by It’s hard to know when this began. But on a variety of fronts conservatives are using arguments and tactics heretofore under patent protection by the left, including pushing for activist judges (with four decades of liberal jurisprudence on the books, the left’s best hope is judges who respect precedent above all), using federal dollars to build political constituencies, filing lawsuits, launching boycotts, and arguing for free speech and “diversity” in education. The last has drawn a surprising amount of attention lately with a debate over evolution and “intelligent design”–the hypothesis that evolution isn’t random but rather the mechanism an intelligent being uses to change the universe.
At first this unnerved me some, because I do not believe anyone should be activist if they are a judge, but it goes to the further point– you almost need to be activist to erase some of the bad precedents that have been set. This was the final paragraph:
The left fears that government bureaucracies will feel pressure from above by elected Republicans and from below by a growing political constituency that’s leaning to the right. That fear is likely to be realized if Republicans ever succeed at creating private accounts for Social Security, Medicare or other large entitlements. The Ownership Society is scary to the left precisely because it is meant to change the face of the culture. Republicans are now starting to realize that like in war, winning often means adopting your opponent’s best tactics.
