The Truth Hurts

....and the Democrats will never, EVER accept it.

Just picture, say, Howie Dean's face when Kevin Hassett of the American Enterprise Institute told him this:

Democrats continue to rely on a world view that crumbles under scrutiny.

Sifting through Democratic positions on numerous different policies, you find two core beliefs that differentiate their view of the world from that of Republicans.

First is the belief that redistributing income is the most important objective of government. Second is the belief that high tax rates don't hurt....

To some extent, a natural laboratory exists where ideal Democratic policies have been enacted by a powerful leftist government: France. As economist Donald Luskin emphasized in a recent National Review, the results of these policies have been catastrophic. Since 1991, average real GDP growth in France has been 1.8%. In the U.S., it was 3.1%.

Surely, you say, the poor live better in France. Au contraire. "The average French family has a lower standard of living than Americans living below the poverty level,'' Luskin wrote. "Impoverished Americans have 16% more dwelling space per capita than the average French; the American poor are more likely to have a car, a dishwasher, a microwave oven, a personal computer, and a clothes drier.''

The problem with the left today isn't that they don't have enough think tanks. The problem is they have held on to core beliefs that are incorrect.

They don't need more think tanks to push their ideology. They need a new ideology. [emphases added]

Picturing Hassett break this news to Dean in person reminds me of Ron White's story about being arrested for being "drunk in public." The police officer administered a sobriety test to Mr. White by having him stand on one foot and count backwards from one hundred. "I got as far as 'wuh,'" White said. In the same way I don't think Dr. Demented would get beyond "crum..." before his head would explode.

Socialism, pacifism, and absolutist secularism do not comprise an "ideology" for leftists; they make up their religion. As I've written on many a previous occasion, telling a liberal that their beliefs are incorrect would be like telling an evangelical Christian that Jesus Christ was "just a man" and fathered a child via Mary Magdalene and is "still in the tomb."

Oh, wait, libs have already done that, haven't they? Let's try a more accurate analogy: telling a left-winger that their beliefs are incorrect would be like telling a Muslim that Allah is a false god and Mohammed was an envy-mongering, mentally-deranged, drug-addicted thug - in neither case would the listener be remotely happy about what they just heard, and what they had just heard would be the God's honest truth.

Followers of demonstrated false philosophies do not admit the error of their beliefs and seek out the truth; they embrace their false philosophies all the tighter and declare war on those who have dared challenge them - which, in a nominal democracy, takes the form of unendingly viscious and dishonest propaganda.

And, of course, just as the error of liberal beliefs doesn't prompt liberals to abandon them, so that error does not by any stretch of the imagination preclude those beliefs from triumphing at the ballot box if Democats have a sufficiently attractive candidate to serve as a vehicle for them (Bill Clinton then, Hillary Clinton in the future). The fact that socialism has triumphed in France and isn't abandoned despite the overwhelming evidence that it doesn't work is itself the living proof.

What that means is that we have two facts: leftism is a debunked failure, but it will always be politically viable because of its romanticist nature. Or, put another way, the head will always reject it, but the heart it will always beguile. And people are far more likely to vote with their hearts than with their heads.

That's why the Left keeps on keeping on. If you're not willing to embrace a new "ideology," character assassination, tactical gimmickry, and faceman huckster candidacies are the only games in town.

And like the proverbial stopped clock, they will always work occasionally.

But the left still needs to be told that their ideas are incorrect, loudly and constantly.

If only to see the expression on Chairman How's face.

UPDATE: David Frum (almost) echoes the sentiment:

The more Americans see of the antiwar movement, the more appalled they will be.

There is great nostalgia on the American left today for the antiwar movements of the 1960s. Leftists now in their 60s remember the marches, the cheering, and of course the sex. What they forget is that it was the reaction against the riots and the protests of the 1960s that delivered the White House to the Republicans for 20 of the 24 years from 1968 until 1992.

Today an even more extremist antiwar movement is again beckoning to the Democratic party. Some Democrats are listening: It looks as if Ohio Democrats will run the violently antiwar Paul Hackett as their candidate in that state’s 2006 Senate race. Wisconsin Senator Russell Feingold is planning to run an antiwar campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2008.

But the leaders of the national party - Bill and Hillary Clinton, Senate Majority Harry Reid, and others - are resisting. They have seen this movie before - and they know how it ends: with the Democrats marginalized and the Republicans back in power. [emphasis added]

I beg to differ on that last graf; Dirty Harry is a leader of the extreme left chorus, and the Clinton machine isn't "resisting" them so much as doing what it's always done: pursue the same objectives from "centrist" camouflage, winking all the way.

What that means for the Donks is that the best case scenario after 2008 is President Hillary saddled, as was her hubby, with an undiminished Republican majority on Capitol Hill. That'll certainly gratify the "anti-war" crowd, but it'll do nothing about the Democrats' long-term "marginalization" - except make it even worse.