Around the 2000 election, I wondered if America’s nearly equal partisan split was due mostly to cynical tactical precision among campaign professionals.
The divide wasn’t purely ideological. Both parties, for example, contained and sought the votes of fiscal hawks and drunken sailors. If the Republican and Democratic machines started further apart than 48-48, it wasn’t because the nation was trending significantly one way or the other, just that a candidate and his advisers were failing to do their jobs. Victory hinged on nicking a few voters off the centrist fringe of the army opposite and winning with 50.1% of the nation while the enemy lost with 49.9%.
The idea that neither party owned a particular ideology has gained currency since then, especially during the Trump presidency. Didn’t Republicans favor free trade? Weren’t Democrats for the little guy once? Our first national Washington Examiner magazine, on New Year’s Day 2019, probed this idea under the headline, “Who’s Right?”
A similar thought was sparked for me again recently by a Twitter user, Noah Carl, who insightfully listed “ideas that used to be right-wing but are now left-wing.” His first three were: “Adopting things from other cultures is bad,” “What your ancestors did matters,” and “Large corporations can be a force for good.”
This is smart and true. Right-wing chauvinism that once spurned foreign cultures has mutated into left-wing condemnation of cultural appropriation. The old Left’s disdain for lineage and inherited wealth has been obliterated by the new Left’s victim archaeology, disinterring ancient grievances and using the supposed sins of forebears to condemn descendants. And it is now the Democrats, the Left, who love crony capitalism and expect moral leadership from Big Business, while Republicans champion individuals and small business.
Plus ça change!
One thing that doesn’t change, sadly, is the passage of these days of shutdown. One blurs into the next. Can you believe we’re now into our third month? It seems impossible, yet also an eternity.
Time has always been a great equalizer, but in this week’s magazine, Jay Nordlinger writes that it is especially so during the pandemic. Amelia Tait delves into the new craze for jigsaw puzzles and games that we’ve seized on to help us while away our long confinement.
In our cover story, “Killing hospitals to save healthcare?,” Kaylee McGhee looks at the dark irony that we’ve slowed the spread of the coronavirus with the lockdown, but that it has also done terrible damage by creating worse health problems and bankrupting hospitals.
Jay Cost challenges the idea that any workers are “inessential” in a free market, which is the same thing as our free society.
If the lockdown is driving you to drink, Eric Felten has a quick guide to excellent but thrifty options.
Clark Neily sets aside the pandemic entirely and writes of historic corruption at the Justice Department, and of where the Michael Flynn case, a scandal, is likely to end up.
