Originally posted by: cwjerome
Somewhere along the line, things changed. I'm fascinated by the endless string of editorials and links from the left-wing google-mongers here, because the attitude of today's liberal seems vastly different than the attitude of yesterday's liberal wingnuts from the 30s, 40s, and 50s. I guess the only way for them to become a power in the marketplace of ideas was to sell out. That worked for a while... but it's becoming painfully obvious that the gig is up because they have no ideological base to stand on. (Hence the political decline of liberalism in the past 10-20 years).
Whereas the crusading spirit that advocated a planned society, and talking in terms of abstract principles, theories, and noble ends was the norm, today modern leftists concern themselves with single, concrete-bound, range-of-the-moment projects and demands without regard to the larger context, costs, or consequences. Notice the same hardened Libs continuously posting links that supposedly "prove a point"... but that's the problem. They're all pragmatic, extremely narrow evaluations of a singular situation. "Bagdad Police Chief Killed" and So-and-So lectures Bush" etc....
Such a strategy may win a few brownie points here-and-there with some people. But what is never developed is the old-fashioned ideological framework. This is the Catch-22 the Left is in today. They can abandon the broad social reforms of their predessesors (because most people will reject the philosophical foundation outright), but eventually their asymmetrical strategy to "smuggle" this society into welfare statism by means of single, concrete, specific measures, enlarging the power of the government a step at a time, never permitting the whole of these steps to be summed up into principles, never permitting their direction to be identified or their underlying base to be exposed crumbles and fails... just as their political influence has deteriorated recently.
They are damned if they do and damned if they don't, and it's almost sad to see them spinning their wheels so furiously in a dead-end road to nowhere. They went from getting their idealistic machinations skewered 50 years ago, to a guerilla campaign of pragmaticism that saw their polices fall short and be rejected today. So much failure, no wonder they tend to be neurotic types
Basically, they are doomed to repeat their past frustrations and will continue to collapse. During the cold war, they proclaimed their love for mankind while being bored by the rivers of blood pouring from the Soviet Union and China. Ranging from intellectual evasion to glowing tribute towards Communists, they pointed their little barbs at the US for reasons of "injustice," "exploitation," "repression," and "persecution." Today, they are no different. They pour out range-of-the-moment, pragmatitic arguments (as evidenced here on P&N) against the USA, while generally remaining silent -and in most ways oblivious to- the nature of our enemy. The more things change, the more things stay the same... once again doomed to be on the wrong side of history.