One of the most annoying qualities of the modern left is our inability to understand why people don’t like us. After every disappointing election cycle, there is always great confusion among Democrats regarding why things didn’t go better. We want to give the people health care! And jobs! Raise their wages! How could they possibly want the other guys?
Well, I’ll tell you, fellow snowflakes. Political parties, in principle, offer the public two things: a policy program for running the government and a set of beliefs and values to order our culture.
It’s not just about a legislative agenda. The ideology that is packaged alongside it plays a key role in a voter’s decision at the ballot box.
Polls clearly show that folks like the Democrats’ policy approach. It’s not hard to sell the idea that we should expand opportunities for the poor and the middle class, which is the core of the party platform. That means when people vote against us, they are protesting the second half of our sales pitch: liberal ideology, not liberal laws.
This shouldn’t be very surprising. When you look at the intellectual side of progressivism nowadays, you see a hodgepodge of dangerous perspectives that are simply not conducive to human flourishing. Voters reject this stuff, and don’t want to elect politicians who are looking to make it mainstream.
First, supporting the left means helping to promote a culture in which we reject a belief in God. Even though America has derived so much strength from its Christian tradition – which is reflected not just in our founding documents, but every transformative social movement that came after – today’s progressives have decided you know what, the almighty is overrated.
Let’s do away with that. Instead, they say, our institutions must focus solely on promoting the nihilistic cynicism of the secularists.
As reflected by the preachings of Richard Dawkins and his ilk, the reasonable perspective now is to deny the existence of the soul and all that is transcendent.
Concepts like faith, hope and love are little more than delusions, just like God. What really drives human existence is the selfish desire to reproduce and pass on our genes, nothing more.
This is the perspective that progressives seek to replace the beauty of Christianity with. Can anyone really be surprised that normal, everyday people, who don’t listen to NPR and have never had kale, find this all quite repellent? That they’re even willing to vote for a man like Donald John Trump in order to avoid living in such a sad, empty world?
In addition to this change, the left constantly promotes the notion that we should all be afraid of everything. Republicans often get portrayed as weaponizing fear, and on certain issues they certainly do. But it is unavoidably the case that my side does as well.
Among the many fear-based messages we see are the following: America is a white supremacist country; our society likes rape; our cops are out to hunt Black people; children should live in fear of getting shot in the face, instead of focusing on their studies; and Trump voters are fascists looking to create an Orange reich.
The list goes on and on. Of course, none of this is supported by data and it’s all just so toxic.
We teach people to be afraid of the world, then we expect them to go out into the streets and march to change it? Human nature doesn’t work that way. The new progressive paranoia hasn’t brought about wonderful social movements. Quite the opposite. It’s made activists into a bunch of neurotic scaredy cats who prefer to stay in their bedrooms and yell at relatives on Facebook.
There’s no God. Be afraid of everything. Gee, what a nice one-two punch. That’s exactly the sort of culture I want my kids to grow up in.
Not!
Lastly, if all this wasn’t enough, our little socialist darlings also tell us it’s wrong to be patriotic. Instead we are supposed to hyperfocus on this country’s sins, and forget about the fact we are the richest, most welcoming and humane society the world’s ever known.
No one has ever welcomed more different races and ethnicities and found a way to turn them all into brothers and sisters. We single-handedly ended the age of monarchies, and launched humanity’s democratic era.
During World War II, instead of resting on our laurels while Europe burned, we sent an armada across the ocean to liberate a continent. And when the struggle was over, America set to work building the modern rules-based order that has achieved 70 years of peace, prosperity and the largest reductions of poverty in human history.
That’s what this country does. But wait, oh sorry, it’s 2023 now, and a bunch of Brooklyn Hippies have now decided we all must sip gently made Macchiatos and ruminate on all the ways America hasn’t been absolutely perfect.
Have I made myself clear? In sum, the next time Democrats get whooped in an election, remember the country has very good reasons to vote against us. We are in many ways, insufferable, pretentious, annoying, boobs.
Of course I’m going to continue to vote Democratic, because I believe in our policies. A higher minimum wage, free college, health care for all, strong action to stave off climate change – this is just what the doctor ordered.
But in order for those noble things to come to pass, we must first recognize all the ways we bug the living daylights out of people.
Joshua Heath is a Santa Clarita resident. “Democratic Voices” appears Tuesdays and rotates among local Democrats.
