The Transformation Of Democrats

Once again, Camille Paglia manages to nail her own party's problems:

Why has the Democratic Party become so arrogantly detached from ordinary Americans? Though they claim to speak for the poor and dispossessed, Democrats have increasingly become the party of an upper-middle-class professional elite, top-heavy with journalists, academics and lawyers (one reason for the hypocritical absence of tort reform in the healthcare bills). Weirdly, given their worship of highly individualistic, secularized self-actualization, such professionals are as a whole amazingly credulous these days about big-government solutions to every social problem. They see no danger in expanding government authority and intrusive, wasteful bureaucracy. This is, I submit, a stunning turn away from the anti-authority and anti-establishment principles of authentic 1960s leftism.
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But affluent middle-class Democrats now seem to be complacently servile toward authority and automatically believe everything party leaders tell them. Why? Is it because the new professional class is a glossy product of generically institutionalized learning? Independent thought and logical analysis of argument are no longer taught. Elite education in the U.S. has become a frenetic assembly line of competitive college application to schools where ideological brainwashing is so pandemic that it's invisible. The top schools, from the Ivy League on down, promote "critical thinking," which sounds good but is in fact just a style of rote regurgitation of hackneyed approved terms ("racism, sexism, homophobia") when confronted with any social issue. The Democratic brain has been marinating so long in those clichés that it's positively pickled.

Who would have thought that in my lifetime the Democratic party would become the party of the rich, led by country club Democrats, and the Republican party would become the party of the people, led by the people at the tea parties and townhalls?

The hippies of the 60's have become the establishment they hated. Pres. Obama is a prime example. He toked his way through college, probably ranting against "the man" in late night deep discussions with classmates. Now he is "the man." Getting into bed with big Pharma, making deals with trial lawyers and unions. His goal of expanding government control over our lives is the very antithesis of long ago liberalism.

Obama and Democrat leadership give truth to the old adage: Power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely.