Liberal Psychoses
How are we to make sense of flash mobbing, the London rioting, more hatred expressed for the Tea Party, more calls for ever more debt and spending, and Barack Obama’s dive below 40% approval in the polls? Let me backtrack a bit.
Paleolithic Liberalism
I grew up with die-hard Roosevelt Democrats. Packers, shippers, and distributors made all the profits; farmers, we were told, did the work. Co-ops like Sun-Maid were noble; in contrast, grasping private packers paid on “consignment”: give us your produce in an oversupplied market and we will get what we can, when we can, for it. Often plums and peaches were dumped, and we paid the packing and storage fees for the privilege of losing the crop. Unfairness, not the capricious nature of market capitalism, is what we wished to hear.
In my youth, my mother helped out in the “Dollars For Democrats” campaign. I remember the 1960s’ talking points still, as she drove us through the poorer sections of the San Joaquin Valley raising money for JFK (Nixon would win the state by 36,000 votes). We had high hopes for Pat Brown and Sen. Claire Engle. Charles “Gus” Garrigus was our local assemblyman. At eight I met a young Alan Cranston at a run-down café on the old 99 Highway in Selma, a sort of awkward gangly guy still at that stage talking about hard-core, bread-and-butter populism.
After all, what was so unfair about wanting a 40-hour week, overtime pay, disability and unemployment insurance, public works and infrastructure (e.g., the California water projects, LAX, the state freeway system), fair housing, money for the new JC/CSU/UC tripartite “master plan” of higher California education? It was not uncommon in those days to see unpaved streets and a few outhouses — something I was told the distant wealthy could avoid but the state should not.
Most of my parents’ and grandparents’ friends, however, were Grange/Farm Bureau/Chamber of Commerce Republicans. I emphasize “friends” since in the early sixties, pre-Vietnam-protest age, politics still never impeded friendships. Most of my mom’s rural friends were amused rather than angered by her genuine liberalism, since it was directed at trying to improve the lot of the working poor, who were ubiquitous and often next door.
Remember, this was pre-Great Society stuff, well before globalized cheap material goods, the age of food stamps, two years of unemployment insurance, aid to dependent families, and the entire government umbilical cord. Most readers will shake their heads and now mutter: “Victor, Victor, did you not see even at seven that the obvious, the logical result of that idealized government help would be something like the annual $1.6 trillion debt and entitlement culture of the present? Did not Plato warn us that the egalitarian mandate has no logical end?”
Perhaps, but in those days it was not hard to think that the ‘”Okies” and “poor folks” and “Mexican-Americans” in the San Joaquin Valley needed some sort of foundational equality of opportunity — given the scarcity of capital and endemic prejudice. My most distinct memory of first grade was hygiene and dentistry problems: half the kids had rotten teeth and clothes that were unclean. (I remember Jimmy Hopson pulling out his front [permanent] tooth in second grade and showing it off.) Stern teachers from the southwest, with Texas and Oklahoma accents, lectured us on how to shampoo and comb our hair, change socks and underwear, brush our teeth, and use soap under our arms and on the backside of our arms. We were to “make something of ourselves” and be “presentable,” the sort of people “we ourselves would want to sit next to.” “Relief” carried the same stigma associated with “hypos” and “switchblades” or “bums” and “hobos.”
Word and Deed
I detour here, because late 1950s liberalism was in some sense conservative, given the rural poverty, the lack of high-tech appurtenances, the coming end of the U.S. postwar monopoly in manufactured goods, and the worry over “commies.” Of course, JFK, like FDR, personified noblesse oblige, but mostly the heroic Democrats were guys like Truman and Humphrey. For my dad, FDR had built the B-29s, Truman stopped the North Koreans, and JFK had stood down Castro — some mythic history in that, but not much.
You might think their square-deal politics were naïve, but they were salt-of-the-earth types, whose lifestyles reflected the politics that they advocated, and whose personal tastes were simple. To the best I can recall, there was no manifest contradiction in my grandfather’s voting for JFK in 1960, and his stern warnings about “lazy” “no-goods” who came out to prune for a week, abruptly to quit when they earned enough money for “booze” and “were up to no good.” The new pocket transistor radios, he swore, only encouraged sloth and poor work habits — and he wanted no one on the farm listening to one, us included.
In those days, liberalism, if we can even call it that, was clearly an equality of opportunity idea — whatever the intrinsic contradictions of the prior New Deal that logically led to the Great Society and the other failed “societies” to come. It was still not socialism of the European type, but singularly American and predicated on a “fair shake” as the majority of its adherents’ lives were not too distant from the objects of their worry.
I’ll skip the next half-century, since the tragedy is too well known, and focus instead on the vastly different, contemporary liberal mindset. To be blunt, what strikes us about its recent and most vocal emissaries — politicians such as a Barbara Boxer, John Edwards, Al Gore, John Kerry, Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi; or the Hollywood celebrities; or the great fortuned like a Warren Buffett, Bill Gates, or George Soros; or the credentialed technocrats who run the foundations and government agencies, or the high-paid media types in the NY-DC corridor — is how vast apart are the circumstances of their own lives from the objects of their concern. In addition, present-day liberalism finds its most numerous adherents among the upper-middle class suburbanites and those who work for government and enjoy de facto tenure (e.g., the public employee unions, teachers, the public professoriate, etc.).
Let Them Eat Steak
Insulation is the common theme here. To the degree that one’s job insulates one from the vagaries of the marketplace — not just the danger of losing a job, but often the petty humiliation so often integral in making a scarce buck, by selling, peddling, hawking, or working for a business — one is now more likely to support the redistributive state and all its satellite philosophies. And to the degree that one has a good salary and capital, and can buy such insulation — where one lives, where one sends one’s children to school, where one vacations — one is most likely to advocate a sort of politics that will not affect directly oneself. The key then is to insulate oneself from the worry over losing a job and livelihood, either by guaranteed employment or ample wealth. (When the London riots started to hit the “better” sections, then suddenly the police appeared in real numbers and the unapologetic public anger increased.)
In other words, if one opposes charters and vouchers, supports teachers’ unions, praises the present-day public schools, and champions the therapeutic curriculum, one is still hardly likely to put one’s child in the L.A. or Fresno school system. If one is a strong advocate for more state subsidies and redistributive policies, one will not live in an East Palo Alto, an Orange Cove, or the wrong side of St. Louis or Baltimore where the money is aimed. Liberalism is, like all politics, self-interested, embraced by those who receive transfer payments and those in charge of administering the redistributive state. But it also provides psychic exemption to a new upper class and asks little concrete in return — no tutoring of the illegal alien, no side-by-side residency in the Section 8 apartment to help create “community,” no hiring in the progressive law firm of a ghetto intern in lieu of the Yale undergraduate. It is the worst sort of petty hypocrisy: an exemption for the guilty soul through support of the redistributive state aimed at the noble but unapproachable poor —and through a clear disdain for the crass and aspiring middle class, which lacks the taste of the elite and the supposedly tragic nobility of the impoverished and victimized.
The Apotheosis of Barack Obama
Some are surprised that Barack Obama – the community organizer, the hard-core leftist, the pal of Bill Ayers and Rev. Wright (compare the homes of each), the totem of the left — would buy a mansion and worry about the price of arugula. Or that when president, he would play golf more in three years than the aristocratic Bush did in eight. Or that in recessionary times, when iconic presidential sacrifice is critical, the First Family would favor Martha’s Vineyard, Vail, and Costa del Sol over the White House grounds or Camp David.
But this disconnect again is logical not aberrant. It is precisely because Obama rails about “fat cats,” “corporate jet owners,” “millionaires and billionaires,” and pontificates about “redistributive change,” “enough money,” “spread the wealth,” and “unneeded income” that he feels spiritually cleansed and so can satisfy his natural appetites for the good rarified life. On Monday swear that corporate jets blew up the budget, on Tuesday feel free to host corporate jet fly-in donors who pay $50,000 to hear you rail about the pernicious culture of corporate jets. Mutatis mutandis, so too an Al Gore or John Kerry.
Human nature argues that contemporary liberalism does not work; but if one is not proximate to human nature in the raw, then one can find psychological penance in promoting something that will never come back to haunt you. Let a flash mob hit Park Avenue or have a group from East Palo Alto swarm the quad at Stanford, or have a Malibu star’s kid shoved about in a downtown L.A. school, or an open borders idealist live in an apartment in Calwa, and then one sees first hand the real-time dividends of a distant elite channeling state money to the less fortunate.
The Wages of Hypocrisy
Barack Obama has hit 39% approval in the Gallup poll. Pundits point to the debt, to the mixed-up foreign policy, to ObamaCare, to his grating sermons on civility, to his blame-Bush fixations, to the serial banality of his inauthentic cadences and his canned Nixonian “make no mistake about it” and “let me be perfectly clear” emphases. All that is true.
But much of our public weariness stems from his loud liberal hypocrisy. Our president lectures about a certain sort of school he never has sent his child to. He talks about “folks” with whom he has never wished to vacation. Unlike a Truman or Humphrey, he sought office not to help those clingers with whom he might have wished to associate, but to feel good about wanting to help from a safe distance from those with whom he most certainly did not wish to mingle.
Golfing or walking the Martha’s Vineyard beach, in the fashion of Kerry’s 7th estate getaway or million-dollar yacht, makes one fret over “why lucky me?” — and requires an antidote of one or two spread-the-wealth sermons a week.
The weird sudden appearance of smarmy, young urban and highly-educated leftist bloggers, with little experience in the physical world or with manual labor, is likewise logical given that most do not raise families in the barrio or shop in the ghetto, or teach school on the wrong side of town or try to buy a house and support three kids on $70,000, or even hit the floor of the Chicago Board of Trade. Only such abstract liberal advocacy can square the circle of self-absorbed concerned metrosexuality.
As we saw last week in Britain and in some American cities, liberal redistributionism makes far worse the innate problems it was hailed to solve. But it remains a powerful narcotic to an aberrant elite, one that feels guilty over its apartheid circumstances and is desperately seeking spiritual redemption on the cheap.
Barack Obama was contemporary America’s clearest example of just such an iconic liberalism — both as a purveyor and a recipient. Just as voting for Obama gave a pass to so many, so too for Barack Obama his own rhetoric and advocacy provide a pass for his own preferences. Liberalism has gone from a first-hand concern for equality of opportunity to a psychological condition of very blessed, but equally unhappy, people.
Readers’ Note: Last Saturday’s hike to Twin Lakes went well (4 hours compared to 7 in 2010); we had 27 join us and a cold drink afterwards. I enjoy reading the high-quality readers’ responses, both those pro and con; they remind me of those who joined the hike the last two years, confident but humble, highly accomplished but not arrogant, well-spoken but moderate in bearing — reasons to be confident about the future of the country.
Rhine Trip: our suites are mostly sold out, but there are still the regular cabins that I always stay in and find more than comfortable. By week’s end we should be over 50 or 55.This year we increased the lectures from eight to eleven, about seven devoted to military history of Western Europe and the other four to contemporary strains in the EU and Atlantic alliance, mounting debt, and historical parallels to the present crisis of confidence in the West.
Self-awareness, like so many of the other devices that deliver the true education which some receive in life, is for the little people.
Now, Buck, you’re familiar with Warren E. Buffett (double R, double F, double T) are you not? Warren had his PR person, more likely than not, write a homespun editorial for the NYT that basically says “tax the rich”. This is the same song and dance that all the Dems including the President have made the number one platinum CD. Not only that, Warren has sung this same song before.
Why is this on topic? Because it is a perfect example of the subject of this piece. Now if Warren just wanted to make a donation to the IRS, why didn’t he just sell shares, make a deposit to his checking account, write out a check for a billion and send it in? But that would only satisfy him with that warm charitable feeling. No, he has to publicly leverage that measly pittance. He’ll feel so much warmer when the government extorts the dough from his peers by taxing all of them. Now here we have a public hero as well as an extremely wealthy old goat, wouldn’t you say?
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/15/opinion/stop-coddling-the-super-rich.html?_r=1
I say yes to tax the rich. Tax the rich, and every citizen, but just do it with a flat tax.
Individual’s motivation from gross income is less than from the net take home pay according to Arthur Laffer, the famous economic advisor to Ronald Reagan, and more recently, Barack Obama (yes, Barry O’ did seek his advice this past spring!!).
Tax rate does not equal revenue. Tax rate less exemptions equals government revenue, and that second variable is significant, messy, and not well understood or measured.
Reduce or even eliminate exemptions, implement a flat tax and revenues will likely increase and even with a lowered rate.
For all those of us little people who pay taxes, it will likely show up as a tax break, and for those high income, low tax individuals, the opposite. In a nutshell, it’s not a level playing ground in the world of tax, and the distortions cause the little people to pay an inflated rate as compared to a more inclusive, simplified, flat tax for every citizen of the country.
What do you think about the assertion that X% of Americans pay NO taxes? (I have no idea if it’s true or not.) Does the flat tax address them?
That’s a good sound bite, and ought to be used in campaigning.
To understand it a little more clearly, consider that tax rates per citizen and corporation are distorted and very uneven. As stated in a comment below, tax policy is a non-cash way of providing “stimulation” to companies, which those in D.C. excessively enjoy doing.
Warren Buffett by the way, pays 18% tax since his income is primarily capital gains and paid out as such. Hedge fund principals use the same compensation scheme and are not subject to income tax but typially capital gains and dividend tax rates.
There’s a few examples, and they really are endless.
Eliminating loopholes and exemptions would increase government revenues, and a flat tax would make those that have been paying income tax, pay at a lower rate, and those benefiting from distortions in tax schemes, pay up.
One other massive tax debacle is tax rates on corporate foreign earnings. Tax is based on jurisdiction, so to tax those dollars for repatriating them for domestic reinvestment doesn’t happen. There’s a situation where eliminating a corporate tax would potentially add to domestic investment capital.
I’ve got a better idea: get rid of the government.
I don’t mean that in an absolute sense, or as an endorsement of anarchy. Some sort of state apparatus must exist. There is such a thing as legitimate government, and that government has legitimate functions that only it can do.
But when I see people talking about the best way to collect taxes, I’m always struck by how blind most of them seem to be to the fact that they’re trying to find the best way to fund something that should be almost entirely de-funded.
Our nation is dying of cancer. Cancer kills in large part because it consumes resources that the body needs to survive, just like government. Now we can dream up new ways to deliver resources to the body in the hope that enough will reach the body’s healthy tissues to avoid death, or we can work to kill the cancer.
When government expenditures are extremely low, it doesn’t matter what kind of tax structure is used to support it.
Congress will never allow a “flat tax,” as sensible as that would be. It completely destroys their reason for being, because it would remove their ability to dispense favors and thus receive kickba…I mean campaign contributions. The same goes for eliminating the ability (NOT “right”) of government employees to unionize.
And if we are to move to no deductions–which we likely should–do it slowly enough there is no shock to the system produced by the movement.
Is this fair enough for you?
1. All persons residing in the U.S. shall come together in “tax units”. Members need not be related, need not reside together, and a tax unit may consist of as few as one person.
2. Each year congress shall set a “minimum wage” and a “tax rate”.
3. The following shall not be subject to taxation:
• An amount equal to a year’s earnings (2000 hours) at the minimum wage, for each adult (age 20-65), decreasing 10% per year to 50% at age 15, and increasing 10% per year to 150% at age 70.
• All payments for necessary health care including medical care, pharmaceuticals prescribed by a health care professional, vision and hearing aids, and fees for health-enhancing entities such as gyms. Health care insurance premiums may be deducted but not health care expense paid for by such insurance.
• All educational expenses including day care for children or legally incompetent persons, the portion of state and local taxes used for education, and tuition, fees and educational materials for private school education, including that portion of parochial school tuition and other expenses going for non-sectarian education.
• All income saved into an account for investments; withdrawals from this account for the benefit of any member of the tax unit shall be reported as income.
4. The “tax rate” shall be applied to any income greater than the deductions listed above, regardless of amount.
5. Any municipality having greater than 100,000 inhabitants or any state may impose on their citizens a surtax which shall be applied the same as the Federal tax.
6. Tax units whose deductions exceed income, shall be paid a sum equal to the tax rate multiplied by the shortfall in income.
7. There shall be no federal tax on corporations or other business entities.
8. The Office of Management and Budget shall compute revenues to be expected using the newly set tax rate and minimum wage, applied to the previous year’s reported incomes. No expenses in excess of that amount may be made without approval by 75% of each house of Congress. This tax shall be the only source of revenue for the federal government.
I also say create a wealth tax for the wealthy. Why are we defending the rich and uber-wealthy when most are leftists? We should also tax union dues, 527s and their contributors and the leftist foundations. Create an entertainment tax for Hollyweird and the NFL/NBA to relieve them of their income…
Fair tax is the way. Screw Congress if it takes away their power. Since when did we give up our power??
I don’t want to nit-pick but Buffett is even more perfectly an example of what you and Professor Hanson are talking about than you specify. Buffett (and others like him) say that income taxes should be raised on high earners BUT they themselves pay relatively little income tax. As the old joke says, he’s not talking about taxes on the rich, he’s talking about taxes on getting rich.
LittLe of Buffett’s wealth will ever be subject to tax as most of it is slated for the Gates Foundation, which makes it a charitable contribution. The same holds for Gates’ wealth.
There is an account at the IRA available for donations over and above an individuals tax rate. It’s used so rarely and for such a relatively small amount, that it might as well not exist.
In Sacramento, mollycoddling the thieves hurts the children.
http://sacramento.cbslocal.com/2011/08/25/therapy-horse-dies-after-oakdale-theft/
Doc said a couple months ago that the prez would fall below 40% and he has.
“to the serial banality of his inauthentic cadences and his canned Nixonian “make no mistake about it” and “let me be perfectly clear” emphases.”
It really is painful to listen to him.
A related comment on another blog I clipped:
Obamaisms that I’ve noticed (each is nearly always true):
“Let me be clear” is followed by an obfuscation.
“As I’ve said before”/”As I’ve always said” is followed by words he has never spoken before.
“People want” is followed by something no ordinary citizen asked for.
“Fair share” is followed by a demand to tax the 10% who pay greater than 70% to pay even more.
“Investing in” is followed by an expensive boodoggle that will never pay its way.
“Our duty to” is followed by some task that the Constitution leaves to states or doesn’t give to the federal government.
“Clean something-or-other” in legislation means a blank check.
“Clean something-or-other” in environment means an impossible standard that will cost a fortune, eat jobs, and reduce our standard of living.
Keep it up Doc. The left is imploding. The leftist media is confused and beginning to abandon ship. Thirty nine percent today and, hopefully, 29% or less in a month or so. God Bless you and don’t let-up. Ken Carr
When, in the second half of his second term, W’s approval sank into the high 20s, it was because by then fully half of the Republicans had abandoned him.
I doubt Lord Obeyme will fall that far, if only because he’s got the black vote, (about 10% of the total), locked in. W, of course, never had that.
But for the rest of the population, I think it’s safe to say that the Post-American-In-Chief has already reached, or even surpassed, W’s worst unpopularity.
(And remember that W was “back up” to about 35% by the time he left office.)
I was recently in conversation with a pessimist who doubted that any of the current crop of GOP presidential hopefuls could beat The Great Alinskyite — and I responded by saying that, au contraire, I thought it was just as likely that ANY of them could.
Can’t wait until 2012 when it’s out with the crooks and in with the clowns – or is it the other way around ? 1955 is gone forever. So what is your solution Dr VDH ?
Your posts tend to be almost unremittingly gloomy, but the “Most readers will shake their heads and now mutter…” passage is one of the most laugh-out-loud funny ones I’ve read on PJM.
VDH: Your essay brought another image to mind and that was the little kids singing someone’s ode to Obama, bright, witty lyrics with lots of pizazz and repeating of their little ode to Obama; very suggestive of songs sung for Fidel or Hugo or maybe “Dear Leader!” Absolutely no sense of irony amongst the parents who appeared to be enthralled with their young kids contribution to Obama’s campaign.
Lastly, during the 1968 DFL campaign, many signs of direct involvement of “Fellow Travelers” were openly displayed in Hennepin County circles. It then seemed a short step to the open takeover of the national party during the 1972 campaign; completed in today’s politics.
You alluded to fascist techniques in your comment, DW. There was too much lurking and overt sympathy for European fascisms in the Roosevelt administration as I tried to show here in this review essay of Erik Larson’s best seller on William E. Dodd’s ambassadorship to Nazi Germany, 1933-37: http://clarespark.com/2011/08/14/review-in-the-garden-of-beasts-by-erik-larson/.
Interesting point, Clare. Early 20th century progressives’ fascination and even open admiration for the methods of Hitler, Moussolini and those employed by other totalist/authoritarian regimes has largely been papered over by those who would rather we just forget about the whole thing. Wasn’t it Lord Acton who said that there are few things more embarassing than to expose the pedigree of ideas?
Utopians, in their impatience with all things human, invariably revert to the fantasies of total control and domination in their desire to bring about that perfect, conflict-free world. Unfortunately for us all, the ambitions of utopians play directly into the hands of those motivated and driven by the will to power. With consequences of which we are all aware. The thing that should haunt us is that there are now many of us – too many – who are actively cheering them on.
Thanks, Ward, and to all the PJM readers who have visited my website since I posted this. The response has been outstanding. As for left-wing resistance to talking about protofascism, two historians have been dissing me on the internet as a “conservative historian” because of this blog:
http://clarespark.com/2011/08/03/jobs-program-for-education-reformers-or-the-new-prometheus/. Apparently, you can’t quote from primary sources and draw your own interpretation (in this case, protofascism in the education theory of Robert Maynard Hutchins). I explained that scholars should strive for objectivity and avoid partisanship, but it was howling in the wilderness.
Enjoyed your recollection of the 50s in the Valley. I was born in 1933 in a small town in Colorado. My parents were hard workers, but never were too far from being broke until things turned better after WWII. Their mentions of “debtor’s prison” used to send chills down my spine. I didn’t know that debtor’s prisons were no longer operating until my teens, but I got the idea that paying one’s obligations was a serious matter. Never forgot it.
I first crossed the California border at Blythe in 1956 on my way to a Navy assignment at NAS North Island. The ag inspectors boasted that 2500 people a day were moving to California. It was the “Golden State.” It was full of promise and beckoning those who wanted a better life. They found it for the next thirty years, but somewhere in there it all started to founder on the rocks of over promising by progressive politicians who believed the state was a bottomless pit of wealth. Now, those who can get out are leaving.
I planned to retire north of San Diego, but after surveying the situation there in the early 90s, I recognized the illegal problem was growing and there seemed to be no plan to change it. Illegals were at that time living in the arroyos between the mesas north of San Diego from Del Mar to Oceanside. They were mostly clean, hard-working people but there were enough bad apples that it took the attraction away as a place for a quiet end of life sojourn. The tax situation was not attractive either and, as I suspected, has gotten worse. I do visit occasionally and find it too crowded and too fast paced. Have not regretted my decision.
This country, in terms of material wealth, has come much further than I ever dreamed it would. Back in the 70s there were real shortages of goods and too much money chasing them with the resultant inflation. In the last twenty years the stores and warehouses are chock full of everything. The problem we seem to be facing now is not enough demand, thus the spector of deflation. Passing money from a tax payer to a non-tax payer is destined to fail. The only way to increase demand is to increase jobs and the only way to increase jobs is to get out of the way of the job creators. That, unfortunately, is what Obama and the progressives can’t seem to understand. Until he does, his numbers will continue to decline. And they should!
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I would bet there are many rational thinking people like yourself, who take action with their lives to make it work out. That is the hope at least, and indeed a bet, because the majority of people aren’t what make news and do not get coverage. It doesn’t sell. The “unlikely” sells – events and stories that exist in the tails of a normal distribution.
That said, it’s always incredibly refreshing to read comments such as yours. It expresses a voice that is more predominant than one might conclude based on news coverage. Likewise for Victor Davis Hanson’s most excellent articles and perspectives. Are these closer to the truth? are these the attitudes that predominate, and that get less attention? I believe so.
Jimmy J Toke interest to your post as I was raised in Coronado one of the few civilian families to do so. It was a wonderful place to grow up we had a great relationship with the Navy (Navy League)….I left CA in 2006 to the midwest for a job transfer (loved the midwest) then RIF came and after 13 months found a dream job but was back in CA. As my wife (Newport Beach, CA native)and I witnessed the destruction of CA through the 70′s,80′s,90′s and in to the 2000 we wondered what had happened in just a short period of time (5 years). Yes what has happened to CA. 1. Immigration or as I see it Infestation 2. Justice (or lack of) System – yes Judges and ambulance chasers 3. Environmental Groups (EnviroTerrorist) 4. Labor Unions (Gangs) 5. Regulations. I could go on for months detailing the above, however my wife and I cannot wait to get out of here. YES “WHAT HAPPENED TO CALIFORNIA”?
KAG said, “1. Immigration or as I see it Infestation 2. Justice (or lack of) System – yes Judges and ambulance chasers 3. Environmental Groups (EnviroTerrorist) 4. Labor Unions (Gangs) 5. Regulations.”
A succinct summary of what is troubling not only California, but most of the blue states, and is now trying to get a strong presence (pace Obama and company) in the rest of the country.
It’s a shame that the producers are leaving California, but I certainly don’t blame you. My decision to NOT move there for retirement was based on the same factors.
Natives of Coronado and Newport. Such beautiful places to grow up. You must treasure those memories.
Doc’s too nice to say it hard.
It isn’t hypocrisy; it’s greed and criminality.
All of the scorn they heap on us is projection on steroids, when it isn’t cynical lies. They are the racists. They are the fat cats. They are the country club riche swigging their wine behind the gated walls. They are the curled lip crew rigging the system for their lazy and immoral offspring.
It’s about to come full circle. Boehner and the boys were displaced by Bam and the gang. Now they are all scheduled for the dumpster.
And the ultimate irony, in every regard, watch how the fate of “the poor” improves with ours when we get take our own money and our country back from these greasy con men.
Poster boy prize of these attitudes of Bam and the gang has to go to Larry Summers.
“They are the curled lip crew rigging the system for their lazy and immoral offspring.”
WOW! Says it all.
Super!! proreason you ARE the “unwashed” VDH.
Regardless of the outcome of the next election cycle, I don’t believe that the eliminaitonists in the White House intend to hand anything back. Their total contempt for the rule of law and the Constitution are the unmistakeable hallmarks of a totalitarian mindset.
People need to wake up and smell the killing fields that inhabit the imaginations of the current occupants of the White House.
Recognizing that coming together for the common good, exercising Christian charity, wanting equality in opportunity, as socialistic but are not Socialism. Socialists used Christianity to leverage their position, which may be why they seek to destroy it. Even now they fall back on the “moral obligation” to seek support for their programs funded at the point of the revenuer’s gun. But religion is banned from mention by the State, so how come they eagerly use it to shore up their give-aways. Absent religion, there is no moral obligation of the taxpayer to support the State welfare.
I found this definition of a Socialist and Socialism from 1886, long before the confusions of the public relations campaign run to confuse them starting in the 1920s.
It is said that, if the Devil ever did manage to displace the Deity, the Former would have to adopt some of the Latter’s characteristics.
Of course, the Devil offers always only cheap copies. Instead of charity, we get entitlements. That’s the new definition of “having a heart” and “doing good”. Always these things lead to poorer spirits… which is the goal, after all.
Entitlements = outsourcing of looking out for the well being one’s neighbour.
I think entitlement goes way beyond merely outsourcing charity. Charity is based on the idea that some people are less “fortunate” than others, and it is the duty (religious or social) of the “well off” to help those “less fortunate” people. Charity doesn’t try to change the fact of poverty. It just tries to make poverty more endurable for those it afflicts.
Entitlement is based on the idea that food, shelter, clothing, health care, education, and entertainment are BASIC HUMAN RIGHTS that a just society is OBLIGATED to provide for EVERYONE.
We can see the difference in Britain. In the past, the British poor asked or begged for charity – or asked for nothing if they were too proud. Today, the British poor DEMAND their ENTITLEMENTS. Any pride they have is based on their ability to intimidate the government through violence – to get what’s theirs by right or take it from the well-off.
“Charity doesn’t try to change the fact of poverty. It just tries to make poverty more endurable for those it afflicts.”
Well said.
Charity and caring for one’s neighbour is not always for those in poverty. Crises of all sorts, don’t discriminate based on income.
Who can better decide for your children’s well being, and life decisions – governement or you as a parent? That may be extreme, but it demonstrates the notion that the individual is where it begins in terms of the well being and care of other individuals. Whether for those in poverty, or where a parent dies leaving the family in the hands of only the Father or the Mother, or where addiction or mental illness occurs.
The assistance and support by individuals within neighbourhoods and communities is the first principle of what it is to be a real citizen and ought to be respected.
When politicians advertise about “programs”, it so very often is a take over of what individuals made good (specifically and personally saw that with Meals On Wheels in Toronto – a now, government agency. Still successful, but it was a means for various church groups and parishes to get together every week, and get with the infirmed and those unable to feed themselves, and to provide some human interaction. Mundane perhaps, but there is a power that is remarkable in the compassion that is just “every-day” for so many involved. It’s now morphed in to a program where it’s a “spend the budget” to ensure we get the 15% increase next year kind of attitude – very different from it’s past roots in my opinion.)
“…government becomes the organ of society in respect to all its interests and all its acts.”
That kind of sums up the modern liberal’s position. The liberal emphasizes one fact about government to the exclusion of much else: it represents us. Whatever the government does reflects the true will of the people. Its values are our values, its motives are our motives, its acts are our acts. So to a liberal, giving the government more power is literally the same as giving the “We the People” more power. The more power the government has, the more power “We the People” have to right wrongs, eliminate injustice, level the playing field, and otherwise correct all the things that are wrong with America. For example, if the government had complete control, if it could directly, forcibly, and without opposition redistribute wealth from rich to poor, there would be no more “economic injustice” in this country. “We the People” would use the power of government to make things right.
This seems like a very simplistic account of the relationship between people and their government. Maybe I’m putting words in people’s mouths. I don’t think it’s far from the truth, though. It’s an attractive idea – government is us, we are government. Maybe it’s the democratic republican ideal. Experience tells me, however, that the idea is cobblers. The government is one more player in a huge game of enlightened self-interest. Human nature, human weakness, human corruption cannot be ignored. We have as much to fear from our government as we do from big business or any other liberal boogie-man.
As we saw last week in Britain and in some American cities, liberal redistributionism makes far worse the innate problems it was hailed to solve. But it remains a powerful narcotic to an aberrant elite, one who feels guilty over its apartheid circumstances and is desperately seeking spiritual redemption on the cheap.
And that is the supreme essence of it all. Especially the part about “spiritual redemption on the cheap.”
I especially liked the full phrase: “_desperately seeking_ spiritual redemption on the cheap.”
Thanks, Dr. Hanson–I learn so much from your writings.
There’s nothing cheap about it. They’re seeking spiritual redemption on my dime.
VDH’s comment on Section 8 housing reminded me that, after Ike, Galveston lost a lot of its public housing, and they’ve ended up with a large number of homes for sale by people moving out. Since they haven’t been able to rebuilt their Section 8 housing yet, the city council thought that they could buy up a bunch of the depressed suburban homes, and use that as Section 8 housing for the interim.
The Federal Government torpedoed it because “it would dilute the voting block”.
I’ve got an even better idea, let that precious “voting bloc” move somewhere else by simply refusing to rebuild the section 8 housing.
Might not be possible. Might be that the feds have rigged things to make it impossible, but wouldn’t it be wonderful?
That would be Ike, the hurricane, not Ike, the president?
“Liberalism is just Communism sold by the drink.” P.J.O’Rourke
I remember my neighbor being so happy to be supporting Adlai Stevenson. I think the congressman’s most memorable feature was his first name. I never knew another one. I was in grammar school at the time.
I went to protests in the 60′s mainly because it was fun. Hippie women were supposed to be fast and free. I spoke to a guy ten years older than me who went to communist meetings because he heard the communist women were fast and free.
Too bad great society programs destroyed black America. Too bad Obama can’t fix a thing.
Destroyed black America, but then you see guys like Herman Cain. Whether he wins the nomination or not, he is an authentic, motivated, and charming guy with a great sense of humour. He is anything but broken (add to that Colon Powell, Condoleeza Rice, Oprah Winfrey, Allen West, Bill Cosby, Chris Rock and many more).
All these individuals are inspiring – for any colour – black, red, white, green, purple, orange, indigo, eggplant, okra, beige, azur, battleship grey, almond white, chestnut, coral, cyan, dodger blue, jasper, apricot, navy blue, teal, violet, vanilla, and yellow ;-)
You can take Chris Rock off that list. He’s just another part of what Dr. H is talking about. The elite liberal who actually referred to W as “retarded.” But I lost repsect for him over ten years ago, when he did his classic bit about the difference between Blacks and N****rs. It was a great, funny and all too true bit, but Jesse, Rev. Al and the usual suspects complained. Rock pu**ed out and stopped using the routine.
Black or white, just anoter liberal poser. Bet his kids don’t attend public school.
Yep, having 0′s popularity number below 40% is very good. However, if one goes to Real Clear Politics you will notice that the preference of Democrat vs Republican congresspeople is now +1.3 percent for the Dems. That is very bad news. We cannot govern this country with only one leg of the stool.
I’m afraid the 40% (latest is 39%) isn’t the whole story. I believe the accurate number is lower.
But I also believe a lot of those who “disapprove” do so because they aren’t getting the free cars they were expecting.
At voting time, they certainly won’t be voting for responsibility and hard work.
The election will be razor close.
A few thousand people in Ohio will make the difference. Pray that our guys are in as much force at the voting booths as Obamy’s federally-approved black panters.
I have a hunch we’re going to see a lot of “flash mobs” showing up at polling places on election day (cough cough).
I hope the GOP GOTV team is ready for this with their own poll watchers, cameras, cops and lawyers on speed dial.
If next year Obama is looking at a Dukakis, let alone McGovern or Mondale-sized blowout months before the election, it is going to get ugly. (If you recall there were veiled threats in 08 before the election)
I hate the fact I even have to think about this possiblity. This isn’t a banana republic or Europe, this is the United States. Thanks 50 some years of misguided liberal do-gooderism! Thanks a lot!
Don’t feel bad about thinking about “it.” I do the same and so do, I suspect, many others. This crowd in the White House has shown themselves to be accepting, if not encouraging of the thug tactics of groups like Acorn and SEIU. Now, it seems Hollywood will go above and beyond with a movie about the OBL takedown, all for the benefit of the Organizer in Chief, due for release in (when else?) Oct 2012.
“A few thousand people in Ohio will make the difference.”
If you are referring to the results of the 2004 episdode, I claim now that Obama will lose by more votes in Ohio than Kerry did. Date your calander.
All one has to look at to see the hypocrisy of it all is the palatial buildings where Frannie and Freddie are housed. And they still exist and gobble up billions of our tax dollars. And the poor are poorer than ever!
Exactly. They keep themselves far removed from the fetid stench of their own failed policies.
These two atrocities personify the extent of the disconnect that VDH illustrates so clearly!
They are so egregious that even for one that does not or cannot understand the extent of the hypocrisy of F&M, that these financial tumors will eventually metastasize, directly or indirectly, with real consequences. They will be buried as they are, but “the people” will pay – just as they unknowingly are now. It’s enough to make one curse out loud.
“It is precisely because Obama rails about “fat cats,” “corporate jet owners,” “millionaires and billionaires,” and pontificates about “redistributive change,” “enough money,” “spread the wealth,” and “unneeded income” that he feels spiritually cleansed and so can satisfy his natural appetites for the good rarified life.”
My family and I were sitting around the dinner table one night and my son said he had heard the term “redistribution of wealth” in school. The hair on the back of my neck stood up, because I was afraid to ask him what else he was “learning” in school. Anyway, he asked if I knew what “redistribution of wealth” was all about. So I said, “Think about Halloween. You go out all night and you work real hard to collect as much candy as possible. Then, at the end of the night, when you dump all of the candy on the kitchen table, your eyes grow big and wide when you see your huge haul, the end results of your labors. Right at that moment, I come along and take half of that candy away from you and give it to another boy who did absolutely nothing on Halloween but sit at home and watch TV. THAT is what redistribution of wealth is all about.”
My daughter, who is three years younger than my son, shouted, “But that’s not fair!” I stared at my kids and replied, “Now you’ve got it.” My kids finished their meal in utter silence, afraid that someone was going to come this year and take half of their candy away from them. Well, join the club.
I’m so glad you had that conversation with your kids!
My advice (my youngest has only one year left in K-12) is to keep the lines of communication open: ask specific questions, like “What went on in Social Studies today?” (rather than “How was school?”), make sure the kids understand that you’re not mad at them because of what they’re reporting, but rather at the teachers or the curriculum, and give them your take on things, as you did so brilliantly with the redistribution of wealth example.
They shouldn’t have to offer opposing views in school (unless they want to), but they should know what their parents think about all of it.
You’re letting them know that education is important enough to care deeply about, even if you can’t change what they’re hearing in school. You’re helping them learn to take charge of their own education, by becoming skeptical and aware that there could be more than one source of information.
There is something seriously wrong when parents have to fear that their children are being brainwashed in schools that they themselves are paying for.
Having your kids tell you all about the lies they were told in class, and then trying to teach them otherwise, is hell through half measures. The correct response is to pull your kids from that school and see that they get a proper education elsewhere.
Some parents complain that this can’t be done, that they can’t afford it or that they can’t stay home and home school their kids. These are real issues, but they are illuminative. Parents who complain that they cannot afford to home school are really saying that they can’t forgo the free day care that the state is providing, that Marxist brainwashing of their children is preferable to giving up a 2nd income.
I’m not saying that this describes you. I’m just commenting on what I see as the general pattern: folks who live beyond their means and feel they have no choice but to hand their children over for daily indoctrination by the left.
Excellent points, Mr Reynolds. Thanks for pointing out what I often think when reading through articles/comments that mention children being brain washed in school to be the next generation of progressives/liberals. Whomever spends the most time w/your children during their waking hours is the one who is having the most impact on their beliefs and values. It’s one good reason of many why we have chosen to homeschool our two children.
I’m frequently amazed at the amount of money other people hemorrhage monthly on non-essentials. We live in a very modest home in a small town and my car is a 20 yr old Honda w/tape holding up the back window (it’s not pretty, but it is reliable). We don’t pay for cable or satellite television nor do we have the most expensive cell phone plan ($50 a month for two phones–and only the adults have cell phones in our home). But lest you think we are hardcore skinflints, we visited four islands in Hawaii a year ago in May–and we’re debt free (thank you Dave Ramsey!). I think too often people get used to confusing “wants” with “needs.”
Brilliant! Well done. It feels like there are two more individuals in the world who understand the failings of redistribution. How very encouraging.
It’s not often we learn the easy way, but these two just did thanks to you!
I hope your son repeats your excellent explanation at his school to the other children in his class. Now that’s progress! HA!
The analogy would have been better if you had demonstrated by twisting their arms til it hurt and then spit on the 10% of their candy you left them.
That would have illustrated the unions and black nationalists as well as redistribution.
Elite liberalism is penance and psychotherapy. It has been for decades. And liberal policies are personal psychological pathologies morphed into public policy. For the left the personal IS political. In every sense.
A truer word was never said. A lefty friend of mine told me he thought that Keynesian economics was essentially the advice to the Pharaoh to store up excess in the plenty years and dispense it in the lean, writ large. I pointed out that such a policy can only work in a totalitarian state in which nobody can vote and individual psychology is irrelevant (i.e. the impact of expectations).
I am coming to the conclusion that all of these leftist “policies” are really just extrapolations of individual nostrums and beliefs. They don’t have the bird’s eye view that real policy must have that produces a comprehensive picture of the whole.
One wonders if the Lean Years of Pharoh was caused by the policies which stored grain during the Fat Years.
We are left with the idea that the Lean Years came of their own accord, dropped onto Egypt from on high. But, assuming people are the same now at they were back then, after years of growing and having their crops stolen, perhaps the farmers decided not to be fooled again, decided not to bring their crops to the market where it would be stolen by their government.
I can imagine that the first year they would decide to work less and grow less,
the second year only to grow what they could consume themselves, like “Wickard”,
the third year the Pharoh would send his people to the farms to steal the grain there,
the fourth year he would murder the farmers who hid their grain too well, and
the 5th year, he would give the farms to selected people who he trusted, who perhaps knew nothing of farming, the 6th year the new farmers began to figure it out, and the 7th year some farmers would try to farm a little others would turn down the gift of a farm, after realizing what the tax rate was.
Wish I’d thought of that!
What you described, up through the 5th year, is pretty much what has happened in Zimbabwae, Africa.
Not a chance. First of all, it was the prophetic word of God that decreed the abundant years and the lean years. Second, what makes you think the crops were stolen? More likely, they were bought dirt cheap because the farmers couldn’t sell all that grain, which vastly exceeded how much anyone would want. A bumper crop can event bankrupt a farmer who has a mortgage because the price collapses on their grain.
Also, I noted the irony of 0bama and his ‘rolled up’ sleeves whenever he speaks to ‘the little people’ as if he’s ever worked a hard day in his damned life.
But, 0bama ‘speaks’ well and he’s so ‘smart’, so say the Left who are so proud of their magical half-black guy [his 'white' half doesn't count]…an ‘intellectual’ guy (at least according to the Left) who doesn’t seem to know his own birthday, doesn’t know which religion he belongs to, doesn’t know how to pronounce “orion” or “Corps”, doesn’t know how many states are in America, can’t be asked ‘hard’ questions, can’t go off teleprompter without sounding like a bumbling fool and has his ‘mysterious and yet vaunted’ academic records sealed.
The Lefty ‘ELITES’? All of them, phonies.
My 4 year old son calls people like this “zombies”, and then shows me, by facial expression, what it is. I wish I could post his picture with this face on.
Couldn’t have said it better myself.
I still get quite irritated at the thought that Obama is more gaffe-prone than Dubya ever was, but one would never know that considering the double-standard approach to O’s bumbling verbiage versus that Bush used to display.
Little Barry Half Black sat on a wall,
Little Barry Half Black had a great fall,
All his great spinnsters and all the MSM,
Couldn’t put Little Barry Half Black together again.
That’s being disrespectful to Humpty ;-)
Excellent article Dr Hanson.
There is no limit to the endless “campaign” (and never will be) for the self-annointed Leftists/Socialists/Liberals because their battle is always to prove something about themselves – Their chosen “victims”, whom they seek to become proxy representatives of, are nothing more than props in their grand melodramas of self-congratulation and self-importance.
Thats why the Libs can easily slide from “poverty”, which at least has some possibility of definition, to the newest reformulation that is guaranteed to be intractable, “inequality”. All Lib campaigns will follow the same path, too. There will NEVER be an end to their meddling in every facet and strata of our lives until they are forced to stop. Our current economic/cultural mess will not end until the Lib self-importance machine as represented by the Lib political class, Hollywood morons and some university “studies” idiots are stood down and they are held to account for the RESULTS of their self-serving campaigns of self-indulgent narcissism.
Liberalism, if not held to account and excised from the body politic, will become the new Caesars path to power.
My parents were Kennedy Democrats as well. Looking out for the “little guy”, championing the American value of “everybody gets a chance at the brass ring”. All you had to do was work hard, follow the rules, get a good education and love your country.
But nobody, nobody…said you were “entitled” to something. Except a fair chance to succeed.
As anyone who pays attention to anything I write in the comments here knows, I don’t believe “liberalism” exists any longer. Certainly not as anything but a tiny fraction of the left of center political spectrum.
Radical leftism has swallowed nearly the whole of the spectrum to the left of center. Euro-Socialism is right next to centrism these days…and it is a million miles to the left of “liberalism”, or certainly what JFK “liberalism” stood for and against.
Euro-Socialism, small c communism, Large C Communism, anarchism, …these virulent diseases of racial and class warfare…do not use logic to persuade and convince. They use distortion and lies to ramrod theft and confiscation down our throats. They weaken societies and destroy economies.
A liberal would debate you and then buy you a beer. A small c communist will smile in your face, pretend he is a liberal and then shove a shiv in your back.
We need to not be lazy about making these differentiations. As long as we keep calling those who mean to do us harm “liberals”…we give them the cover they so desperately need. We need to strip them of such cover. To take off their masks and hold them high for everyone to see.
There is nothing “liberal” about overthrowing capitalism. There is nothing “liberal” about announcing a fraud as “settled science”. There is nothing “liberal” about propagandizing our news outlets through distortion and lies.
We do ourselves a grave disservice when we call the leftists “liberal”. They are no such thing.
That is exactly what I’ve been saying for years.
Some people tell lies, but in the case of leftists the words they use are themselves lies.
Once upon a time I referred to myself as a liberal because I believed in the ideals of classical liberalism. It was this noble word and its positive associations that the left hijacked and used to promote evil. Of course nowadays that term has been sucked dry of its brand equity, and so the leftists have largely moved on to other terms, with “progressive” being the most prominent one.
Of course the lies and the evil of the left never change, only the words that they hide behind, the lies within lies with which they craft their webs of deceit.
Precisely, Lee.
In fact, I think there is much to like about classic liberalism. There is almost nothing “progressive” about modern leftism, there is nothing “liberal” about modern leftism and there is nothing “mainstream” about them…or their media.
There is nothing “pro-choice” in their agenda. There is nothing scientific and certainly nothing “settled” in their “settled science”.
There is virtually no peace, no love and no harmony in their racial and class warfare.
There is no “equality” in their prosecution of laws, passage of legislation or protection of voting rights, borders, or economic/fiscal platforms.
I wrote a piece for PJM called the Inversion Narrative dealing with this subject. They are the polar opposite of everything they pretend to stand for and against.
It is not mere hypocrisy…it is intentional fraud that drives them. And the flying monkeys they have trained in their propaganda wing. “Redistribution” is just a phony word for “kinetic overthrow” of the free market system.
Dyed-in-the-wool Democrat, circa 2009: “What’s not to love. He ran such a great campaign.”
Cranky independent: “So, what about running a campaign with univision followers convinced you he’ll be an effective leader of a highly diversified nation?”
DITW Dem: [Protracted silence.]
“But it remains a powerful narcotic to an aberrant elite, one that feels guilty over its apartheid circumstances and is desperately seeking spiritual redemption on the cheap.”
Actually it’s just cheap for the aberrant elite since they aren’t bearing the brunt, either social or financial, of the costs of their hubris. Please note that I do not include the job makers/businessmen/corporations in the ‘aberrant elite’ category–just the leaches/community organizers/career politicians.
Dr Hanson, I always enjoy your articles, and agree with almost everything you say, but I have to pick you up on one point:
“When the London riots started to hit the “better” sections, then suddenly the police appeared in real numbers and the unapologetic public anger increased.”
This is a considerable mischaracterisation of what took place. On the Saturday and Sunday the disturbances were confined to a couple of locations. On the Monday, however, the violence spread to a list of locations as long as your arm. This was completely unexpected and unprecedented. The police simply didn’t have the numbers to cope with the extent of the trouble. By the evening of the following day they had drafted-in thousands of extra officers from outside London – NOT because ‘better’ areas were being targeted, but simply because they realised that on the Monday they had been swamped, unable to cope, and the thugs had essentially ruled the streets (of overwhelmingly ‘working-class’ areas, not ‘better’ areas).
Public anger stemmed not from concern for ‘better’ areas, but from the fact that we could see gangs of thieving, looting, violent brainless welfare-poisoned scum making fools of the police and of society generally, and robbing innocent working people of their homes, their businesses, and in several cases their lives.
Our anger isn’t reserved for those who target ‘better’ areas, Dr Hanson; our anger is directed at the thuggishness, stupidity, violence, and contemptuous ignorant selfishness of the cowardly scum who smashed our neighbourhoods for fun. I’ve not spoken to one person here who disagrees with that.
Then again, maybe it’s the media you’re thinking of. If Notting Hill and Islington are threatened then, yes, even the media types start to side with the police…
Yes. That was obvious to the majority.
I would like to know the ratio of police to public.
And, you know the “media” would stay out of the poorer neighborhoods; They wouldn’t feel safe, and they would be objects of retribution.
Does the U.K have anything like our National Guard for domestic emergencies?
Dr. Hanson;
Amazing how you have become such a prolific, profound, and elegant writer after being schooled on personal hygiene and social grace instead of academics. (I remember having to write “I shall not curse”, or my multiplication tables, hundreds of times in parochial school; And we had to wear uniforms.)
I have fond memories of the family members in my youth getting along very well although there were deep political differences.
Dichotomies are what gives politicians life these days. They cherish, teach and preach antipathy as if it is their life’s blood. And it’s working.
Even church, back in those days, was focused on personal introspection, rather than social injustices, and what people should think about their status in their community.
But, you, Dr. Hanson, are a perfect example of intellectual curiosity that inspired you to seek further knowledge. And that knowledge has brought you truth.
Attending any of your classes must be an intensely absorbing experience, since you, as well as your subject material, stimulate our passion for greater knowledge of our own personal capacities.
But, let me state the obvious; Obama would be out of a job if he couldn’t blame Bush for anything, and if tele-prompters were banned for use by politicians.
“But it remains a powerful narcotic to an aberrant elite, one that feels guilty over its apartheid circumstances and is desperately seeking spiritual redemption on the cheap.”
They are not doing it on the cheap. They are doing it with other people’s (taxpayers) money.
I forgot to state that, Kennedy faced down Kruschev, rather than Castro, Dr. Hanson.
I’d even venture that there would be no Castro if it weren’t for Kruschev. Maybe not even a Cuba.
I’m sure there are many readers that can verify this.
A recent George Will column has a different take on the Kennedy-Krushshev confrontation.
I read that piece, and it seemed like the run of the mill “what could have happened if…” essay that journalism 101 students write. But, George can do great essays.
I stand by my statement that Kennedy faced down Kruschev, as there is much more to the story than George Will’s brief episodes illustrate.
I remember there was quite a bit of turmoil at the U.N. during that time, which you may remember, resulted in Kruschev shaking his shoe at the Assembly. That was front page photography all over planet Earth.
Although it was ultimately the U.S. Military strength and reputation that caused the success of the Cuban Blockade, Kennedy was President at the time, and gets the credit for being Commander in Chief.
Fortunately for us, it worked as it did. Otherwise I would be nothing but a radioactive particle somewhere in the Homestead area.
Mr. Hanson, we are close contemporaries, both having been born in 1953, and while I grew up in a different environment, aerospace brat in Los Angeles County, I have seen and remember much which is parallel to what you write about.
The particularly jarring note is the difference between my mother’s family’s devotion and the horror that is the far-left dominated party of today.
My maternal grandfather’s brother was the head of JFK’s campaign for the state of Kansas in 1960. The family has photographsof Uncle Jim shaking hands with Candidate Kennedy.
Today I cringe at relatives who “cling” to the belief that there is even the intent of improving people’s lives relict in Democratic Party intentions.It rather reminds meof the wife who returns to her husband beating after beating, a profound denial of reality.
Thank you providing that perspective, Michael. I suspect the overwhelming majority of Brits are honest, hard-working, decent people; I haven’t been to Great Britain since the late 1990s, but I doubt things have changed THAT much. It’s remarkable what havoc a relatively small demographic can wreak, however.
I do think the Professor was referring to the tipping point when the media –standing in for the social elite — started to “side with the police.” The media tend to think it’s fascinating and politically blameworthy when thugs and gangs are attacking people in the poorer areas. When the attacks move into the neighborhoods of the better-off, however, the media lose their fascinated political posture and just start feeling scared.
The general public is equally appalled at the attacks no matter where they’re occurring. But the shift in media sentiment is a common dynamic.
J.E.Dyer – broadly I think you are absolutely right, and if that is the broad thrust of Dr Hanson’s argument then, of course, I agree. However, his statement concerned public anger and police response, neither of which took their cue from the quality of the neighbourhoods being attacked.
The malaise in the media is seemingly irredeemable: the BBC and The Guardian are both happily running a constant stream of articles and opinion describing the ‘riots’ as political acts. This is not only dangerous, and utterly wrong, it is also to my mind another case of the mainstream media’s absolute narcissism. Whether it’s Osama Bin Laden or a welfare thug from Tottenham, the mainstream media sees them as blank canvases on which to paint their own pet issues and projects.
Which would be comic, were it not so dangerous. Because thugs of all stripes happily take their cues from the mainstream media, learn their lines, and recite the excuses given to them by headscratching media know-nothings sat at laptops in wi-fi-enabled Notting Hill coffee houses.
It’s really quite simple. “Liberals” are no longer liberal. The left has insinuated its Marxist philosophy into it and worked its destructive spell upon it. Upon waking up from a long sleep, Rip Van Winkle would have noticed right away but we’re more like the frog in the pot with the temperature gradually rising.
…in those days it was not hard to think that the ‘”Okies” and “poor folks” and “Mexican-Americans” in the San Joaquin Valley needed some sort of foundational equality of opportunity — given the scarcity of capital and endemic prejudice.
The nation took a serious misstep when we moved from “equal opportunity” to “affirmative action” (although, as you note, the administrative class benefited hugely). Apparently we are determined to compound the error by moving on to “diversity” as an end in itself.
This article is the kind of even-mindedness we need, now. It will be important in the next election to recruit the political left who can still appreciate what my father’s generation understood about the American liberal of the mid 20th Century. It was my dad who lionized FDR, but also taught me that wealth trickles down, and the generation of it was essential for everyone to prosper. Much different from today’s left.
Please make some videos of your Europe trip, Professor Hanson. I enjoy your teaching, but can’t afford the trip this time. I did make it to Italy with my late father’s reunion group (the Tenth Mountain Division) and it was the experience of a lifetime to hear these mountain town residents express their love for Americans. If you are the descendant of a WW II veteran, do make the pilgrimage once in your life.
I’m surprised that Mr. Hanson omitted an important difference between today’s liberals and the liberals of the past: FDR and JFK were deeply patriotic men, who believed in the goodness and mission of this nation. FDR could authorize fire-bomb raids on enemy cities and the building of the atomic bomb. JFK could put our nuclear forces on high alert in the Cuban Missile Crisis, ready to strike. And both tried to pursue what they believed would be strong pro-economic growth policies. Because they wanted this nation to succeed.
The left-wing “netroots” bloggers that Mr. Hanson talks about are different. As Michael Barone once noted, today’s liberals have a disdain for patriotism and a marked preference for transnationalism and “one world” theories.
Liberalism’s faith in America was shattered by the Vietnam War. It never recovered.
I’ve been told to my face by lefties like these that they don’t care about protecting America, they care to protect the world FROM America. Hence their stubborn insistence on making America pay for “raping the planet” with global warming and such. And their constant longing for America to “catch up” to the allegedly civilized states of Canada and Western Europe, abandon the role of “imperial” superpower, and become just one of many nations taking direction from the U.N.
In an America that has descended to second-rate or third-rate status, these privileged liberals (“limousine liberals,” we older New Yorkers used to call them) will still do well, just as the wealthy do well in banana republic countries.
You raise an interesting point, Professor: that the liberals of old were much more likely than they are now to be ordinary people, with at least some level of direct connection with those they hoped to help. They were also friendly and gregarious rather than insular and irritable.
We didn’t know many liberals when I was a kid. I remember a couple my parents knew when Dad was in medical school, at the University of Oklahoma, in the late 1960s (I was an early grade-schooler at the time). Everyone’s grandparents were registered Democrats then (well, except my mother’s parents, who had despised FDR well before it was cool), but most people were socially conservative, and a lot of the young adults, like my parents, had registered Republican at some point in the ’60s. This particular couple they knew were a pair of liberal Democrats who thought Hubert Humphrey might as well have been in the John Birch Society. My folks just laughed at their political foolishness, describing them as “New York liberals,” but we lived in the same neighborhood, and, since they had kids our age, we biked and skated the blocks between our houses and played together often.
I had a number of liberal professors in college, of course, but they were far from the doctrinaire, one-note leftists on faculties today. They encouraged critical thought, as did the more conservative professors, and were willing to have conservative arguments “win” in class discussions if the argumentation was sound. A couple of professors even described themselves as specimens of Churchill’s liberal-at-20, conservative-at-40 formula. I did have one professor (in philosophy) who was a big follower of Frances Fox Piven, but she was a nice lady otherwise, and basically harmless. She could really get into it with conservative students in her 101 class, but she let conservative arguments have a fair hearing.
I think what we’re seeing today is a lot of second- and third-generation liberals who have come completely unmoored from any background in accountable, self-sufficient working-class life. We have grown a “liberal class” now. But it requires sustainment from the accountable classes — the ones who, like farmers and firemen and engineers and accountants, pay for their own mistakes. Ultimately, the liberal class can’t perpetuate itself, because it doesn’t make anything and it doesn’t evolve and adapt.
There is a link to a similar article on yet another elitist boob, Al Gore, on Icecap.us from The-American-Interest.com by Walter Russell Mead titled,”The Failure of Al Gore:Part One”.
I think Spiro Agnew had it right : “A spirit of national masochism prevails, encouraged by an effete corps of impudent snobs who characterize themselves as intellectuals”. (from Ranker website).
Conservatives WANT to live in a World of their own making. Liberals should be REQUIRED to.
Dr. Hanson,
You have helped keep me (and others I am sure) sane during the Democratic Dark Ages. With “indulgences” back in full swing, self-flagellation (in public) for all of the You Tube world to witness, with the King’s (Federal) granaries being attacked by rot and rats, I would swear that we are in the 14th Century. Barbara Tuchman in A Distant Mirror was not far off. Thank you for your brilliant writing and humanity.
Our president lectures about a certain sort of school he never has sent his child to.
I remember during the one debate with McCain, Obama described how his mother who was getting welfare scraped to get him in a private school.
I remember wondering
1. Why didn’t he think the public school was good enough?
2. How a mother on welfare could get the money to send her son to a private school?
3. Why was he against vouchers?
And, especially,
4. Why didn’t McCain call him on it?
“4. Why didn’t McCain call him on it?”
Because McCain doesn’t think; he just reacts.
In the 50′s, the time of which Mr. Hanson writes, 99% of America had faith in the governement as a result of WWII and the aftermath. Since the US had quickly become the dominant, by far, economy in the world after the war, American lifestyles were improving by leaps and bounds and our parents and grandparents still had excess capacity to be generous. And having gone through the Depression, people were charitable both at home and abroad. Why not? They had seen suffering and now had the means to prevent it. 99% of the population, regardless of political party, was “liberal”. The other 1% were Communists.
Since that time, the economies that were flattened after WWII have recovered, and China and India have recently begun to grow because their governements, after decades of abject economic failure, have begun to realize that capitalism is the path to prosperity. And although worldwide prosperity isn’t a zero sum game, the natural net of the six decades since the 50′s is that the wealth of the rest of the world is much closer to the US’s wealth than during the 50′s. Unfortunately, people aren’t generally smart enough to appreciate that their own wealth is staggeringly higher; and what they perceive instead is that we aren’t much better off than Europe or Japan. Because of relentless propaganda, many think that the US is worse off. Everything is relative, and relatively speaking tha US is hurting vs the 1950′s.
So naturally, people are becoming more concerned about their current well-being and economic future.
While all this was going on, the marxists were busily plotting and subverting the west, particularly the US, since our country has long been the only global entity that stands in their path to worldwide domination. They aren’t dumb, and have had smashing success convincing people who own cars, plasma TV’s, iphones, $200 sneakers, and who are getting fat from overly rich food that they are “oppressed”. And of course, compared to Warren Buffet, and 10 Chinese multi-billionaires, they are.
Ergo, we have the “oppressed” on the left, which is now the party demanding handouts from the ruling class rather than the party of generous Americans who want to help the poor and promote world peace, and on the other hand, you have the adults who recognize that the days of the wild ride US economy are over, and that maintaining and improving prosperity will take responsibility, hard work and ingenuity. The ruling class and their sychophants are winning because they had the foresight to capture the media four decades ago while our guys were quintrupling the wealth of the world and rebuilding Europe and Japan.
There you have American politics of the last 65 years in 5 paragraphs.
Proreason wrote:
“99% of the population, regardless of political party, was “liberal”. The other 1% were Communists.”
Good post.
This is an insight which seems to have been glossed over or which historians cannot grasp.
Someone else commented on another blog at PJM that the 1950′s (which the Repubs pine for as the “conservative” good old days and that the Dems like to hate as a supposed fascist era) were in reality a time of Potemkin conservatism. High taxes, large amounts of government control and union membership, and an overweening faith in the benevolence of government give lie to any conclusions about that time being as conservative as, say, the 1920′s. The fact that largely conservative moral values still predominated (although by Kennedy’s assasination that didn’t even hold sway, especially in urban areas) was merely a holdover, a mindset worn out of habit by the public.
Meanwhile, the Gramscian project was proceeding full bore as anti-Communists, cowed by an already infiltrated MSM, dropped the ball on rooting out the worms in academia and foundations.
The evolution of helping the underprivileged in times of hunger to a 48% dependency on social programs, for three generations, that demand more than many tax payers supply for their own families is unsustainable.
Obama’s mother collected welfare,he went to Harvard.
How many of you can afford Harvard for your children?
Job exportation,mass immigration and unions have crushed the job market.
The disconnect of the “rich” ,politicians and religious leaders from the common tax payers leaves us with no representation.
They can afford to be generous with your money,to themselves and the poor.It buys them devotes and votes.
They dependent parts of society have become so self-righteous in their demands for a free life they claim welfare as a Constitutional right,even illegal immigrants.
One,harsh,solution could be no representation without taxation.20 years on welfare would = no vote.
yes, and it all started because well-meaining Americans, energized after their astonishing success in WWII, were determined to share their hard work and good fortune with others, including the world. We called them “liberals” 55 years ago.
But every good deed is an opportunity for a marxist, and they quickly seized upon the generosity of Americans and turned it into a monster of government dependency.
Now we are waking up, or actually beginning to see beyond the propaganda thrust into our faces for 50 years, and the roses don’t smell so sweet.
The Democratic Party: Soothing OUR conscience with YOUR money since 1932.
More like 1912 :)
I always felt the rich, like the Kennedy’s, Buffet, Gore, and McCaskill tended to support dem policies not so much as penance for their wealth (perhaps if their money came too easily) but more as a cover – to avoid being a target of our now massive and capricious gov’t. You do not bite the hand that feeds you, and most at the levers of gov’t are liberal. In addition, most business now requires the blessing of this same gov’t. It is only in their self-interest to support the the liberal/progressive tendencies of gov’t.
In simpler words, it is good business, not penance.
It might be “good business” in the short term, but in the long term the economy is destroyed, which is not “good business”…in fact it’s “bad business”.
I’ve lost all patience with the libs/leftists/progressives. These days, when I hear someone spout that nonsense, I say, “You socialist thieves want to be generous with someone else’s hard-earned cash extracted at the point of a government gun. You want to give something to somebody else? Reach in your own damned pocket and spend your own damned money. Keep your thieving hands out of mine!”
I’ve never had to use that response more than once per person.
” the First Family would favor Martha’s Vineyard, Vail, and Costa del Sol over the White House grounds or Camp David.”
A new elite has taken hold. It’s their turn to eat.
Tripe.
How can you possibly know what other people think. Your “desperately seeking redemption on the cheap” is my holding out a hand to help the guy in need.
It is one thing to express your own feelings and motives; it is quite another to take ownship of others feelings and motives and then publish them, to boot.
Look, Febe, your holding out your hand to somebody in need is fine. But taxes are way different from that. You want to take MY money away from ME to give to someone else that THE GOVERNMENT chooses. It is impossible for me to understand why the libruls get a warm glow from dominating my finances and deciding to whom my charitable contributions will go.
Fred, I do taxes during the season for a household name tax outfit. I’d love it if some of the liberal tax-paying people I know, could sit with me and watch people getting their tax return prepared wherein they get generous refunds, way over and above what they had withheld. Refunds of several thousand dollars. They might begin to think differently about redistribution of income.
Frank said “They might begin to think differently about redistribution of income.”
I doubt it…..because in a liberals mind, it is now a replacement for Religion that “we must take from the “haves” and “give” to the “have-nots” …..Nothing even proof that the system we now have changes nothing about peoples status as “poor” no more.
Even if you took it form them by force right there is the office and handed it to the “poor” would they get it……ever…..
Febe;
It’s like giving to a United Fund. They take your money and give it (not all) to whoever they deem worthy.
You can designate who you want your money to go to, but, that organization does not get 100% of the money you designate. There are administrative costs charged by The Fund. The designated organization gets what’s left.
To fully support any organization, you have to give that organization your money directly.
On a much larger scale, this is the same thing that happens to your tax money.
Return to the things, THEMSELVES!
Growing up entails mastering stages of life, so until seven or so, humans encounter the PHYSICAL, and hopefully “graduate” to the next challenging level.
Until fourteen or so, the emotional-sexual realm is SUPPOSED to be met and conquered, but we all know how that’s turned out—witness all the wild and crazy crap that passes for entertainment, these dire days.
Next comes the lower mental dimension, ending around the age of twenty one. And, the average American is certainly FAR FROM as well endowed in this regard as one Victor Davis Hanson, and those with erudite learning like him.
Well, what about the “sache”, the things?
The key human fact to keep in mind these days is that self esteem is THE most vital “gain” from growing up in America circa 2011. And, THIS is DESPITE in-your-face proof that most people have NOTHING to have high self esteem for!
My point?
High technology has resulted in a society that doesn’t NEED much—even a maladjusted fool can make a living or survive on the dole!
So, what about the collection of such “normal” Americans, who, by the way, elected Obama as their leader: nuf said, eh?
Actually, Obama is the PERFECT president for our out-of-touch times, since he—and his supporters—have taken “don’t have a clue to how things are created or businesses make a profit or food is grown or…”—to a suicidal level.
When “things” reach a most out of whack situation, real reality has a way of HAVING ITS WAY.
One final truth—there is only light.
No one sees an objective reality. The human nervous system “plucks”, or receives incoming light waves of various frequencies and the brain translates this into an IMAGE—and, given all normal humans share the same evolved physical characteristics, we all just agree that what we see is what is.
Why, even cutting edge science agrees that all elements are really evolved photons—so don’t attack me for writing this.
The “magical” truth is, though, that the subjective “ego”, or subjectivity itself, is ALSO light!
Shine AS the light you are—that’s some THING to be!
DNC Chair Wasserman Schultz Booed Heckled in Iowa
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B0JXXrceIoE&fe…
“Happiness and moral duty are inseparably connected.” George Washington
“As we saw last week in Britain and in some American cities, liberal redistributionism makes far worse the innate problems it was hailed to solve. But it remains a powerful narcotic to an aberrant elite, one that feels guilty over its apartheid circumstances and is desperately seeking spiritual redemption on the cheap.”
Another BULLSEYE, Dr. Hanson! Excellent!
I’ve been reading about the French Revolution lately. Some very interesting parallels to current events. Insolvency and how people respond to it. Interesting.
Good article. Leftism had their elitists in the old days too, such as FDR and JFK. But the difference is back then for every FDR and JFK you had plenty of Harry Truman and Hubert Humphrey types, that really came from common middle class people, and still knew many. But nowdays, it seems like every leftist politico or commentator went to Harvard or some other Ivy league school, and rarely ever has any poor, or even middle class friends. Mind you many conservatives do too, but they seem to have more conservative middle class origin politicians than leftists from the middle class. This is proved numerically in congress, if you rank by personal wealth, and quickly notice that dems dominate the wealth rankings.
I think that is one reason the left hates Palin so much. She clearly came from the middle class, and acts like it. I suspect they will hate Perry for the same reason, he went to A&M, not Harvard.
The worst part of liberalism from above is that the beneficiaries of the largess are neither grateful nor better citizens. In fact, the exact opposite results along with constant demand for more from both the givers and receivers.
Post modern Britain is a nightmarish back to the future of Kubrick’s CLOCKWORK ORANGE…..Historically ,the British working classes have always been violent and drunken , but Victorian /Edwardian morality put a restraint on it …a kinda fear of the Lord / fear of the Law , but since the undermining of religion and the liberalisation of the law ,feral types have been gaining confidence and celebrating their new freedoms and enjoying their ability to intimidate decent members of society
This degeneration has been going on for decades , like the slow drip , drip , drip of an anaesthetic and is now producing a kind of ”lord of the flies ” mentality ! Walk around any British city on a saturday night and witness the bedlam of drunken , loutish young men and scantily dressed , obese , foul mouthed young women that wouldn’t have been out of place in the early 1700 ‘s …it’s like a riot in a trailer park !
….the ghetto mentality that was once limited to the enclaves has now became mainstreamed , trendy and fashionable by toxic TV , radio and internet ….tatoos , hoodies , gangster clothes are now the ”in thing ”combined with a hedonistic , nihilistic lifestyle and worldview that wouldn’t be out of place in the age of Tiberious
Back in the past , this type of degeneracy was limited by hardship and austerity to a privaledged elite but now it has infected the masses with the miraculous use of modern technology , scientific revolution in health standards , good food and high tech communications …..infact the common folk have, in some ways ,more priveleges than a Roman Emperor or a French King …what we are witnessing is the mainstreaming of the degeneracy of the French court and the orgys of Tiberious on the isle of capri
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