Left, Right, and Chicken

Yesterday afternoon I made a deal with my wife. We agreed that if we would leave the Democratic Convention on the television, for broadness of mind, then for the fullness of my stomach I would grill chicken. It seemed to me an awful waste of a big TV and I still feel the need somehow to cleanse the screen of liberal effusions, but I got to eat two dinners in one day. I also must confess that, amidst basting of the delicious foods, I was overcome with another appetite: democratic blood lust. Whether it was the public shaming of DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the confused warbling of Paul Simon, the colic gassing of the Bernie Sanders crowd, or Elizabeth Warren's endless clucking about Donald Trump, I could not turn my eyes away. So much was I enraptured by the spectacle--here swooning there screeching--that I burned some of my delicious food. The Democratic affair didn't just afford me an excuse to eat, though, but confirmed three suspicions I've held for some time.

First, I find the liberal sell is a tough one. The liberal always has to persuade that he simultaneously loves America, its values, traditions and so on, but also wants to change it. Now if there were only a few changes this would not be so challenging, but when you have a laundry list of complaints, it's hard to sell the patriotic vibe. The old line, "If you love America, then make it better," is not an unreasonable or inherently unpersuasive one, but it requires moderation both for logical coherence and rhetorical efficacy.

Second, the left is immoderate. No amount of reform has ever been enough, nor it seems will it ever be. There are always new industries to be regulated, new groups to be protected, new rights emanating from the Constitution, new funds needing feeding from the tax trough, and on and on. Obama's desire to "fundamentally transform" did not even satisfy the liberal lust for change and new things through one administration, let alone one generation. I'm starting to think that the liberal impulse is rooted somewhere unhealthy in the psyche.

Finally, the left doesn't understand it is precisely its progressivism–its relentless tide of change–that most makes conservatives look askance at the changes. Immaturely and imprudently, they took Obama's relatively thin margin of victory in 2008 as a mandate for widespread change instead of a cautionary reminder to be moderate. The left refused to be content with the Affordable Care Act, but pushed more and more throughout the tenure of the Obama Administration, at whose end we now find a whole new list of grievances needing immediate redress.

The right, especially in America, will abide change and even embrace it, but no conservative anywhere will brook an unbridled gallop toward utopia. The left, however, expects the conservative to continue pouring moderates into the DC slaughterhouse just so we can be hamstrung by our increasingly irrational faith in the process which fails even to restrain liberalism, let alone conserve anything. The left will be astounded when it is the conservatives who either stop playing or change the rules of the game.