Vox Blogoli: Insurgents in Sportcoats---The MSM View of Religious Conservatives
Hugh Hewitt, Blogfather, has kicked off another round of Vox Blogoli, where he solicits links to posts on other blogs in response to provacative subject matter he posts on his blog. We at MoltenThought are very pleased to be a part of this event.
Jonathan Rauch writes the following in an Atlantic Monthly article (subscription required):
A more perfect insight into passive media bias has yet to be unearthed. Rauch plainly sees the world through a political lens---warring interest groups battle for the hearts and minds of the polity in his view, while "moderate" civilians are caught in the middle. "Social peace" is achieved by the moderates actively resisting the tendency of extremists to pull politics too far to the right or to the left.
What a delightfully convenient metaphor for a lefty confronting the prospect of future electoral marginalization!
Such soul-searching as the Left has seen fit to undertake since Dubya foiled them again has tended toward explaining away the pitiful performance of the Democratic Party these past 10 years as tactical errors or Red State ignorance, not a fundamental repudiation of leftism. They're utterly missing the point.
Religious conservatives are religious first, conservative second. The worldview of churchgoing Christians is not a worldview at all---their primary concern is not this world but the next. Outright hostility and bigotry on the Left and within the Democratic Party has roused religious Americans and pushed them into the arms of the GOP. While most of these new adherents to the Republican Party are Christians, the last election saw a similar trend among Jewish and even Muslim Americans. It isn't hard to figure out why---Democrats only show up in church to raid the offering plate on the way to their next effort to undermine religious observance in America.
Rauch's sneering condescension demonstrates that this trend will continue, as the secular humanists who dominate the Left cannot countenance a kind word for religion. Note how he sets up the false dichotomy of writing anti-abortion planks into the GOP platform (a symbolic and worthless political act which changes nothing) and the commission of domestic terrorism by bombing abortion clinics. One wonders what Rauch thought of The Weather Underground or the Black Panthers back in their bomb-throwing days. Would he have advised moderates to resist civil rights so as not to cater to these extremists? If only the mandatory bigotry of affirmative action were confined harmlessly to the Democratic Party Platform!
Yet there is a middle ground between symbolic but irrelevant and relevant but unconscionable. Religious Americans are citizens and they have a right to take part in politics. They are not so much coming to a political party as that party is coming to them. There is a reason why evangelical Christians in particular became a political force in the 80s. The GOP knocked on their doors and asked for their votes, and even went so far as to change their policies to make them more friendly to churchgoing voters. The Republicans continue to reap the rewards of this investment.
Yet Rauch has already given up on the notion of these folks ever voting a Democratic ticket again. In this passage, he's advocating for the Democrats not to shun Michael Moore and the hardcore leftists whose counsel has caused so much woe for their electoral performance, but to embrace them, to move even further left, so as to foster "social peace" and avoid the "street fighting" of the past.
Here he badly misreads the current situation.
In post-9/11 America, all of the initiative, all of the energy, all of the drive, all of the political momentum lies with the Right, not the Left. What bold new vision has any Democratic politician laid out which can compare to the audacity of President Bush's "Freedom on the March"? Why is it that the Democrats today can only obstruct, and not instruct, policy? Who are the reactionaries and who are the progressives in 2005?
The answer is obvious.
Fred Barnes has been fond of late of referring to the Arab saying, "The dogs bark, but the caravan moves on."
Rauch and his MSM buddies can bark all they like, but those ignorant religious conservatives have an honored place within the American caravan, which is leaving the Left behind.
Update:
The Hedgehog has some further comments I find absolutely compelling.
The Unusual Suspects has an interesting take---what makes anyone think religious conservatives are radicals?
Major Mike doesn't lend much credence to the notion that embracing radicals promotes peace.
Ravishing Light offers compelling proof that religious conservatives aren't prone to acts of violence---the MSM dog hasn't barked.
The Pseudo-Polymath wonders if Rauch's medicine isn't really intended to kill rather than cure.
Agricolae makes me wonder that if Rauch is correct, isn't he predicting more political violence on the Left? After all, if the 60s protestors turned violent as a result of being locked out of their party convention, wouldn't today's Left turn violent as a result of being locked out of power?
Jonathan Rauch writes the following in an Atlantic Monthly article (subscription required):
On balance it is probably healthier if religious conservatives are inside the political system than if they operate as insurgents and provocateurs on the outside. Better they should write anti-abortion planks into the Republican platform than bomb abortion clinics. The same is true of the left. The clashes over civil rights and Vietnam turned into street warfare partly because activists were locked out of their own party establishments and had to fight, literally, to be heard. When Michael Moore receives a hero’s welcome at the Democratic National Convention, we moderates grumble; but if the parties engage fierce activists while marginalizing tame centrists, that is probably better for the social peace than the other way around.If you want to know why the MSM is having so much difficulty coping with and understanding the 2004 election, the answer lies within Rauch's assessment of religious conservatives.
A more perfect insight into passive media bias has yet to be unearthed. Rauch plainly sees the world through a political lens---warring interest groups battle for the hearts and minds of the polity in his view, while "moderate" civilians are caught in the middle. "Social peace" is achieved by the moderates actively resisting the tendency of extremists to pull politics too far to the right or to the left.
What a delightfully convenient metaphor for a lefty confronting the prospect of future electoral marginalization!
Such soul-searching as the Left has seen fit to undertake since Dubya foiled them again has tended toward explaining away the pitiful performance of the Democratic Party these past 10 years as tactical errors or Red State ignorance, not a fundamental repudiation of leftism. They're utterly missing the point.
Religious conservatives are religious first, conservative second. The worldview of churchgoing Christians is not a worldview at all---their primary concern is not this world but the next. Outright hostility and bigotry on the Left and within the Democratic Party has roused religious Americans and pushed them into the arms of the GOP. While most of these new adherents to the Republican Party are Christians, the last election saw a similar trend among Jewish and even Muslim Americans. It isn't hard to figure out why---Democrats only show up in church to raid the offering plate on the way to their next effort to undermine religious observance in America.
Rauch's sneering condescension demonstrates that this trend will continue, as the secular humanists who dominate the Left cannot countenance a kind word for religion. Note how he sets up the false dichotomy of writing anti-abortion planks into the GOP platform (a symbolic and worthless political act which changes nothing) and the commission of domestic terrorism by bombing abortion clinics. One wonders what Rauch thought of The Weather Underground or the Black Panthers back in their bomb-throwing days. Would he have advised moderates to resist civil rights so as not to cater to these extremists? If only the mandatory bigotry of affirmative action were confined harmlessly to the Democratic Party Platform!
Yet there is a middle ground between symbolic but irrelevant and relevant but unconscionable. Religious Americans are citizens and they have a right to take part in politics. They are not so much coming to a political party as that party is coming to them. There is a reason why evangelical Christians in particular became a political force in the 80s. The GOP knocked on their doors and asked for their votes, and even went so far as to change their policies to make them more friendly to churchgoing voters. The Republicans continue to reap the rewards of this investment.
Yet Rauch has already given up on the notion of these folks ever voting a Democratic ticket again. In this passage, he's advocating for the Democrats not to shun Michael Moore and the hardcore leftists whose counsel has caused so much woe for their electoral performance, but to embrace them, to move even further left, so as to foster "social peace" and avoid the "street fighting" of the past.
Here he badly misreads the current situation.
In post-9/11 America, all of the initiative, all of the energy, all of the drive, all of the political momentum lies with the Right, not the Left. What bold new vision has any Democratic politician laid out which can compare to the audacity of President Bush's "Freedom on the March"? Why is it that the Democrats today can only obstruct, and not instruct, policy? Who are the reactionaries and who are the progressives in 2005?
The answer is obvious.
Fred Barnes has been fond of late of referring to the Arab saying, "The dogs bark, but the caravan moves on."
Rauch and his MSM buddies can bark all they like, but those ignorant religious conservatives have an honored place within the American caravan, which is leaving the Left behind.
Update:
The Hedgehog has some further comments I find absolutely compelling.
The Unusual Suspects has an interesting take---what makes anyone think religious conservatives are radicals?
Major Mike doesn't lend much credence to the notion that embracing radicals promotes peace.
Ravishing Light offers compelling proof that religious conservatives aren't prone to acts of violence---the MSM dog hasn't barked.
The Pseudo-Polymath wonders if Rauch's medicine isn't really intended to kill rather than cure.
Agricolae makes me wonder that if Rauch is correct, isn't he predicting more political violence on the Left? After all, if the 60s protestors turned violent as a result of being locked out of their party convention, wouldn't today's Left turn violent as a result of being locked out of power?
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home