Who knew?
Well, I knew that the Democrats are the closest thing America has to true conservatives, theirs being the party for leaders and voters most broadly satisfied with and loyal to our major political, economic, and social institutions as we find them, today.
But they are not rigid stand-patters foolishly deceived that America is perfect.
Theirs is a center-left party for center-left voters, always looking forward by no means to revolution - despite the hyperbolic rhetoric of American politics - but to gradual, incremental changes that make our democratic capitalism (Obama's and Clinton's expression) better for all, that make us a more perfect union (Obama's expression), or that take us toward a fuller realization of the promise of American life (Herbert Croly).
And it is worth recalling that conservatives from Burke to Kirk have generally described their own parties and movements much as I have just described the Democrats, as satisfied with and loyal to the fundamental institutions of their homelands, seeking always gradual and evolutionary changes and improvements.
In contrast, the Republican Party is not at all conservative, and the name of both its ideology and its agenda is wholly inappropriate.
Come to that, their so-called "conservatism" is not now, and was not when he said it, an ideology devoted to stand-pat-ism, either; to efforts that, as William F. Buckley, Jr. falsely claimed some sixty years ago, amount to standing in front of the moving train of history and yelling "Stop!"
Their so-called "conservatism" was then, and is today, the ideology, and the Republicans are the party, for people who so loathe contemporary America that they desperately, urgently, and even angrily want to undo, roll back, and overthrow all of the changes of more than a century of progress.
This piece by JB makes him seem a man of the center-left.
Why Trump's “rigged” comments are so corrosive and dangerous.
Has he ever written similar comments about Bernie's equally pernicious and sometimes even worse rhetoric?
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