Saving the democrats.(on the right)

NEW YORK, JANUARY 7

THE world, especially American Democrats, ponders the question: Where might the party go in the immediate years ahead? The political reality seeps into the mind, that liberalism's next step is not obvious. Dogmatic socialization doesn't widely appeal. The obvious social-economic targets are education and medicine. The public sector already pays an enormous part of the cost of higher education. As for medicine, the Democrats would like to make it free, but are estopped by the crystallizing public realization that benefits that are universally used are universally paid for, like Social Security. Free liver pills end up showing their face on the ledgers of everyone.

What then might the Democrats do?

I acknowledge the recommendations of columnist E. J. Dionne, because they are commendable, but for other reasons also, which will be revealed.

Dionne, a senior fellow of the Brookings Institution, remarks that gratitude is an aspect of the human condition which is insufficiently acted upon. "Gratitude," he writes, "suggests that no matter how proud we are of our own accomplishments, we know they would have been impossible without help from others. The politics of gratitude is also a politics of reciprocity and generosity. Because we acknowledge the help we have received we are more ready, individually and collectively, to render help to others."

That point is obvious in perspectives entirely material. Before we could attend a school, or worship at a church, somebody had to build them. We routinely acknowledge our indebtedness by renewing the school's life and tending to the churches. What is harder to recall is the non-material institutional benefits we inherit. "Even if we never need the help of the courts, or of the policeman, or of the Bill of Rights," he quotes an author, "that they are there for us in the event of need distinguishes our society from most others. To alert us to their presence, however dormant in our own lives, tends to ensure their survival."

I come out of the closet to identify the words as my own, and renew my call, made 15 years ago in ...