Dems, meet mirror

Peggy Noonan in her column today on the state of the Democratic Party:

The Democratic Party is that amazing thing, out of power for six years and yet exhausted. They're pale, tired and unready. Too bad, since it's their job to be an alternative, not an embarrassment.

This week Democratic members of Congress and other elected officials unveil their "New Direction for America," the party's declaration of its reason for being. It said it stands firmly and unequivocally, without fear or favor, unwaveringly and with grit for . . . reducing the cost of student loans. And making prescription drugs less expensive. And raising the minimum wage. Etc.

This is not a philosophy but a way--an inadequate way, but a way--of hiding the fact that you don't have a philosophy.

And no philosophy means no anchor in anything that produces an allegiance to something larger than themselves. You see it in the constant denigration of US efforts in the war on terrorism. Where is the celebration of the good that has been accomplished? Where is the reflection on the world would really be like if the US didn't exist? Why the assumption that the US is wrong and evil, a rampaging elephant in a sea of tender grasses, and oh why can't we be more like the Europeans?

Without a philosophy there is no vision, and without a vision you cannot truly love the society you are responsible for. You don't feel a part of it, but instead feel perfectly entitled to call your President a Hitler, the biggest terrorist in the world, a liar. You feel entitled to disrupt public speaking engagements by conservatives, even to the point of throwing pies and other such objects at them. You feel entitled to send vile emails to people you don't even know. Such unhinged behavior is a sign of hatred, not of a guiding philosophy.

I'm not talking here about the traditional kind of liberalism that truly has compassion on the needy. I'm talking about a selfish outlook that seeks to hack away at the chains that have historically bound us to the founding principles of our nation, unaware that if unmoored from our past, the ship of state will simply drift wherever the currents take it.

Where is the Democratic Ronald Reagan, a figure who can lift the party by reminding us that we are a shining city on a hill, not a garbage heap in a ditch? Until the party develops a philosophy beyond buying votes with government handouts, that person will be difficult to find.