Democrats in drag: Third Way fall from grace
By Steve Farrell
web
posted June 18, 2001
(Author's Note: This is the first weekly
installment and the foreward to a multi-part series of the same title
that will be featured weekly throughout the summer and beyond.)
When I began this project two years ago, I recognized the title I chose, Democrats in Drag, would be provocative and controversial, offensive and humorous, hated and praised, cursed and hallelujahed. I also knew it was marketable. Yet the bottom line is that the title was chosen because it reflected an issue I felt so very passionately about. The Republican Party speaks conservative, but legislates liberal, gets all dressed up for church, but drives down to the brothel.
If there ever was any truth to the claim that the Republican Party was conservative, constitutionally based, and morally sound, its 1990's flying leap into the arms of Progressive Government and the Third Way insured that honest men would soon come to believe otherwise. Yesterday's defenders of the Republic are today's champions of the New World Order and the corporations which figure to cash in most on the megalomaniacal prize.
In claiming this, I am not indicting the whole crew in a conspiracy, nor making a case for such -- though conspiracies always have and always will exist whenever power and men cross paths. Jefferson and Madison's instructive that "men are not angels" should be warning enough that almost all men, given their day in power, thirst for more. So expect it.
What I will make a case for is that the Third Way offers the perfect answer to the grasping politician as well as to the Pratt House conspirator, for the Democrat as well as the Republican -- for it is the "safe" middle ground, both conservative and progressive, communist and capitalist, moral and amoral, tolerant and intolerant, friend of local government and friend of the U.N. It is everything and anything. It is never what it seems to be, and always what it seems to be -- for it is the master of double-talk and the friend of deceit.
Throughout this series, I will, more often than not, use the term Third Way when referring to this philosophy, but I do this knowing full well that the fascist cat is out of the bag, thanks to the ever visible Bill Clinton calling it his own in 1999. By so doing, he put on "red alert" a few conservative writers and commentators, who immediately and effectively blew the whistle, loud and clear, on what it was -- and what it was not.
On the other hand, this fascist cat only really came out for a brief flash and then scurried back whence it came. The reason was that, with few exceptions, blind partisanship and hatred for Bill Clinton were the chief motivating factors for the investigation, not purist interest, not a desire for an honest probe into Third Way politics on both sides of the political aisle. With Clinton gone, the prevailing wind blasts in our ears, "Who cares?"
But we should care!
Political insiders know full well that Clinton's torrid romance with the Third Way was preceded by a far more lengthy and scandalous affaire d'amour between Republican Party "conservative icon" Newt Gingrich and Third Way spokesman Alvin Toffler. Had the red alert been truly sounded by dyed-in-the-wool conservatives, then the Contract With America, the Republican Revolution, and the party's "efforts" to squelch Mr. Clinton's radicalism would have been put under the microscope too, and the party and our country might now be on a more constitutional course.
As it is, Bill Clinton and Republican "opposition" to Bill Clinton only gave the Third Way what will likely be a short-lived, bad public name. That's all. Meanwhile, the Third Way's compromising, anti-constitutional agenda goes forward on schedule. Today its advocates on both left and right have only switched designations, calling themselves progressives, centrists, right-of-center centrists, left-of-center centrists, bipartisans, defenders of "civil society," compassionate conservatives, and believers in "good governance." A few, mostly in Europe and in the Democratic Party's Progressive Policy Institute, still cling to a public confession of faith in that halfway house between communism and capitalism, the Third Way.
But we should not overly concern ourselves with this or that name of the day. Better we focus on defining just what is the Third Way, so that having done so we can more readily uncover it, no matter how the pretenders are dressed -- whether as Pink Donkeys or Blue Elephants
That is the hope of this series -- that politicians, parties, and political
movements within those parties be known for what they are and not what
they appear to be, so that with blind partisanship set aside, our Constitution,
our rights and our way of life may advance, not retreat in the face of
the enemy. 
Next week: Democrats in Drag, Part 1: Technology, Sovereignty and the Third Way.
Enter Stage Right senior writer Steve Farrell is the former managing editor of Right magazine, a widely published research writer, a former Air Force Communications Security manager, and a graduate student in constitutional law. He can be reached at Cyours76@yahoo.com. His full archives are available online at: http://www.newsmax.com/commentsby.shtml?byline=Steve_Farrell