In Quick Hits bystander points to Harper's Scott Horton posing six questions to Former Harper's editor Roger D. Hodge about his new book, The Mendacity of Hope. It starts off simply:
Former Harper's Magazine editor Roger D. Hodge has just published what may well be the definitive critique of the Obama presidency from the left: The Mendacity of Hope: Barack Obama and the Betrayal of American Liberalism. I put six questions to him about his new book.
What should quickly become obvious, however, is that Hodge is not simply concerned with Obama, nor with the betrayal of American liberalism. America was founded on the convergence of two political philosophies: the rights-based philosophy of Reformation/Enlightenment liberalism, grounded in structures of Anglo-American common law, and the civic responsibility-based philosophy of classical/Renaissance republicanism. It is primary the erosion of later that shines through ad Hodge's paramount concern, at least in response to these questions. Obama is simply one player on the stage, a pawn of much larger forces.
First is a warm-up question framed in terms of Gibbs' attack on "the professional left," which Hodge uses well to economically point out that:
(1) "True to their Clintonian principles, President Obama and his advisors have spurned the Democratic Party's liberal base and have sought to govern by appropriating the policies of the Republican right."
(2) "And yet Democrats expect liberals to toe the line and shut the hell up lest the Republicans take advantage of their dissent." And
(3) "In fact, for the most part, the 'professional left' of policy intellectuals, public interest advocates, and opinion journalists have done just that."
He then goes on to note:
What's fascinating about the Democrats is how consistently they have squandered enormous political advantages. The party's leaders have apparently internalized Republican propaganda to the point that they feel they do not deserve to rule.... What results, of course, is that the Democratic Party, over and over again, enacts some version of the Republican agenda.
So far, none of this qualifies as a revelation. It is simply plain truth very well stated. And I'm not sure that Hodge really has anything more to offer. Nor am I sure that anything more is needed. Living in an age of such multiple forms of madness, simply being reminded that sanity exists, and what it looks like is more than enough. Of course Hodge may well have more--this is only an enticement to the book, not the book itself. Still it's very worth noting some of what he stresses. Such as:
|
STATE BLOGS
