We do indeed have the beginnings of a realignment in American politics. As Glenn Greenwald recognizes, that is the core argument of The Conservative Soul. Conservatism has been highjacked by an ideology favoring an authoritarian, constantly-militarist, debt-ridden welfare state. It has no real roots in the Anglo-American conservative tradition. It explicitly rebukes Reagan and Goldwater as outmoded icons. David Brooks has decided to side with the Bush agenda – against individual freedom and for more government power over people’s lives. Glenn Greenwald recognizes and grasps this new and essential divide in today’s politics. It is not: are you left or right? It is: are you with this radical, new statism or are you against it? I’m against it, from the perspective of conservatism. And these people are not going to take that tradition away from me without an almighty fight. Money Greenwald quote:
To be considered "liberal" or "leftist" now means, more than anything else, to oppose that [Bush-Cheney-Rove] agenda. All of the people now deemed to be on the "left" – including many who have quite disparate views about the defining political disputes of the 1990s – have been able to work together with great unity because all energies of those "on the left" have been devoted not to any affirmative policy-making (because they have had, and still have, no power to do that), but merely towards the goal of exposing the corruption and radicalism at the heart of this extremist right-wing movement and to push back – impose some modest limits – on what has been this radical movement’s virtually unlimited ability to install a political framework that one does not even recognize as "American."
Regardless of what other beliefs one might have, opposition to endless warmongering in the Middle East (and the wonderful tools used to promote it, such as rendition, torture and indefinite detentions) – combined with a belief in the rule of law, along with basic checks and balances, as a means of modestly limiting the power of the federal government over American citizens – is now sufficient to render one a "liberal" or "leftist." That’s because the political movement that dominates our country is radical and authoritarian – "security leads to freedom." Our political spectrum is now binary: one is either a loyal follower of that movement or one is opposed to it.
This may shift as new candidates with more complicated policies and responses emerge among the Democrats and Republicans. But until then, vive la resistance! Come one, come all.
The Dish 