Habu writes: “I believe at first blush the question will be reduced to at what price can you buy off the US populations freedoms?”
That’s a good way to put it.
The mainstream press (and I’ll include academia in this category) sells itself for sinecures, and the attending prestige of the position. Obama must keep the mainstream press and academia as his supporters.
The left sells itself for power, having very little besides power to further its aims. Most Christianity is now of the left and post-Christian, having decided that, along the lines of liberation theology, the state has the most efficient means to accomplish the mandates of Christian charity, even if the charity involves uncharitableness to some (e.g., the costs to third world incurred via cap and trade that will result in suppression of economic exchange and growth, or the costs of illegal immigration on domestic job markets). So a large part of the left and center left is in the bag, quite willingly.
The rich sell themselves, most prominently in the financial markets, to big incomes and bonuses. Being also post-Christian, they generate meaning via social justice political action, thus securing profits and fulfillment. Include in this group the children of the rich, who live in an environment of privilege.
What the heck, throw in Whiskey’s analysis of gender politics. That’s another big block, whether defined in his terms or more politically correct ones.
So that still leaves a very big middle, which is experiencing a squeeze and diminishing prospects. Much of this middle group has family, home, and work to worry about, not to mention neighbors and relatives who are in the other categories of people, above. There’s not much time to resist in any significant way. Tea parties are significant, but families don’t like much to demonstrate on street corners. The big middle perhaps still identifies with archaic icons of virtue such as Atticus Finch and George Bailey, of ‘It’s a Wonderful Life.”
lc quotes Huxley: “Without economic security, the love of servitude cannot possibly come into existence . . .” The big middle loves traditional values but also increasingly loves security, and so health security will have much appeal, as in Europe. In Denmark the ideal social characteristic is “cozy.”
I recall the Gary Larson cartoon of the dinosaur convention: “The climate is cooling, the mammals are reproducing, and we have brains the size of walnuts.”
There’s always scarcity and paring around pocketbooks. That’s why economics is the ‘dismal science.’ But a simple test to apply regarding a government’s intention is to ask whether it is aiming to expand freedom, in the complex sense of, say, Catholic social doctrine: concern for the poor and the defenseless, respect for workers, a living wage, support for families, and attention to creation of an ever-widening circle of prosperity. And there is no ever-widening circle of prosperity without the fire of invention and free enterprise.
