A Voice in the Wilderness In Defense of "Mere Conservatism"

Krauthammer: We, The Ankle-Dwellers

President Obama is a progressive liberal.  He has said so himself on numerous occasions.  The media and academia are overwhelmingly of the same ideological makeup.  This isn't news to anyone, and is meant only as a factual description.

The problem with the agenda of this president, and those "gatekeepers of information", is that this is still a Center-Right nation.  I know Progressive Obama was elected, which seems to contradict my preceding claim, but the decisive votes that drove him into office came from "Independents" (generally a code-word for "uninformed") and people under 30 (my generation, which is easily swayed by their emotions and lack of life experience).

Among American voters, the liberal/progressive voting block is half (21%) that of the conservative (40%).  For a liberal Democrat to win, he or she needs to find 30% somewhere.  This is why candidates like Barack Obama run as "centrists", or as a "new breed of politician", one "above the political fray."  Such political posturing is, of course, non-sense to anyone with access to the internet and/or ears.

As Dr. Charles Krauthammer of the Washington Post points out in his latest column, President Obama's message has fallen on deaf ears precisely because he has advanced the progressive-Left agenda he said he was "above".

"I am not an ideologue," protested President Obama at a gathering with Republican House members last week. Perhaps, but he does have a tenacious commitment to a set of political convictions.

Krauthammer identifies two particular explanations for the apparent inability liberal Democrats have these days when it comes to understanding the public's dis-favorable opinion on their policies:

Well, they understand it through a prism of two cherished axioms: (1) The people are stupid and (2) Republicans are bad. Result? The dim, led by the malicious, vote incorrectly.

Liberal expressions of disdain for the intelligence and emotional maturity of the electorate have been, post-Massachusetts, remarkably unguarded. New York Times columnist Charles Blow chided Obama for not understanding the necessity of speaking "in the plain words of plain folks," because the people are "suspicious of complexity." Counseled Blow: "The next time he gives a speech, someone should tap him on the ankle and say, 'Mr. President, we're down here.'"

A Time magazine blogger was even more blunt about the ankle-dwelling mob, explaining that we are "a nation of dodos" that is "too dumb to thrive."

Nice.  Real nice.  How could we "littles" ever hope to comprehend how brilliant an idea it is to spend money we don't have on something like Obamacare "reform" people don't want?

The notion that conservative-libertarian values and principles are not in-tune with the average, hard-working, tax-paying American voter is preposterous, and could only be put forward by people who are desperate to advance a worldview they know to be unpopular and untenable in an America that still believes in liberty, personal responsibility, and limited government.

Are some Americans dumb?  Certainly.  Are far too many of us under-informed and easily swayed by alluring rhetoric?  We have the president to prove it.

But the answer to our problems is not top-down socialism and the theoretical musings of progressive-Left pundits and professors.  The answers will come from our shared values, from the Constitution (if we ever choose to all learn and apply it), and from the Judeo-Christian ethic that, to quote Mr. Michael Medved, typifies the historical narrative of this "greatest nation on God's green earth".

Cue: triumphant music.

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