Andrew Sullivan sometimes lets his emotions get the best of him, as, well, do I. Still, this ebullient observation by AS tonight strikes me as right on target. So sue us:
Look at their names: Huckabee and Obama. Both came from nowhere - from Arkansas and Hawaii. Both campaigned as human beings, not programmed campaign robots with messages honed in focus groups. Both faced powerful and monied establishments in both parties. And both are running two variants on the same message: change, uniting America again, saying goodbye to the bitterness of the polarized past, representing ordinary voters against the professionals. Neither has been ground down by long experience, but neither is a neophyte.You have a Republican educated in a Bible college; and a Democrat who is the most credible African-American candidate for the presidency in history. Their respective margins were far larger than most expected. And the hope they have unleashed is palpable.
That hope is not just about their parties. It is about America. America's ability to move forward, to unite, to get past the bitter red-and-blue past. That's what the next generation wants. And they now seem motivated enough to get it.
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Whatever people like Andrew Sullivan are smoking - I want some. The results from Iowa, at least on the Democratic side, were not surprising at all. Obama is the perfect candidate for the Oprah-fied America. He's a product - his policies are straight liberal democrat - but he's nicely packaged with the Oprah stamp of approval. This isn't a new direction as much as it is the ascent of a candidate who nicely plays a politician on TV. Welcome to America 2008. This is going to be one tedious campaign for the White House.
Rob G: You may be the last American to remember Marcuse. Few lefties actually read him.
"While the Left says to everyone, "You'll be tolerant or else! (oh, and by the way, we're allowed to be intolerant of you.)""
In what way are conservatives not tolerated?
Are you being lynched?
Are your churches being forcibly closed or burned?
Are you denied freedom of movement? Medical care? Voting rights?
Are your children being forcibly marched into public schools?
Are you forced into gay marriages and abortions?
Your businesses closed by government fiat?
Have you suffered a Krystal Nacht?
Are your books burned?
Are you refused housing, public accomodation or employment?
Are you being rounded up and shipped to camps?
Did this happen under Clinton and Carter? How, pray tell, did you reclaim the reins of government under such dire hardship?
Please detail the ways you are not tolerated. Not a chip on the shoulder sense of victimization, Right-wing Oprahism, but real intolerance, such as mentioned above. And please explain how the MM has managed to cover all this up!
Irenaeus:
Judging by the way others fired even as I decided to hold my powder at the very last minute (but of course I did -- I'm for gun control, LOL!), you may have a point with your second comment ...
"You may be the last American to remember Marcuse. Few lefties actually read him."
Maybe so, but the 'long march' through the universities has been very successful, whether its heirs and benefactors remember Marcuse by name or not. He and his fellow travelers' ideas still motivate the Left.
"Please detail the ways you are not tolerated."
It's only beginning, Elizabeth, with PC on campuses and speech codes, and laws against 'hate speech,' etc. Give it some time - "soft totalitarianism" is on its way.
Rob -
Hate speech laws have been on the books for some time now. As a free-speech near-absolutist, I have never approved of them, moderately liberal though I am. I still don't see masses of conservatives being marched off en masse, even in Dubya's America.
While there is plenty of whining about oppression on campus (my son is bewildered by this assertion - there are campus Republicans at his public college), I haven't heard of anyone being imprisoned for their views.
"It's only beginning, Elizabeth, with PC on campuses and speech codes, and laws against 'hate speech,' etc. Give it some time - "soft totalitarianism" is on its way."
In other words, you can't detail any ways in which holding conservative views actually result in intolerance, other than that you don't like that liberals disagree with you.
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