Zeitgeist of the Status Quo

Ann Curry: "Today House Democrats are poised to pick Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi as Minority Leader. The California Democrat would be the first woman ever elected a party leader in Congress. It is now 7:07 a.m. You are now up to date from the news desk. Let’s now turn back to Matt, Katie, and Al."

Katie Couric: "Is it okay to say, ‘You go girl!’?"

Democrats under Lyndon Johnson ushered in the last great social change in America, civil rights legislation in 1964-65 that made the U.S. government color-blind. This spirit of equality carried over to fair treatment of women and non-Black minorities. It’s the Democrats’ last big idea, leaving that party, based in the old cities of the East and West coasts, the party of the status quo: the New Deal agenda of government fixing your life, creating equality, and employing Democrats to make it happen.

Here’s why the Democrats’ protect-the-status-quo agenda isn’t mine:

Democrats are the party of special interests. The basic party starts with brains plus labor unions (promising a working class majority), has added women (women hold up half of heaven), and expects the support of minorities (25% of the white population plus all minorities equals a majority). To retain these groups, Democrats keep pounding at a special interest agenda of pro-labor, pro-women, pro-each separate minority issues. It's what they are. Change, and they wouldn't be Democrats.

Democrats are the party of the protected classes, those who benefit from absolutist interpretations of the Bill of Rights. That means especially plaintiff attorneys and the media broadly defined to include entertainment. In this world, I find, absolutes rule, sensationalism triumphs, and anecdotes supplant hard research as journalism substitutes for history. Journalists and attorneys play off each other—attorneys want publicity, and journalists want the sensational examples of crime and corruption attorneys uncover. Both thrive on catalogued wrongs, not balanced analysis.

Democrats the party of imputs, not outputs, symbolized by public education. Government schools are the worst, doing everything they can to avoid being financed according to their results. Yet the "imput" disease is government-wide. Government wants to talk about how many they serve, not how well they are served.

At home, Democrats favor higher taxes, which pays for more government and provides money to do good, even when the evidence shows higher taxes hurt growth and total tax collections. Abroad, Democrats favor a New Deal for the world’s poor, financed out of the money saved by giving up war, even when the evidence shows confronting terror sooner saves lives and money later.

As a lifelong bureaucrat, I favor competition and measured outputs. As a conservative, I believe in confronting evil, not wishing it away. I see Republicans--not Democrats--trying to change America and the world.