Siren
Dear David,
Thanks for sending "Why Liberals Think What They Do" by Victor Davis Hanson.
It is admirable rhetoric... and mostly mistaken.
To begin, life is muddle.
My enduring hope is for progress, not perfection.
Therefore, I forswear political judgments that predicate Impossible Purity.
A frequently overlooked truth is that The Final Solution was, at bottom, a quest for absolute purity.
It is also true, in a more general sense, that impossibly pure principles generate theoretical enthusiasm while practically castrating the enthusiasts who subscribe to them. (Note The Tea Party's meteoric rise followed by the suddenly real question of The Republican Party's survivability.)
Too often the quest for perfection discourages people from achieving the good that is within their grasp.
I recommend “Is Perfectionism A Curse? Paul Ryan Tells The Truth” http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2012/09/paul-ryan-tells-truth.html
Like the lure of ancient Greek Sirens, "perfect ideology" seduces us to abandon our proper posts "in the midst of the muddle," instead plunging overboard into depths that seem profound but are functionally uterine.
Those seduced by the embryonic calm of "uterine perfection" -- be it dogmatic perfection, doctrinal perfection or ideological perfection -- tend to sideline themselves, to "feel" they're doing what's "best" when mostly they don't do much of anything... unless obstruction and obfuscation are considered achievements.
"The terrible thing about our time is precisely the ease with which theories can be put into practice. The more perfect, the more idealistic the theories, the more dreadful is their realization. We are at last beginning to rediscover what perhaps men knew better in very ancient times, in primitive times before utopias were thought of: that liberty is bound up with imperfection, and that limitations, imperfections, errors are not only unavoidable but also salutary. The best is not the ideal. Where what is theoretically best is imposed on everyone as the norm, then there is no longer any room even to be good. The best, imposed as a norm, becomes evil.” "Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander,” by Thomas Merton http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2012/04/merton-best-imposed-as-norm-becomes.html
***
(Alan: My interlinear comments are in
Why Liberals Think What They Do
By Victor Davis Hanson
October 30, 2012
Note that Barack Obama is running not on his liberal record, but as a challenger against incumbent Mitt Romney who has done all sorts of terrible things like causing the 2008 meltdown (This statement is lunatic, close kin to Romney's accusation that Obama advocated “the politics of revenge.” Hanson should at least begin his argument by stating a fact, not a falsehood. While trying to fact check Hanson's claim, I came across a similar allegation leveled against Obama, an allegation also without merit. http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2012/09/fact-check-obama-had-more-to-do-with-2008-economic-meltdown-than-bush-ever-did/) and outsourcing jobs to China. (In a global economy, the entire thrust of predatory capitalism is to outsource jobs.) In Obama’s view, given the supposedly tranquil world abroad, (We are living in the least violent time in history, although alarmism would have us believe otherwise. http://paxonbothhouses.wordpress.com/2011/10/06/our-national-pastime-is-self-terrorization-violent-death-is-at-an-all-time-low/) we must try nation building at home, and thus concentrate on bold new initiatives like stimulus, infrastructure, green jobs, and federalized health care — none of which have been envisioned before, much less funded. (If Hanson took a wider view, he would see that all industrialized countries have not only envisioned "national" healthcare, but enacted it. As a result, the rest of the world spends only half as much per capita to enable their citizens to live longer than we Americans. At the following webpage, be sure you click to enlarge graphic. ttp://blogs.ngm.com/blog_central/2009/12/the-cost-of-care.html) And to the extent Obama has a concrete example, he points to efforts of the private oil sector to find more gas and oil despite, rather than because of, his own efforts. (Solar energy is the future. The more obstructionist we are, the more we refocus on fossil fuels, the greater the damage we cause to the American economy. All branches of the American military are now planning for the unprecedented upheaval occasioned by Global Warming.) Conclusion? Obama himself apparently has given up on liberal ideas in lieu of Big Bird, binders, bull****ter, movie stars, and hip-hopsters, which prompts the question: does anyone believe in liberal ideology anymore — and if so, why? (To say that Obama’s agenda distills to Big Bird, binders, bull****ters, movie stars, and hip-hopsters is beyond absurd. The “White Right” would have NO fear of Obama if these were, in fact, his issues. His Issue, however, is income redistribution, without which, the whole capitalist house-of-cards tumbles: you can not fuel a consumer economy when consumers receive starvation wages. Aware of this ineluctable fact, Henry Ford paid his workers eye-poppingly high wages so they could buy the cars they made. You may contemplate the real results of income inequality by reading Reich and Kristof at http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2012/01/politics-and-economics-101-curricula.html)
Did California’s redistributive elite really believe that they could all but shut down new gas and oil production, strangle the timber industry, idle irrigated farmland, divert water to the delta smelt, have 37 million people use a highway system designed for 15 million, allow millions of illegal aliens to enter the state without audit, extend free medical programs to 8 million of the most recent 11 million added to the population, up taxes to among the highest in the nation, and host one-third of the nation’s welfare recipients — and not have the present chaos? (Oil and gas are doing fine. The timber industry is not strangled. Agribusiness is in good shape. Yes, we need infrastructural improvement like renovating the highway system. And yes, in the short haul, this will be costly. But given current interest rates, there is no better time to undertake highway improvement than now. Furthermore, if we delay, the relative cost of renovation becomes "magnitudes higher" - like "not fixing that leak in the roof" until the mortgage is paid off. Admittedly, welfare is not a pretty picture but with globalization, automation, robotization and software enhancement converging to permanently eliminate traditional, "brawny" "jobs," the choices are 1.) some kind of welfare, 2.) enforced sterilization, 3.) remaking the United States as Sudan, 4.) The Final Solution. Yes, we are free to choose among these options, but let us consider them squarely.)
The California schools — flooded with students whose first language is not English, staffed by unionized teachers not subject to the consequences of subpar teaching, and plagued with politicized curricula that do not emphasize math, science, and reading and writing comprehension — scarcely rate above those in Mississippi and Alabama. (California’s budgetary problems distill to Proposition 13, enacted decades ago when I lived in The Golden State. Even so, to say that California’s schools “scarcely rate above those in the conservative states of Mississippi and Alabama, is, at best, grandstanding. Conservative states have always had their heads up their ass, and nothing has changed except for the amplification of stupidity. I will also note that California is about to have a budgetary surplus. California will come roaring back while "The Bible Belt" continues lagging the field in everything but ideological bravado. http://www.kansascity.com/2012/11/15/3918200/californias-budget-shows-signs.html)
Do Bay Area greens really believe that they that will have sufficient water if they blow up the Hetch Hetchy Reservoir? [1] Did Barack Obama think that the Keystone pipeline or new gas and oil leases in the Gulf were superfluous, or that we do not need oil to make gasoline, wheat to make flour, or to cut timber to produce wood? (The Keystone pipeline will produce a piddling total of 5000 permanent jobs and do nothing to lower the cost of gasoline, which – when "boom times" re-commence – will be driven through the roof by unprecedented demand in China and India. http://www.npr.org/blogs/itsallpolitics/2011/12/14/143719155/just-how-many-jobs-would-the-keystone-pipeline-create I do not know “the green plan for Hetch Hetchy" but California’s Democratic government is not going to jeopardize the Bay Area’s water supply. If we want to play the “really believe” game, consider what happened the last two times America elected Republican presidents. In fact, there is a lockstep relationship between Republican administrations and economic catastrophe. http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2012/05/republican-rule-and-economic.html Although both parties are guilty, alarmism is GOP mother's milk. As Mencken put it: "The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.")
Did liberals (and their hand-in-glove employer supporters who wished for cheap labor) think that letting in millions from Central Mexico, most without legality, English, or a high school education (and in some sense at the expense of thousands waiting in line for legal admission with capital, advanced degrees, and technological expertise), was not problematic and that soaring costs in law enforcement, the criminal justice system, the schools, and the health care industries were irrelevant? (My judge friend, AC, a North Carolina state senator in the 1970s, says that as soon as vigorous recovery begins “we will beg Mexicans to come back, whether they’re legal or illegal." Inconvenient Truth: Big Money – mostly Republican - craves cheap labor like a horny teen in a whorehouse with his Daddy's credit card.)
What, then, are the motivations that drive so many to such absurdities? Note here that I am talking of the architects of liberalism, not of those who receive generous entitlements and whose desire for bigger government is thus existential and elemental.
Equality of result (Alan: I know no one who wants equality of result. What "we" do want is less plutocratic inequality. Ironically, it is important to reduce such inequality because plutocracies are not healthy economies. Plutocrats themselves are spiritually and psychologically shrunken people who neither foster nor tolerate the "open source" creativity that is a sine qua non of buoyant western economies. How do I quantify income inequality? CEO compensation increased $725% between 1978 and 2011. The average worker’s compensation increased 5.7% over the same period. Not only does this discrepancy suck, it destroys the American body politic in any recognizable form. http://articles.latimes.com/2012/may/02/business/la-fi-mo-us-ceo-pay-231-times-more-than-average-workers-20120502 Again, I recommend Robert Reich and Nicholas Kristof’s articles at http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2012/01/politics-and-economics-101-curricula.html) )
Keen minds from Aristotle to Montesquieu and Tocqueville have lamented that the proverbial people sometimes prefer equality under authoritarianism to inequality accompanied by personal freedom. As long as there was grinding poverty, the liberal agenda of “leveling the playing field” made sense enough — Social Security, disability insurance, the 40-hour work week, and Medicare. But once modern mass production and consumption arose, energized by globalization and the entry of billions of new foreign workers into the equation, and high technology extended the appurtenances of the aristocracy to the poor (today’s ubiquitous smart phone is 100 times more versatile than yesterday’s $3,000 primitive suitcase cell phone), how could you keep promoting government-sponsored equality for the less well-off? Ensure no one has to drive a Kia? Petition on behalf of those who do not yet have an iPad? (Wow! How did Hanson know that?!? Everyone I know is circulating that petition right now! Fact: The playing field is less level in the United States than anywhere in the developed world. Inequality and lack of social mobility are existential dangers to The Common Good, or, as the Preamble to the Constitution puts it “The General Welfare.” ... Containing the words “general” and “welfare” it is no wonder that the American Right rarely mentions the Preamble, which is - in effect - America's "Mission Statement." Of course, we need not be America any longer. The Sudanese Option is open – and increasingly popular on the ever-alarmist right side of the aisle.
Weighing over 250 pounds, not rickets, is a national plague. Riots target sneaker stores, not food bins. Sandra Fluke naturally become the epitome of frustrated liberal-mandated equality. We are to believe that an upscale white law student, who by choice enrolls at a Catholic university, is deprived because her university will not pay for her condoms or abortion pills. Her cell phone no doubt costs more than a year’s supply of prophylactics [2]. The result is psychodrama, not class struggle, as liberals strain to find ways in which America is Les Misérables rather than the Kardashians, plagued by this obsession to step in and make everyone (except themselves) the same. (This line of reasoning is trivial, revealing the puerile Right's fondness for "cutesy exemplification." American conservatives much prefer that “these people” not reproduce which makes hand-over-fist distribution of free contraceptives a no-brainer. If conservatives were honest with themselves, free contraceptives would be a “coded line item” on electronic food stamp cards. Not only will welfare queens render infertile, but liberals like Fluke will diminish their own fertility... Never mind that insurance always covers the cost of Viagra.)
Voters
Romney almost forfeited the election when a video was leaked about his honest, though inexact, admission that 47% of Americans would, by needs, be unsympathetic to any agenda that cut spending and taxes, given their dependence on government “stuff.” Borrowing money to pay for more entitlements for the liberal mind is good politics, killing two birds with the proverbial one stone. The less well-off are indebted to those who gave them subsidized food, health care, shelter, even cell phones and will vote accordingly to ensure the liberal political class remains in power. And as deficits grow, the calls for higher taxes on those who “didn’t build that business” and are “fat cats” and never knew when they should stop profiting only increase. Liberalism is about power and influence, impossible without millions of dependent constituents.
“Them”
Liberals believe that there are lots of crass and greedy one-percenters who live to profit, and as refined Greeks expect grubby Romans to work while they think and plan. Like cockroaches, you cannot get rid of the one-percenters, given their elemental grasping. They will always get up at a 5 a.m. to chase the next superfluous buck in carbon-polluting oil exploration, Wall Street speculation, smoky trucking, or unsustainable farming. They are sheep with inexhaustible fleece. (They do not have inexhaustible fleece, but are so heavy with their recent growth that it’s time for shearing. This happens at regular intervals. And it is happening now. In fact, sheering is overdue. Not to shear would be catastrophic.) So liberals do not really believe that anyone will stop working due to Obamacare or a 40% income tax rate. (The highest marginal tax rate when Eisenhower ruled over the Golden Days of the 1950s was 91%. Why is 40% frightful?) Jerry Brown (who is on the verge of getting California back in “the black”) might say of overtaxed Californians, should his 13% income tax rate pass, “Where else could they go?” (I lived in California for 11 years and damn near everyone admits that the Golden State's troubles are disproportionately attributable to Proposition 13 which fixed property tax, forevermore, at 1% of real estate’s sales price.) For those who cling to their profits, you could tax them at 90% and they would still scheme to find a way to have more than others — so what does it matter if they pay more? (Not a person on the left side of the side aisle has mentioned 45% much less 90%. Not even in their wet dreams.)
Exemption
Liberals believe that abstract caring allows them seclusion and cocooning in the real, material world. Private schools, tony upscale suburbs, nice Volvos and Lexus SUVs, jet travel to Tuscany, a fine Napa $100 wine, Harvard or Stanford for junior — all that reeks of privilege and exclusivity, and can prompt remorse. (The presumption that all hard-working capitalists are conservative conveniently overlooks the liberal politics of Buffett, Gates and Costco founder, James Sinegal, not to mention that most of California’s super-successful entrepreneurs are, like the rest of the state, liberals. http://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2008/06/wage_against_the_machine.html) In some sense, Costa del Sol and Martha’s Vineyard, like John Kerry’s yacht or John Edwards’ home, are antithetical to the entire liberal value system. (John Kerry’s fortune is his wife’s fortune, the liberal heiress of Heinz Soup. "In some sense" any allegation can be made about anyone or anything. "Exceptions to rules" do not -- as the conservative psyche assumes -- constitute "new rules." Exceptions are exceptions. And rules are rules.) But if one is loudly for “pay-your-fair-share” higher taxes, or for affirmative action, or for more deficit spending, then one feels absolved from guilt over his isolated privilege — and can enjoy it without lamentation. And if one makes enough money not to worry about a few more taxes or fees, then a mind at peace is a pretty good deal. Lots of those who now reside in Portola Valley and the Berkeley hills helped to promote policies whose deleterious results fell on distant others, out of mind, out of sight, far away in Porterville and Stockton. Liberalism is an elite person’s psychological investment in enjoying a guilt-free affluence. (Even economically, Democratic Liberalism works better than Republican conservatism. See “Republican Rule and Economic Catastrophe: A Lockstep Relationship” - http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2012/05/republican-rule-and-economic.html Also see “Personal Irresponsibility in Red States” - http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2012/05/personal-irresponsibility-in-red-states.html See
Naiveté
Large percentages of the population now work for government [3] — federal, state, or local. Millions more are divorced from the tragic world of mining or drilling where nature is unforgiving. That distance has allowed Americans in droves to disengage from both the private sector, where one either makes a profit or goes broke, and the grimy processes by which we live one more day. A San Francisco professor, a Monterey lawyer, and a Sacramento bureaucrat do not know how hard it is to raise beef, grow peaches, find and pump oil and gas, and haul logs out of the forest and into Home Depot as smooth lumber, or what it takes to build a small Ace Hardware business. The skills needed to keep a 7-Eleven viable in a rough neighborhood, I confess, dwarf those of the classics professor. (Liberal Europeans raise beef, grow peaches, pump oil and haul logs, and they do these things quite well and far more cleanly than we. Sure, a few Mediterranean latecomers to the European Union created a mess. But, by and large Europe is plenty profitable. And her standard of living, on average, thumps ours. American yahoos are obsessed with the fact that -- over time -- Europe grows at a 2% rate whereas the United States at a 3.5%. So what? As I see it, this meaningless differential is paralleled by the difference between "civilization" and chest-thumping barbarism. Hey! Give me civilization any day. I know many Europeans and they all laugh – out loud – at the prospect of moving to the United States. Inconvenient Truth: Lazy ass capitalist paper pushers lodge most of the complaints about “lazy liberals” because most capitalist magnates – as opposed to small scale entrepreneurs – have never raised beef, grown peaches, pumped oil or hauled logs. And they certainly have not done the hard research that would bring to light the many ways in which anthropogenic global warming is already evoking economic havoc. I would bet dollars dollars to donuts that the author of this article is not a real entrepreneur but “the guy” in the suit at http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2012/11/brilliant-new-yorker-cartoon.html )
In the elite liberal mind, there is instead a sort of progressive Big Rock Candy Mountain. Gasoline comes right out of the ground through the nozzle into the car. Redwood 2x4s sprout from the ground like trees. Apples fall like hail from the sky; stainless steel refrigerator doors are mined inches from the surface. Tap water comes from some enormous cistern that traps rain water. Finished granite counter tops materialize on the show room floor. Why, then, would we need Neanderthal things like federal gas and oil leases, icky dams and canals, yucky power plants, and gross chain saws — and especially those who would dare make and use them? (Nice rhetoric… but bullshit. In general, Democrats have a much clearer idea of real production than the slob-fat, red-state layabouts who are not one whit smarter than their God-damned, Know-Nothing fundamentalist bullshit. I live here. I know.)
Anger, envy, and the primordial emotions
For some, especially those who are well-educated and well-spoken, a sort of irrational furor at “the system” governs their political make-up. Why don’t degrees and vocabulary always translate into big money? Why does sophisticated pontification at Starbucks earn less than mindlessly doing accounting behind a desk? We saw this tension with Michelle Obama who, prior to 2009, did not quite have enough capital to get to Aspen or Costa del Sol, and thereby, despite the huge power-couple salaries, Chicago mansion, and career titles, felt that others had far too much more than the Obamas. (“And thereby felt that others had far too much more than the Obamas.” Karl Rove did the dire disservice of pimping irrational allegations as gospel truths and, in the process, taught an entire generation of conservative politicians to demagogue their addelpated constituencies. One Big Lie after another they have been rendered witless. Take a look at Karl now… “Avalanche On Bullshit Moutain” - http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2012/11/john-stewart-karl-rove-fox-news-and.html) “Never been proud,” “downright mean country,” “raise the bar,” etc., followed, as expressions of yuppie angst. (Yuppie angst? Isn’t it time for this Hanson to get out of his 1980s condo? Yuppies? The guy is about as current as beatniks.) The more one gets, the more one believes he should get even more, and the angrier he gets that another — less charismatic, less well-read, less well-spoken — always seems to get more. (I believe Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert and most other people who are better read and more eloquent than Donald Trump deserve more. But I don't see them - nor myself - as envious. Mostly, we experience a sense of pity. It is an inconvenient truth that “half the time, shit floats." If Republicans are such smart people, how did Trump, Adelson and Romney conduct such laughable campaigns, completely reliant on self-induced delusion? These guys couldn’t buy a clue, and most intelligent Americans do not want to imitate them, nor their "success." Yes, many Americans believe they should get a bigger piece of the pie if only to preserve democracy and to shove plutocracy back to the dark place from which it came. Check out George McGovern’s “Defense of Liberalism” - http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2012/01/george-mcgovern-case-for-liberalism.html "The merely rich are not rich enough to rule the modern market. The things that change modern history, the big national and international loans, the big educational and philanthropic foundations, the purchase of numberless newspapers, the big prices paid for peerages, the big expenses often incurred in elections - these are getting too big for everybody except the misers; the men with the largest of earthly fortunes and the smallest of earthly aims.
There are two other odd and rather important things to be said about them. The first is this: that with this aristocracy we do not have the chance of a lucky variety in types which belongs to larger and looser aristocracies. The moderately rich include all kinds of people even good people. Even priests are sometimes saints; and even soldiers are sometimes heroes. Some doctors have really grown wealthy by curing their patients and not by flattering them; some brewers have been known to sell beer. But among the Very Rich you will never find a really generous man, even by accident. They may give their money away, but they will never give themselves away; they are egoistic, secretive, dry as old bones. To be smart enough to get all that money you must be dull enough to want it. G. K. Chesterton )
So do not discount the envy of the sophisticated elite. The unread coal plant manager, the crass car dealer, or the clueless mind who farms 1000 acres of almonds should not make more than the sociology professor, the kindergarten teacher, the writer, the artist, or the foundation officer. (No left-winger I know proposes “income equality.” It's as absurd as saying "the College of Cardinals banged Mother Theresa weekly." What we do propose is a living wage because, as Henry Ford saw at the outset, if workers didn’t make enough to purchase the cars they manufactured, consumer-driven industry would never prosper. And so, he paid them unprecedentedly hefty wages. Have you seen "Inside Job?" http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2011/10/daily-dose-october-152011.html Contemporary capitalists are in it for themselves, only for themselves, even if it means their bogus economic practices kill the goose that lays the golden egg. Once globalized, it became completely inconsequential to these predators whether the United States survived in any recognizable form. As government models go, Sudan is moving up fast.) What sort of system would allow the dense and easily fooled to become better compensated (and all for what — for superfluous jet skis and snowmobiles?) than the anguished musician or tortured-soul artist, who gives so much to us and receives so much less in return? What a sick country — when someone who brings chain saws into the Sierra would make more than a UC Berkeley professor who would stop them. (The next “chapter heading” epitomizes the previous sentence.)
Nihilism
Finally, we come to a small subset that simply does not like America’s wealth and capitalism, supremacy overseas, and ubiquitous global culture — or at least believes that anything not his own must be far better (an oikophobia [4] or hatred of one’s own household). He bores us with lectures on the wonderful EU, the superior La familia romance of Latin America, the “it takes a village” values of Africa, or the Cairo speech mythologies of the Middle East. Because America is so affluent, it allows so many the luxury to dream of how our wealth is so ill-gotten — as long as quiet others in the shadows ensure that life remains pretty good in San Francisco and Madison. Contrarianism is an innate characteristic, but one indulged without risk, only when the larger tribe is safe and secure. (Predatory capitalists, totally invested in financialization rather than nuts-and-bolts productivity, have made "the tribe" unsafe and insecure. Cowboy Capitalism has nearly nothing to do with yesteryear's productivity and everything to do with devising ways to employ fewer Americans for no end higher than the magnification of private opulence at the expense of public squalor. It’s an “Inside Job” - http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2011/10/daily-dose-october-152011.html)
In short, twenty-first century elite liberalism has become a psychological condition, not a serious blueprint on how to solve real problems. The president knows that — and so without ideas has been reduced to name-calling and sermons on Big Bird. (It was Romney who made an issue out of Big Bird. In America, all trivialization – whether it is the slutification of Sandra Fluke, Grover Norquist’s “Tax Pledge,” or insanely disproportional attention to the Benghazi tragedy is the work of ideological diversionists in the pay of plutocrats. http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2012/11/not-content-with-just-one-suicide.html
Article printed from Works and Days: http://pjmedia.com/victordavishanson
URLs in this post:
[1] blow up the Hetch Hetchy Reservoir?: http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/305063/defining-insanity-down-victor-davis-hanson
[2] than a year’s supply of prophylactics: http://cnsnews.com/news/article/sandra-fluke-says-she-didnt-know-target-sells-birth-control-pills-9
[3] now work for government: http://chicagoboyz.net/archives/6677.html
[4] oikophobia:http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704147804575455523068802824.html
