Anti-Climacus

THE PRAVDA-IZATION OF MATT YGLESIAS: continues unabated:

"Joshua Shenk in Mother Jones writes about the conservative story and how liberals need to come up with a better one if we want to win. It's true enough, but the article is suffused with a kind of moral relativism that must be rejected if one wants to understand the scope of the problem. If you're willing to be the bad guy (as Bush clearly is) then it's easy to write a story with a happy ending -- cut taxes and expand entitlements, no need for Kyoto because global warming won't happen anyway, etc.

As a political tactic, it would be easy enough for liberals to respond to this, at least on the core front of social spending by upping the ante and promising even more benefits in the form of broad, universal government programs with no tax increases. The liberal dilemma is that we want -- or at least I want -- to actually do the right thing, which means acknowledging that things need to be paid for and that solving environmental problems requires actual regulations and not wishful thinking."

Now, obviously, in the first place, nothing angers me more than a willingness to ascribe the worst possible motives to your opposition, which Matt's certainly pandering to here. And it's also nice to see the slip-in that conservatives only want to give the appearance of solving problems, without actually solving them (presumably doing something else instead. which trope do you prefer? to get money for halliburton, or to satisfy their own insane lust for power?). Liberals, in their infinite benevolence to humankind, are the only ones who actually want to solve the problems that affect us, who have the courage to do what is necessary to affect what is right.

As a liberal, I'm offended by this sort of characterization: conservatives of all stripes want exactly the same ends as we liberals do; we only differ on what path with be most effective in getting there. As a great, great liberal once said (Hubert Humphrey, before the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act):

"men of good will seldom differ about ultimate goals, but these men do differ about means and timing and priorities. But these differences are the stuff of unending political discourse."

I know a lot of people have a lot wrapped up in the Bush is stupid/evil/only getting by on his father's name idea, but doing so only pollutes the political waters even more.