In a piece full of very good parts, this has to be my favorite of Jon Chait's many perfect paragraphs knifing the Democrats lack ideas meme:
A related assumption is that new ideas are better than old ones. This meme has gained particular currency during the Social Security debate. For instance, conservative privatization advocate Peter Ferrara dismissed liberal foe Robert Ball as a "well-meaning gentleman who hasn't had a new idea in 40 years." The accusation resonates with many liberals. The Democrats' economic policy, as labor leader Andrew Stern told Matt Bai of The New York Times Magazine, "is basically being opposed to Republicans and protecting the New Deal. It makes me realize how vibrant the Republicans are in creating twenty-first-century ideas, and how sad it is that we're defending 60-year-old ideas."
I can't tell you the enjoyment I get from watching professed followers of Edmund Burke demand that Democrats stop protecting old ideas and realize the many virtues of newness. That no policy or idea can last more than 70 years without requiring radical overhaul is such a violent attack on the philosophical foundations of conservatism, not to mention the dictionary's definition of the word, that it's beyond belief, particularly in a party where so many sniff about their deep immersion in conservative intellectual traditions. But as Chait says elsewhere in the piece, the conservative superiority in "ideas" often reflects nothing more than a greater capacity for hypocrisy. Seems the same would go for their advantage in philosophy.
