Common Sense on ...

The left and public perception

E MUST WAKE our fellow citizens to the subversion of our republic by George W. Bush and his plans for perpetual war. To do this, we must make them furious. But not at us.

This has been an ongoing error on the left.

There is a presupposition by some that those "in the know" will correctly interpret various vandalistic vicissitudes and react with anger properly directed at its intended target.

Such naïveté can be ruinous.

The vast majority, whom we are purportedly trying to convince of the justice of our cause, will instead perceive such vicissitudes as nothing more than malicious mischief, and will wish the perpetrators and all their associates safely in jail.

Our object, then, must be to think; to consider, before every public speech or act, how this speech or act will be received by the bulk of our people. We must do this still more carefully than the right, for we have more to gain, and therefore also potentially more to lose, than does that faction. And we must do this infinitely more skilfully than we have heretofore.

America's fabled "political pendulum" has begun already to swing back to the left. But this swing may be no longer or more consequential than that of 1992 if the right, which has been "pulling" the national political spectrum since 1978 to the extent that Barry Goldwater is now reviled in some quarters for having been a "liberal," gets its way yet again.

It's our responsibility to stop that.

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