Reflections at the End of Election Season

This note was sent today to our contributors, and we would like to share it with our readers as well.

Dear friends,

“In a revolutionary epoch, sometimes men taste every novelty, sicken of them all, and return to ancient principles so long disused that they seem refreshingly hearty when they are rediscovered.” At least that’s what Russell Kirk wrote.

The prevailing political ideas of a society come and go as if in a cycle. Those who study politics observe how difficult it is for one political party to hold the White House for more than three consecutive terms. In 1964, electing Mr. Reagan in 1980 may have seemed beyond imagination. And with the exception of Bobby Kennedy, few may have anticipated an Obama administration only 20 years after that of Reagan’s. This is not a refutation specifically of those arguments, which suggest that history progresses slowly but surely towards an endpoint. Perhaps if anything it is more similar to noticing how glasses with big rims come in and out of fashion every twenty years or so.

Democracy is about courting adherents just as feudalism may have been about capturing the loyalty of lords.

Democracy is about courting adherents just as feudalism may have been about capturing the loyalty of lords. Democracy is a political system about providing information and insights to voters to persuade them to see the issues as you do and to vote that way. That is the goal of any publication with a mission statement that seeks to uphold a fixed set of values. Unfortunately, it has become very effective to smear candidates with certain words that stick rather than to critique their policy. On our more optimistic days, we believe that the policies and positions we generally favor are so persuasive, so difficult to argue against or provide historical evidence to the contrary, that our opponents have no choice but to call us names, insult us, engage in elaborate schemes of character assassination.