Has America Passed the Point of No Return? Have Progressives Finally Won the Future?

John Hinderaker at Powerline has a rather sobering post today:  Why Is This Election Close?

John believes that the country may have passed a point of no return.  He writes:

On paper, given Obama’s record, this election should be a cakewalk for the Republicans. Why isn’t it? I am afraid the answer may be that the country is closer to the point of no return than most of us believed. With over 100 million Americans receiving federal welfare benefits, millions more going on Social Security disability, and many millions on top of that living on entitlement programs–not to mention enormous numbers of public employees–we may have gotten to the point where the government economy is more important, in the short term, than the real economy. My father, the least cynical of men, used to quote a political philosopher to the effect that democracy will work until people figure out they can vote themselves money. I fear that time may have come.

Hinderaker quotes Andy McCarthy at National Review, who implicitly believes that the Gramsci vision has been realized, that the "long march through the institutions" has been accomplished, and that a large part of our country's culture and institutions, namely the media and academia, are in the firm control of the Left.  What's worse, is that the Republican establishment cannot fight them because it has accepted the Progressive framework, not arguing for its abolishment, but only that it be better executed.  McCarthy writes:

It has always been possible to run against elite opinion and win — if you make a compelling counter-case...Today’s Republicans do not. Indeed, they cannot, because they have accepted the progressive framework. Their argument is not that the welfare state, deficit spending, federalized education, sharia-democracy promotion, and the rest are bad policies. Their argument is not that Washington needs to be dramatically downsized. It is that progressive governance is fine but needs to be better executed.

My friend Lawrence Auster at View From the Right has long argued the same thing -- that the Republican establishment seeks a slightly different approach to liberalism, but not its defeat.  This is a very pessimistic view, but no doubt it contains a lot of truth.

If we do indeed lose the nation to another four years of progressive destruction, it may be time to consider some radical alternatives, e.g. a new political party, state nullification of unconstitutional laws, and even secession.

Read Hinderaker's article here.

Read McCarthy's article here.