Becoming What You Fear

The abused become the abusers.

We know this from studying domestic violence. Those most likely to beat children are those who were beaten. Those most likely to prey on them were preyed-upon.

Yet even the most gentle among us find it hard to resist this when it comes to politics.

We are going through a sea change. Bottom rail on top now. Unlike the Carter and Clinton transitions, this is no mirage. This is no short-term thing. The $10 trillion damage to America by movement conservatism will not be forgotten by this generation of young people, nor will the coming struggle to overcome that Bush legacy.

It will take Republicans decades to get past this failure, just as it took Democrats 20 years to finally nominate a "different kind of Democrat" from the Democratic Leadership Council after the debacle of 1968. Just as it took Republicans 20 years to elect Dwight Eisenhower, who offered only to be a more efficient steward of the New Deal, after the debacle of 1932.

Katrina. Iraq. The financial meltdown. Torture. Abuse of power. Republicans and conservatives will have to wear this for the rest of their lives. It's a stain that will never wash out. See Ramsey Clark? That's the kind of exile from power we're talking about. You are banished, forever, all of you. Go.

So the political task before liberals now is consolidation, the broadening of their coalition to embrace and encourage defectors. President Obama (couldn't resist) is already engaged in this important work, turning the 52-47 victory of 2008 into a 60-40 majority that lasts.

But what about the Netroots? They worry me.

Too many Netroots leaders are already letting the perfect become the enemy of the good. Too many, like Jane Hamsher and Howie Klein, are more interested in settling old scores and excluding all but their most-favored from power.

Progress does not lie in that direction. We saw it in what happened to conservatism between its birth in 1968 and its apotheosis as Reaganism. Republicans held big majorities, but rather than consolidating they threw more-and-more people overboard — women, gays, blacks, Hispanics — until they created the disaster that now lies before us. Eventually, like the French Revolutionaries, they were even throwing one another overboard.

I was privileged, in my strange way, to be a witness to the birth of this stupidity. In the summer of 1974 I was an unpaid intern to Sen. James L. Buckley (a sort of Caroline Kennedy of the right) and then a paid intern to Human Events (then a sort of Howie Klein). What I saw, in people like Pat Buchanan, Howie Phillips, and the "true believers" of that time, was a continual hardening of the political arteries.

It was a straight line from the Human Events of that day to people like Michelle Malkin. Is this the path Jane wants her daughter to walk?

The most important point is none of the far-right ever accomplished anything meaningful for anyone but themselves and their increasingly-limited circle of friends, not from that summer to this day. They destroyed what they considered the left, and then they destroyed the country. What a legacy — Saint Peter will laugh at them as they show up at the Pearly Gates and point his thumb straight down. Their children and grandchildren will curse their names, and should, for what they have done to this beautiful country.

Is this what you want, Jane? Or do you want to be part of the solution? The margin between vaccine and poison is a narrow one — don't go overboard. We will all be sorry if you do.