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| The Country Mouse |
The City Mouse, now retired, was once an American Studies professor back in the day when American Studies was yet a new pedagogical venture. She has lived in one of Connecticut’s major cities, Stamford, now finds herself within hailing distance of a second, Hartford, the state’s Capital City, and talks in full sentences.
She still considers herself a John F. Kennedy Democrat and
draws a sharp, categorical distinction between Kennedy liberalism and postmodern
progressivism.
“President Kennedy,” she wrote to me some time ago, “has been buried twice: once in 1963 following his assassination, and more recently following the continuing upsurge of postmodern progressivism, to which I am temperamentally opposed.
“Not,” she added, “that anyone in my
ideologically battered party would take my temperament into account when making
political judgments.
“Old-goat Democrats, such as Biden, Pelosi and others, most
of whom have now brashly and publicly turned a new postmodern, progressive
leaf, have thrown their lot in with new-age progressives who are not – repeat not
– liberals. I know that history has a way of rolling on, usually over the
graves of consequential men and women such as Kennedy and Governor of Connecticut
Ella Grasso, but I’m still alive and do not expect to be rolled over anytime
soon, if it may please God.”
The Country Mouse is a journalist now retired – “Thanks be
to God!” he says, with an unmistakable harrumph! – “from a profession that has
lost its way.”
“In what sense,” I asked him, “has journalism lost its way?”
“The media’s critical instincts were rightly aroused by an antagonistic
former President Donald Trump. Following a reasonable 100 day honeymoon with a
new President, Joe Biden, it has, once again, defanged itself.
“Especially here in Connecticut, the media has been much
too uncritical of the reigning power, and that power, a rarely closely
questioned Democrat hegemony, has been operating in the state unobstructed for
nearly half a century. Such a media is dangerously unwoke, to use a phrase we
hear often falling from the lips of progressives.”
It might be useful, I though, to challenge him on this point.
“Both you and the City Mouse appear to have in common an almost visceral
distaste for progressives.”
“You need a governing adjective there,” he responded. “’Postmodern progressives’ might do. It may be argued that former President John Kennedy bore the marks of progressivism, as did former Governors of Connecticut Ella Grasso and Abe Ribicoff. But it would be more accurate to call both of them classical liberals firmly attached to the great liberal chain of being that joined democratic politics to famous and infamous small “r” republicans -- ardent defenders of liberty such as, to pick only one son of liberty, Samuel Adams, the most persuasive journalist of his day. Postmodern progressivism breaks the chain. It is not concerned with the liberty of the individual, secured here in the United States by both statutory and constitutional law, not to mention the blood, sweat and tears of the founders of our republic. In the feverish, reductionist, postmodern imagination, the liberty of the individual has given way to equity – a quasi-Marxist, highly political, leveling doctrine that seeks to make equal round pegs and square holes. How often in the past three decades have you heard postmodern progressives in Connecticut quoting liberally from any of the founders of the American Republic? Kennedy, Grasso and Ribicoff did it all the time.”
“What,” I asked, “is the distinguishing characteristic of
the postmodern progressive here in Connecticut and the northeast?”
“A thirst for political power unattached to the public
good.”
“Can you provide an example?”
“I hardly know where to end. The General Assembly -- for
those untaught by progressive, cancel culture pedagogues in Connecticut, the
second of the state’s three co-equal branches of government – has just decided,
once again, to extend Governor Ned Lamont’s plenary powers until mid-July. The ‘greatest
deliberative body in Connecticut’ has put itself into a deep freeze for more
than a year.
“Investing the chief executive of the state with plenary
powers -- that is to say, with legislative and judicial powers – cannot, under
any color of reason, be said to have improved the public good. The continuing
investment of plenary powers upon the governor by a cowardly – there is no other
word for it – legislature that refuses to exercise its own constitutional
responsibilities, is a dereliction of constitutional obligations that every
governor in the state preceding ‘King Ned would have had no problem denouncing.
And any non-progressive in Connecticut’s General Assembly easily might call upon
any of the founders of our Constitutional Republic for moral support.
“Here is Samuel Adams on patriotic liberty: ‘If ye love
wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude than the animating
contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We seek not your counsel or your
arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you; may your chains set lightly
upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen!’
A bit severe, you think. Here is Jefferson: ‘The tree of liberty must be refreshed
from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.’
“Here is Thomas Paine, author of Common Sense: ‘When men yield up the privilege of thinking, the
last shadow of liberty quits the horizon.’
“And let us not forget that late 19th century
apostle of liberty, Abe Lincoln: ‘The shepherd drives the wolf from the sheep’s
throat, for which the sheep thanks the shepherd as a liberator, while
the wolf denounces him for the same act as the destroyer of liberty, especially
if the sheep was a black one.’ That is a direct reference to the oppression of
African Americans in the United States.
“But the hard-won liberty we here enjoy, the rich deposit of
liberty from our ancestors, rarely taught in woke universities, must be pronounced dead when sleepy legislative and judicial branches nod at the plenary, pre-revolutionary
powers of dominant chief executives across the country. This is not progress.
It is not even progressive. It is a timid, undemocratic retreat to
pre-revolutionary days when men and women were in the habit of confusing an
efficient monarchy with responsible small “r” republican liberty.
“More than a year ago, we gave plenary, life and death
powers to Governor Andrew Cuomo of New York, and he used those powers to
destroy life – and liberty. We gave plenary powers to ‘King Ned’ of
Connecticut, and he used his powers to kill the liberty of individuals in the
state to shape their own futures through representative governing institutions.”
“I can hear the bugles blowing and the flags flapping in your words," I said, "but
what do you say to those who argue that extraordinary measures are necessary in
times such as ours.”
Here the Country Mouse erupted with one of his Johnsonian harrumphs, "Exceptional measures should not invalidate our republican rule. Much has been done by professional politicians to erode liberty under cover of
necessity. Wolves plead necessity all the time. There is no end to necessity. I
say -- a false necessity is the last refuge of scoundrels. Give me back my
republic. Do it now!”
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