From the Unbelievable to the Passé
From time to time I stop and wonder how the unbelievable can become the accepted. Let me list four arbitrary, but still representative, examples of what I mean.
1) Embracing unworkable statism.
Everywhere one looks statism is a failure. Contrast resource-rich Venezuela with Chile. Juxtapose Cuba to Colombia. Of course, compare Dark Age North Korea with the 21st-century South. Look at the UK in 1954 and 1990.
They are rioting in Europe not to embrace socialism, but in petulant fashion to find someone somehow to pay for it — as if “they” and “them” are partying in some remote Aegean island, with vaults of stashed euros.
Whether hard communism or soft socialism, statism does not work. We all know why — it goes against human nature, rewarding mediocrity and punishing merit, professing egalitarianism for the masses, while the operators of the system, whether the old Soviet apparatchiks or the new crony EU Brussels bureaucrats, satisfy their appetites like capitalists. Ultimately, it is simply like coasting on a bike uphill. The last hard peddles are simply not enough to push the bike and rider over the hill: finally the brilliant small manufacturer, the lean contractor, the enterprising farmer, the late-into-the-night engineer — they cannot carry any longer the clerk, the auditor, the regulator, the tax man, and the bureaucrat who wish not merely to piggy-back onto the biker, but to try to stop his peddling even as they demand to get over the crest.
Yet we are finishing a second year of absorbing banks, insurance companies, auto manufacturers, and the health care system, borrowing trillions to redistribute in new entitlements, with more lust for equality of ends notions like cap and trade and immigration amnesty. Any House member who went along with all this and lives outside a blue-gerrymandered district or San Francisco or Chicago cannot run on the Obama agenda.
The entire statist protocol polls well below 50%. Past leftist candidates like Michael Dukakis, John Kerry, George McGovern, or Walter Mondale could not get elected on their visions; those who did (Carter and Clinton) either imploded after a single term or triangulated and so found a way to a two-term presidency despite never getting 50% of the popular vote.
Statism versus free markets is about as easy to understand as the difference between Singapore and Greece, and yet here we go again. This weird suicidal statist impulse seems for Obama to trump almost every other consideration: he may well destroy the Democratic Party for a decade just when it was recovering; he has so terrified private enterprise that trillions of dollars in capital are simply sitting out his first two years, waiting for the end of his congressional majorities, and hence his agenda to implode.
All this goes on as Obama sees the EU running away from precisely what he wishes to implement, while at home a high-tax, high-entitlement, redistributive economy like California has managed to destroy the most richly endowed human and natural landscape — agriculture, tourism, high-tech, oil and gas, Hollywood, Napa Valley, Silicon Valley — in the nation. And yet here we continue down into the abyss.
2) Higher education.
Most of what we are told about universities is untrue. America’s reputation for higher learning excellence (in business, sciences, medicine, engineering, and finance) is despite not because of the humanities and social sciences. Current research in the liberal arts (the portfolio the English or sociology prof is tenured on) increasingly has almost no relevance to the general public or applicability to teaching or even scholarly merit.
Diversity is Orwellian: the university is the most politically intolerant and monolithic institution in the country, even as it demands the continuance of tenure to protect supposedly unpopular expression. Even its emphases on racial diversity is entirely constructed and absurd: Latin Americans add an accent and a trill and they become victimized Chicanos; one-half African-Americans claim they are more people of color than much darker Punjabis; the children of Asian optometrists seek minority and victim status.
Meanwhile on the labor front, liberal faculties prove far more illiberal than K-Mart. Part-time faculties now account for 40% of the units offered at many universities, earning 30-40% of the wages per unit of full professors, and mostly without benefits. There is no outrage from those who customarily damn CEOs from the lounge. Tuition rises faster than both inflation and the cost of health care, and yet the twin promises of a BA degree are no longer kept: today’s graduates are not so likely to get a choice job, and are not certified as literate in English or competent in math.
At some point, all this cannot go on, and we will have the academic version of September 15, 2008 — as parents no longer choose to take on $200,000 in debt to send their children to 4-year liberal arts schools, in which they will be likely indoctrinated that they should oppose the very American institutions that created the wealth and freedom that fuel their colleges and pay their faculties.
We have in a way already reverted to the sociology of the 19th century of an elite and a non-lettered mass, but without its benefits. One-hundred years ago, very few went to college. Only a well-schooled elite did, as the rest learned through the school of hard knocks. (My grandfather never went to college, but used to chant to me when I came home from college his high-school Latin “amo-amas-amat” as he irrigated the vineyard at 82.) Today we try to graduate almost everyone, in the process ensuring that for 4-6 years they are not apprenticing at anything other than Starbucks, “The Poetics of the Low-rider,” and university psycho-dramas over dating and oogling. I wonder whether today’s entering freshman is any better educated than someone in 1890 who was farming at the same age. I note that 50% of incoming freshmen at the CSU system must take remedial math and English. I suppose the new Obama student loan take-over in part is designed to protect the status quo, ossified university that staffs his administration and provides the fire for so many of his agendas.
3) Technology.
I remember as a little boy going to the Big Fresno Fair to see the “picto-phone,” huge monstrosities that we were told one day would allow us to phone and simultaneously see the other person on the other end of the line. Then quietly in the 1970s all that disappeared and the idea became Edsel-like.
But wait — suddenly without as much as a whimper one can Skype across the globe for free. Is not that a revolution in the human experience that has transpired without notice?
The current technological revolution is stealthy like that. The advancing pace of change is geometric but not the human reaction to it, which devolves to quiet indifference. So we look at terrorists in Waziristan from Las Vegas and decide in judge/jury/executioner fashion whether the big face on the screen lives or dies that nano-second. And sigh? I fly to an airport, have a minute, and access over 60 million words of the corpus of ancient Greek literature in between flights. Big deal?
Time to take the keys to the car back.
We pledge to restore America to its roots, founded in self-government – of self, of family, and of our local communities. We will disempower all forms of domestic government beyond this scope. Issues outside those addressable in these jurisdictions will be resolved by voluntary associations of the assembled communities. Laws and regulations will be written and enforced locally. Taxes will be collected and spent locally. Funds for activities beyond the community will be allocated by the communities.
We pledge to restore power to the people and their communities, and destroy once and for all the ability for those far removed from us to dictate law, regulation and policy, and be influenced by interests that are not ours, that are not local. In this way there can be no special pleading, no special interests given that if the majority of the communities adopt a practice by their individual choice, by definition it will be of the general interest. We will use freedom to discipline these communities, the freedom of the citizen and their enterprise to vote with their feet as well as the ballot box. Communities will experiment and compete for their citizens’ favor. San Francisco can complete its transformation into the left’s utopia – with death panels for young and old, if not a reefer heaven (and keep and (re)distribute all the income these wonderful policies will create.. or destroy, without recourse to their neighbors’ pocketbooks). The Central Valley will again be able to compete with the world’s best sources of food. The gangrenous areas of Detroit will either recover or, through bankruptcy, be recycled into a better place.
We pledge that in three more Presidential elections you will no longer care much about the federal, and most state government. All but a few of the functions of the central government will be returned to jurisdictions of around 300,000 citizens. Government employment will drop from the 10s of millions to sub-million. Much of D.C. will be returned to their local communities and other areas turned into parks and museums. The central legislature and courts as you know them today will be much less important to you (and of much less stature and cost) than those individuals heading local institutions you invent and support. The same as businesses decentralized in the 70s and 80s you will see a new architecture for governance based on increasingly inexpensive (self-service) 21st century automation and networks that does not rely on a King, or the rule of a majority far distant and removed from your interests. Call it the Mass-Customization of Governance and the end of the Regulatory/Administrative State. And just like business experienced decades ago, we’ll see that not only can faster and smaller governance can be delivered at a 10th of today’s costs, but in its distributed nature it will be able to survive all those threats that a centralized hierarchy of even well intentioned and able people cannot. And we’re all much more comfortable having the necessary upcoming hard decisions (about how we help those in trouble, those we’ve made dependent, in a time of scarcity) made by our neighbors, not some institution far removed from our community.
And we need not have any constitutional changes, simply a Congress that says “on these days over the next twelve years we will stop doing X, Y, and Z, and disestablish Agencies A, B, and C and by the end of the period we will be doing nothing related to domestic affairs that isn’t at the request of, and in the service of these near-sovereign communities). The internet and inexpensive automation has eliminated any need for top-down governance (and all the rent-seeking and corruption these centralized hierarchies naturally attract)”
These communities will be as sovereign as any EC state, and will take membership of the U.N. from 200 to 1,200 states. Others will complain and we’ll offer that if they too organize into individual communities of the same size, free to choose their own path, they can certainly join as well.
—–
Well, I can dream.
You suggest in your comment as YOUR DREAM that EC states are sovereign, NOT directed by unaccountable very highly paid and pensioned bureaucrats in Brussels, far removed from the populations they control, who grab ever more power. Or were you ironic? Ditto your suggestion that we should be proud members of the UN, publicly the MOST corrupt and incompetent agency in the modern world, even more so than the EC. Again irony? The EC nor the UN remotely, like or even similar in laws or administrative limits as the USA. Their name as “United / Union the same sort of feint as “liberal” for the modern totalitarian statists, who sometimes call
themsleves “democrats”.
Where do you stand on persons in power, who have shown without a shadow of a doubt they have little respect for rule of and behaviours in law ? Are hostile, belligerent and by policy use intimidation and publicly observable law-breaking to gain their ends With no compunction for any necessary victims. WHAT IF they refuse to accept the judgements of the election ?
As for example in Zimbabwe?
IF, Americans vote against this administration in November, there remains that “lame duck” session. These are not persons who will remove themselves without the revenge promised by Nancy Pelosi at the loss of the Millenium election. And within this Congress exacted with her sneeering march, gavel raised high (high five?)as the laurel at the triumph
WHAT THEN? Are there contingency plans ?
The one saving grace of a “lame-duck” legislative revenge is that it gives the incoming Congress a license to refuse to fund any of it. Gingrich lost the government shutdown battle with Clinton because in the end he was seen as going too far. A shutdown battle to stop clearly illegitimate legislation will not have that probelm.
Athough the Founders were intelligent and well-educated, they were under the sway of the Leftist idiocy of the day — the Enlightenment. Their lack of understanding of Human Nature was their Achille’s Heel. The idea that men are born tabula rasa, capable of detached logical/rationa reasoning was a theory that close observation of human-kind in practice would prove false (indeed, delusional). The “marketplace of ideas” was insane as applied to real live people. As always, observation trumps daydreaming: “A lie is halfway arouund the world before the truth has it’s boots on.”
Lies are no more tolerable in the marketplace of ideas than botulism is in the marketplace of food. The real Human Nature (Men are as good as they have to be, and as bad as they can get away with), makes the idea of putting the truth or falsity of any statement up for a vote a very bad one. Another bit of observation vs dreaming is that the right thing to do is always simple, and hard. The wrong thing to do is always very complicated, and easy. Another variation on Occam’s razor, based on the fact that people in general will do what is easy more often than what is hard, regardless of right or wrong.
“Athough the Founders were intelligent and well-educated, they were under the sway of the Leftist idiocy of the day — the Enlightenment.”
I have rarely read a less true statement written. There is nothing Leftist in the Englightenment, Rousseau is the root of the left and he did not greatly influence the Founders.
“Their lack of understanding of Human Nature was their Achille’s Heel.”
They under stood human nature with respect to republican government better than almost any, as evidenced (from much other agreeing evidence) from the fact the American Revolution actually worked, as contrasted with the French Revolution founded primarily in Rousseau.
“The idea that men are born tabula rasa, capable of detached logical/rationa reasoning was a theory that close observation of human-kind in practice would prove false (indeed, delusional).”
There is essentially nothing of the “tabula rasa” conception in either the Founders or the Enlightenment, and people certainly are capable of detached and logical reasoning. I think the delusion is yours.
“The “marketplace of ideas” was insane as applied to real live people. As always, observation trumps daydreaming: “A lie is halfway arouund the world before the truth has it’s boots on.”
And yet, the truth will out. Stalin’s lies had the likes of the Grey Lady to spread them, and yet now we know. Observation does trump daydreaming, and observation gives the lie to what you write.
“Lies are no more tolerable in the marketplace of ideas than botulism is in the marketplace of food.”
With respect to your lies, I am being tolerant. That is because I believe you believe them and are ill informed and possibly infected with a leftist meme of one of the more invidious sorts.
“The real Human Nature (Men are as good as they have to be, and as bad as they can get away with),”
That, is false. There is ample observational evidence that every social animal looked at shows clear signs of a sense of fair play; ground rules which include generosity and even a sense of moral outrage at ill deeds. It far more true to say the people are as bad as they have to be and and as good as they can get away with. Since you call yourself Jacobite, I should presume you feel we need a divinely chosen king of a presumed perfect enough to guard us from ourselves and others with arbitrary one size fits all rules which curiously are never enforced on the king’s favorites–I think we have far more than enough of crony capitalism now, thank you. Royalty, the divine right of kings, and inherited rule has been rejected for excellent principled reasons and by excellent reasoning, the rejection proved correct by experience.
“makes the idea of putting the truth or falsity of any statement up for a vote a very bad one.”
But not worse than any other means of choosing such, and so far far better.
“Another bit of observation vs dreaming is that the right thing to do is always simple, and hard.”
Something so true to say it falls under Don Lancaster’s category of, “not even wrong”, just nothing which you can say the Founders or their Revolution opposes.
“The wrong thing to do is always very complicated, and easy. Another variation on Occam’s razor, based on the fact that people in general will do what is easy more often than what is hard, regardless of right or wrong.”
I believe you are some sort of troll, and will treat you as such in the future.
“the Leftist idiocy of the day”
True of the French Enlightenment—but not of the canny authors of the Federalist.
The American Enlightenment was untainted by the folly of the French and Continental Enlightenments.
The Founders’ Tradition
By Robert Curry
We have had to the present day two different traditions in the theory of liberty…[one] was made explicit mainly by a group of Scottish moral philosophers led by David Hume, Adam Smith and Adam Ferguson…Opposed to them was the tradition of the French Enlightenment. F. A. Hayek, The Constitution of Liberty
America was founded during the Age of the Enlightenment, and the Founders quite naturally looked to Enlightenment thinkers for the ideas and arguments they used in the great task of crafting our system of government. Hayek’s point is important because it was the Scottish Enlightenment that influenced the founding, and it did so decisively. The French Enlightenment had virtually no influence on America in its formative years. The Founders were steeped in the Scottish tradition, and that was the tradition they relied upon. As Daniel Walker Howe put it, “the Scots spread a rich intellectual table from which the Americans could pick and choose and feast.”
The Scottish Enlightenment was made up of men who delighted in vigorous debate. And yet, as Samuel Fleischacker has written, “the Scots did tend to share some general views–on the sociability of human nature, on the importance of history to moral philosophy and social science, on the dignity and intelligence of ordinary people–that were of great importance to their followers in America and elsewhere.” Those shared general views informed the American debate, and provided the basis of a fundamental agreement among the Founders.
This fundamental agreement is a matter of the utmost importance. How different our history might have been if there had been a significant party among the Founders committed to the ideas of the philosophes! For Voltaire and Diderot the political ideal was the enlightened despotism of a reforming monarch, like Frederick in Prussia or Catherine in Russia. Government by the people was folly because, as Diderot wrote, “the general mass of men are not so made that they can either promote or understand this forward march of the human spirit.” Fortunately for us the Founders did not have to debate these fundamental issues.
Today the central role the Scottish Enlightenment played in America’s founding has been largely forgotten. Even the fact that there was a Scottish Enlightenment has been eclipsed by the prominence of the French Enlightenment. When well-educated people discuss the Enlightenment, they almost invariably are actually discussing the French Enlightenment.
If we want to try to re-capture the view from 1776 in order to understand the thinking of the Founders, perhaps the best place to start is where the Founders began–with the Enlightenment tradition of liberty that informed their thinking.
We could do that but not with the present politicians. First, the Democrats have to be voted out of office for at least 50 years for attempting a putsch [bloodless so far] and creating a statist oligarchy. Those that voted the largest money bill in the history of the United States with out reading it have to go, those that pushed socialized medicine has to go, those the bow to kings and potentates has to go, basically those that don’t really like our country should never hold public office ever. We must revere the Constitution and those that don’t shouldn’t ever hold public office, its much to dangerous for the People, we have politicians that don’t like their own country, they have go. We have to get back to the basics and that means that the enemies of the Constitution and the Republic such as the Democrats have become can never hold public office again.
*sigh*
Can we start with a pledge to keep it short & sweet?
NahnCee, did the previous poster wake you from your reverie? Unless you are one of the very privileged class — the Obamas, Kerrys, and Pelosis — you had better wake up.
Memo to Victor David Hanson:
The War on Terror is also an excellent example of failed big-government statism. Yet you’re an enthusiastic supporter of THAT kind of statism.
Why the hypocrisy?
National defense is an actual Constitutional responsibility of the federal government. As individuals we lack the ability to defend our nation thus we join together in the “common defense”.
We are however capable of planning for our own retirements and so don’t need to be forced into an unconstitutional government retirement program, Social Security.
The War on Terror has nothing to do with national defense.
It’s just another big government program.
That’s an interesting assertion. I doubt the 3000 from 9-11 would agree (or the thousands since who have not joined them).
What do Iraq and Afghanistan have to do with 9/11?
LOL
Bravo Extra Stout. The invasion of the sovereign nation of Iraq was the most liberal act of American’s most liberal president since LBJ. Nothing but big government social engineering.
Invading Iraq ended the containment of Iraq. Containing Iraq meant US military bases in Saudi Arabia. Getting out of Saudi was a huge advance in the war on terror.
But don’t think this is over.
Blinding ignorance is not an excuse for a clueless existence.
Still the same tired old talking points, eh? Afghanistan is your boy oblammo’s “good” war, isn’t it? Stop blaming Bush and man up. . . your fearful, I mean, fearless leader needs to do the same. . .
Reply to 3, extra stout
Regarding Iraq, you are right. It was a war of choice, not a war of necessity. But then Bush in many ways was almost as bad of a statist as Obama. Lefties point to Bush as a failure of conservatism. Real fiscal/libertarian/small government conservatives point to Bush as somebody who failed because he was not conservative enough. It is a bit ironic, but once he was tamed by a repub congress, Clinton was actually a better small government conservative than Bush.
Afgansitan though, is not a war of choice. It was Ben Laden’s headquarters. Invading them was a legidimate act of self defense. In the 2008, even most dems agreed there.
On both Iraq and Afganistan though, my rule is once a war is started, however unwisely, we should fight it to win. That is where the leftists are wrong on both Iraq and Afganistan. That is the thing that really irritates me about the dem party regarding war. They rarely object before a war is started, the point when an objection would do us the most good, (they voted for both Afganistan and Iraq) but once we are actually in the war, they do everything they can to pull the plug so we can lose. And the worste part is they often protest loudest at the very point when the tide is turning, and victory is about to be achieved (like iraq at the peak of the surge). The same thing is liable to happen in Afganistan, with that absurd deadline for withdrawal.
What does Afghanistan have to do with 9/11? Ohhhhh-kay, sorry. I tried to assume that you were making a serious comment. You have corrected my assumption. Never mind.
A belief in limited government isn’t the same as believing in no-government. We’re none of us anarchists. I personally believe in a strong central government, but that government stays strongest when it acts within constitutional limits. The government that attempts to do all things for its citizens will, in time, accomplish nothing, except its own failure and unpopularity with the citizenry.
This is a silly article. All through the 8 years of the Bush administration, his numbnutted crew tried extending US hegemony in the dumbest most, destructive ways possible, while getting all big brother domestically. And corporate America, especially in the financial sector, was allowed to trash to economy thanks to a good ol’ boy attitude with corporate misbehavior.
All bad, terrible bad stuff by any sane measure, yet right wingers, who apparently all have memory issues, are acting like those were the good old days.
We were very, VERY lucky to have Obama elected when he was. If you don’t feel that way, you have issues.
Well I certainly have issues with the election of Obama. I saw he was an empty suit before the election. He has never accomplished anything in his life aside from college degrees with unknown grades. He is now telling his supporters he “needs a break” from all this hard work. He just got back from his last vacation. He turned the government over to Nancy Pelosi after Inauguration. He admitted he had not read the health care bill when he signed it.
You sure have odd heroes.
Wow, we are in topsy turvy land today. Obama has taken ALL of Bush’s policies and multiplied them by 10 then he is doing his best to gut the American economy and Bush is the bad guy and Obama is god incarnate? You jumped into your partisan pants with both feet this morning didn’t you.
Interesting BitChie. “If you don’t feel that way, you have issues.”
Did you receive your training in a Soviet era psychiatric hospital?
Why is Mr. President unpopular?
Why can’t he be mmm, mmm, mmm again?
How come “real” progressives don’t like him?
Do drone attacks = Nobel Peace Prize?
Dem President, Dem Congress with “right winger” proof majority.
Why is BitChie so frustrated? Hate = Love?
This right winger for one does not treat Bush as the good old days. In many ways Bush was almost as bad of a statist as Obama. Our difference though is you probably say Bush was too conservative, and say his failure is conservatisms failure. But as a small government/fiscal/libertarian conservative, I would say Bush failed because he and his fellow repubs were not conservative enough. Or perhaps Bush was only conservative on issues that did not matter, like stem cells, gays, abortion, etc, while ignoring fiscal conservatism and small government. Mind you, Obama is much much worse, his rate of spending and regulatory growth makes Bush look like a piker, but that does not make Bush good, only less bad by comparison.
The real irony is once he was tamed by a repub congress, Clinton was in many ways a better fiscal conservative than Bush.
The only real good old days for conservatives is Reagan. Even he was not perfect, he didn’t cut spending and regulation as much as he should have (partly because the dem congress wouldn’t let him), but he was vastly better than his successors, or his predecessors.
Also, to those who say the recession proves the failure of the free market, I would reply that the recession was caused mainly by unwise government interference in the free market, such as Fannie May, the Community Redevelopment Act (both strongly supported by dems), and the Federal Reserve unwisely keeping interest rates too low, while unwisely telling people that low rate adjustable rate morgages were a good idea.
The presidency of Barack W Obushma will go down as the worst 12 years of White House incompetence and ineptitude ever! These two-into-one are in reality the Third Evolution of politics. It is the governance of the Third Way, ie “The Insanity-of-the-Inside-the-Beltway Way.”
Bush43 was no more “conservative” than was Bush41. Obama is just more of the same. Look, if MINDLESS Incoherent Pork Barrel Spending worked, we would be in Nirvana by now. Obushma just evolved from “Mindless’ to “Totally Irresponsible.” The tipping point for most people in America is the collection of national debt. The Tea Party Folks get that. The Republicans are slowly getting it. The Left doesnt get it at all and are mad as hell. Those on the Left are much like spoiled rotten frat boys mad that someone has found out that their collective credit card is suspended in the midst of a rollicking party. The rest of us know it is time to sober up, go home, and sleep it off, and get back to work. Indeed, most of us are already back at work for the most part. The Left is still arguing with the waiter that they are not done getting drunk and how unfair that someone is shutting down their rollicking time of fun, waa-waa!
Those on the Left are just totally pissed, in that “If they are going to make us pay for our lifestyles and beleives, then lets go trash the place” kind of immaturity. The political elites in this country (Left & Right) need to just shut up and get back to work with the rest of us. We cannot afford these polcies anymore. Even the most uneducated among us can clearly see that now. The CRA-Mortgage Bubble has burst. The Wall Street Bubble has burst. The Big Govt Bubble is bursting as we speak. The Bloated Union Pension (Public & Private) Bubble is about to burst. Getting pissy because you have to sober up, wake up, and get back to work is not going to change the reality of the situation at all.
#3 – “The War on Terror is also an excellent example of failed big-government statism.”
The fact that we haven’t been hit since 9-11 indicates to me that the war on terror is not a failure. Now here’s a push pop. Why don’t you go back to puffington host with your little friends. The adults are having a conversation here.
Vote every one of the bastards out every chance you get until our taxes, the national debt and deficit start to go down.
God damn these sanctimonious bastards!
You tell ‘em, Jack!
I’ve read this twice and I still don’t know what it’s about.
The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people’s money.
Maybe you should enroll in one of our fine universities then. Oh wait, that probably wouldn’t help.
seems he already has a university degree(probably a doctorate). what else could explain his ignorance.
Obviously, a doctorate in some liberal arts area.
The point is that statism and redistribution of wealth kills creativity, pride and honor. I’ll go along with their redistribution when George Soros, the Clintons, BO, and all the others, have the same amount of net worth as I do, because they’ve redistributed it to the needy. But they will Never do that.
TT’s sentence shows that he has already graduated from an ivy-festooned university. Too ignorant to get it and proud of it. Try three things, TT. Get humble. Read it again. Also read this about how your President is exposing our troops to death and dismemberment, with no intention to actually win, for political reasons:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/09/30/AR2010093004683.html
Oh, so you must be one of those incoming freshmen who require remedial reading classes. To me it is clear as day.
The article came across to me as saying we’re basically too darned complacent with regard to statism & all that goes with that. The entitlement mentality, like a cancer, is undermining the best interests of our country. It all started with FDR, continued with LBJ & the current crop on the left wants to ratchet it up a few more notches.
Started with Teddy Roosevelt (1st Progressive Party candidate)and Woodrow Wilson. The 16th ammendment is when we went from the government working for us to us working for them. This is just an escalation of beaurocratic control using whatever language can rationalise that take over as they search for that absolute power they so desperately want.
It’s a bunch of random anecdotes that VDH thinks support his self-serving right wing ideas. Does that help?
VDH:
It’s unbelievable statism is not completely passé, for all the reasons you mention, plus the fact that our supposed betters who would run the state apparatus all turn out to be like Obama: Incompetent.
This reminds me so much of the political crap in the USSR, portrayed in “Red Storm Rising” by Tom Clancy. The government of elites brought their whole country down because they were to ignorant to listen to reason. We are headed that way if not already there.
Obama is very competent. Everything is going exactly to plan.
VDH:
“I wonder whether today’s entering freshman is any better educated than someone in 1890 who was farming at the same age.”
To answer your own question, avail yourself of a sophomore high-school textbook of the 1920s or 1940s.
The level of literacy apparently obtaining then was truly humbling to us today.
That said, while the knowledge then was undeniably deep, it was also comparatively narrow to what is being learned today.
No-one in the 1890′s had to learn to synch their cell phone to their personal computer in order to download the latest MP3s in the queue.
…. avail yourself of a sophomore high-school textbook of the 1920s or 1940s.
…. The level of literacy apparently obtaining then was truly humbling to us today ….
The level of “education” that will these days get you out of Yale or Harvard or a similar Ivy League with an impressive looking four year degree certificate to hang on your wall, would, in 1949, not have earned you a high school graduation certificate!
That’s a two way street Mr. Bilgeman my friend.
Vanishingly few of us know how to raise livestock or repair a tractor, shoe a horse, can a crop, darn a sweater, or plow a field…Or even survive a season without piped in mullah juice feeding central climate control. Neither do many of us ‘moderns’ learn (or desire) to read and comprehend historical texts that may lend us real insight into human nature and perhaps some small appreciation for the rarity of human liberty concomitant with an ability to identify historic dead ends.
This in contrast to the inculcation of our youth in rote recitations of the latest sociological fad to vomit itself out of the mind of some licensed intellectual who doesn’t believe that such a thing as objective truth even exists.
I posit that it would be far easier for one of our (not so distant) ancestors to learn to “synch their cell phone to their personal computer in order to download the latest MP3s in the queue” than it would be for a modern westerner to learn to survive his/her life.
VDH excellent job of scratching the service. Future points to consider.
1. Foreign aid. Why.
2. No child left behind. Failed, no cannot take a 60 IQ child and make a success.
3. Federal Dept. of Education. The quality if education consistently dropped since inception.
4. Federal income tax. Almost 50% of US residents are leaches,
5. LBJ’s Great Society, or how to destroy black and white poor families for money.
6 I’ll admit I am judgmental. As examples I think that most, not all Muslims are loyal to Islam and not the USA or any other nation. Welfare ( WIC) should be a fixed dollar amount, not increased for additional children of inflation. Hint, hint if you are a drain on society keep it to a minimum.
1. Foreign aid = unconstitutional, show me where it’s allowed?
2. No child left behind = unconstitutional, not the business of the federal government
3. D.O. Education = unconstitutional, not the business of the federal government
4. Income tax = constitutional but questionable as to it’s equality (?) How is it fair to tax one person at one rate and another person at another rate, unless you are a secret liberal?
5. LBJ = Not the start of progressivism but he sure gave it a boost with his unconstitutional programs.
A thought: If I take $100 from you against your will, and use it to feed hungry people, I go to jail for stealing. If 10 of us get together and take $100 from you, against your will, and use it to feed hungry people, we will go to jail (should anyway) for stealing. At what point is it OK for people to take other people’s money and give it to 3rd parties to feed them. When the people have more guns (federal government has lots of guns)? If the federal government passes a law that says I can take your money and give it to others while keeping a part of it for my costs, is that right? It’s legal (barring constitutionality) but is it right???
Interestingly tuition at Harvard in the period 1900 to 1915 was $150. This was the period when Quentin Compson’s family sold a square mile of Mississippi land to pay for 1 year at Harvard. Current tuition is $33,000, an increase of 220x. This is over 10 times the official BLS CPI, and 3 times the increase in the price of gold. Tuition increases started to rise consistently over a year to year basis in the post-war period with the GI Bill (signed in 1944), the National Defense Education Act (1957-62), and the Higher Education Act (1967).
On the other hand, consumer electronics, which have not been subject to government intervention, have declined in price. In 1985 a 256KByte RAM card for an Apple II was about $300, and it cost about another $100 to bring it up to 1MByte. The current cost of a 1GByte card us about $40. So you can buy about 10,000 times as much RAM in 2010 as you could in 1985 for the same amount. A 60MByte Hard drive in 1988 was $800 or so. A 1TByte HD can be can be had for under $100 now. That’s an increase in capacity of 16,000, and a decrease in cost of 8-10x.
Do a sector by sector comparison of cost and government intervention, and I’ll bet you that you’ll find the sectors with government involvement are the ones with the greatest cost increases. This means an overall inflation, even though some sectors are actually deflating.
Get the government out of education, agriculture, health care, etc., and you’ll see cost reductions all the way across the board.
Ah yes, but if Harvard had had its current diversity program, then Quentin would not have jumped off the bridge. Oops, maybe his room-mates would have taped him having sex with a cow and he would have killed himself anyway. Oops, again, wrong book1 ;-)
But seriously, you are going to confuse most of these PJM folk with your Quentin Compson talk, plus they think that one of the main problems with America is the number of people who know who Quentin Compson is and admire him, rather than Jason. Or that is what they would think if…etc.
I didn’t finish college. I know who Quentin Compson is. I kinda prefer Benjy…
“But seriously, you are going to confuse most of these PJM folk with your Quentin Compson talk…”
But seriously, get a life. You think juxtaposing the latest CNN cover story with the poster’s reference to Faulkner to be ever so clever, an intellectual achievement beyond the ken of us “PJM folk”. Uh, OK Dwitless. Got it.
BTW, if your smarter than thou attitude is some sort of compensatory mechanism that keeps you from jumping off a bridge, then by all means stick with it. Just understand that some consider it quite lame.
And as for your figures, hasn’t the price of land more than kept up with Harvard tuition? Certainly if you could get a square mile of land in Massachusetts for $33,000, you would have a hell of a deal. Usually a buildable ACRE now goes for two or three times that.
The trade-off for our cheap giga-bytes is that those things are all now produced elsewhere; yielding jobs for a relatively few retail employees jobs to dole them out to us.
Read, Dwight, read. Mississippi, not Taxachussetts. And there are plenty of square miles in Mississippi that aren’t that costly.
Reading Is Fundamental. Heard that somewhere.
Yeeaaaa!! Bang on! Nail on the head!
And good data, good examples too.
Applause.
Interesting read,
Thanks Victor.
Buy,
Dave McCaig itunes.
Excellent points, as always. The whole “we need a highly educated US populace to compete in the world” mantra is useless if it’s Bachelor Degrees in Leisure Studies. The whole “clapping for credits” education has to go – not everyone is suited for higher education. I’ve enjoyed some of your other YouTube accessible lectures on that theme.
PS – pedal/ling not peddling thx.
Embracing statism is found in all those who wish to build a global government without G-d. The state becomes their god, and their god gives, and can take away.
The individual needs to be ruled, not individuals ruling the state. A global Tower of Babel will not bring peace, because it will not have the laws of G-d in it’s heart.
This is the real reason Soros, and his ink embrace statism. A vein attempt to do away with G-d the Father who died, and rose from the dead for mankind’s sin.
Better than usual, doctor. This one’s a high point, even for you.
But I think I know the answer to your fourth point, our own arrogant plutocrats. From the time the ice began to recede a few thousand years ago and man discovered agriculture until just 234 years ago, there was really only one governing structure. Oh sure, the Greeks had their experiment, and for a while the Romans shared power amongst themselves, but what did that amount to? 1% of historical governance? Probably less.
The other 99.9%, of course was the iron fist of a priviledged elite forcing their will on the lives of the powerless, and taking everything they had in recompense for living lives 10,000 times as good.
And then 1776 happened. Within a hundred years the bounty VDH describes in his other three points was available to any bright and hard-working family. Since then, it has only gotten better.
Now the Hispanic girl talking to her friends in central Mexico from a Walmart in Fresno has a life that in many ways is just as good as the life John Kerry enjoys.
And the John Kerry’s of the world don’t like that. Not only don’t they like it, they are determined to end the rise of the rubes forever. Obama is their best vehicle ever to make it happen, because America is the drumbeat of freedom and nobody runs the con like he does. Snuff America’s liberty and the world is laid open to the divine rulers once again.
“From the time the ice began to recede a few thousand years ago and man discovered agriculture until just 234 years ago, there was really only one governing structure.”
I like your theory: Statism derives from the first agricultural co-ops, ~10,000 years ago. Makes them sound so progressive.
“Get the government out of education, agriculture, health care, etc., and you’ll see cost reductions all the way across the board.”
….and the cost reductions will be dwarfed by the explosion in quality and functionality.
This country is dying and on life support, and the disease is government.
If you want your children to be more than serfs, defeating big government has to be your number one priority.
Sir, I think you missed one of the major redistributist mechanisms in present-day America: the civil court system. Americans the country over are looking to strike it big via an insurance settlement, a pot-of-gold-at-the-end-of-the-rainbow letter from a doctor validating a disability (“anxiety disorder” was the trump at the subsidized apartment building I worked in), a chance to ruin a wealthier or more industrious compatriot.
“This weird suicidal statist impulse…”
Apoptosis?
Statists are scabs on the body politic, dead leaves on the Tree of Liberty. Wherever they flourish, societies decline. A healthy culture recognizes their debility, and sloughs them without further concern.
To a rational person, this course of events — call it the natural life-cycle of statists — may appear to be the result of suicidal impulses. Not necessarily so. They know not what they do. They are simple creatures. Perhaps they are the missing link in the chain of human evolution, a branch of cognitively deficient hominids which failed to die off completely, or have its DNA as yet be eliminated from the gene pool. True, they are impulsive, but their drive is to domination not self-destruction. The suicide part is merely a consequence of their stupidity.
I think you’re onto something. Statists may be descended from slave stock, who, perhaps over centuries and millenia, adapted to survival under bondage conditions and thus feel more ‘at home’ in an authoritarian environment. Remember that slavery was endemic everywhere throughout history even in Europe until the rise of Christianity. And it was often hereditary too. Most of us surely have some slaves in our ancestry. But we don’t all inherit the same traits from our ancestors.
Or perhaps statists are (as you suggest) descended from humans who did not adapt well to the burdens of consciousness, and basically resent their own existence. They transfer that onto society, since that makes their self-loathing easier to bear; and thus seek to rein-in the joyful, dynamic, creative parts of human life. It may be that it is a pro-survival adaptation, since the struggle for power is in part what keeps human societies flexible and adaptive. The problem is that the revolutionary cycles seem to get more and more extreme over time – and eventually it takes some kind of civil war or major trauma to resolve the contradictions. We may be living through such a cycle now, although it is made worse now since the state is also trying to take control of culture… that is those spontaneous forms of internal communication that traditionally took place through religious expression, music, art etc. It would be interesting to hear what Dr. Hanson thinks of these kinds of grand historical theories.
Mind you we all have a mix of statist vs. individualist I think. I went through a much more lefty phase in my college years. I still believe its important to inculcate a sense of community, and patriotic duty (particularly in times of threat or crisis)… though I now think that if that doesn’t happen at the family / local level, it’s a bad idea to try and enforce it at the state or federal level. Concentrations of power are sometimes necessary, but they should always be limited and as temporary as possible. The problem is releasing that power once the objective it was concentrated to solve has been achieved. It is the great temptation (dominion over the empires of the Earth) and the statists are drawn to it like flies (they think it will cure their disease, but it only makes it ravenous). The Framers knew all this, which is why the statists hate them and their works.
The United States is the only country in history where the principle problem facing the poor is not plague (there are no plagues), is not war (there are no wars on US soil), is not famine (our crops never fail and we have more food then we can eat). The major problem of US poor is Obesity.
Our poor people are fat. Never happened before.
We should be proud.
Not just the US. Australia, too, is almost matching US obesity levels, and our generous welfare system (not to mention universal health-care) attracts many foreigners to come to stay in the sure knowledge that, in no time at all, they can bludge off the foolishly hardworking taxpayers and they may also expect, correctly, that welfare forms are available in their native tongue.
The idea of being poor meant you did not have enough to eat. The current system over solved that one. The real poor are people without a basic education. We have compulsive schooling but not education. The old saying “Give a man a fish–” etc. is actually true. But without the uneducated underclass the leftwingers would have no issue to keep themselves in power. The last thing they want is an educated country where everyone has at least an chance of moving ahead either moneywise, or just doing as they please without government “mandates, programs and assistance.” Why can’t these meddlesome pains in the arse just go away?
VDH, you frequently dismiss English and the social sciences–fair enough. But can you bring yourself to dismiss the Greek and Latin classics? As you have pointed out yourself, the texts are at the very heart of Western civilization. And among the language humanities, classics was the only discipline to retain its philological focus, refusing to succumb wholesale to theory (though there were some concessions). Do you see no future for what Sheldon Pollock called a Department of Philology in the United States? Should we completely forget about our past?
You may want to familiarize yourself with Victor’s CV before you ask such questions.
Per wikipedia: “Hanson received … his Ph.D. in classics from Stanford University in 1980.
[...]
Until recently, he was professor at California State University, Fresno, where he began teaching in 1984, having created the classics program at that institution.
In 1991 Hanson was awarded an American Philological Association’s Excellence in Teaching Award, which is awarded to undergraduate teachers of Greek and Latin.”
His books also may be of interest to you:
Who Killed Homer: The Demise of Classical Education and the Recovery of Greek Wisdom, The Western Way of War: Infantry Battle in Classical Greece, The Other Greeks: The Family Farm and the Agrarian Roots of Western Civilization, A War Like No Other: How the Athenians and Spartans Fought the Peloponnesian War.
Now then, do you believe that Prof. Hanson is one who is likely to “dismiss the Greek and Latin classics?”
If I didn’t know about VDH’s scholarship in classics, I wouldn’t have asked the question in the first place. But the fact is that VDH has hardly been an enthusiastic supporter of the the DIRECTION (I’m not talking about the content!) of the discipline, and I wanted his latest thoughts on the matter. Did the discipline write itself out of relevance like comparative literature and English? Or did it weather the storm of theory better than most other humanities fields? Can classics serve as a MODEL for the way humanities SHOULD be taught? Or is there no good role model for the humanities left in the left-leaning university?
He was criticizing HOW English and the humanities are taught, not that they ARE taught! You might want to read a bit more carefully.
By the way, before you answer my question about the future of classics, please know that I have read your scholarship and I think it is brilliant. I believe it shows in the quality of your insights here. I just want to know if you have any new thoughts on classics since WKH.
Thanks
Victor — Your next-to-last paragraph, and the one just before it, are brilliant insights. Thank you for stating the truth, and a powerful argument against state compulsion.
Many of those “moneyed and cognitive elites” became hectoring populists because they are conscience stricken over their ill gained wealth. However they, after suitable reflection, have concluded that they can assuage their troubled consciences, by supporting programs with high sounding names in which the federal (or state or local) governments foot the bill. After all those “moneyed and cognitive elites” say to themselves, “Well, we do pay taxes, ergo we are contributing proportionately”.
If they really had guilty consciences they would use their own money to fund the programs instead of ours.
What they want is for the Poor and Downtrodden to be provided Services without having to dirty their own hands or spend their own personal money. If you don’t want your money used for things THEY think are good causes it is because you don’t care as much as they do.
The thing about statism is if you succeed at it, then your population consists of sheep, and sheep are perhaps the single most self centered creature on the planet. All they think about is getting the juiciest piece of grass, and they don’t care if it’s off the side of a cliff, or surrounded by a pack of snarling wolves. Off they go to go get it, secure in the knowledge that their dear shepherd will protect them. If you want any sheep left at all, you have to be on your toes. People are far smarter than sheep, so when you turn them into sheep, you just get sheep that are highly inventive at getting themselves into trouble.
I admit your point on technology is one I have not considered, though it now seems obvious. This very same technology that you rightly point out has raised the standard of living and equalized many different social and economic levels is the same technology that now makes the statist even more vulnerable to the truth and defeat.
Let us not forget it was a cable news reporter who birthed the Tea Party. It is the internet that provides counter balance to the statist supporting media. It is rapid communications technology that shows union thugs beating up black conservatives, the true size of the Glenn Beck rally and the fact that black lawmakers walk through Tea Party protesters untouched.
This will bring down the statest and may even fix your our higher education problem. impact.
Dr. Hanson is right, there are no fresh ideas coming out of the Democrat party. The only serious plan to get us out of this fiscal mess is authored by a Republican, Paul Ryan. Democrats that dismiss the road map have yet to offer anything viable as an alternative, wishing only to continue down the same path and cross their fingers for a different outcome. I have not heard any goals such as balancing the budget, getting public sector pay back to a level commensurate with the private sector, or addressing any of the other 800-lb. gorillas in the room, such as social security and medicare, coming out of the democrat party. Their idea of change is the same old leftovers, just more of it. If Republicans stay optimistic and make use of their built-in advantages, like the economic truths that plague Democrats at every turn, or even matters of physics such as the impossibility of insuring more people at less cost with no decrease in health care quality, they have a real opportunity to be the party of the future. They need to be bold, offer solutions, and follow through this time. Just give us a distinct choice and we the people will reward them handsomely not only this November but for many elections to come.
Thomas Sowell’s “Conflict of Visions” describes two fundamentally differing views of humanity. The unconstrained vision (e.g. statism) believes that elites must call the shots to ensure that the masses are looked after (like pets). There is no original sin – we are all born good. This vision goes back to Plato. Its attraction is that it gives one group a great deal of power and money and perks while giving select other groups endless entitlement and the comforting feeling of being looked after. It is an endless Parent/Child dynamic. The unintended consequences (bankruptcy, externalities, free riders etc.) are explained as the result of not enough time working the plan.
The constrained vision believes that the system is unknowable but functions best when everybody looks after his or her own business. We are not born good but must be trained to be sociable, industrious and law-abiding. This vision goes back to Aristotle. It is grittier and requires hard work by anyone who wants success. Its attraction is that it rewards behaviour not intentions. It demands that people operate as Adults and stop making excuses for failure. The unintended consequences (pockets of relative poverty and extreme wealth, hard-luck stories, windfall fortunes etc.) are explained as outliers that don’t invalidate the concept but must be accepted as the price for equal opportunity.
To rescue the nation, the grown ups will have to forget about trying to reason with the statists’ temper tantrums, name-calling and bullying. They will have to get tough.
Plato sucks
How about that for a bumper sticker. 25 centuries of western civ nailed in two words.
True.
But they won’t.
Run while there’s time.
” hard communism or soft socialism”…….or a fetid mix of both.
That’s what we’ve got – and that’s what we face, what this election is about – stamping out the flames of doctrinaire socialism that the Ayers gang has ignited.
So why does everybody continue to talk about liberalism, leftism, progressivism, statism, collectivism? Why do Rove, and Gingrich, and and MCain and O’Reilly, and Palin, and the grand panjandrums of puritan punditry avoid the use of the word SOCIALISM?????
The Socialists have landed. They are in the driver’s seat. They are not going to follow Trudeau’s ten year plan; they like Hugo Chavez’s. They’ll follow Mao’s determined example!
Norman Thomas, the leader of the Communist Part U.S.A., when they were not afraid to identify them selves, famously is purrported to have said “Americans will never knowingly vote in a socialist government.” He was right – and they still won’t. But they’ve already voted in a “leftist” administration because Republicans and over-educated conservatives refused to use such a dirty word. Much less “Communist”, even though Obama is a flaming Red.
Key words are important. “Don’t vote for Socialism!” is a better rallying call than “Don’t vote for Leftism!”. The Dems don’t mind being considered leftist but they are deadly afraid of being labeled Socialists, and will go into a screaming panic if they are. We should be hammering them relentlessly with the correct term.
Why are we obliging them by using wimpy, vapid euphemisms?
And yet here we continue down into the abyss.”
The reason is either that a) some of these people are not fully connected to reality. That is they are operating according to the socialist playbook, not according to what their senses are reporting. Contradictory external stimuli has no effect on these people, they suffer from a mental illness. We are literally being governed by the unhinged. b) Some know but don’t care. They actually want to damage America. They are driven by resentment and simply take delight in destroying the rare and precious values and institutions our ancestors embodied in the constitution. They are cutting off the nose to spite the face.
“trillions of dollars in capital are simply sitting out his first two years…”
If we retake Congress and the money starts to flow again, it will be vital to deny Obama any of the credit. We must track, document and account for the renewed flow of investment and constantly and convincingly show that it has nothing to do with Obama; but that rather it’s because now there is something containing him. Don’t let them pull a Clinton. We have the momentum while they jabber incoherently. It’s what happens to ideologues once Toto pulls aside the curtain and the deception is revealed. Don’t let up on November 3, rather, push the pedal to the metal.
“…then some sort of human desire to help the “other” kicks in as a sort of penance for the enjoyment of privilege.”
I think that for guys like Gore and Kerry it is the unconscious fear that some will say ‘you have too much’ and take it all away from them. Thus they are impelled to show us how deserving they are of all their wealth by making a big distracting show of philanthropy (using other people’s money) so no-one will notice the new yacht they just bought. Throughout history there are examples of the super-rich befriending the masses in order to protect their own wealth and power. Plus Gore is partly insane too.
“…they sense that something for nothing is not a neutral act, but a sort of evil in creating dependency and destroying initiative”
Yes. Nice way of articulating this subtle point.
“The very wealthy promise largess to the poorer on the premise that both despise the culture of the aspiring, the one in condescending disdain, the other in bitter envy.”
The former, from the value of material measures. The latter from the measure of values.
Thank you, Dr. Hanson, for this, and all you do.
An aside: my son was an extremely hard-working, straight-A high school student; ACT and SAT scores were very, very high; excellent three-sport athlete; lots of the requisite community service. Nevertheless, he was rejected at about half the elite northeastern colleges to which he applied. Meanwhile, I have learned of others with much poorer grades, but with slightly “exotic” resumes, who were accepted.
How could this be? As you have reminded us, “diversity” —not character or cranial content, or work ethic—trumps all. And my son’s home state, Vermont, is apparently Admissions Office code for white and non-diverse.
I guess we had it coming to us, although the closest we have ever been to slavery was in the 1860s when many of our family members went South to end it.
“he was rejected at about half the elite northeastern colleges to which he applied”
Count your blessings.
Good point!
Charity used to begin at home — meaning individually to our neighbors who needed help. It was practiced by individual families and by local churches. Now the feds want to take our hard-earned money and distribute it as they see fit, dribbling it to this victim group and to that union who secured the election for the party in power. That is what we rail against, the federal institution usurping the power and the unselfishness of the individual.
Thank you very much. I’ve been saying this for so long my voice is hoarse. Everyone looks at me funny when I use those very words; government is usurping the role of the individual in charity. This indiscriminate charity practiced by a bloated government will play a significant role in our downfall.
I worked at the Post Office after several years of ‘commercial/industrial’ employment.
I was told to slow down and not work so hard at the Post Office. If I did not slow down, I got flack from management and co-workers.
The Post Office gives you excessive sick leave each year, but they actually punish you for using it. The want your corpse at work, no matter how incapable of work you may be.
What you speak is the truth, Dr. Hanson.
People need to take a look at Detroit, New Orleans, and parts of Chicago and Los Angeles, to see what the Democrat Party has in store for them.
The Democrat Party and the unions have such a toe hold in America, it’s going to take some drastic measures to bring them to an acceptable level.
If not, following these events to their conclusion, the next civil war will be between these two groups and the muslims who want to instill Sharia law in the United States, and rename the United States ‘New Palestine’.
He was criticizing HOW English and the humanities are taught, not that they ARE taught!
By whom is the urge to statism indulged and nurtured? Not by those who measure a society’s well-being by its AVERAGE autonomy, wealth, comfort and happiness. No, its proponents’ metric is their PERSONAL autonomy, wealth, comfort and happiness. And damn the average! The challenge to these latter is to organize and justify the coup that enslaves the majority. They prey on envy of success; greed for other people’s money; ignorance of history; and the siren song of equality of result. They leave out the facts that (1) this equality will occur at a much lower level of average well-being, (2) that augmented state force will be needed to implement Utopia, and (3) that the resulting impoverishment does not extend to the state’s political elite and their families and friends, who will enjoy augmented well-being. In spite of the continual failure of these “Utopian” systems, they will continue to bedevil mankind as long as man is greedy and ignorant of history. The first condition is guaranteed by human nature. The second requires the co-option of the education system and incessant propaganda.
As always VDH is bracing and thoughtful. I particularly admire his incisive and devastating characterizations of our disconnected and insular academic and plutocratic elites. This is not a new development but can be traced back to the beginning of the 20th Century as socialism began to exert its death-grip on European and Russian intellectuals. Richard Piples described this phenomenon as the rise of “the intelligentsia” and illustrated it brilliantly in his “Reflections on the Russian Revolution”….
“……As in other countries where it lacked legitimate political outlets, the intelligentsia in Russia constituted itself into a caste: and since ideas were what gave it identity and cohesion, it developed extreme intellectual intolerance. Adopting the Enlightenment view of man as nothing but material substance shaped by the environment, and its corollary, that changes in the environment inevitably change human nature, it saw “revolution” not as the replacement of one government by another, but as something incomparable more ambitious: a total transformation of the human environment for the purpose of creating a new breed of human beings – in Russia, of course, but also everywhere else. Its stress on the inequities of the status quo was merely a device for gaining popular support: no rectification of these inequities would have persuaded radical intellectuals to give up their revolutionary aspirations…”
To me at least, this is a perfect description of what today’s “intelligentsia” desire for us all. An unending creation of grievance that can then be used to take over and resuape all of the institutions of society. It should be no surprise that both the academic and the well-monied Left has so fervently embraced socialized medicine and radical enviromentalism, These are two sides of the same coin that promise the elites complete and total mastery over individual. By imposing statist control over health care and the “enviroment” the intelligentsia hopes to dominate every aspect of human behavior in the name of “reshaping” it to something more to their liking.
“Having spent several years watching the political process, we came away feeling that 99 per cent of what politicians do is keep systems running that were laid in place by previous generations of politicians.”
“-Marx had talked about the general crisis of capitalism and the argument of the left was always that capitalism would collapse upon itself and socialism would triumph. We argued that both capitalism and socialism would collapse eventually because both were the offspring of industrial civilization, and that we were on the edge of a new way of life, a new civilization. ”
Alvin Toffler ’94
Jason S, some variation of Paul Ryan’s plan is inevitable.
The only question is whether it will be enacted in time and forecefully enough to save the country, or not.
Whats 9/11 it got to with Iraq and Afganistan?
Uhhmmm.. I dunno, maybe becasuse its where alot of ISLAMIC TERRORISTS historically train, operate, receive funding and support?
Maybe (in Iraq’s case) its because a dangerous nut on ‘that side” had a known, proven, repeatedly documented use of Weapons Of Mass Destruction, chemical and biological, against large populations of civilians…
And, since its apperently so easy to smuggle large, truck transported military rockets, by the tens of thousands to Hamas and Hezbola, under the watchfull eye of the UN tasked to prevent such smuggling, maybe just MAYBE, the idea that Sadam’s known, proven, documented, and BRAGGED ABOUT WMD’s (that he used without shame or reservation repeatedly against large civilian population centers) could maybe, just talking-out-loud-possibly, fall into, or be smuggled to, some unfriendly types that blow up stuff?
But not like anything of that sort has EVER happened before, right?
I mean, if 20-40 foot tall, truck transported, military missiles can just appear, by magic, in the IN THE TENS OF THOUSANDS, straight into the hands of known terrorists ALL THE WHILE the UN is actively supposed to STOP this very action from occuring, and SWEARS they never saw a SINGLE ONE OF THEM come through…..
Then of course a few mortar shells, the size of mere soda bottles, loaded with Sarin or nerve gas could NEVER make it from Iraq to NYC..or Chicago…or LA, right?
It is beyond credibility for ANYONE to actually believe, given Sadams proven history of WMD usage, and paying the families of islamic suicide bombers, that he “probably” wasnt a threat to us on 9/12.
Probably, huh? The Foolishly Ignorant would subject us all to live in such peril, based on their “trust” of a guy with THAT kind of history and bevavior, in a post 9/11 world?
But then again, the Foolishly Ignorant are always known to believe in foolish, ignorant, impractical, unrealisticly theoretically far fetched “could be’s” …in the face of overwhelmingly opposite facts and histories.
The breathtaking advancement of technology is not going unnoticed by our elite. They are licking their chops at what they envision as their ace in the hole to total domination of people, culture, markets, industries. It is the march to 1984 where machines will make manmade decision making obsolete other than among the “intelligentsia” under the guise of “science”. Consolidation of essentially everything will be spearheaded by statists the world over as they bring energy, health, food, education, housing, jobs under their control. Small business will be a dying breed along with freedom and individualism.
Fortunately, that same technology also can be used against these elites, and there is no way to get that particular genie back into the bottle.
In the end, the statists’ dreams of power and control matter little. The money to fund them simply isn’t there, and the whole thing will fly apart as the USSR did. The question is: will we do this the orderly way, or the messy way?
VDH steps right up to the edge of the best example in recent memory of the difference between statist redistribution and free market redistribution — the used car industry. In America, the automobile industry is supported by a small fraction who buy new cars from the dealerships. They then gladly and willingly trade in their barely used cars with upwards of 20 years of life on them at an enormous financial loss. Those cars are sold over and over again, for less and less money until eventually a $30,000 pickup truck becomes a $500 pickup truck that becomes a precious means of income for a scrap metal collector. By this very American means of “spreading the wealth”, every American of every economic means can have the boon of independent transportation.
Compare this to “cash for clunkers”, a liberal program, where the very richest Americans are paid subsidies to destroy their barely-used cars and trucks to keep out of the hands of poorer Americans. CFC was a profound example of rich people thinking about themselves, and now an entire generation is going to have to make do with more expensive used cars in poorer condition for the next two decades. Yet self-righteous liberals have no idea that their self-absorbed policy has actually hurt poorer Americans for decades. Now the same liberals are demolishing entire neighborhoods in detroit, turning farmland into desert in California, and snuffing out the energy production industry in the gulf.
For them, it doesn’t matter how expensive cars, housing, food and energy become. They can still afford it. As for those who cannot afford it, all they can imagine are cash subsidies, the liberal method of redistribution, to get the poor people by. What a miserable, impoverished future they imagine for us all.
I’m pretty sure the “elites” loved Cash for Clunkers because they KNEW it would hurt poorer Americans. Car ownership is not just freedom, but opportunity–if you cannot afford a car (or find a friend with nothing else to do but give you rides), you can only pursue work and education close to your home, or serviced by public transportation. That might not be a problem if you live in Manhattan or Chicago’s Hyde Park, but in rural areas and even smaller cities people without personal transportation can have very limited opportunities for employment/advancement. A company 5 miles off the bus line, or in a town 15 miles away in the next county will only hire you if you can get there every day.
People who are unable to get work–or advance through better-paid work–end up relying on government “largesse” to meet their families’ needs, and that reliance makes them easier to control, and that control over the masses is a goal of the “elites.”
In addition to being a disgusting waste of capital and a hypocritical violation of the old green “reduce, REUSE, recycle” mantra, Cash for Clunkers was an attack on personal advancement and upwards economic mobility; its popularity frightens me.
VDH ought to be able to point out much more unbelievable ideas than these four. Peoples over time and place have tolerated many forms of government, from tyrannies to democracies. But no people anywhere at any time have accepted the idea of same-sex marriage. This is not only un-human; it’s un-animal. Sci-Fi stuff for teenaged geeks who have little/no clue about the man-woman thing. If they can sell this ultra-bizarre wierdness, they can sell anything.
This is entirely off topic, but I’m not sure how to contact you otherwise. You know the Roman Empire videos that you comment in, or co- narrate? These videos are mad popular with young young men. Like, my fifth grader and his friends. They spent last year in the hands of a very, ah, modern teacher- getting schooled in rain forest and feeling nonsense- and the reaction was a fierce, dedicated afterschool study of Calvin and Hobbes, and Roman and Greek war videos. You show up in a great many of them. I know you write amazing books. Would it be possible for you to write a history at the level of kids reading? The books at the library on the subject are yellowed with age. But still–they are checked out. Have you seen Joy Hakim’s books? They are modern and bright and paperback. I would so buy books with that look, that take on Roman and Greek history and Alexander. I know there are other parents who would buy them too, b/c a shortened Xenophon- I can’t get it back from this one kids’ mom. She wants her kids in on the games played at the park. The kids are taking tree branches and declaring them peelums ( sp?) and gladias (sp?) I’m not sure what they are- I’m folding laundry and reading other things,
In the third grade, there are five little boys studying Greek myths, and having discussions about them, which is strange in so many, many, many ways. They are so familiar and comfortable with them, they act them out, they study them. They are more comfortable with them than the people I went to college with who took classical civ. I don’t think this is a particularly different school- it’s a poor school– 70% free school lunch- entire classes of spanish speakers- so I am assuming there are other little boys like this…….It’s not just percy jackson…percy just sort of rode a tidal wave of manliness hero/ courage hunger, I think……
I’m just a mom, and I know you are busy, but would you consider such an undertaking? I don’t know what would motivate you to this service, but I’d like to point out you could shape a generation of young men, and the next generation, and the next, and to bend a tree trunk is more decisive than pruning the crown.
The super rich play a triple game.
The hobble and knee-cap the upper middle class — their competitors for wealth, status and power.
And they support policies to salve their unease with their enormous wealth and power — which almost none feel they truly deserve.
And the massively expand government power to raod-block their economic competitors and ensure massive government bailouts when they fail.
You are absolutely on track. Those regulations are already in place that will keep many individuals from opening a small business. When the first “customer” in the door is the government to limit your ability to turn a profit and apply ridiculous rules (many of which do not make any sense) that in itself is enough to limit opportunity and avoid creating employment for anyone else.
This country was created from the bottom up not top down. Just as in the instance of Obamacare, that is a top down approach to the problem. Now they are going to slash my Medicare benefits (plus other tacts like the real estate tax) to fund it.
The really sad thing is that Americans have continually elected these idiots to put a noose around our necks. This is not going to end well.
Insightful as usual Dr. VDH.
Perhaps we could try extending the Obama success punishing logic of “at some point don’t you have enough money ?” Rather than setting arbitrary levels for income per dictate of the Obama crew, we should set an arbitrary level for total assets. Anyone having assets over ten million dollars must turn it over,redistribute it, to the government (works for Hugo Chavez). Among the first to cry and whine and oppose would be Kerry, Palosi, Gates Sr., Buffet, Soros, Rev Wright, and their candy ass eletist cohorts. As we all know democrats only like to redistribute “other peoples money” as well as being in charge of deciding equal outcomes for the lesser unwashed class, and buying congressmen.
The only thing I want to hear from John Kerry is how to be a serial marrier of wealthy yet homely women. His only talent.
Hurry November !! A start in the right direction.
Enjoying all the righty/lefty, lib/con, fruit/nut dialogue in the blog. surely people of intellect, passion, and purpose. All proposing to love freedom and liberty. One side fearful of the gutter and the other fearful of the sky.
So America suffers from an acute case of national schizophrenia and the band plays on. Well, at least it isn’t that awful ‘malaise’ Jimmy Carter ascribed to, but it clearly defines the complete ideological split in America today. Of course during Carter’s brief reign no one could imagine that the senior generation would align with the youth generation to produce Barack Obama. So the ‘realignment of interests’ in the US is becoming manifest, as demonstrated by the entries in this blog.
The world does not wait for America to realign itself under one banner, ‘they’ made a massive leap in the 2 years that America spent distracted by a president and a homely girl in a blue dress. 2 more years of wasted indecision and propaganda by both sides, in that ‘failure’ of government, will pretty much sum up another generation; divided by race, divided by war, divided by greed and poverty, divided by diagnosis…so no surprise, divided by solutions. Ever consider that the beauty of democracy is that it has to kill itself to rise from the fertile ashes of the flames? How far from the flames is America? How close dare we go? Is it not that fire that makes us Americans?
Continue your pagan dance with flames America, because the ‘comrades’ on Wall Street and the ‘comrades’ in Beijing have already agreed on your fate. Your entertainment and flirting with flames keeps you from understanding who the real enemy is, and how they are sucking the lifeblood of the nation called the United States of America.
VDH said: “Statism versus free markets is about as easy to understand as the difference between Singapore and Greece, and yet here we go again. This weird suicidal statist impulse seems for Obama to trump almost every other consideration: he may well destroy the Democratic Party for a decade just when it was recovering; he has so terrified private enterprise that trillions of dollars in capital are simply sitting out his first two years, waiting for the end of his congressional majorities, and hence his agenda to implode.”
The notion that the economic pie is being divided unequally is what drives the statists. What they don’t get is that the size of the economic pie is expandable. But only if people are willing to take chances to make more and bigger pie. Every time someone dreams up a new product or service that makes people’s lives better and successfully puts it out there, it expands the amount of pie. Everybody gets more pie! The statists think those creative risk takers have taken too much of the economic pie, so their inclination is to stop them. Hence the economic pie shrinks under their policies, while the slice of the pie that government takes grows ever larger. That way lies poverty and ruin.
Right now the government takes about 19% of the economic pie. But they want more so they can give bigger slices to their favored constituencies. In the meantime they discourage the pie makers from making more pie. Eventually the government will take 50% of a declining economic pie. The statists do not understand that they must keep their share of the pie low and encourage the pie makers to make more pie because government does not know how to make pie. They only know how to consume it.
More economic activity (pie) means more jobs, profits, tax revenues. Everyone wins. Pass it on to everyone who believes more big government is the answer.
Ah, more patented VDH manure to spread on our vulnerable yet fertile minds, so that we, too, may believe that the US has succeeded in absorbing “banks, insurance companies, auto manufacturers, and the health care system,” and that these were thriving under conservative stewardship; that George W. Bush ever polled above 45% in the last 3 years of his presidency, or that Clinton ever polled under 55% in his last 3 years in office – thus demonstrating the non-viability of liberal governance.
Perhaps we will come to believe that California’s problems stem from funneling too much money into its school system and infrastructure; that cell phones equal wealth; that the illustrious VDH can determine the destination of a phone call just by listening to the language in which it’s made.
And the most noxious crop comes last: the idea that liberal ideals are based on disdain for “the aspiring class;” that there is a “non-aspiring class;” that every family has a benevolent achiever who will pull up the less fortunate; that people making over $200,000 a year can’t afford to pay a little more in taxes than they do now for the sake of creating a fragile strand between those who are drifting downward & those who are exploding upward in wealth; that liberals are in politics only to enrich themselves; that income is the major determinate of political ideology among liberals; and that conservatives are protecting the interests of anyone but the richest 1%.
You need to use your search engine and put in the following; “cpusa 1963 45 goals congressional record”. Some of these goals are overcome by events, some have already been accomplished, the rest are either the agenda of the ACLU or the platform of the national Democrat party. These goals were designed by the political scientists and psycologists of the Soviet union with the express purpose of destroying the U.S. Pay attention and keep notes. The tax limmit of $250k that Obama keeps refering to does not increase taxes on his real constituency, the govm’t workers inside the beltway. Why are the three counties around D.C. in the richest 10 in the country?
Mr Hanson – I greatly admire your writing and prose, but I cannot , in good conscience let this go:
You peddled your wares.
You pedalled your bicycle.
I am sorry , but it is one of those grammatical errors that just drives me crazy.
Color/honor/valor etc – if you speak the Queen’s , these are wounds too grievous to suffer.
“Awesome” as an adverb or pronoun – mortal.
Ridicule my petulance if you must , but do not slaughter my grammar.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:InflationTuitionMedicalGeneral1978to2008.png- This chart is amazing. Out of control college inflation. Why go so deeply into debt when the opportunities going forward will be neutralized by redistribution? There is no reason- just join a union or better yet, be ignorant! If Elizabeth was so concerned about working families and tricks and traps, perhaps she can shed some light into how universities and the federal student loan prograsm is trying to trap our youth into a life of servitude and debt service from the time they are 18? or is that their grand plan? college is overrated and more private companies should hire intelligent, hard working citizens eager to flourish in the capitalist system straight out of high school and train then , themselves. All I hear out of academia is a constant demonizing of private industry and corporations. Time for the private sector to fight back both big government but more importantly, question college costs, why it is that this administration so eagerly wants to control student lending with strings attached. Come work for me and we can do something about that debt that you owe me.
http://www.standup4chloe.org
I’m not very efficient in keeping it “short and sweet” when examples of the corruption of the principles in which we were founded are so cumbersome. I am just an ordinary Mother fighting for my daughter’s life and exposing our story as the agony only exists standing upon the reality expressed in David Limbaugh’s book, “Crimes Against Liberty” and the fraudulent distortion of government health care in which MO Lt. Governor Peter Kinder Stand against. I have always stood for a conservative political agenda, but am extremely intellectually underprivileged in comparison with the commentators on this blog and appreciate the information I have been presented via same. I clicked on the link due to the title’s inclusion of the word, “overwhelming”. As I have exposed Chloe’s story to others, gave one small speech, and continually attempt to contact others w/ a similar interest, I see this common reaction of an “overwhelming” nature. Many empathetic, sympathetic, caring people, but it is left at that. I believe this is due to the story being in total contradiction to what they believe to be true about the United States of America. My conclusion is that #1 they must be educated regarding the corrupt, but true, reality before they will be able to act. My question to the main contributors on this blog is: You are already knowledgeable regarding the level of deterioration, so why don’t people such as yourselves help? Seriously, not trying to agitate or offend anyone, maybe you do much more, just don’t see it? Do you all just talk about it? I have watched my 14 yr old daughter suffer in state custody, because she was told by govt officials she could “refuse to return home” and chose foster care due to teenage naivety in general and blood glucose fluctuations related to her type 1 diabetes. Is she important enough for others to act? I met so many families over this past year who are enduring the negative consequences of government intervention in their families. Most are from a lower economic strata and not able to advocate for themselves. They deserve the freedoms the constitution asserts just as much as any. These are children, real lives. If we want to only talk about what people care about the most, money. Here goes: Federal tax dollars are being used to house my child away from me and there were never any allegations of abuse or neglect. Government health care was used to house her in mental institutions for months while no mental illness present. She was flown in a chartered plane from TN to VA psych hospital with your tax dollars while I begged for her and spent $20k on competent attorneys who can’t even depose the state’s doctors after numerous attempts. Thank you for your time. Please “LIKE” the Stand Up 4 Chloe Facebook page. Send a message to info@standup4chloe.org if you want to help or request I speak at your event to share Chloe’s story and help push the conservative agenda forward for November and beyond.
As usual, a great article from Mr. Hanson!
Mr. Davis Hanson, I wanted to write and say that you have changed my perspective. I am still digesting this. First, I should say that I identify as progressive (have always been a fan of Sweden), primarily because I am black, disabled and on public assistance. For a long time I have believed that conservatives have no good answers for people like me, people who cannot work and produce through no fault of their own. I have heard much Tea Party rhetoric against “takers” like me, and I have felt alienated because there is nothing I can do about my disability and I desperately miss being able to work and earn more money. And no matter what anyone says, I still do not think that most people on welfare are just lazy. The poor are some of the hardest workers. I believed that conservatives wanted to go back to the days when people like me were stuck away in the attic or languished in institutions, and I credited my Social Security check, food stamps, and Medicaid for giving me a chance to live as a human being.
However, you have changed my mind!
You said:
“Lost in all this sanctimonious moralizing by the Bill Maher/Michael Moore/George Soros left is that there is redistribution going on constantly. In every extended family someone has done pretty well. What happens? He loans money to cousins. She puts up a nephew in the extra bedroom, gives a lot to her church, pays for bats at Little League, takes her daughter’s fellow Brownies to pizza, or co-signs the nephew’s car loan.”
That is so true! It was as if the scales fell away from my eyes when I read that paragraph. I think of my older brother, who came from the same financially-troubled family as me, but who has been a steady worker, accumulated savings, and invested money. I know that he wants to start his own business and has natural business acumen, but there are so many regulations and taxes that make this very difficult. If he were more free of onerous government, he could do a lot more to help me more financially, as much as I help him emotionally as his sister, friend, and support. HE knows I am no leech, and as my family it is his responsibility since he knows me, and not the responsibility of taxpayers a thousand miles away who are struggling to take care of their own families. But government interference prevents people like my brother from doing more for their families.
Thank you Mr. Davis Hanson, as I now feel I can support conservatism and the Tea Party.
Bravo! Dr. Hanson
Vivid illustrations of Archon Obamalinski and sundry ad hominem administrations of the Good Intentions Paving Company.
If only you were required reading…
TLM wrote; But seriously, get a life. You think juxtaposing the latest CNN cover story with the poster’s reference to Faulkner to be ever so clever, an intellectual achievement beyond the ken of us “PJM folk”. Uh, OK Dwitless. Got it.”
I’m not sure that you got it until you identify the second Faulkner book referenced here.
BJ wrote: Read, Dwight, read. Mississippi, not Taxachussetts. And there are plenty of square miles in Mississippi that aren’t that costly.”
So how much do house lots go for in Oknapatawpha County in this Delta Autumn? Isaac McCaslin needs to know.
Dwittles:
“Got it” that you’re an insufferable pedant, as your post makes clear.
BTW, don’t confuse being obtuse with being clever. It only makes you look more self-absorbed, and unlike a character in a Faulkner novel, sorting out your random associations is not worth the effort.
The only brief explanation I can give is that these folks feel entitled to rule and dictate to those who pay for the programs that encourage dependency and another sub-class of mass entitlement at the other end of the rich/poor paradigm, to perpetuate the sense of entitlement at both extremes of the economic/class scale with those in the middle squeezed to further perpetuate the tension, ad infinitum.
“I wonder whether today’s entering freshman is any better educated than someone in 1890 who was farming at the same age.” Dr. Hanson, I have an answer to that question, at least in part. In the museum of my wife’s hometown in rural Kansas, I recently had occasion to see a middle-school examination from the 1890s. Containing very difficult questions across a broad array of subjects, from history and geography to the classics of antiquity to math and science, I am certain most of today’s college graduates would have trouble passing this test. This test came from a one-room schoolhouse, by the way. It was impossible not to compare today’s over-priced, under-performing educational system with the product of yesteryear, and very unfavorably, I might add.
“I wonder whether today’s entering freshman is any better educated than someone in 1890 who was farming at the same age.”
Please read Colette’s novel “Claudine at School” for a description of the high school examinations, both oral and written, taken by farmers’ daughters attending a village school ca. 1900: spelling/dictation, handwriting, (French) composition, mathematics, drawing, history, geography, physics, chemistry, English, literature, music (sightsinging)–and needlework.
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