[lbo-talk] David Brooks, so worried

[andie nachgeborenen]

Of course, we should be talking, hmmm? It's not like our side didn't have its way -- with terrible obstacles of course, but you expected a rose garden? -- and screw up as or even more royally, leaving almost all of us as bereft of ideas and hope as they are. Of course we did have some accomplishments, like saving the world, granted with their help, and leaving large parts of it in some ways better places at a terrible cost. But there is some symmetry here.

--- On Sat, 10/11/08, Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:


> From: Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com>
> Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] David Brooks, so worried
> To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
> Date: Saturday, October 11, 2008, 3:49 PM
> Man, it's really interesting how disillusioned
> conservative  
> intellectuals are. Back when I was one, we didn't
> really have anyone  
> in public life to popularize our agenda - we all felt very
> lonely and  
> defeated. We all took that quote from Whittaker Chambers to
> heart: "It  
> is idle to talk about preventing the wreck of Western
> civilization. It  
> is already a wreck from within." Reagan changed that -
> though I'd left  
> the fold, the fold felt very happy to have a real movement 
> 
> conservative - who was not an intellectual, but who, as
> Brooks points  
> out, was someone who took right-wing ideas seriously - on
> his way to  
> the White House. The high-domes of the right were happy to
> play the  
> populist game as long as there was still some ideological
> fervor in  
> the mix. Now, though, Palin looks like the reductio ad
> absurdam of  
> that populism, and the ideological fervor is gone. Of
> course they  
> can't admit that they've had their way with the
> world and the world is  
> much the worse for it. But what an impressive
> disillusionment.
> 
> Doug
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