Dead donkey walking

As I wrote last week, describing the credibility implosion at the New York Times, the political left lives in a fantasy world of its own making. On 9-11, the passengers on that joy ride suffered a head-on collision with reality. Like crash-test dummies in slow-motion instant replay, the left has been reeling ever since: bouncing off walls, windows and dashboards. They are about to be expelled from the vehicle altogether. And that’s good news for only one person.

Society, of course, doesn’t move with the same speed of car crashes and test dummies slamming into windshields. The time between impact and concussion can be several years. But the results of a social head-on collision can be just as devastating to a nation as to individuals.

To be healthy, every nation needs dissent. As the left in America has grown to encompass the entertainment industry, colleges and universities, teachers’ unions, churches, the Old Media and, above all, the Democratic Party, one would have expected discussion – the impact that occurs when ideas meet one another head on – to have grown.

Instead, the opposite has happened. With its newfound power, the left moved to stifle debate. Their vehicle was political correctness and its big cousin in the pin-striped suit, tolerance. Colleges and universities purged or silenced conservative professors and muted students with the grade-book. Teachers’ unions embraced perversion and corruption as their allies in the battle against taxpayers. Churches began preaching the gospel of political correctness, and gave God the boot because he refused to sanction evil. The Old Media looked down on this new creation and told us it was all very good.

Crime, perversion and degeneracy flourished. And the Democratic Party embraced them all. It was a perpetual party and a very big tent. After all, a vote was a vote. So what if the last registered address was a Chicago cemetery, or someone who had entered the country illegally? Didn’t they, too, need a voice? By embracing crime, perversion and degeneracy, yet being short on specifics, the Democrats appealed a little to all of us. It was enough to get by.

Relativism clouded the lines between good and evil. We filled in the cracks with touchy-feely oneness. The left used the power of government – and the taxpayers’ checkbook – to fund their fantasy. Their appetite was endless. Conservatives rebelled, but they had nowhere to go. Forty years in the political desert had reduced the Republican Party to permanent minority status. With the death of dissent, the nation spiraled downward into the abyss of single-payer everything – whose real name is communism – which is where the left’s sympathies had always lain.

The Democrats’ current dissent against the war in Iraq (i.e., their support for a brutal dictator giving safe haven to murderous terrorists), their love of peace at any cost (as in criminalizing self-defense, at both the individual and national level), their embrace of degeneracy (in return for the NAMBLA vote) and their contempt for the Constitution (in Senate judicial confirmations and truant Texas lawmakers) is becoming apparent to the real America: all those who don’t live, eat and breathe politics.

In the aftermath of the 9-11 wreck, Democrats have scurried for the familiar ground of the big tent. Their presidential candidates are embracing any and all leftist schemes designed to aid and grow the underclass, while telling those of us paying for their fantastical nonsense that we – not the government but us, the taxpayers – can’t afford a tax cut! The Democratic Party must never have fastened its seatbelts, because with the 2004 election, they are headed for the final bounce against the windshield from the 9-11 wreck. It is possible they may not carry a single state (although they will win some local and state elections).

There is only one candidate whose interests are served by Democratic disintegration. She is, of course, a candidate who believes in political resurrection. Her husband paid the price for his philandering by buying her the necessary New York votes with a presidential pardon. Those begging New York’s junior senator to run for president in 2004 can save their breath. Hillary is too busy working behind the scenes to orchestrate the biggest Democratic train wreck in history during 2004, because she believes that personal victory rises out of the ashes of Democratic defeat. We are witnessing a dead donkey walking.