Progressive Futility Redux

Earlier I noted the attempt by wealthy liberals to fund left-wing "think-tanks" to compete with those of a conservative persuasion and suggested that this was a waste of money. [here]

My argument was that, unlike conservatives, liberals were unwilling to jettison a stifling accumulation of policies, programs and perspectives and to start anew, and this would doom their efforts to reinvent or reinvigorate liberalism. It would simply be a case of old wine in new bottles.

James Piereson, writing in the New Criterion, makes the same point and notes that the organizers of the project are well aware of the problem. He writes:

Liberal groups..., are organized mainly to protect an agenda that was enacted by Democratic majorities stretching back to the 1930s. They... are [also] organized also around a few important Supreme Court decisions, primarily dealing with abortion and affirmative action. In any case, such a posture has made them reactive and reactionary rather than forward looking. As a consequence, they have not adjusted to new political and economic circumstances.

He continues:

This [analysis] is..., correct as far as it goes, except that it does not go very far in diagnosing what ails the liberals. [We] should remember ...that liberals had an opportunity to enact their agenda in the 1960s and 1970s, and almost wrecked the nation in the process. It was conservatives and Republicans who rescued the economy, won the Cold War, and saved the cities from crime, stagnation, and welfarism. The liberals, because they controlled the television networks and the news media in general, along with the universities, concluded that they were in a position to dictate terms to their fellow citizens, and did not need to persuade anyone with facts, evidence, and argument. Thus the typical liberal approach to any situation was to issue demands or to file a lawsuit -- approaches that dispensed with the need to persuade anyone that their ideas were best for the nation. The rise of alternative television networks and newspapers has now rendered these tactics hopelessly ineffective. Now no one (except unfortunate college students) is required to pay any attention at all to the liberals. And most do not.

This is perhaps a bit stronger than I would put it but he is correct to note that control of educational and communications institutions not only isolated liberals, but instilled in them a false confidence in their power to affect the course of events, one that continues today, witness the current enthusiasm for "framing" their message rather than examining its likely effect if implemented.

He concludes:

New thinking may be required, but there is precious little evidence in this article that such thinking is in fact underway. [Those who have conceived this project] have outlined a thoughtful strategy, but have not said what they seek to accomplish. They have presented a road map but have not identified any destination. Nor have they identified any dead ends that they will now abandon. They will find out soon enough that their main difficulty is not so much the absence of new ideas but the real presence of powerful constituent groups that refuse to adjust their goals or allow new groups to take their place.

Exactly. Those of us who hope for a real and substantive debate over national policy will have to wait a bit longer -- this initiative offers little hope for a genuine Democrat revival. I fear that the Democrats are going to have to suffer a genuinely catastrophic loss before they wake up and begin to cast off the shackles of their past failures.