Gordon -- Obama and the Liberal Paradigm

John Steele Gordon has written an interesting commentary called Obama and the Liberal Paradigm The sheep are quite capable of looking out for themselves. Someone tell the Democrats.  He illustrates the Democrat failure to understand this with Valerie Jarrett's nonsense about "talking truth to power", even as she sits in the White House filling the emptiness in the brain of the President.  I do not endorse some of his version of the history, namely the accomplishments of FDR, in this, but his viewpoint is worth understanding and his description of the Democrat paradigm is essentially accurate.  That description of the Democrat paradigm formed in the late 1800s is:

The basic premise is that the population is divided into three groups. By far the largest group consists of ordinary people. They are good, God fearing and hard working. But they are also often ignorant of their true self-interest ("What's the matter with Kansas?") and thus easily misled. They are also politically weak and thus need to be protected from the second group, which is politically strong. [He later calls these the sheep.]

The second group, far smaller, are the affluent, successful businessmen, corporate executives and financiers. Capitalists in other words. They are the establishment and it is the establishment that, by definition, runs the country. They are, in the liberal paradigm, smart, ruthless and totally self-interested. They care only about personal gain.[He later calls these the wolves.]

And then there is the third group, those few, those happy few, that band of brothers, the educated and enlightened liberals, who understand what is really going on and want to help the members of the first group to live a better and more satisfying life. Unlike the establishment, which supposedly cares only for itself, liberals supposedly care for society as a whole and have no personal self-interest.  [He later calls these the shepherds.]

He then attempts to describe why this paradigm no longer applies with his version of history and the effect of government under FDR and 40 years of Democrat rule having sufficiently penned the wolves.  The situation now is:

Not only does the liberal paradigm not even come close to agreeing with the social and economic reality on the ground today, worse, it has largely congealed into a political religion, especially in the nearly 30 years since Ronald Reagan shifted the nation's political center of gravity, just as FDR had done 48 years earlier. Since liberals care about the sheep, all who disagree with liberalism must not, making them morally inferior if not downright immoral. Thus the nastiness in American politics is largely on the left. Whatever you think of Sarah Palin, her treatment in the liberal press was ugliness personified.

But in a world where a majority of Americans work at white-collar jobs, have high-school and college degrees, own their own homes, and hold financial securities in their own right, the so-called wolves are now a majority. If liberals don't begin to take that fact into account in formulating policy, the Obama administration will not only be an unsuccessful liberal administration, it may well be the last liberal administration.

Yesterday's election results would appear to indicate that the supposed sheep are beginning to become aware that they are actually wolves and very capable of taking care of themselves.  The shepherds may soon find themselves out of a job.  It is about time that Americans remembered that they have prospered mightily in a free enterprise environment, as educated and self-motivated workers whose work is generally in high demand, and as investors in stocks, bonds, and homes.  Almost all Americans are the Capitalists so hated by the socialist Democrat Party.