This post is addressed to everyone who considers him- or herself to be a cognoscenti of Virginia politics: you have a new assignment this week. If you haven't read James Webb's
Born Fighting: How the Scots-Irish Shaped America, you need to stop what you are doing and read this book. If you have read this book, you need to go back and reread the last chapters, specifically Part Seven, entitled "Reflections: The Unbreakable Circle." This book and these chapters may very well set the stage for much that happens in the Virginia political scene this year, and for many years to come.
Please understand that this isn't a book review. I'm not going to cheat you by providing a "Cliff-notes" version of the book now. I am going to begin working on an outline of the book, distilling its key themes for my own benefit and study. Many have raised the question of which candidate for the U.S. Senate in Virginia is more liberal. This book will end that discussion and it will end it with a finality that cannot be debated.
James Webb's vision of a United States based on the Jacksonian ideals of Democracy and social justice is not merely liberal, in the context of our times it is transformative, almost revolutionary. I'm not writing this to put down Harris Miller in any way: Miller is a thoroughly respectable mainstream Democrat with impeccable party credentials: but he is no radical.
If you are searching for something very different in a time of orthodoxy, a time when politicians from both major parties look and sound alike, I urge you to consider James Webb. The ideas Webb expresses in Born Fighting are the product of a unique and busy life lived at full speed. They reflect the journey that our nation and our party have made over the last forty years. Some have questioned, given Webb's service in the Defense Department during the Presidency of Ronald Reagan, whether Webb is a "real" Democrat: this book will answer any doubts on that score.
Webb is a Jacksonian--a populist extraordinaire--something of a novelty in today's Democratic Party. His populism is the product of his life experience, careful consideration, and a deep intellectual process. While Webb is an intellectual of unusual talent and scope, his intellectualism is anything but elitist or Northeastern in its origin or outlook. As such, there may be something vaguely threatening about Webb to those who believe that the Democratic Party was founded at Harvard and came to full maturity at Yale.
Not only is Webb a "real" Democrat, his election to the U.S. Senate would herald the beginning of a radical reshuffling of the political order in our Commonwealth and in the United States as a whole. Webb's version of Jacksonian populism could form the basis for a new political majority in the United States based on an approach to our nation's problems, whether they be problems of international security or domestic policy, that is hard-headed, commonsense, and practical, but also deeply humane.
Webb's entrance into the race for the Democratic nomination for the U.S Senate seat currently held by Republican George F. Allen presents Virginia's voters with something they have been clamoring for: a real choice. If you want to understand the full scope of that choice, you need to read Born Fighting: it is one of the most honest, far-reaching statements of personal principle I have ever read.
In Webb's own words: "We were born fighting. And if the cause is right, we will never retreat."