Cyde Weys Musings

The latest news on the warrantless wiretapping front is that the Democrats are poised to roll over once again and make permanent the six month expanded eavesdropping extension they passed not too long ago. Their excuse? They don’t want to look weak on national security. The linked DailyKos story posits that by not wanting to look weak on national security, and by rolling over and passing legislation that they disagree with once again even though they control both houses, they are just making themselves look weak in general. It’s hard to argue against it making them look weak. The 2006 election was all about us voters standing up and demanding change, and now that our guys won, why aren’t we getting change?

Allow me to be cynical for a bit. I don’t think the reason the Democrats consistently pass legislation unpopular with their base is because they don’t want to look weak on national security. I think it’s because a lot of them truly don’t share our values. They aren’t really progressive. Just like the Republicans pander to the theocrat base, then conveniently never get around to passing the religiously motivated legislation that they want, I think the Democrats are pandering to us. They act strong on civil liberties during primary season, but once they’re in office, their actions speak louder than words, and it turns out they really aren’t as progressive as we had hoped.

One thing about politicians is that, uniformly, they are almost all old. Barack Obama, widely considered a young, “fresh” face, is 46! And being old really doesn’t mesh well with being progressive. A person’s values are generally set when they are young in life, and don’t change much afterwards. That’s why old people seem to be more conservative than young people; it’s simply because, over time, society has become more progressive and liberal, and what was once left sixty years ago is now right.

The United States has a long history of becoming more liberal over time, with conservatives fighting tooth and nail every step of the way. First it was ending slavery, then giving women the right to vote, then the New Deal which prevented rampant widespread poverty, then civil rights for minorities, and then effective environmental protection. There are Democrats who think they are progressive simply because they agreed with Martin Luther King’s views decades ago when so many didn’t, even though the battle lines have now shifted far leftwards and are primarily concerned with giving equal rights to homosexuals.

Our Democratic politicians do think of themselves as progressive — for a definition of what progressive meant decades ago when they were growing up, anyway. This is why they consistently go against modern young progressives when it comes to issues like preventing government spying on American citizens. Not wanting to appear weak on national security is merely an excuse. There will always be a lag time between what society is ready to accept and when it will actually happen. But the march of history really doesn’t bode well for the conservatives. Now hopefully we can get rid of this silly obsession with modesty soon.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 9th, 2007 at 19:18 and is filed under Politics. Keywords: . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.