Going rogue with Sarah Palin

What gives significance to Merkel’s victory is that her centralist party in the previous election governed in a coalition with the left. She won this time in a coalition with a party to the right with libertarian features. It marks a significant change in Germany and potentially in the West and in the world. It indicates that Germany and others in Europe will no longer necessarily look to Washington for initiative as they find their own way out of the economic recession. America’s post-war leadership arc — a product of military victory in Germany and Japan — may be over. And it suggests that the most central nation of Europe may have finally cast off the shadow of cultural and political nihilism, which has plagued Europe and Russia since the Decembrists movement of 1825.

That Other Mother has not yet left New York, however, as evidenced by the lede in The New York Times news item, which sees the German vote not as the victory first for Merkel, but as a failure for socialism: “A specter is haunting Europe — the specter of socialism’s slow collapse.” As the philosopher Kenneth Burke used to point out, the perspective is ingrained in the nuance, tone and texture of the press’s language.

The Times:

Even in the midst of one of the greatest challenges to capitalism in 75 years, involving a breakdown of the financial system due to “irrational exuberance,” greed and the weakness of regulatory systems, European Socialist parties and their left-wing cousins have not found a compelling response, let alone taken advantage of the right’s failures.

Those who look back to Europe, including Obama’s economists, Obama’s publicists, academics and press, Obama’s friends and key advisers and Obama, are being left behind.

The rise of a competitive libertarian party encroaching on the traditional turf of the left changes the political dynamic in Germany. This change is suggested in the United States by the libertarian initiative that began to gain a purchase here with the rise of Ron Paul. In a political environment where 43 percent of voters consider themselves to be independents, the stage is set for change. But the numbers may be less important than the quality of the crowd. The sanitized, suburbanized, rich-girl Marxism and innocent indignation of the vast antiauthoritarian horde may be yielding to the passing age. Compared to the sharp tenor of the University of Michigan students who rose to their feet chanting, “End the Fed! End the Fed!” at a recent Ron Paul speech. Or the call rising in the American heartland going rogue with Sarah Palin.

Visit Mr. Quigley’s website at http://quigleyblog.blogspot.com.