We often ask ourselves with regard to motion pictures, whether art mirrors life or life, art. The concept was brought to the fore yet again as I pondered the current socio-political landscape of the United States, particularly with respect to the status of “Reagan era conservatism.”
Do you recall the M. Night Shyamalan film, The Sixth Sense (1999)? It’s a very entertaining piece of work indeed. But what interests me at the moment is the story of one of its title characters, Dr. Malcolm Crowe.
You see, Dr. Crowe is a brilliant therapist who one evening gets a visit from a patient whom he failed to help. That patient shoots Crowe and then kills himself. Fast forward a few years and Dr. Crowe is back in business with a new troubled patient whom he is dedicated to helping more than ever in light of the previous failure. This young man’s problem: he sees and communicates with the dead. Crowe, at first incredulous, ultimately comes to believe that his patient may not be delusional. And as he opens to the possibility that such things may in fact be possible, he is able to give this severely troubled child the help he really needs. When the deed is done, Dr. Crowe is in for yet another revelation. He discovers that he himself never survived the attack by his former patient. Dr. Crow realizes that he is one of the dead his young patient sees. Though a gifted therapist, a man of scientific realities, he never knew or even conceived the possibility that he was no longer among the living. Isn’t Dr. Crowe the epitome of the GOP and “conservatism”?
For months now we have been fed a steady diet of lamentations by “conservative” columnists and talking-heads on the death of “conservatism” or “the Reagan era”, etc. All are presented in reference to the victories of Democrats in the last mid-term Congressional elections and/or the victory of Democrats in the elections last Fall which effectively put them in a position of unchecked power at the Federal level. Now I certainly concede the fact that the Left wields enormous political power but this didn’t begin with recent electoral victories.
The sad reality is that the “Reagan era” ended when Ronald Reagan left office. An associate of mine recently penned an article entitled,
“The Fault, dear Republicans, is not in our stars, but in ourselves…” wherein she castigates Republicans/conservatives for wallowing in the glory of minor victories for decades rather than staying on the offensive. Fact is this is exactly what the Right has done since Reagan. Sure there was the victory of the GOP in the 1994 mid-term elections. But after securing this victory, the GOP forgot about the struggle. The Party ultimately became the principle defender of the very bureaucratic and Statist (or dare I say Socialist) policies to which it was supposedly opposed. By 1996, the difference between the Republicans and Democrats was becoming titular, at best. If I may borrow from an old bard, Socialism by any other name is still quite odious.
The reason Socialists have been so successful is that they never allowed a victory to lull them into a false sense of complacency and security. Socialism is in every respect, a constant struggle. The battle never ends. Hence with every victory, they behave as if they are still the downtrodden masses. It takes no more than a cursory gander at the society around us to appreciate the fact that the Left dominates every aspect of the culture (journalism, entertainment, academia, government), and has so for decades on end.
Obama’s ascendancy did not signal the death of “conservatism.” “Conservatism”, like Dr. Malcolm Crowe, has been dead for quite some time. The signs have long been visible to those of us with the sixth political sense. It just took a while for "conservatives" to realize the fact.
