Democratic Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton appears son the screen during the second day session of the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia, Tuesday, July 26, 2016. (AP Photo/John Locher)
There were a lot of misty eyes in Philadelphia last week. But isn’t there something disturbing about politicians having the ability to bring an audience to tears in a simple, routine speech? Is something missing in a nation where political idealism can elicit such a strong emotional response?
After all, none of the speeches were the Gettysburg Address. In fact, they were more akin to Edward Everett’s two-hour ramble at Gettysburg than Abraham Lincoln’s legendary two-minute address that followed. Not a single line from any speech delivered last week will be remembered this November. In fact, I can’t recall a single phrase of particular importance a mere week later. But, for some reason, the tears flowed freely. The emotions outpoured. Why?
Sometime in the 1960s, politics became emotional. Not the type of emotional that sends statesmen into fits of high-sentence frenzy (e.g., Daniel Webster or William Henry Seward, or even Winston Churchill), but the form of reaction more akin to that which compelled teenaged girls cry when they saw the Beatles in concert. With the election of John F. Kennedy, throngs of young people became believers in political ideas – they became idealists. Setbacks were met with crying and disbelief. Faith in politics became the bedrock of social activism, and whenever that faith was challenged, the faithful were shaken to their core. The respectable façade of politics as a genteel enterprise was forever shattered and replaced with the sentimentalism of the “crowd.”
To the far left, Philadelphia was the Runnymede of modern American politics, where they were forced to concede defeat to a narcissistic, calculating, and dishonest pawn of corporate interests.
Fifty years later, the same idealism runs strong within America’s progressive ranks, but the intensity has grown. At the Democratic convention, Bernie Sanders’s supporters cried as the former candidate knelt down in defeat before Hillary Clinton to pledge his allegiance. For true believers in Sanders-style politics, the pain was real, the betrayal of liberalism by the Democratic establishment too unfathomable to be true. And the proof of treachery was contained in 19,000 emails.
To ideologues of the extreme-left, Philadelphia was the Runnymede (where King John was forced to sign Magna Carta by Cardinal Langton following a succession of foreign military defeats) of modern American politics. A humiliated far-left was forced to concede defeat to a narcissistic, calculating, and dishonest pawn of corporate interests who used her institutional political influence to steal her party’s nomination. Of course, childish hysterics and protesting followed.
But if the events in Philadelphia have provided any insight into the psyche of American liberals, one thing is clear: American “progressivism” is increasingly adopting a schizophrenic persona where old-school liberals (e.g., the Clintons) fighting decades-old culture wars against particular groups are challenged by new-aged post-structuralist progressives (e.g. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren) fighting against everyone, including themselves. It is the progressives of our parents’ generation versus the nihilistic progressives of the contemporary college campus. Old Manhattan versus hipster Brooklyn. Woodstock versus Bonnaroo. The educated and slightly idealistic do-gooders of the FDR and JFK persuasion pitted against the well-heeled, well-credentialed, spoiled snobs of the Obama years.
American “progressivism” is increasingly adopting a schizophrenic persona where old-school liberals are challenged by new-aged post-structuralist progressives.
Not surprisingly, the core political beliefs are largely unchanged. The sullen class-warfare of the Great Society resonates strongly with contemporary “Occupy Wall Street,” while the sexual libertinism of the 1960s and 1970s is the inspiration for present-day permissiveness. The language of civil rights is now applied to each new social crusade, while anti-war protestors degrade their often noble cause with intemperate outbursts of civil disobedience and ignominious anti-military protests. But something has changed. The mood is evolving; liberalism is becoming more virulent, more aggressive than it was in previous generations.
Following nearly four decades of conservative ascendency, liberals have regrouped and decided to re-assert themselves as both a cultural and political force. The tired old ideas of the 1930s and 1960s have been resurrected by philosophical necromancers and repackaged into new slogans and applied to new causes with vitriolic frenzy.
The new left is built upon the same ideas of its intellectual predecessors, except that the new generation is more radical, embittered, and prone to intemperance than those of the past half century.
But while old-fashioned liberals, and particularly those of the New Deal era, took pride in philosophical thinking, the new generation of liberal activist is more comfortable protesting on Sixth Avenue or at a political convention than making a coherent or systematic argument. He is smitten with his own ideas and hateful of any others. Driven by emotion and beleaguered by subjective standards of right and wrong, the contemporary left is the heir of the confusion of the 1960s. Now untethered to any social norms, and substantially removed from the historical precedents that shaped early liberalism, the modern left is all sail and no anchor.
Moreover, the new left is built upon the same ideas of its intellectual predecessors, except that the new generation is more radical, embittered, and prone to intemperance than those of the past half-century. Ever ready to point their finger at anyone but themselves, they believe that the world would be a perfect place if the rest of us would merely admit that progressivism is the answer to every social and economic problem.
In Philly, Judas of Chappaqua triumphed. But, unlike the Gospels, electoral victories are purely temporal. The betrayed and slain Mr. Sanders will not rise on the third day and deliver his followers from Hillary.
Maybe that explains the source of the great joy and the great sadness on the faces of the delegates at Philadelphia. In a snapshot, we could see the hope of eternal salvation promised by the prophets of the liberal establishment, but then, a dramatic shift occurs and reality sets-in: Judas of Chappaqua triumphed, and unlike the Gospels, electoral victories are purely temporal. The betrayed and slain Mr. Sanders will not rise on the third day and deliver his followers from Hillary.
To me, the tears at Philadelphia were sad because they came from a profound realization in the failure of liberalism to deliver its promises. They were the tears of a faithful that can’t admit they were duped, again, by the ideas and leaders to whom they have dedicated their lives. They were the tears of coming to terms with the fact that you can’t grandstand on principle, or honesty, when Mrs. Clinton is your candidate. They were the tears of reality.
Glen Sproviero
Glen A. Sproviero is a commercial litigator in New York. Read his previous columns here.
Democratic Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton appears son the screen during the second day session of the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia, Tuesday, July 26, 2016. (AP Photo/John Locher) 
