Redstate

By trevino Posted in Elections — Comments (12) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »

My wife and I voted this morning in the shadow of the fall-colored Appalachian foothills of Maryland. There is something bucolic and archetypical about Election Day in this part of the country, where farmers, laborers and officeworkers of all races tramp in their work clothes -- some with hay stuck to their boots -- into the local middle school to cast their ballot. The orderly process of local democracy is a quietly magnificent sight, made moreso by the gratitude of those who know their good fortune. The woman in line behind us was of south Asian origin; she had been a refugee from Uganda during Idi Amin's genocide of a generation past. This year was her tenth as an American, and the shine of freedom had not worn off a bit. Seeing her, the comparatively new immigrant, casting her ballot amongst the men and women of pre-Revolutionary stock who still predominate in these parts was a welcome reminder that the American dream is not dead, and that our nation's gates are yet open to the weary and oppressed.

There's a line in The Killer Angels where the cause of the Civil War is summed up as, "Different dreams." So it was then; so it is now, it seems. The Democrats and the American left, taking their talking point from Ron Suskind, have taken to styling themselves of late as the "reality-based" community -- they arrogate the claim to objective truth itself (O irony, given the left's intellectual proclivities) as a means of differentiating themselves from their partisan opponents. The demands of reality are curious indeed: In reality, America's war in Iraq has nothing to do with the war on terror. In reality, the war in Iraq is an unwinnable quagmire. In reality, the Republican Party is a threat to American democracy. In reality, the GOP can only win through lies and vote suppression. In reality, George W. Bush is a profoundly stupid man. In reality, John Kerry both defended America and heroically protested an unjust war. In reality, tax cuts benefit only the wealthy. In reality, the Bush Presidency has been illegitimate since the Florida debacle. In reality, compassionate conservatism is a sham. In reality, the world hates and detests us for what our President has done. In reality, the American dream itself is dying. In reality, America is a nation in decline.

Every one of these postulates is false.

Read on.

That's the Big Lie of the self-styled reality-based community: it is, in the end, a fundamentally unreal worldview to which they cling. In the desperate desire to set themselves apart, and thereby to win, they feel that they must not only oppose the Republican Party and the American right -- they must delegitimize them and all they stand for. But they do a poor job of it: a smart adversary would define what the demonized other means before assaulting it. The American left, mad with accumulated bitterness and resentment from 1994 to impeachment to Florida to 2002 to today, simply lunges for the jugular. In their frenzied claws, they find an American flag: they become defeatists in the present war; they nominate as their standard-bearer a man who helped defeat us in the last big war; and they kick to the curb those Americans for whom God and country are not much-derided abstractions of the ignorant, but the true objects of devotion of the thoughtful man. The results do not give them pause. They do not care. Reality is on their side.

We believe in something different. A different dream, if you will. We recognize that the fox and the hedgehog are wise in their own way -- and that there are times for each. We know that the battlefield fortitude and endurance of a willful democracy will always outlast and defeat the fanaticism of tyranny's foot soldiers. We know that a free Iraq in the heart of a den of autocracies will be a dagger in their hearts. We know that insurgent bands cannot defeat or humiliate the United States -- only Americans can do that. We know that our political process is a contest of ideas, not a childish cartoon of villainous antidemocratic potentates versus righteous liberals. We know that a rising tide really does lift all boats -- and that a tax cut for all is a tax cut for all, not a wedge to spur resentment of those who have taken full advantage of America's bounty. We know that you can either defend America, or protest an unjust war -- not both. We know that this Administration has more than fulfilled the promise of compassionate conservatism (to the dismay of those of us inclined toward fiscal tight-fistedness, true) several times over -- as children with AIDS from the inner cities of America and Africa can attest. And we know that America's ascendancy is still not complete. We know that the American dream is alive.

We know that, somewhere in a small Maryland town this morning, an erstwhile refugee from deepest Africa cast her vote for the most powerful man on Earth. Alone, she is a refutation of all they believe and stand for.

Different dreams. That's what's at stake today. If you intrinsically believe this nation is headed for the broad, sunlit uplands by virtue of its founding principles and character, you vote with us now. If you viscerally fear the nature and proclivities of the masses, or if you see our nation on a headlong course to disaster, you vote with them. It's that simple. Don't think the dreams don't matter -- history is replete with examples of nations which rose or fell according to the self-imposed expectations of their people and the leaders they chose. France's Third Republic. Thatcherite Britain. Reagan's America. In some ways, the dream is what matters most of all.

The present-day dream of the Democrats and the American left was forged in opposition, bitterness, and defeat. Our was born of the boundless optimism in this great nation that both parties were once heir to. Should they win, they will be in the nightmarish quandary of having no one to define themselves against but themselves: lacking core principles independent of their enemy, their Administration will be chaotic, aimless, embittered -- and single-term. Should they lose, indeed, we may expect to see them de facto withdraw from the task of governing these United States: a fearsome prospect, and not one to be wished, but one to be expected. Either way, their dream leads toward the inevitable end of failure because they regard it as inevitable.

And what of our dream? It survives. Win or lose, we go on. A second Bush term finds us working diligently and constructively to rectify the failings of the first; a Kerry Administration finds us standing fast to save America's honor and potential from those who might diminish it. The Republican Party began as a lonely beacon against the slave power that threatened to overwhelm the American polity. The modern conservative movement began as a minority's struggle against the titanic zeitgeist of its day. We've been down before. We'll stand tall again. Because what animates us is not what animates them: not hatred for the enemy, but love for our country; not resentment of the foe, but optimism for our future; not bitterness at past wrongs, but gratitude for our predecessors. We know which is the more lasting, and which dream will prevail.

Godspeed, America. Red State and its allies will be here on Wednesday morning to carry on.