One And The Same

Kim du Toit
May 13, 2008
9:00 AM CDT
· News Wire

Here’s an interesting take on Britain’s Labour Party (and the effects of NuLabour on the ancien regime):

Now, like a character in a cartoon who fails to realise for the longest time that the ledge he had been standing on has disappeared, it has suddenly looked down in horror at the emptiness and plummeted to the ground.

But in all this talk of the death of the New Labour dream, something is being overlooked. In order to reinvent itself, Labour definitively killed off its old self. If the new incarnation is done for, is there anything left of Labour? Martin Kettle, writing in the Guardian at the weekend, seemed to be suggesting apocalypse: “The entire post-1918 Labour project of government by a single nationwide class-based party of the Left may now be in terminal jeopardy.”

But hey, I thought that New Labour was all about getting rid of the idea of a “class-based” party. What happened to “governing for the whole country”, and leaving behind the old sectarianism of Arthur Scargill and Michael Foot?

In their confusion and disarray, people on the Left seem to be losing a grip on the famous “narrative” of the last decade, and they are especially at sea about where the “c” word fits into the picture. Suddenly everybody is talking about class, or rather talking about the fact that it doesn’t seem to matter any more, as if this were a revelation.

Why would this be interesting, at least to Americans?

Because we’ve never had a “workers’ paradise"-style government (aided, in no small part, by the non-existence of “class” in the British sense). In addition, labor unions have gone from their heyday of strength in the Hoffa Senior years to a pale shadow today.

In fact, where the parallels occur between the Labour Party and the Democrats is that Tony Blair pulled his party to the center, co-opting many Conservative Party planks as his own—and if that sounds familiar, it’s because Bill Clinton did the same in the early 1990s.

Now, of course, NuLabour has left Labour in ruins, as the ill-effects of statist government are being felt by Brits everywhere, and statism is exposed for the inefficient (and ultimately brutal) political system that it is.

What’s even more interesting is that both Democrat candidates are statists in the Old Labour mold—Hillary Clinton is not Bill, in that she is more of a doctrinaire socialist than he ever was, and Barack Obama is even more of a socialist than Hillary Clinton. Both talk of class (in the American sense of “the rich” vs. “ordinary people"), and both foresee a much-expanded government as the cure for all our society’s supposed ills.

And that, right there, is the difference between America and Britain—because America is not broken, and the “ills” which the Democrats would seek to address are either miniscule, or have already been dealt with in previous political generations. Consider, for example, the “race” issue in the 1950s compared with the “race” issue today, or the “working class” of the 1930s vs. the same class today, and the gaping differences are immediately apparent.

Immediately apparent, that is, except to Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and all the rest of the liberal Democrats, who are still fighting their race- and labor battles as though the issues are still those of the 1950s and 1930s respectively.

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Comments

Bottom of Comments | Comment Form | Original Post

But does America realize it’s not broke?

My epiphany came in summer ‘82 when listening to Larry King “blame America first” late night radio.  There was a cognitive dissonance in my head that I couldn’t resolve for a while. Then it hit me.  “We’re the good guys!”

We’re not perfect but we ARE the good guys and America is still the “Last, Best Hope.

blackeagle603 | 5/13/2008 01:03 PM CDT |

“With no great struggle, come no great people.” That’s too bad for Hillary and Obama and many other liberals looking for great “change.”

They are The Third Man’s modern equivalent to cuckoo clocks.

In 100 years, neither of them will be remembered.

arkythehun | 5/13/2008 01:29 PM CDT |

I sometimes think that what we have in the US is a version of “tribes” as opposed to class.  Instead of the traditonal pryamidal graph of society with the poor on the bottom, the ultra rich on top, and the middle class in the middle we have a Venn diagagram of overlapping and intersectin groups.  The liberal groups don’t overlap or intersect with the whole all that much so they tend to exists in groups that beleive there are “classes” even when they don’t interact with them.  They tend to have a more exclusive tribal language and will exhibit more forms of canabilism when stressed.

toad | 5/14/2008 04:30 AM CDT |

When you’re standing back and looking at history from a remote perspective, the markers of “The End of Golden Ages,” reach out and slap you with an all but nuclear stroke.

“Panta chiona fiona” (all things held in common) didn’t work for Spartacus, it hasn’t worked for any of his successors, yet, the left stumbles along chanting a Meme that doesn’t rhyme, simply a cacophony of jumbled words with no melody or coherent drumbeat, thinking to save the world while destroying it.

If you haven’t seen it, you need to watch Chief Kathy Lanier’s performance in Mayor Fenty’s Press Conference following the Oral Arguments in “DC vs Heller.” She’s singing the ‘Swan Song of Golden Ages’ (Marker #1)..."We are civilized, not everyone needs weapons.” She declares that they haven’t thrown the whole 2nd Amendment away, the Police, Armed Guards, the Military, and, the various Alphabet Agencies have all the weapons needed to protect the people of DC...and, repeats, “Not everyone needs weapons.”

She seems to believe that the 2nd Amendment was referring to an official government Militia. To me, that’s a declaration of War by those Mr Jefferson, Mr Madison, Mr Hamilton, Mr Coxe, Mr Adams, Henry and the other Founding Fathers intended the 2nd Amendment to protect us from.

They’ve declared War...now, where do we go from here?

Gordon DeSpain | 5/14/2008 08:59 AM CDT |

Of course, as a non-American and non-Brit, it might be difficult to assess whether the recent British experiences are reflected in the US.

However, again as a non-black, I am amazed at the appearance of race issues in both countries ... as well as in Canada.  I do not mean to suggest that racism does not occur in these three countries.  It does ... just as antisemitism rears its ugly head form time to time.  But as a club to bludgeon whites?  Here, whenever a black youth runs afoul of society, there will be accusations of racism ... or profiling ... or similar attempts at dodging the reality of criminal activity.

Still, class as the Brits know it has never been a part of either of our North American countries.  From tales by ex-pats, it is still alive and kicking in what used to be Great Britain.

I fear for the US if the Democrats succeed in reviving the (now) contrived accusations of the ‘30s and the ‘50s.  There are no perfect countries, cultures or civilizations.  I do think that the rest coul dwell emulate the US, Canada, Australia or New Zealand, though.

George Smith | 5/14/2008 09:33 AM CDT |

I thought it was Thatcher who gave the Left the problem of the classless society (as I recall a number of British putative haters of the class system admitting in the 1980’s), and their inability to come up with a response. Assumedly NuLabour was that fraudulent response.

Ugh, if we had a competitive press in the U.S. instead of the partisan crap we’ve got.

TraitorHater | 5/16/2008 02:08 AM CDT |

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