The New Clarion

Kos and Bill Press, living in Liberal Land, will be angry at Harry Reid if he does not pass everything the left wants now that Al Franken’s election has given him 60 Democrat senators. They don’t understand that politicians are terrified of taking the blame if things go wrong. If the Dems can’t bring along Republicans for cover, then they get all the blame.

Kos and Press are right: this is the liberal moment. Now is the time to ram through socialized medicine, cap and trade, nationalization of a few more industries — hell, maybe another trillion dollar stimulus package, if they lose all touch with reality. They can do it now. All Republicans can do is stand in the corner and scream, but with the MSM functioning as a Democrat propaganda organ, who will hear them?

When the economy tanks, Democrats will likely be slaughtered at the polls. At this point, they’ll be slaughtered anyway, so they might as well pass everything on their wish list.

Don’t be fooled into thinking the Democrats are about to learn a lesson. Leftists never learn. Well, almost never: the few that do learn — usually the lesson that America is not the source of all evil in the world — become neoconservatives.

The rest tell each other stories meant to allow them to evade reality. “Check your premises,” is Ayn Rand’s famous admonition; it’s the one thing leftists will not do. They are certain that as altruist-collectivists, like Plato’s philosopher-kings, they see the truth that eludes the rest of us. Their opponents are blinded to the greater truth by their greed and this world of illusions.

“No excuses,” sayeth Kos. In a few years, he’ll be full of them.

And yet, the will to power keeps politicians cautious and to some extent tied to reality. Being a senator or congressman is a sweet job that elevates one to the ruling elite. Once you get that gig, you do not want to lose it. Keeping his job is a politician’s number one priority. The masses might be blinded by greed and easily swayed by corporate lies, but they still get to vote in America. (How they must envy Chavez and Castro, who eliminated the annoyance of elections.)

I expect the Obama-Pelosi-Reid expansion of the state to continue at near full speed in 2009, with the far leftists pulling along their timid moderates because it’s the moral thing to do (by their standards). Many statist Republicans will be secretly glad Democrats are expanding state power and taking all the blame if things go wrong. The Republicans will be able to mumble stuff about traditional values and freedom to fool their base — hoping that people will forget such travesties as Sarbanes-Oxley, TARP and the prescription drug bill, products of a Republican president. It’s a shame that the Republican Party will prosper from the epic fail we’re about to experience under Democrat rule.

Individual Americans — those of us without political pull, who go about working part-time for ourselves and the rest of the time as slaves to the state — will suffer.