Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean announced to a religious meeting in the nation's capitol last week, "We're about to enter the '60s again."
Al Gore created the Internet, and Howard Dean has finally invented time travel. Nostalgia for the '60s is not new among the left, of course. But note the religiosity with which Dean longs for the past.
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Such an era, Dean explained, will be an "age of enlightenment led by religious figures who want to greet Americans with a moral, uplifting vision." What is that vision? "I'm talking about moral principles like making sure everybody in America has health insurance just like 36 other countries in the world. This is a moral nation, and we want it to be a moral nation again." Dean then called for an increase of the minimum wage.
The chairman has uncovered one of the great weaknesses with the thesis of Charles Reich in his '60s screed "The Greening of America." There were three consciousnesses, Reich said: Consciousness I braced against progress, Consciousness II worked for progress, and Consciousness III peacefully overthrew traditional institutions and ideas. We may give Howard Dean the benefit of the doubt and say that he was a liberal and not a revolutionary in the '60s. But he is neither anymore.
Today, Howard Dean is of Consciousness I. That is, he has scrapped his progressivism; instead of looking forward he is looking to the past, enamored by a bygone era, elated by the prospects of the '60s in repetio.
History does repeat itself, but not exactly. It is always a repetition of human nature, not in predictable patterns but in the comedy and tragedy of character. And Dean knows enough of that reality to admit that the '60s were not perfect.
"The problem is when we hit that '60s spot again, which I am optimistic we're about to hit, we have to make sure that we don't make the same mistakes," Dean said, referring to Great Society's promotion of poverty rather than its solvency. "We essentially created ghettoes for poor people," he said.
This time, all will go well, of course. But note wherein the problem with the '60s lies, according to Dean. If he had to name one culprit, it would probably be Lyndon Johnson. As for the '60s radicals who stormed the campuses, who burned the flag and smoked dope, they are an angelic host. They are today's vanguard in the Democratic Party, and they will not err when it comes to the whole work of social justice and utopia to which they, in religious terms, aspire.
Ann Coulter is poignant in her new book "Godless" when she alleges of liberalism a determined religious identity.
I found as much to be the case at the recent Episcopal Church Convention in Columbus, Ohio, which dosed to this observer entertainment and madness at once for its sheer silliness. They spoke much of the "holy spirit" directing them down one gangplank or another. The "holy spirit" dictated the ordination of a homosexual bishop, or reparations to slave descendants, or the church's official endorsement of abortion.
The Episcopal Convention decided upon "Justice and Peace" as its top budget priority, but when faced with the opportunity to affirm the exclusive lordship of Jesus Christ, one canon theologian rose to declare, "This type of language was used in the 1920s and 1930s to alienate the type of people who were executed. It was called the Holocaust. I understand the intent, but I ask you to allow the discharge to stay."
In a similar spirit, Dean contrasted his vision for the '60s with what he says is a revival of the '50s' "McCarthy-era" by the Bush administration.
There is a religious left, and they are less of a threat all the time. It was they, after all, who aborted their offspring on spiritual grounds. Now, Howard Dean, prophet of the Democratic National Committee, rises at a religious gathering to demand of the rising generation the taxes that will endow the next Great Society. Don't count on it, Rev. Dean.
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