The left has come to regard common sense - the traditional wisdom and folkways of the community - as an obstacle to progress and enlightenment.
Christopher Lasch
Traditionalists will have to master techniques of sustained activism formerly monopolized by the left.
The proper reply to right wing religiosity is not to insist that politics and religion don't mix. This is the stock response of the left.
Most women are pragmatists who have allowed extremists on the left and right to manipulate the family issue for their own purposes.
The left sees nothing but bigotry and superstition in the popular defense of the family or in popular attitudes regarding abortion, crime, busing... →
Because it equates tradition with prejudice, the left finds itself increasingly unable to converse with ordinary people in their common language.
The left no longer stands for common sense, as it did in the days of Tom Paine.
Instead of taking environmentalism away from the left, conservatives condemn it as a counsel of doom.
The left has lost the common touch.
That was all and it was enough for me: fantasies are better left fantasies.
Arthur Laurents