A little Nietzsche.

It's been too many years since I last read Nietzsche.  When I first read him, I couldn't afford the books.  Instead I copy/pasted them off the internet and printed them off at work.  I snuck them out in black notebooks that I also requisitioned from work.  So thanks P&G!!  You made me an amateur philosopher.  Tonight I picked up a Nietzsche reader at the library, and was immediately hooked again.

In fact, there's quite a bit that speaks to the situation democrats find themselves in today.  As an example, there's a quote from his book Twilight of the Idols, in the "Four Great Errors" section:

This young man grows prematurely pale and listless.  His friends say:  such and such an illness is to blame.  I say: the fact that he fell ill, the fact that he could not withstand the illness, was already the consequence of an impoverished life, of hereditary exhaustion.  The newspaper reader says:  this party will destroy itself by such a mistake.  My higher politics says: a party which makes such mistakes is already finished--its instinct is no longer sure.  Every mistake, in every sense, results from a degeneration of instinct, a disgregation of the will -- which is almost a definition of the bad.  Everything good is instinct -- and therefore easy, necessary, free.  Effort is an objection.

Isn't this exactly the problem with the democratic party?  Our politicians calculate, equivocate, and hesitate.  We experience loss after loss, and we put the blame on strategy.  Nietzsche would say that the problem isn't with strategy--it's more intrinsic than that.  Our party doesn't instinctively believe in its own rightness anymore.  Our party no longer had lost the will to hold power, and still lacks the will to take power.  Think about the republican triumph in '94, and their subsequent takeover of all branches of the federal government.  This wasn't just a strategic victory.  They attacked without reservation because they felt no reservations.  They believed in their agenda and they fought for it.  We sat down to chess, and a bulldozer ran us the hell over.

When we stop blaming the media for our failures, when we stop pretending that it's just bad issue framing that keeps us in the minority, then maybe we'll focus on the real problem--that democratic politicians view their own core values with suspicion--they don't trust in them enough to evangelize to the public.  They'd prefer to blur the differences between the parties.  Isn't it strange how the public sides with the democrats on just about every issue, yet keeps electing these "strong" republicans?  Isn't it strange that our politicians are so afraid of being obstructionists, so afraid of what their own party stands for?

Clinton said that the public will always choose "wrong but strong" over "weak and right", and that's true enough. So why do democrats (as a party) project so much weakness?  It's because the party is spent.  It's tired and sick.  Apparently the big strategy question for '06 is whether we keep our mouths shut and let the republicans self-destruct, or aggressively push our agenda and values and give the public a choice.  How is this a question at all?  Why aren't we jumping at every chance to broadcast our values?  Why ever miss an opportunity to proudly say what we believe?  Some democrats don't trust that their values and views will win elections.  That lack of will makes even a victory in '06 hollow.  Sure a weak dem party could win congress from a weak rep party, but so what?  When a party wins that kind of election, it's clearly too spent ideologically to do much with the victory anyway.  The progressive net roots is the future of the party, because it's the will of the party.  We don't triangulate, and we don't compromise.  We're believers, and we will win.