Jonah's Blues

Jonah Goldberg worries that the revolution is over and that we're in the early stages of a long period of Republican dominance. The prospect saddens him. He writes:

[M]y real fear is that this is as good as it gets. Conservatives may have to look forward to years of incremental victories, less-than-incremental setbacks, cronyism, hypocrisy, rent-seeking, and the sort of pragmatic compromise which inevitably grinds down intellectual joy and entrepreneurialism. This isn’t because Republicans are worse than Democrats (by any historical measure Democrats have been vastly more corrupt than Republicans — though Republicans are better at getting caught). It’s because that’s the nature of the beast.

In a sense he's right. Conservatives have long since won all the major intellectual battles and the Left now stands revealed as irredeemably bankrupt, both morally and intellectually. In political terms the only real question for Democrats is whether to mindlessly obstruct Republicans or to roll over an hope for a belly rub. All the great fights are taking place within the Republican fold. And for a Republican intellectual gladiator like Jonah that must be saddening.

But that doesn't mean that there aren't real issues to be fought. Almost every month the Bush administration puts forth a new policy that raises fundamental questions regarding what sort of society we are and what kind of government we want. Perhaps Jonah finds it distasteful to enter the lists against other Republicans on issues like entitlement reform, immigration, reconstructing the Gulf, the democratization of the Middle East, deficit spending, education reform, and the like, but those of us who feel no particular attachment to either political party can find plenty of juicy issues to contest. The great debate goes on. It just no longer conforms to the institutional boundaries of the two-party system.