“But back to my point about the right’s better understanding of power: I was referring to the exercise of power, an area where the left habitually shoots itself in the foot. It is so tied to the principle of power moving from diversity of opinion to consensus to unity that it will sacrifice its unity over factional squabbles. There comes a time in any effort that the exercise of power must move from the hub of achievability, through the spokes of idealism, to what is attainable.

“The right understands this exercise of power. In fact, it is predicated on it. That’s the right’s strong point. Its weakness is in confusing power with authority. Authority is an invention of the human consciousness to gain power over life’s uncertainty. However, human invention is superseded by the nature of all things. That nature is bound up inseparably with free will. True authority is not an aspect of force, it is an aspect of supreme self-dominion to which others are drawn for the realization of their own self-dominion. As the epitome of the raider and conqueror, I know of what I speak. All dominion not derived through natural law must come to an inevitable end—must be either replaced or assimilated.”

“What about the left’s black eye from the Vietnam War?”

“Oh, I thought it was self-evident. It’s simple. The left crucified a whole generation of Americans. The left didn’t just speak truth to power, but declared its institutions, its memorials, its flag, and its cherished history morally derelict and obsolete. Today, having moved its moral compass from the edges of radical politics toward the center, the left finds itself in a pitched battle for credibility whenever it honors the same institutions and edifices of thought that it scurrilously attacked during its anti-war heyday.”

“But wasn’t this nation founded on such revolutionary radicalism?”

“Aha! That is the irony. The left matured from the extremism of pillorying any past idols and icons deemed flawed to appreciating the relativity of perfection. It was eighty-seven long years from the Continental Congress’s declaration that all men are created equal to the abolition of the abominable institution of slavery. Remember, it took America bumping along a rocky road of controversy, from the striking out of the slavery clause in the Declaration of Independence, to the Emancipation Proclamation, to the Thirteenth Amendment of the Constitution, for slavery to end.

“In the eighties, when the right returned to vie with an older left, it found the left’s vinegar sweetened to wine and its spit dribbling down its chin. The left’s moral compass may have been in the center, but its feet were all over the place. Liberals went from tearing down the castle to shining the silver and buffing the floors, from rancor to reason. The left had boxed itself into a future corner during Vietnam.”

— Grandfather

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Sitting with Warrior – pg. 105-107

Copyright © 2010

Sounds like Jonathan Chait’s been sitting down with Grandfather Warrior in his long but spot on article:

When Did Liberals Become So Unreasonable?:

http://nymag.com/news/politics/liberals-jonathan-chait-2011-11/