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by Christopher Chantrill
December 22, 2006 at 3:48 am
FOR SOME TIME many people have defined the main political division in the United States as the Mommy Party and the Daddy Party. Democrats represent people who believe that the government should mother the American people. And Republicans represent people who believe that the government should be a strict father.
But now comes Matthew Continetti with the news that the real cleavage between the parties is on peace vs. war. The Democratic Party is the Peace Party and the Republican Party is the War Party.
[The] invasion of Iraq seem to have accelerated a shift begun some 30 years ago: The Democratic party is increasingly linked with the attitudes, tendencies, and policies of peace, whereas the Republican party is increasingly linked with the maintenance and projection of American military power.
Using this analysis the mid-term election of 2006 represents a collapse in support for the war among independents.
Continetti finds that partisan discord over foreign policy has been the norm in US history. The relative agreement during the early Cold War period was unique, and did not really start to break down until after the Vietnam War, really taking off in the Reagan years when Democrats began to identify against the Reagan military buildup.
To Continetti, the new divide between the Peace Party and the Power Party raises all sorts of questions.
But what happens when the peace party holds power of its own and faces a world in which illiberalism is on the march? What happens when the power party faces a revolt in its own ranks? What does it mean when the party of the social elite identifies more closely with those who wish to constrain American power than with those who wish to use it? Will an American failure in Iraq discredit the power party, just as the urban riots and other social dislocations of the late 1960s discredited the party of the Great Society?
The divide promises an interesting political future. The Democrats believe that war is never the answer. We shall see. On the other hand the Republicans have clearly burned their fingers in the mess in Iraq. Projection of power is not always the answer.
It seems fairly obvious that the mess in Iraq is going to discredit the Power Party. For now. The question is, what comes next?
Sphere: Related Content | | printChristopher Chantrill blogs at www.roadtothemiddleclass.com. His Road to the Middle Class is forthcoming.
Sorry, I was laughing so hard, my fingers were getting tangled. "Worries" should be "concerns." "Peace" should be "piece."
I've been worried that this site might be lacking in humor, but to label the Republican's the "power party" surely is to assuage all worries. Lot of grins and kneeslappings there, friends. This whole peace needs to be seriously rethought. The Republican's can be best described as the party of national suicide; the Democrats of national murder. And the common end being . . .
When we began first to preach these things, the people appeared as awakened from the sleep of agesthey seemed to see for the first time that they were responsible beings...
Finke, Stark, The Churching of America, 1776-1990
In 1911... at least nine million of the 12 million covered by national insurance were already members of voluntary sick pay schemes. A similar proportion were also eligible for medical care.
Green, Reinventing Civil Society
We have met with families in which for weeks together, not an article of sustenance but potatoes had been used; yet for every child the hard-earned sum was provided to send them to school.
E. G. West, Education and the State
Law being too tenuous to rely upon in [Ulster and the Scottish borderlands], people developed patterns of settling differences by personal fighting and family feuds.
Thomas Sowell, Conquests and Cultures
The primary thing to keep in mind about German and Russian thought since
1800 is that it takes for granted that the Cartesian, Lockean or Humean scientific and
philosophical conception of man and nature... has been shown by indisputable evidence to be
inadequate.
F.S.C. Northrop, The Meeting of East and West
Inquiry does not start unless there is a problem... It is the problem and its
characteristics revealed by analysis which guides one first to the relevant facts and then,
once the relevant facts are known, to the relevant hypotheses.
F.S.C. Northrop, The Logic of the Sciences and the Humanities
But I saw a man yesterday who knows a fellow who had it from a chappie
that said that Urquhart had been dipping himself a bit recklessly off the deep end.
Freddy Arbuthnot
Dorothy L. Sayers, Strong Poison
I mean three systems in one: a predominantly market economy; a polity respectful of the rights of the individual to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; and a system of cultural institutions moved by ideals of liberty and justice for all.
In short, three dynamic and converging systems functioning as one: a democratic polity, an economy based on markets and incentives, and a moral-cultural system which is plural and, in the largest sense, liberal.
Michael Novak, The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism
The incentive that impels a man to act is always some uneasiness...
But to make a man act [he must have]
the expectation that purposeful behavior has the power to remove
or at least to alleviate the felt uneasiness.
Ludwig von Mises, Human Action
[In the] higher Christian churches… they saunter through the liturgy like Mohawks along a string of scaffolding who have long since forgotten their danger. If God were to blast such a service to bits, the congregation would be, I believe, genuinely shocked. But in the low churches you expect it every minute.
Annie Dillard, Holy the Firm
When we received Christ, Phil added, all of a sudden we now had a rule book to go by, and when we had problems the preacher was right there to give us the answers.
James M. Ault, Jr., Spirit and Flesh
The recognition and integration of extralegal property rights [in the Homestead Act] was a key element in the United States becoming the most important market economy and producer of capital in the world.
Hernando de Soto, The Mystery of Capital
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©2007 Christopher Chantrill