Dave Dufour

I’ve been a fan of Andrew Sullivan for a long time.  Recently, and perhaps unfairly, I’ve found his constant drumbeat about torture to be a huge overreaction, given the kinds of people we’re fighting in the war on terrorism.  But I think, perhaps, reasonable people can disagree, and Andrew is one of the most reasonable.  Today he posted this, regarding many of the same conflicted feelings I’ve had about the institutions that continually let us down, to the point that we stop believing in them.

I still believe in the Republican party, but just barely. When it gained control of the congress in 1994, I was elated.  But then the GOP proceeded to act like a free-spending party of drunken liberals.  George Bush was no conservative himself, and the conduct of the war was largely incompetent, although I still believe the ideals were right, and we’ve since corrected a lot of the problems there.  Bush allowed himself to be demonized by the screeching left, without fighting back, and like all bullies, the left took his silence as a signal to demonize him further.

And then the party allowed John McCain to become the nominee of the party.  He overplayed the war hero angle and couldn’t create any major points of policy difference between himself and Obama.  And with the media in the tank for the Democrat nominee, coupled with Obama’s obvious charisma, he had little chance of winning.

Now, the chickens are coming home to roost.  The conservative/capitalist political point of view is “discredited,”  by those who think saying so makes it so.  We are barrelling down the highway toward a socialist future and a country where we are all dependent on the state’s largesse.  This must be fought, and defeated, but I don’t see anyone in the GOP leadership who has the commitment or the moxie to make it happen.

So, I share Andrew’s concern. I think the situation will turn, but I think it may happen from the grassroots, not from the top, because the top is rotting away.  Modern day “tea parties” and Going Galt may be the answer. I hope so.