I've been thinking about what ties together that whole Wednesday-morning Grover Norquist alliance: corporate fat-cats, gun nuts, Neocon imperialists, and religious fanatics. The Lakoff "strict father" stuff makes sense, but it's too psychological for my taste, too encounter-group. I'm sure there are plenty of other ways to sum up the right wing, and I think I've found one:
The Winner-Take-All Society, the Might-Makes-Right Society.
They are, without doubt, despite their anti-evolution fanaticism, the party of Darwin. It's law of the jungle, and there's a reason why we're occasionally given to calling them "Neanderthal".
They are all about competition, climb to the top of the heap, and (literally, in the case of the religious fanatics) to hell with everybody else. They are the party of exceptionalism, Horatio Alger, Manifest Destiny, secrets, deception, and the Rapture.
They live in a Hobbesian, savage world of throat-slitting ruthlessness. Winner take all, and whoever is strongest and most muscular is the most righteous. Sparta exalted, and devil take the mediocre.
This points out a very natural contrast for Democrats: the party of the average guy and gal, of cooperation, of working together, of taking care of each other.
I think just about every core Democratic principle can fit under this big tent: "We're here for the average American", or better yet, "We're all in it togther". The great progressive movements of the 19th century and of the 1920's and 1930's clearly illustrate this.
One could argue that history has been very kind to the ruthless, competitive, heroic, Alpha Male asshole... at least up to the modern era of the 20th century, when another model began to take shape: the average man and woman as hero (or anti-hero?), the populist perspective, the triumph of the ordinary and relative.
I am starting to agree with Michael Moore that the right-wingers (in their various guises around the world) are so rabid and violent today because they feel their power slipping away. Or of the late, great Bill Hicks, who pointed out that "the reason these institutions are crumbling is because... they're no longer relevant". And Thomas Frank who views all of this religious nonsense and black-and-white fundamentalism as a "backlash" against modernism. Or, as I like to write it, Modernism, to illustrate its early 20th-century roots in Joyce, Einstein, and Picasso-- this is a very late backlash, indeed. Today's world is a relativistic world, and the ape-brain does not like it one little bit. We are witnessing the anguished growing pains of evolution right now. As Bill Hicks put it, we have to "evolve ideas".
I firmly believe that the future belongs to co-operation as much as competition. The pendulum has swung waaay too far to the right-- temporarily, in backlash, no doubt. If we don't assert ourselves, it'll get stuck there. With focussed, unified, dedicated effort we can push it much firmly into the area of core Democratic principles, where it's likely to stay for a long, long time.
