"It was as if Democrats live in a utopian dream world, divorced from the daily demands and realities of organization and management." -- Camille Paglia

"As if"?

Thanks for a good post. If Paglia can understand what's wrong with the Democrats and articulate it this clearly, why does she still insist on voting for them? Some mysteries will never be solved.

Pagia wrote:

" They see no danger in expanding government authority and intrusive, wasteful bureaucracy. This is, I submit, a stunning turn away from the anti-authority and anti-establishment principles of authentic 1960s leftism."

Because for most of them 1960's leftism was a fashion accessory, not a well-considered political stance. Self-indulgent, feel good, paternalist, corporatist leftoidism is the natural politics of the political and philosophical uneducated types typically turned out by liberal arts programs and their relatives. And J school types who all hope to be the next Upton Sinclair or Woodward and Bernstein and reveal that really big story which will overturn the established order. Except such events are rare, so they make it up most of the time. (See Jayson Blair, Steve Glass, Brian Barnicle, etc, ad nauseum)

What I don't get is why so many of my fellow engineers are in the same group as above. You'd think they'd have a better grounding in reality and the difference between what sounds good and what works.

This will probably get me banned, but here goes.
Camille Paglia is quoted as saying "Why has the Democratic Party become so arrogantly detached from ordinary Americans?"

That sounds like stuff I have heard about the Republican Party.

It was clearly true of past "Parties" including the National Socialists" of Germany and the panopoly of the USSR.

And others.

Could it be that the problem is the concept of "party" to whom we owe allegiance, pay dues, and wait for, for our care and concerns.

Well, MMM, I think many engineers fall victim to corporate leftoidism for the same reason that the liberal arts types do--mainly because it is easier to go along to get along rather than to question the premises behind it.

Another reason I've long suspected is that some of them may be more susceptible to indoctrination in their required liberal arts classes simply because not all of them have a deep enough knowledge or history, philosophy or literature to see through the politicized versions of these subjects offered in such courses.

This will probably get me banned

PUH-LEEEZE!

I must protest even such a suggestion. In all these years, I have never banned a single commenter! The closest I came was when I blocked an obscene URL that insulted another blogger -- and only then after repeatedly asking him to stop it.

That sounds like stuff I have heard about the Republican Party.

Yes it does. You probably could have heard it here.
I think the reason the GOP lost the last two elections was exactly because of that.

I do wish you had left out the nazis and commies, you could have used just about any party.

Could it be that the problem is the concept of "party" to whom we owe allegiance, pay dues, and wait for, for our care and concerns.

I don't speak for but me, but while I usually vote GOP, I'm an anti-Democrat.

When people tell me that I have to be nicer about Republicans I always respond, "It's not my job to get Republicans elected, it's their job to earn my vote".
I have a feeling Eric feels similarly. I could be wrong.

I'm a fan of personal responsibility, so that leaves me out of both parties, but out of the Democratic party more.
And occasionally, just occasionally, the GOP gets it.
Ronnie Raygun and then the Contract With America were two good things for the GOP.

Why would engineers seem comfortable with the left?

Because they have not examined the matter carefully. And because they are engineers.

I offer this suggestion; engineers think those governing are more capable, knowledgeable, and principled than they are.

Thus an engineer trusts that government can run society well if only it has sufficient power.

The engineer knows he is to be guided by proved principles. Tests are to be rigorous. And what works is to be kept, and what fails discarded.

He accepts reality. Not every good thing he devises may be affordable. He does not hate the accountants who say this.

And he makes the mistake of thinking politics is, or at least can be, conducted the same way.

The idea is appealing. And the left, socialism, promises that is so.

Other 'isms' do not.

The more I see the revolt of the flyover country folk, the Joe the Plumber types, Saran Palin, the Tea Party people, the more I remember what my Russian professor (who finally got out of the USSR in 1958 after time in the Gulag) referred to constantly in her lectures on life in the Soviet Union: The Nomenklatura's total disdain and contempt for the ordinary Soviet "citizen". Our "betters" are affronted and insulted by people who work hard and fairly for a living, love their families and friends, participate in their communities (largely in churches or charitable organizations), believe that virtues like honor, duty, integrity are binding, and who have the unmitigated gall to question the local Nomenklatura's ukases (sorry, pun intended).

In Stevens County, Washington, there's been an uproar because the bureaucrats in Child Protective Services, along with the local Nomenklatura have refused to place children, taken from their parents, with relatives who go to church, are patriotic, and conservative, because they are "unfit". They are vagrantly open about this. As one of them has said, off the record, "These are people who shop at Walmart." You can only tell somebody they're stupid, a dumbfuck or whatever for so long. Eventually the lesson sinks in and when it does the day of reckoning will not be pleasant.

How has "liberty" become the inspirational code word of conservatives rather than liberals?

"Liberty" was never the code word of liberals, "libertinism" was, though leftists often confuse the two. It is no accident that it was the Democrats who obstructed passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

Liberty, liberate, liberal, and libertine all stem from the same Latin root "Liber" -- meaning free. The word "libertine" traditionally meant "free thinker" and sometimes "Antinomian" (the Calvinist heresy holding that the Christian Elect need not obey moral laws). It also has a secondary meaning, which is "a licentious man." Normally, a licentious man is thought of as immoral in the lewd and lascivious sense. Because of these multiple meanings, the word can be misleading, and when the word is used, it causes confusion, because it tends to conflate a philosophy which might tolerate lascivious acts with the commission of the acts themselves.

I think think it is incorrect to characterize traditional liberalism as being libertinism -- especially when the meaning of the word is not made clear.

BTW, I don't think the Democrats who obstructed the 1964 Civil Rights Act can be fairly characterized as either liberals or libertines.