Sunday, December 12, 2004

Un-European

From The American Spectator:
During the presidential campaign, Democrats rejected the suggestion that they were out of touch with mainstream America even as their candidate bragged about non-American support. That Kerry had to cite endorsements from foreign leaders as a political prop was a tacit admission of the party's estrangement from America: the less support the Democrats could find inside the country, the more they turned to support for their views from outside it.

In American political history, modern Democrats are an anomalous creature, a party that seeks to win elections by running on foreign endorsements while regarding many of their countrymen as anthropological curiosities foreign to them. Running against "conservatism" at some point turned into running against America for the Democrats, and as they grew more alienated from mainstream America the more they came to depend on foreign fashions and views to justify their agenda, whether it was Democratic activists citing Danish jurisprudence to dismantle marriage or Bill Clinton hiding behind the opinion of "the world" during his impeachment.

Listen closely enough to what the Democrats say and it becomes clear that their first problem is not with modern conservatism but with America itself. They simply don't agree with America's founding philosophy, which is why they find basic American customs like reciting the Pledge of Allegiance distasteful and why their judges are constantly trying to rewrite the founding documents of the country.

The movement to smuggle foreign jurisprudence into Supreme Court opinions, which picks up speed each year, is a de facto left-wing Constitutional Convention. That is, the Democrats wouldn't dare call openly for a Constitutional Convention to write a new Constitution resting on liberal European foundations but they are in effect holding one anyways through the courts. Judicial activism is an ongoing Constitutional Convention, which has the additional advantage for Democrats of allowing them to subject the Constitution to foreign editing and revision without risking the wrath of the American people. (Justice Stephen Breyer let the cat out of the bag about what they are up to when he said, "Our Constitution and how it fits into the governing documents of other nations, I think, will be a challenge for the next generations.")

When the Democrats say something is "un-American," they usually mean something very American that they don't want in America anymore. Very reasonable American expectations fortified by history and custom, such as placing crosses and creches in public places, are suddenly declared "un-American" when what the Democrats really mean is un-European.

Yes, and I've never understood the whole "we need to be more like Europe" angle. For Heaven's sake, this country was founded by people who escaped from Europe!

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