Paglia notes the fall of excellence, and admits Mark Levin won with Liberty and Tyranny.

This is great, and a big hat tip to my friend task.

Camille Paglia had an interview with Salon in which she touts her new book and her thoughts on the Presidential race and politics in general. Paglia is voting for the Green Party candidate in protest of the mindlessness of the current Democratic Party. Her political stripes are pretty much hard left, but notes, interestingly, that what she once thought was a Democrat issue, freedom and liberty, was taken by the GOP via Mark Levin’s blockbuster Liberty and Tyranny.

Well, thanks for the exclusive. Totally agree on two subjects, Afghanistan and the growing surveillance state. But it seems like those are issues brought up — we raise them, other progressives raise them a lot — but part of why it never comes up is because the Republicans are completely complicit and would likely be worse in both of those areas.

(Paglia) Wait a minute, hold it, no! Listen — a huge point I want to make is that the protest against the surveillance state has, with only a few exceptions, been mainly coming from the Right and not from the Left! Talk radio has been seething with this issue for years. A good example is talk-show host Mark Levin’s “Liberty and Tyranny,” which was a No. 1 New York Times bestseller three years ago and yet got very few mainstream reviews. Democrats have got to wake up! This is why the Republican Party has gained and why the Democratic Party is in disarray — because the Democrats have lost one of their key signature issues from 1960s leftism. Why has the GOP become the freedom party?

She just said it is because of Mark Levin that the Democrats are in such disarray. As a longtime fan of Mark Levin, and observer of his effectiveness, I would have to agree.

Her thought process on why the Democrat party will not get her vote is that they have not held to their ideals of the 1960′s, and in her memories of that time period, shares the changing quality of both political ideals and quality of craft in art and architecture.

What I believe she is noting is the loss of liberty. Since the 1960′s, government intrusion in our everyday lives has increased at such an alarming rate, that she concludes that we are quickly becoming a Big Brother society. Her idea of liberty and my idea of liberty are different, but I think her sense that the Democrat Party left her and is consuming the society is right on target. In fact, Mark Levin often says that the Leviathan that is our bloated government is so large that it is devouring society.

When the government squelches free enterprise and starts a march toward tyranny, liberty is snuffed out, and out with it goes new ideas, exciting discoveries, new technologies, and yes, inspired art and architecture. We need to be free to pursue our interests, but when the government dictates what we do, we haven’t the freedom to pursue our dreams. Getting in line is the new norm, and being your own person is frowned upon.

But the childish naivete of so many supposedly well-educated liberals was shown by their complete failure to notice or remark on the most glaringly obvious deficiency in Obamacare: You cannot possibly expand medical coverage to millions of people without also expanding medical training and funding new clinics and hospitals. The total absence of that in the bill was ludicrous.

Right. Well, liberals, what are you doing to your party? Not that I would ever find it a welcome home, and I think Paglia hasn’t quite connected the dots on how her party became the anti-liberty party. She does recognize the control-freaks that are running it, and that as a liberty-loving person, she cannot go along.

Let’s remember how Bob Dylan broke out of folk music into the public sphere with his great song, “Subterranean Homesick Blues,” which was about the fascist intrusion of Big Brother government. It was about the FBI and the CIA and the police — faceless bureaucracies — intruding into our private lives. What in the world has happened to the Democratic Party? Its passivity towards this awful takeover of our lives by a know-it-all government, as shown by the way Obama has governed by constantly going around Congress — appointing czars and one new layer of bureaucracy after another. And hardly a peep of protest from liberals. It’s like the movie of H.G. Wells’ “The Time Machine” — Democrats have turned into the Eloi; they’re like sheep. They hear a signal, and it’s like pre-programmed spin in their heads — they just trot like sheep in one direction. I am voting Green in protest against the systemic corruption of my party.

I think Paglia’s insights here are very prescient. She is saying that the GOP has now taken the liberty label, and it leaves the Democrat party with the tyranny label. Not a mind-blowing epiphany for most of us on the liberty side, however, the fact that she nails the tyranny label on the Democrats so effectively, using the same language of most of us on the right, should give pause to thinking liberals everywhere.

I disagree with her positions, but this is the first thing I’ve read from a liberal that answers a lot of questions I’ve had about the Democrat party. How can they be for freedom and then use government to dictate how we all should live, what we should eat, drive, buy, almost every liberty taken from us is via controlling leftists through coercion.

I actually think, that since Paglia admits in the interview that she listens to talk radio, she does catch Mark Levin, and just as regular listeners understand, Damn, that Mark Levin is effective.