Liberal Talk Radio

Great piece from Camille Paglia, icon of “third wave” feminism. Paglia offers a wide-ranging reflection on the (tarnished and tottering) state of our union in Salon.

About the Dems, Paglia notes:

The Democrats have to start fresh and throw out the entire party superstructure. I was bitterly disappointed after voting for Ralph Nader that he didn’t devote himself to helping build a strong third party in this country. When the American economy was still manufacturing based, the trade unions were viable, and the Democrats stayed close to their working-class roots. But now the Northeastern Democrats, with their fancy law degrees and cocktail parties, have simply become peddlers of condescending bromides about “the people.”

About the Cocktober Surprise:

The Foley scandal exploded without any proof of a documented sex act — unlike the case of the late congressman Gerry Studds, who had sex with a page and who was literally applauded by fellow Democrats when they refused to vote for his censure. In the Foley case, there was far more ambiguous evidence — suggestive e-mails and instant messages. Matt Drudge, to his great credit, began hitting this issue right off the bat on his Web site and radio show. What does it mean for Democrats to be agitating over Web communications, which in my view fall under the province of free speech? It’s a civil liberties issue. We can say that what Foley was doing was utterly inappropriate, professionally irresponsible, and in bad taste, but why were liberals fomenting a scandal day after day after day over word being used? And why didn’t Democrats notice that they were drifting into an area which has been the province of the right wing — that is, the attempt to gain authoritarian control over interpersonal communications on the Web? It’s very worrisome and yet more proof that the Democrats have lost their way.

And she saves her best daggers to discuss Iraq, and the administration’s blunders in international affairs:

This administration lacks deftness in international relations. Worst of the lot is Dick Cheney, with his lumpish provincialism. What a narrow, limited mind! His geopolitics is a vintage-1870s version of frontier Americanism, but he managed to impose it on the over-credulous new president when this Bush took office. It’s all so simple to them: The majority of Iraqis and Iranians want peace and modernization, so let’s impose democracy at the barrel of a gun. But what ignorance of history: The mass of the population always want to live their own lives; change is always driven by small, committed groups of ideologues and fanatics — even in our own revolution. Representative democracy is a great ideal, but major shifts are rarely achieved by majority rule, which prefers the status quo …

This administration doesn’t seem to realize that the world is much larger than the United States. I hear on conservative talk radio the constant assertion that America is the destined leader of the world, that America is blessed by God and the best place on earth, where everyone wants to live. Therefore anything we do is automatically good, and the only problem is the people who hate us because we’re free. Now I’m very pro-American — my entire family escaped poverty in Italy because they rightly believed in the American dream. My father and five of my uncles proudly served in World War II. But uncritical American boosterism — automatic endorsement of every government action — is myopic and self-defeating. I don’t think too many people at the top of this administration — or too many conservative radio hosts, for that matter — have traveled much outside the U.S. or had contact with other languages. They’ve had minimal exposure to other worldviews or lifestyles. It’s unsettling that politicians with such constricted vision will have been in charge of public policy for eight years of this presidency …

I’m not a Bush hater. I’ve always viewed him as a decent fellow who was pushed into the presidency because he was his father’s son. But he’s been out of his depth in foreign affairs from the start. He certainly lacks the basic verbal skills for the presidency — reading speeches authored by others is no substitute. But I’ve become concerned about Bush’s mental state in the past few months. Sometimes in his press conferences or prepared statements (which I listened to on the radio), I heard a sort of Nixonian tension and hysteria. His vocal patterns were over-intense and his inflections impatient, lurching and sarcastic. There was this seething quality to his speech that worried me and that seemed to signal that something major is being planned — perhaps another military incursion.

I have one minor point of disagreement with Paglia. She writes:

The Democrats’ portrayal of Republicans as fat cats out of touch with ordinary Americans just doesn’t fly anymore, and they should drop it. I think the center of the Republican Party really is small-businessmen and very practical people who correctly see that it’s job creation and wealth creation that sustain an economy — not government intervention and government control, that suffocating nanny-state mentality. The Democrats are in some sort of time warp in always proposing a government solution to every problem. It’s like Hillary’s philosophy that it takes a village to raise a child. Well, does it? Or does it take a strong family and not the village?

What’s broadened the appeal of conservatism in recent years is that Republicans stress individualism — individual effort and personal responsibility. They’re really the liberty party now — I thought my party was! It used to seem as if the Republicans were authoritarians and the Democrats were for free speech and for the freedom to live your own life and pursue happiness. But the Democrats have wandered away from their own foundational principles.

The official party line of the GOP may be that it’s the party of individualism, but as Bush’s (and Congress’) wanton disregard for the First and Fourth Amendments shows, that’s hardly how they act when in power. Nonetheless, as Bruno and I discussed on the show a couple of weeks ago, I do agree with Paglia’s contention that the bedrock of Republican support nowadays is the small businessman (and, yes, I do mean businessMAN) — the Rotarians and Optimists and State Farm reps of America’s small towns and suburbs, pasty white men with beedy eyes and minds shrunk by narrow vision.

Nonetheless, Paglia’s piece is a stirring indictment of the Democratic party, the Bush administration, and disaffected, privileged youth. It’s a call to arms for neo-libs like Bruno and me. Read it now.