The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

Marty Peretz and the Inevitable Obsolescence of Yesterday’s Liberalism

Posted on | December 28, 2010 | 2 Comments

One of the beauties of conservatism is that, if we define it as William F. Buckley Jr. did — standing athwart history, yelling “stop!” — the conservative never need to change his ideology, which is essentially a stance of opposition to whatever innovations liberals propose on their march toward the Utopia of Social Justice.

The issues that make headlines may change from day to day and year to year, but the wrongness of liberalism is so reliable you can set your watch by it. Today’s latest “innovative” liberal policy idea is inevitably revealed, on closer examination, to be just a re-tread of old liberal ideas that have failed before. And the conservative stands firm in opposition.

Pity, then, the liberal.  He must constantly update his beliefs to keep pace with the relentless advance of Progress.

Once upon a time, Marty Peretz was a liberal in good standing, but has now been effectively purged by what I call the Sirhan Sirhan wing of the Democratic Party. And now a fascinating article in New York magazine shows us 71-year-old Marty Peretz as a lonely and embittered exile, unable to comprehend how liberalism has failed him or, as Peretz’s critics would say, how he has failed liberalism.

Category: Liberals

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