I was reading another diary this morning, and a commenter asked a question about the show put on by the conservatives last night. He asked, "What gives them the right to be angry?" A fair question.
They don't need a "right," they are reacting instinctively. They hate liberals, their "guts" hate liberals. They feel threatened by any system that might give the enemy power over them. They will break any law and tell any lie to get their way. This kind of hatred has been a central fact of our political life since 1790 when Benjamin Franklin, in the last public act of his life, presented a petition to Congress calling for the abolition of slavery. The response by representatives from Georgia and South Carolina in speeches they made in Congress sounds like every conservative speech made since. The subject may change from slavery to the vote for women, or mixed-race marriage, or gay marriage, or civil rights for blacks, homosexuals in the military, or women in the military, or prayer in school, or ...
And the response from the liberal side of the system is usually ineffective. Conservatives have been wrong on social issues for hundreds of years but they continue to dominate the debate. They really care about winning, but liberals only care about being right. It is an old, old story and this election is no different.
Even though this is clearly a war, that fact is lost on liberals. They still cling to the story told in elementary school about how our system works. In fact, if it were not for pressures from other nations or pressures from brave liberals who finally "get it" and march in the streets to demand social change, or who fight in factory parking lots, or who finally gain power for a term or two in numbers enabling them to make social change, the slaveholding, solid, sullen South would still be shining in all its medieval glory. Remember, Great Britain abolished slavery before we did and without a Civil War. FDR stopped the state-sponsored practice of enslaving blacks in the South by arresting them and piling up fines on them until they agreed to work for a farmer or a factory until the debt was paid off. He stopped it after the attack on Pearl Harbor. He knew that our moral position could not be regarded as superior to the Axis of Evil so long as we continued to enslave blacks. So he told his justice department to put a stop to it, after years of DOJ knowledge and indifference. It was stopped.
The utter stupidity of the Obama campaign telling its supporters to hold off in their attacks against the conservatives is breathtaking and suicidal. It reminds me of Adlai Stevenson, the model of an intellectual loser. A good man who would have done good had he won. But who was doomed from the start. The northeastern governor, Dukakis, was equally inept and hopeless. Obama is no different. Sarah Palin sounded more like Harry Truman than Obama does. George Wallace, one of the most reprehensible men to appear on the twentieth century political stage, made substantial political hay with his attacks on nuance and academic "superiority." His famous phrase, which he would use today on Obama, was "pointy-headed intellectual." The audience would roar. He was directly appealing to their core beings, their sense of not belonging, of alienation. Remember these people are constantly told that they are fools. They don't like it and they seek to burn the villages of their detractors.
So the reaction by the liberals of our world to the actions of the conservatives is the usual one. They, the liberals, are convinced that they are right, and they are convinced that constant chanting of that convinction will convince the other side. But, of course, that is hopeless.
There is an old saying:
Might and Right are always fighting,
In our youth it seems exciting.
Right is always nearly winning,
Might can hardly keep from grinning.
The diaries and comments that have dominated DKOS since the beginning of this election season are marked by excitable, naive youth who proclaim that they have "right" on their side while the conservatives, hoary and fierce, only have "Might" on theirs.
Last night, we, the intellectual righteous, saw the mighty grin.
As proof of my argument, consider this point. I have just told the DKOS community that they are wrong in what they think and how they try to carry out what they think. And I am sure that most who read this diary will become angry at me. That roiling, boiling, emotion is the same that the conservatives feel when they are told what fools they are. So the conservatives and the liberals can be both stirred, but then the important difference emerges. Conservatives are stirred to action. They close ranks against a common enemy. The liberals are stirred to self-congratulation. They are stirred to mutual animosity. Each insists that his position, or his nuance of a position, is "right." In the meantime the battle is being lost.