Most of the metrics are up: the economy, employment, Main
Street, jobs, etc. And even though the
impeachment charade should never have been validated by the Senate, many conservatives
can be comforted by the fact that things are, indeed, getting better. Or are
they? Mark Bauerlein at American Greatness sobers us up again:
The election of November 2016, the
elevation of Judge Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, the Mueller report
debacle, the Iran turnaround, and other wins for conservatives may be
satisfying, but they have not shaken the leftist lock on our institutions one
bit. The simmering stew of LGBT rights, toxic masculinity, white privilege,
disparate impact calculations, and Millennial social justice campaigns has
become dogma in corporate America, media, higher education, K-12 public schools
(and many private schools, too), Silicon Valley, Hollywood, Broadway, the art
world, museums, libraries . . .
. . .
For the Left, outcomes trump
procedure just as politics eclipses intelligence, conscientiousness, and
competence. One thing I saw in more than 30 years in academia was that while
leftists on the faculty were not always the brightest bulbs in the room, they
often managed to populate university and department committees where policies
were created and passed. While we were teaching and researching; they were
reshaping the institution. We were getting on with our work, pushing our
individual careers, getting our names in print, and believing we were advancing
the field and the school. They were taking over. Put it this way: We were
clueless, they were canny.
Donald Trump understands this.
That’s one reason the Left despises him. He typically doesn’t bother to debate
ideas and ideals, but this is not anti-intellectualism, as the liberal says. It
is, instead, his awareness that politics is now, first and foremost, a battle
of persons, not ideologies or tax rates or trade. The Kavanaugh episode proves
the point, for this battle was all about the individual (which is one reason
why Supreme Court appointments are so heated).
In recent times, conservatives have
tended to focus on ideas. If, after President Trump leaves office, they don’t
start thinking more about personnel, if they don’t consider the population of
institutions as much as they do the structure of institutions, if they choose a
leader who thinks technocratically instead of ad hominem-ly, we will indeed end up with the permanent Democratic
majority liberal intellectuals have predicted for the last 20 years.
And a follow-up: One American News’s special report on FISA
abuse (blogged here) is not at present scheduled for a re-broadcast.
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