part of out Basic studies. We are the ones are opposing the indoctrination the universities are shoveling in our face.

We are not leading protests, not out of apathy but out og the fact we do not care for their views.

Posted by: GTBurns at January 17, 2006 09:44 AM

Burns, you're absolutely right. . .

Posted by: TalkinKamel at January 18, 2006 05:02 PM