Matthew Continetti certainly appears old and wise enough to have fully resolved the moral and political conflicts that go all the way back to the pre-Socratics.

Or maybe not?

A few fanatics at Weekly Stantard, like a few fanatics at, say, the Nation magazine, tend to see the world largely through an ideological lens. But few of them would consider the possibility that their [at times] vituperative exchanges reflect more a psychological defense mechanism than an honest debate about what constitutes virtuous human values.

It's like all those old Leon Trotsky fanatics who, over time, became neoconservative fanatics.  Their point of view is not the point at all. Their point revolves, instead, around believing in something they can call a neccessary truth. Therefore, in acting out this necesssary truth, they are projecting the most rational behavior there is.    

Let me explain roughly how this tends to unfold for most Truth Tellers:

First, and for a vartiety of reasons, they become acquainted with a particular political worldview. This could come about as a result of their historical or cultural parameters, or from the family that raised them, or from a book they read, or from someone they met, or from an experience they had etc. etc.

For some, however, this political point of view becomes increasingly more important to them. They begin to explore its utility more assiduously

Time passes. Some go to college. They begin to grasp the nature of political science more academically, scholastically, didactically.

Eventually some come to believe their own political values are the most rational political values a human mind can comprehend.

By then they have usually accumulated friends and colleagues and family members who bascially share these values. Indeed, many proactively search for others [in places like this, for example] to share the camaraderie of thinking about things the same way.

As these relationships grow and become increasingly more important to them, the line between "my political values" and "my life" starts to fuse. Their political self is becoming more hard-wired into their social relationships.

Eventually a time comes when they are not just content to share their political values, but also to defend them against those who do not agree. Sometimes they come to see "the other side" as irrational or evil.

For a few it can reach the point where they are no longer able to reasonably differentiate  an attack on their political values from an attack on them personally.

Finally, for the most dogmatic...the most extreme ideologues...a stage is reached whereby the iniitial contact and quest for political wisdom has become so profoundly integrated into their self-identity... professionally, socially, emotionally, psychologically.... that defending The Truth has less and less to do with defending their point of view and more andmore about attacking or even ridding the world of all those who don't or won't see the light.

I like to call this the Objectivist Syndrome. But there are many, many more "Isms" it applies to as well.

George Walton

Not to worry young Eve: the swollen pumpkin sized noggin of kirchick sets the nearly unattainable Big Head Gold Standard at tnr.  I hate to say this but compared to that behemoth orb with eyes, nose, and mouth, you are a mere piker in the chase...

At the risk of stating the bleedin' obvious, no.  Liberalism on steroids looks like Sweden, and Scandinavia isn't coming to a theater near us anytime soon.  American liberalism today is uniformly more capitalism-friendly than many of its counterparts (e.g. European social democracy).

Ironyroad writes:

At the risk of stating the bleedin' obvious, no. Liberalism on steroids looks like Sweden, and Scandinavia isn't coming to a theater near us anytime soon. American liberalism today is uniformly more capitalism-friendly than many of its counterparts (e.g. European social democracy).

George [iambiguous] Walton responds:

You have to put political transition periods [like the one we are going through now] in historical perspective.

Remember back in the sixties [and on into the seventies] when the New Deal was put on steroids and morphed into Lyndon Baines Johnson's The Great Society? At that time all things conservative were out on the fringe of political discourse. That was a time when the mainstream press used to call capitalism the "free enterprise system" because, around the world, capitalism was seen as the root of all evil. After Barry Goldwater got trounced in 1964 it appeared all the more unlikely that right wing conservatives would ever get near the seat of power. But out of the Goldwater defeat arose a new conservative movement that, by the late nineteen seventies, was on the verge of changing all that. When Reagon won in 1980 another new political transition was in the making. By the time Newt Gingrich, Rush Limbaugh and The Contract desended on Congress in 1994, it wasn't long before all things liberal were haughtily disparaged. Indeed, we were being assured that a new "permanent conservative majority" was being consoldiated; and, between talk radio and Fox News, the political dialogue in America had reached the point where calling someone a liberal was practically like spitting in his face.

Now we turn another corner and we are on the road to being right back where we started all those years ago.

Someone once said that the height of stupidity was doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. But basically that has been the story of America's political economy for decades and decades now.

We keep alternating between Democrats and Republicans as each new existential crisis arises.

There are really only two alternatives here:

1] A new politcal narrative attached to a new political party successfully enters the political  

arena.

2] Somehow the moderatres and the pragmatists of the liberal [progressive] perspective and the conservative [right wing] perspective drive the radicals out of the parties and moderation, negociation and compromise becomes the order of the day.

george walton