Leftists Love One-Party Authoritarianism

There's a lot of commentary today on Thomas Friedman's essay, "Our One-Party Democracy." Check all the buzz here. A ticklishly good response to Friedman is Jonah Goldberg's, "Thomas Friedman is a Liberal Fascist":

I cannot begin to tell you how this is exactly the argument that was made by American fans of Mussolini in the 1920s. It is exactly the argument that was made in defense of Stalin and Lenin before him (it's the argument that idiotic, dictator-envying leftists make in defense of Castro and Chavez today). It was the argument made by George Bernard Shaw who yearned for a strong progressive autocracy under a Mussolini, a Hitler or a Stalin (he wasn't picky in this regard). This is the argument for an "economic dictatorship" pushed by Stuart Chase and the New Dealers. It's the dream of Herbert Croly and a great many of the Progressives.

The whole thing is at the link.

Actually, I found another angle on this over at Ordinary Gentlemen. It appears that the Ordinary Gents have turned over a lot of the front-page blogging to a new Ordinary Gentle-Lady, "Jamelle." I have no idea who she is, but reading her stuff confirms that Ordinary Gentleman has completed the transition to a hardline leftist blog after flirting with the idiotic "liberaltarian" scam for most of the year. At least with Jamelle, who joins the explicity neo-Stalinist Freddie, these Sullivan-myrmidons can quit their stupid game of ideological musical chairs. (And E.D. Kain is the worst. Dishonest, deceitful, the guy simply masks a deep-seated hatred of right and good in the most opaque amalgam of liberaltarian bull.)

Anyway, what gets me going about these creeps is Jamelle's fundamental affirmation of one-party authoritarianism, with a little twist in favor of regime change USA:

The only thing I’d add to Friedman’s analysis is ... that it is a little inaccurate to describe the Democratic Party as singular or unified in any ideological sense. In reality, or at least as far as congressional Democrats are concerned, the Democratic Party is more of a loose coalition between a broadly center-left party (based in the Northeast and the West Coast) and a broadly center-right party (based in the Rust Belt, and rural areas throughout the West, Midwest, and the South). For liberals, this isn’t particularly good. Under a functional legislative system, where majority rule was given deference, this wouldn’t pose too much of a problem; the center-left party could rely on the center-right party to help craft and pass broadly acceptable legislation (while the right-wing party languished in irrelevance). The way it stands however, the right-wing party has pretty significant veto power over nearly every piece of legislation, which effectively means that any given piece of progressive legislation has to go through two conservative filters.

To take it back to Friedman’s point though, the fact of our tri-party legislature acts as yet another obstacle to one-party governing, since there simply isn’t enough ideological cohesion and group loyalty within the Democratic Party to pass anything approaching ambitious legislation. The real solution, of course, is a complete restructuring of our legislature into something approaching a Westminster-style parliamentary system, with multiple member districts and executive branch drawn largely from the legislature. However, since that is also incredibly unlikely, we’ll probably have to look for other ways to make Congress more responsive to the majority party (like eliminating the filibuster, or revamping the committee system!).

For those in the know, the Westminster model is often referred as an "elective dictatorship." The prime minister is drawn from the majority in the Commons, and the party in power can fall on a vote of no confidence. There's really no incentive for MPs to pull down the government, however, since that means that they'll have to go before the voters in a new election. Sure, it's a long way from Westminster to an authoritarian one-party regime. But what's interesting in Jamelle's case is the outright hostility to American constitutionalism. A solid reading of James Madison or the Federalist Papers indicates that the structure of American political insitutions works to prevent tyranny. To do away with the presidential model is revolutionary AND authoritarian. No serious analyst makes such proposals. And this mention of abolishing the filibuster is more hostility to the protection of minority rights. Leftists just don't care about democratic safeguards - they're all about power, the more demonic the better. Jamelle's piece is a good indicator of just how whacked are the folks at Ordinary Gentleman. The rank attacks on conservatives we see over there, including Sarah Palin, reveal not only a total alienation from genuine heartland values, but a mean-spiritedness that's inherent to leftists politics.

These folks are awful people. Jamelle's commentary just confirms that Ordinary Gentlemen have become the same kind of liberal fascists that Jonah Goldberg sees in Tom Friedman.