How Do You Respond to Something Like This?

 

The Democrats assume the average American voter is a gullible idiot. What if they are right?

https://twitter.com/i/status/1743635357160145330

What No One Is Saying

 

For the third election in a row, the Republicans did unexpectedly poorly this week, defying the polls.

Yet, since 2020, nobody seems to be raising the obvious possibility. It looks as though the aggressive prosecution of Trump, his lawyers, and the January 6 protesters for suggesting that election was fixed has cowed everyone into silence. As, of course, it was intended to. It should be obvious that the Democrats would not have responded so aggressively then if they had not indeed fixed that election; and intended to fix elections from then on.

This also explains why the Dems are comfortable sticking with Joe Biden, despite his poor performance, scandals, and mental decline. They are even fixing the primary process to get him the nomination. They apparently calculate they can push him over the finish line no matter what. He just has to stay alive.

It also stands to reason that, if they are prepared to override democracy to fix the primary process, they are going to have no qualms about doing the same in any general election.

RFK Jr.

 

I can’t help being excited by RFK Jr.’s presidential bid. I think, at a minimum, he is going to change the popular discourse dramatically—I think he already has--and ensure that Biden does not win a second term. One way or another, this is going to be historic.

As things stand, Biden and the Democratic Party are trying to fix the nomination for Biden by moving the South Carolina primary up to become the first contest. Iowa and New Hampshire are naturally enough unhappy with this. Moreover, the New Hampshire constitution mandates that NH must go before anyone else. 

So all the Biden campaign can do is refuse to run in these first two contests. That means Kennedy sweeps these first two contests. They can refuse to seat his delegates, but this gets him media and momentum. Since the Republicans are running primaries at the same time, they will not be ignored. Calculating that the Biden campaign can block this momentum with a big win in South Carolina is a gamble.

Meantime, the charges of corruption are gathering around Biden. Meantime, the signs of mental decline are multiplying. But by backing Biden and keeping everyone else out of the race, the Dem establishment has no backup, if Biden falters or becomes unelectable.

They are trying to keep RFK out of the media. But this is not likely to work as well as it did: alternative outlets like Joe Rogan now get much more viewership than the old “mainstream,” and on these alternative platforms, RFK is sought and active. He is highly articulate, he comes across as utterly sincere, he has a compelling case and a compelling personal story.

I myself find it hard to resist the personal story. Those of my generation were permanently traumatized by the assassination of JFK. It was when the postwar promise of America seemed to end, when everything started to go wrong. RFK looked like a chance to get back on track, and then he was assassinated too. It was hard not to believe a conspiracy was involved. Now RFK Jr. looks, to us old fogies, like a possibility to, even at this late date, make it all right again. 

They can try all the dirty tricks they used to keep Bernie Sanders from the nomination, twice. But each time they do this they take a grave risk of alienating their base. They covered for that last time by having Biden adopt a large part of the far-left agenda. But I think they miscalculated. People did not support Bernie Sanders because of his platform. They supported him because he seemed sincere and not a part of the establishment. A lot of strong Sanders supporters are now accused of being on the right: Joe Rogan, Elon Musk, Tulsi Gabbard.

Now RFK has that same ground. It is probably a majority of Democratic voters. Sanders should have won, had he not been blocked, and Sanders was not an attractive candidate—too old, and unknown before he ran. RFK is more attractive, with more compelling issues, and with Kennedy charisma.

Block him as they blocked Sanders? No doubt they can do it, but if they do, I expect they will have gone to the well too many times. RFK comes into the race already looking like a martyr; because his father and his uncle were martyred; because he has been censored for his views on vaccines. Strike him down now, and the consequences could be dire for the Dems. If their base does not defect to the Republicans, Cornell West is running. Rumours are Joe Manchin may run too. That gives alternatives to both left and right. Many more could simply stay at home.

In the meantime, Kennedy is forcing a debate on the Covid vaccine and the lockdowns, which is devastating to the establishment. People will want to vote against the establishment as a first priority. If not RFK, their choice is not going to be Biden.

Cuomo Is Just One More

 

USA Today

The Andrew Cuomo scandal seems another example of high-level Democratic politicians often being reprehensible people. And they seem able to rise high in the party without anyone noticing or, perhaps, caring. This in turn reinforces my growing impression that politics has become of late a moral choice: one cannot be a good person and attain and stay in leadership on the left.

Michael Avenatti was widely touted as a presidential possibility, as was Andrew Cuomo as of a year ago.  John Edwards came close. Elizabeth Warren faked her ethnicity to get ahead. Bill Clinton was a serial philanderer, if not a rapist. Ted Kennedy seems to have been responsible for a girl’s death. It looks as though Joe Biden is in the pay of China and others; his son certainly is.

 Really, are these the good guys?

When a Democrat who looks like a good, sincere human being comes along, they seem to be rejected by the party brass: Tulsi Gabbard, Andrew Yang, Mike Gravel.

Sure, there are scandals on the Republican side too. But far fewer. There, it seems to be an individual matter, and good men and women can rise to the top: a John McCain, a Mitt Romney, a Rick Santorum, a Ben Carson.

I do not think it was always this way. I think this is another of the consequences of unrestricted abortion. Everyone knows in their conscience that it is wrong. A political party that supports it is in flight from morality.

The Thrashing About of a Great and Dying Beast

Pelosi as the Grinch Who Stole the SOTU Address

Trump’s superpower is that he is a great showman. He showed that talent at its apex in his State of the Union Speech. He was like a confident ringmaster, with little pieces of business coming up regularly to maintain interest.

Nancy Pelosi tried her own hand at Trumpian showmanship with her dramatic visual, ripping up his speech as it ended. But she did not get it right.

My Filipina wife does not follow US politics closely. Currently in the Philippines, she was unaware of the Iowa Caucuses snafu.

But she knew all about Nancy Pelosi ripping up Trump’s speech.

“That was so uncivilized,” she commented. “She should be impeached.”

Coming right after Trump’s feel-good performance, his relentless recitation of good news and audience heartstrings jerked, and just as he was saying "God Bless America," Pelosi looked a lot like the heavy in a wrestling match, doing something cartoon-level evil.

People love to watch the villain; but they do not cheer her. They are more likely to come out for the opportunity to vote against her.

My wife's next observation was that Pelosi looked either drunk or drugged. I actually thought so too.

It seems to me significant that Pelosi has now come out with the charge that Trump, during the address, seemed to her "a little sedated." 

Viewers can watch and judge for themselves just who of the two looks sedated; but the fact that Pelosi would come out with the charge seems to me corroborating evidence that she was indeed on drugs of some sort. She realizes she looks drugged, and seeks to distract attention with the charge. It is a typical ploy.

Kinf of like charging Trump with Russian collusion after Hillary and the Democrats engaged in Russian collusion; and then with Ukrainian bribery after Biden engaged in Ukrainian bribery. There is a distinctive pattern forming here.

Perhaps the bigger takeway is that we may be watching some great beast entering its death throes.

Eleanor Roosevelt Launches Her Presidential Campaign Yesterday

You can't make this stuff up. Hillary Clinton reboots her campaign by claiming that her Republican opponents are living in the past. She quotes “Yesterday” as their imaginary theme song.

Nice cultural reference, Ma'am. That'll resonate--with anyone over 65. It's a good song, but it's officially 50 years old today. Even when it came out, it was the one Beatles song your parents liked. Her command of its lyrics is sure to demonstrate to everyone that she is not living in the past herself, no doubt.

Especially since the entire theme of her announcement was to evoke the memory of Franklin Delano Roosevelt—on Roosevelt Island, in Four Freedoms Park.

It might not be a bad idea to play up her long experience. After Obama and Bush II, many might be craving a steady hand on the wheel. Moreover, after eight Democratic years in the White House, and her role as part of that administration, “Hope and Change” is not a convincing slogan.

But that does not excuse the irony of attacking her opponents as old-fashioned. Using a song that would officially quality as an antique.

It makes her sound not just hopelessly out of touch, but lacking in self-awareness. Give it a little push, look in her sometimes-not-quite-properly-aligned eyes, note her weird smirk, and you might suspect she is delusional.

How could her aides have let this pass? Perhaps she does not listen to her aides.

The Party of the Poor

Only a grocer's daughter...

A friend of mine, a fellow Canadian, backs Obama for the US presidency.

Interesting how Canadians, Brits, Bessarabians and Jordanians always have a favourite in US elections. Nothing could make clearer America’s status as “leader of the free world.”

Why does my friend like Obama? H answer is straightforward. He is well-educated and has a decent teaching job, but considers himself, on the whole, one of society’s “have-nots.” The Democrats he sees as the party of the poor; the Republicans are the party of the rich and of the big corporations.

If I believed this, I would also support the Democratic candidates, so long as competence and honesty were equal. I believe, however, that the Republicans are really the party of the poor, and the Democrats are the party of the upper class.

Formerly on welfare.

It is true, apparently, that those at higher income levels really do break Republican, while those with lower incomes break Democratic. This distinction is not that clear, however; it is more reliable to say that urbanites, rich or poor, break Democratic, while suburbanites and folks in the country, rich or poor, break Republican. And there are no good stats for income levels above $100,000—I suspect that once the income gets stratospheric, you would find a Democratic tilt. The Gates’s, the Buffets, the Soros’s, the Jobs’s seem to trend Democrat.

But look at where the Democratic leaders, or the Republican leaders, went to school. Here my case becomes, I think, clearer. While both parties tend to favour Ivy League, Dems are more consistent about it. This, where you went to school, far more clearly than annual income, indicates class. Ivy Leaguers will tend to be the second or third or fourth generation of wealth in their families. More importantly, they will all know each other, will have grown up together, will have belonged to the same fraternities and gone to the same parties. They will think alike. They will be conscious of themselves in class terms.

University of Saskatchewan, class of 1919.

Quick tally: Obama—Columbia, Harvard. Kerry—Yale. Gore—Harvard. Clinton—Oxford. Dukakis—Swarthmore, Harvard. Mondale—University of Minnesota. Fritz at least was a man of the people.

For the Republicans: Romney—Harvard. McCain—Naval Academy. Bush—Yale. Dole—Washburn University. Bush I—Yale. Reagan—Eureka College. Ford—Yale. Washburn University? Eureka College? Not exactly Ivy League. Definitely more diversity here.

Both parties, in sum, are dominated by an old-money ruling class, but the Democrats more so. If you did not come up through the right schools and the right connections, you have a far better chance of reaching the top among Republicans. This speaks to class consciousness.

Not incidentally, it is the same in Canadian politics. Quick tally of Liberal leaders: Bob Rae and Michael Ignatieff, as is well known, were actually roommates at U of T. Rae: U of T, Oxford. Ignatieff: U of T, Oxford, Harvard. Stephane Dion: Laval, Sciences Po. Paul Martin, U of T. Jean Chretien: Laval. John Turner: UBC, Oxford, Sorbonne. Anyone who did not know each other at Oxford, Laval, or U of T? We’re talking one degree of separation at most.

Conservative leaders: Stephen Harper: University of Calgary. Stockwell Day: no degree. Joe Clark: University of Alberta. Preston Manning: University of Alberta. Brian Mulroney: St. FX, Laval. Kim Campbell, UBC. Jean Charest: Sherbrooke. The most obvious difference between Conservative and Liberal here is East vs. West; but the Western schools are on the whole less well-established, and the Western establishment is often first-generation. And apart from that, we have a far greater spread. Sherbrooke? No degree?

Okay, how about the NDP? They’re the party of the working class, right? Thomas Mulcair: McGill. Jack Layton: McGill. Alexa McDonough: Queen’s, Dalhousie. Audrey McLaughlin: Guelph. Ed Broadbent: U of T. David Lewis: McGill, Oxford. Give them credit for Guelph. Everything else is Canadian Ivy League, with a special shout out to McGill. Could this be why their teams are called the Redmen?

Sure, the Liberals and the NDP want to look after the poor. The upper class has always wanted to look after the poor: part of their mandate and their justification is to look after the poor. In the Arabian Gulf, sheiks are obliged by custom to have a free water tap on the outside wall of their compound, so that the poor can always get fresh drinking water, a major issue in the Arabian desert. The English lord was socially obliged to see to the health of anyone ailing on his estates. And I do not want to be cynical about this; ruling classes are not altogether a bad thing.

But invite them to your parties? Go to school with them? Let them marry your daughter? Elect them to a leadership position? I shouldn’t think so.

And there is a fundamental problem with a ruling elite that claims it is not a ruling elite, but instead “the party of the poor.” This is dishonest, and suggests there may be other dark deeds afoot. A ruling class is only tolerable when it is bound by a strict sense of honour to work for the general good; this speaks of a lack of any such strict sense of honour, and so of a corrupt ruling class.

In the meantime, the choice for those who are poor or on the outside of society in some way is this: do they want to be “taken care of,” by the Liberals or the Democrats or the NDP? Or do they want to move up, no longer being poor, no longer being on the outside? Then you go with the Republicans or the Conservatives.

Does Obama Want to be President?

Most commentators seem to think Obama’s acceptance speech was underwhelming. This is surprising, and interesting, because Obama’s reputation is built above all on his skills as an orator.

Which makes me wonder: does Obama still want to be president?

It almost goes without saying that at some level he does not; otherwise he could have generated more enthusiasm, more of his special skills, for this speech. It is in the end the only possible hypothesis here.

This is not surprising, given the stresses of the presidency. And it has happened before. Just last cycle, a lot of people complained of John McCain that he was not ready to do what it took to get elected. Others made the same complaint, in the primaries, about Fred Thompson. The same has been said in the past of Ted Kennedy, running against Jimmy Carter; Bob Dole, running against Bill Clinton; Bill Bradley, running against Al Gore. Candidates and politicians can lack enthusiasm for the job, just like anyone else.

Obama does not really have the personality to enjoy politics over the long term. You need to be the perfect extravert, always ready to chat up a stranger. You have to enjoy schmoozing, and cutting deals. Obama is not that type at all, as confirmed by many rumours around Washington, and now by Bob Woodward’s new book, The Price of Politics. He is not a natural negotiator, and he needs a lot of time to himself. His choice of Joe Biden, the ultimate ward pol (and not the more obvious choice, Hilary Clinton), as running mate may reflect his own awareness of his weakness in this regard.

Of course, given the chance to be America’s first black president, he was able to muster the enthusiasm he needed. But for a second term? The emotional payoff may no longer be sufficient. He has even stated, publicly, that he would not mind being a one-term president, if he got the right things done. If he loses now, his legacy is secure: he will always be the first black president. He will always be the one who gave the US universal health care, something presidents have been trying to do, and failing to do, since Nixon. He will always be the president who got Osama Bin Laden, and the president who ended the war in Iraq. In a second term, he probably faces a Republican-dominated congress, a bad economy, and an intractable debt problem, a “fiscal cliff”; frustrations are likely to multiply and accomplishments will not be so easy to come by.

Those around him, and the party, will of course have been pressuring him heavily all along to stay on; it is the done thing. Incumbency is not something to give up lightly. Now—at the moment of accepting the nomination—it is really too late to change his mind. Although it was really too late at least a year ago; he needed to give any successor proper notice to gear up a campaign.

An awareness that Obama’s heart is not really in it may explain the odd sense of panic that seems to be emanating from the Democratic campaign, which does not make sense based on either the polls or the electoral college vote. They may be worried, not only about Obama’s performance in speeches like this, but in the upcoming candidate debates. They have been trying to make the campaign about Romney and Ryan. This does not make much sense in a re-election campaign, but it may make some instinctive sense if you want to move the spotlight off your candidate. They may also fear Obama going off-script and his frustrations showing through.

The decision to move the acceptance speech from Panther/Bank of America stadium to a smaller venue suggests the organizers themselves feared the speech would not be very strong (although, of course, there are other possible reasons). The foul-up over the platform suggests again that Obama was, in the first place, not engaged, and in the second, not entirely prepared to be a team player. He had not taken an active interest in the platform to begin with, and, once a problem was suggested, he demanded changes overruling both the platform committee and the convention.

The happy golfer.

He was looking for excuses, perhaps, not to try.

All pure speculation, of course. God knows what chaos might be going on behind the scenes in the Obama campaign. I don’t.

Women's War on Democrats

Back in chains? Back, in chains. Painting by Ellen Su.

A new poll by ABC News/Washington Post has turned up a surprising result. Just as the Democrats have been hitting the Republicans for a supposed “War on Women,” and despite benefitting from an unearned error by Todd Akin in Missouri, Obama’s standing among women has actually suddenly dropped. A lot. Like a stone. A heavy one.

“The decline has occurred entirely among women registered voters – from 57-39 percent favorable-unfavorable in April to a numerically negative 46-50 percent now. That’s Obama’s lowest score among women voters – a focus of recent political positioning – in ABC/Post polls since he took office. Unusually, his rating among men, 50-47 percent favorable-unfavorable, is numerically better than it is among women, albeit not by a significant margin.”

What can it mean? I think it means conning or patronizing the average voter no longer works. It worked in the days before the Internet, before so much information was available to so many so easily. It no doubt would have worked even better before the invention of print, and before most folks could read. No longer.

Instead of buying the rap that the Republicans hated women, it looks as though women have reacted in anger to the absurdity of the charge, feeling there was an attempt to manipulate them, and/or that their intelligence was being insulted.

This bodes ill for the Democratic Party, and for “progressive” groups everywhere, because their electoral model depended on the formation and combination of client groups who could be led: grievance groups like gays, women, blacks, immigrants, Jews, Catholics, “the poor,” and so forth. Led by mad, patronizing statements like “They want to put y’all back in chains!” Republicans have more often addressed voters as individuals, and on the basis of reason.

If this is right, the current apparent Obama tactic of over-the-top attacks on the Republican ticket may be a very bad idea.

Slow Train Coming

My friend the left-wing columnist is stumped, he admits, by the recent US midterm elections. He attributes them to “unfocussed anger” from older people in the US upset over America's supposedly declining power in the world.

No kidding.

This is pretty dramatic evidence that there are two distinct cultures in contemporary North America, and at least one of them is completely ignoring the other.

In fact, my friend's reaction in and by itself seems to dramatically prove the validity of the concerns of the Tea Party.

Unfocussed anger? These elections had a laser focus like nothing I had seen in my lifetime. Not only were the issues laser-clear since early summer, but this election was almost perfectly predicted in the polls. In two sentences, here's the message:

1. Stop spending money, and
2. You're not listening and you don't care.

This is so obvious it is in the name of the “Tea Party” movement. Moreover, a nearly spontaneous mass movement like the TP appears to be has to coalesce around something that is pretty obvious to a vast mass of people, or else it is not going to happen. How is it then that, even if left-wingers do not agree with this perception, they cannot even be aware of other people having it? Obviously, they are not in fact listening, and they don't care. That is, they are not listening to anyone outside their own little clique, and they don't care what anyone else thinks if they are outside this clique. They are, in other words, a self-interested ruling class.

Some time last year, MSNBC featured a panel of economic experts loudly disagreeing online; as one often also sees on Fox News.

This, indeed, is the Fox News trademark; it is why they can call themselves “fair and balanced” and why the average person agrees with them. Yes, their commentators are all or almost all conservative-leaning; but that is not relevant. What matters is that they consistently have spokespeople on for both sides of any issue; so that people can feel pretty confident they are hearing all sides of the issue, from the horse's mouth, and any commentary is clearly labelled as such.

Besides getting both sides, and being respected for thinking for themselves [“We report; you decide.”], people love the excitement of hearing such arguments. MSNBC, more recently, has carved a niche for themselves by imitating the Fox format, but featuring star commentators resolutely on the left.

It is striking, and pathological, that the “legacy media,” print or broadcast, rarely does this. If and when they host what they purport to be two sides of an issue, it is usually faked, and this is visible from the plain fact that the two commentators usually agree on most things in their discussion. The permitted grounds for debate have been severely limited before the debate itself can begin. This is a visible attempt to limit public discourse, and it speaks directly to what the Tea Party and the midterm elections were all about.

To get back to MSNBC: one of the speakers, Rick Santelli, during a heated exchange when everyone was offering different opinions on the best economic path to follow, just threw up his hands and started repeating loudly and clearly, “STOP SPENDING! STOP SPENDING! STOP SPENDING!” Then he walked off camera.

Here's the link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K_7PwbxcDbs

It was a marvellously clarifying moment; it was the Tea Party in one simple sound bite; and so dramatic it was rerun many times, and garnered close to 200,000 hits on YouTube. I've heard the slogan repeated as a catch phrase a lot of times since, in what I think it a deliberate allusion: “Just stop spending.”

Few political messages in history have ever been clearer. Yet, even though it was on MCNBC, their own house channel, the left, and my friend, missed it altogether.

We are in a worldwide recession.

It is the worst since the Great Depression.

The average person is hurting.

A lot of people have lost a lot of money through over-borrowing; that's what happened in the housing bubble.

What do we all do when times get tough? What _must_ we all do? Basic, kitchen-table economics: we cut back our spending.

Yet everyone has recently been watching the US government increase spending and borrowing to unprecedented levels.

Americans know they or their children will be left with the bill.

What about this is hard to understand?

Here's another good video on the issue, as it affects Britain—where the new government has been behaving far more responsibly than the Democrats in Washington.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7gd6-zfeeaM

Granted that the left or Obama or the Democrats may subscribe to Keynesian economics. Keynes may even be right, or partly right—though most economists these days seem to believe he was wrong. Even so, why on earth would the left or Obama or the legacy media think they could go extravagantly against common sense without bothering to present their argument clearly and humbly to the general public every step of the way? This speaks to being out of touch. This speaks to a sense of privilege, of a right to rule.

The second, broader, issue of being out of touch was crystallized recently by an essayist in the American Spectator:

http://spectator.org/archives/2010/07/16/americas-ruling-class-and-the/print

It was picked up and pushed hard by Rush Limbaugh on talk radio; it was rushed into book form over the summer.

I think Codevilla's argument is actually a bit less than coherent; but it picked up on and laid out a growing sentiment in the US public, the same sentiment that generated the Tea Party movement.

The idea is strong and growing, in the US and across the developed world, thanks to the Internet busting what had been an information cartel, that the world is being run by a ruling class that looks out for its own interests, not the interests of the world or the general public, and deliberately limits access to information in order to sustain its power. One important result is that government is not truly representative. Hence the “Tea Party” reference: it's about taxation without representation.

This ruling class, however, seems to me to have sealed their own doom, through a spectacular complacency. The newspapering business is classic: it is not really that traditional newspapers are doomed by the technology. The technology ought to expand the market and boost the business, because it makes the product cheaper. The problem, rather, is that no one wants the product; and they now have alternatives. By contrast, new technology has done nothing to slow down talk radio—a positively antique medium--or Fox News. Instead, news organization after news organization is sinking into insolvency because of complacency and a sense of privilege which prevents them from stooping to see or react to the world as it really is; or indeed stooping to interest themselves in the wishes or needs of their audience.

In systematically choking the flow of information for their class benefit, they have, inevitably, as ruling classes usually end up doing, starved their own members of the very information needed for their survival.

As a result, instead of trying in any way to counter the obvious popular concerns that appeared over the past year or two, the Democrats and the “legacy press” seemed to do, and still seem to do, their darndest to reinforce the impression that they are out of touch and do not care. It was all amazing to watch: like someone standing on a track with a milk train bearing down on him, and no sign of awareness visible on his face at all. It seemed the dramatic final proof that the elite were not in synch with the rest of us, and indeed that they were not competent. Everybody else saw it coming a mile off down the prairie.

Now, even after the election, we are all seeing columns from the left still wondering what happened and positing arcane theories. Frankly, most of them boil down more or less to stating publicly that the average voter is stupid and not competent to govern his own affairs. This is the tone of a ruling class, not used to communicating with the public, and not interested in doing so.

It is all like the apocryphal comment attributed to Marie Antoinette--”Let them eat cake.”

This is an over-generalization, but, on the whole, the Republicans in the US have tended to be the party of the individual, and to have appealed to voters as individuals. The Democrats have tended to be the party of groups and group rights, and to have appealed to voters as members of some special interest group—blacks, women, Catholics, Southerners, the elderly, Hispanics, teachers, unions, auto workers, gays, and so forth.

With the growth of the Internet and the information explosion it has made possible, it is no longer nearly as viable to appeal to voters as members of special interest groups. It is no longer nearly as possible to speak only to their supposed “leaders,” themselves members of your own ruling class, and expect the average member of the group to tug his forelock and vote the party line. People are more able now to look into each issue for themselves and form their own opinion.

And, having the clear impression now from what new information they have seen on the Web that they have been systematically lied to by their leaders in the past, they are very much inclined to do so.

As a result, overall, the Republican Party's approach begins to work better than the Democratic Party's approach. I expect this advantage to grow. The Democrats will have to reinvent themselves as something else to survive. The Republicans, on the other hand, may be supplanted by the Tea Party.

The same dynamic seems to be at work in Canada and Europe. There are exceptions, of course, but traditional voting blocs and deference to traditional authorities are fading.

I see it as a new chapter in human freedom and a further advancement in the democratic ideal, at least on a par with the Renaissance.