Liberalism: Out of a Job

Richard Fernandez:

... the political crisis now facing the president stems precisely from the fact that he is being held responsible for an economy that is falling in a seemingly bottomless abyss. The jobs report is likely to be only one of several pieces of forthcoming bad news: the sovereign debt crisis is spinning out of control in Europe, China’s bubble may have burst, Japan is still crippled from decades of stagnation made worse by a tsunami, the Middle East is in flames.

Not just “the Democratic Party as most of us have known it,” but the post World War II structure may abruptly be juddering to an end. We are living through the crisis of the elites, whose ranks encompass but a few of the “oligarchy” Hamsher fears. Big government, multinational institutions, giant welfare states, and large scale public sector unionism may be dying.

Liberalism is not going to go down quietly, witness what is happening in Wisconsin, a state that Ann Althouse incorrectly characterizes as "clean-cut" when it comes to politics.

What we’re seeing is what happens when the ruling class loses control. Wisconsin is Syria without the gunfire. The Liberals have been in control for so long simply won’t accept the last election. As long as Republicans accepted defeat gracefully, they were tolerated as a voiceless, powerless minority whose function was to as demonstrate that there were two parties. But the thought of them actually exercising power, and moreover exercising power in opposition to established policies … well who in the hell did they think they were?

Wisconsin’s Democrat politicians are demonstrating that they are no more clean-cut than any Chicago thug. They did not just discover the power of mob rule; they knew how to use it as soon as their hold on the state was loosened.

The battling harridans on the Wisconsin Supreme Court bench are not clean-cut jurists but gutter politicos who don’t hesitate to make sexist accusations of assault if it means that they can regain control.

Surface tranquility is always seen in one-party states. The willingness to use violence and thuggery usually keeps things quiet until the people rebel. That’s when violence breaks out and people who had no problem with the regime ask “what happened, everyone was so happy … and proud … and clean-cut.”