Feb 20

Senescence

This article about the Los Angeles city council rejecting an anti-war resolution described a scene which seems rather typical of the anti-war left:

The testimony was largely orderly, although two police officers escorted a white-haired woman in a "Green Power" T-shirt out of the packed council chambers after she was declared out of order.

Last year I went on a vacation to San Francisco which included a visit to Berkeley so certainpeople could check out grad-school possibilities. On our way off campus, we ended up passing by Sather Gate where an old woman in dirty tie-die was harranging all passersby with her brilliant, revolutionary solution for every problem in the world: love.

These days, I'm increasingly reminded of that scene almost every time I see an anti-war protest. Right now we can see the major issues which will shape political debate for the next decade or two being driven by the right largely because the increasingly senescent left is offering little more than paranoid-delusional conspiracy theories ("no blood for oil!") or platitudes which would be rejected by Hallmark for excessive banality ("war is bad for children and all other living things!").

This disappointing situation is largely the result of a strong trend away from practices like intellectual debate and self-criticism. I wouldn't bet on this changing, either, as it's much easier (and safer) to call Bush a chimp and sit around patting yourself on the back than it is to salvage a rational position from the current soggy mess. While I won't mind election losses for lefty economic policies it's more than a little worrisome that there's so little effective opposition on other issues like Ashcroft's continued attempts to curtail basic civil rights. Unfortunately, years of crying wolf and other intellectual dishonesty have cost groups like the ACLU a great deal of support they'd otherwise enjoy - many libertarian-leaning people like myself would support these groups were it not for things like their betrayal of the second ammendment or attempts to portray party-line opposition to school vouchers as a freedom of religion issue.