Deliver Us from Strange Children

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More and more I find myself taking a decidedly biblical view of the world.  A view informed by Old Testament wisdom, law and the Covenant.  That is especially true when I think of the Adolescent Rebellion of the 60's and 70's and the evils that followed (and continue to follow) in its wake.
I dwell also on the societal consequences of the interruption of generational continuity.  For America the break was, in the main, brought about WWII; for Europe (and broadly, Western social, literary, economic, academic and religious foundations) dissolutions were brought by the combination of World Wars.  Disillusion and cynicism, following great breakdowns of confidence in institutions, secular and divine.

There is no Serious Problem -- Social, Political or Economic -- that is not Either Caused by or Made Worse by Big Government

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The Course of Empire Destruction (Thos. Cole, 1836)

For a number of years now I have been posing the title statement as a question.  In print and in conversation.  Crickets and bullfrogs; the query might just as well have been rhetorical.  Few have responded, and no one has ever offered an apposite answer. Big-government types occasionally make an attempt, but only after they've changed the question to suit a prepared answer. The most common response, for example, is to reply that government does some things right, which I've never denied and which is entirely outside the scope of the question.

The American Project Is Undone

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Humpty Dumpty

For many reasons I have not looked forward to writing this essay.   Some readers will surely view it as a pessimistic and panicky jeremiad; all Henny-Penny.  And I'd love to be wrong; I hope that my arguments will be found wanting and, if not rebutted definitively, at least convincingly.  My thesis is this: America has passed the tipping point in its long journey toward Marxist solipcism; that, barring the miraculous or the sudden emergence of a black swan, we cannot return to being a free society.

Ignorance vs. Stupidity: A Dead Heat at CNN

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CNN Ireport Badge

More and more I am convinced that legacy media folks -- contrary to the opinion of some conservatives -- are perfectly sincere.  Innocent of fact, curiosity or independent thought, to be sure, but sincere.  They believe they are right in most, if not all, things, and I think they might even feel sorry for the rest of us if sympathy wouldn't interfere with the pleasure they take in condescension. 

The Historical Roots of Statism in America

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Opposing Statism: The Incomplete Conservative Argument 

Until recently, I had never been satisfied with with conventional explanations of the steady rise of American statism.  Within the conservative pundit class there seems to be general agreement (or, at least, emphasis) that beginnings lay in the presidencies of Roosevelt, Taft and Wilson and the rise of the Progressives.  To be sure, anti-Jeffersonian policies flourished in their administrations as it later did with F.D.R., Lyndon Johnson.  But the nagging question for me was how, after the Founding period, did this trend -- more or less suddenly -- emerge?  Say with Theodore Roosevelt...?  So recent?  What about the Hamiltonians, the Federalist Party?  Some of our conservative voices, Glenn Beck, for example, will talk about Alexander Hamilton (a good start), but then they seem compelled to leap over a big chunk of history to the late Nineteenth Century.  Why is that?  What are they avoiding?

APS Cheating Scandal: In No Way Excusable; In Every Way Predictable

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The Atlanta Public School (-teacher) cheating scandal, and similar reflections in other cities, points to the systemic corruption of the K-12 educational establishment.  That corruption is especially prevalent in major metropolitan areas where affirmative action priorities [1] have reduced the level of competence and judgment of "educators" [2].  Crony Socialism (a redundant phrase) invites collusion between city  bureaucracies with oversight and those overseen.  To offer cash incentives for teaching and administrative performance within a system where incompetence has become the accepted standard, is to ask for trouble.  Moral hazards and predictable outcomes.

Sacred Ground: The Lincoln Myth

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Preface
For some of us the time comes when we are forced to recognize that much of what we have been taught -- what is "common knowledge" -- is simply untrue.  That is the case, I believe, to some extent in all the academic disciplines but perhaps less so in the hard sciences than the soft sciences and liberal arts.  Here, I am concerned with history, which seems to be the subject of more ideological tampering than other disciplines.
In this essay I assert that the commonly accepted history -- the orthodoxy -- of the American Civil War period and the persona of Abraham Lincoln are largely innocent of salient fact, intellectual honesty and the application of common sense.  Further, I will argue that Lincoln's abuse of constitutional powers did great violence to Jeffersonian view of federalism and ultimately became the template for contemporary statism.

Al Gore: Hoist On His Own Canard

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Al Gore's fear-mongering book and video, An Inconvenient Truth: The Planetary Emergency of Global Warming and What We Can Do About It, represent an undeniable triumph for K-12, academe, Hollywood, TV, the press and liberal lemmings worldwide. And no mean achievement in the entrepreneurial spirit of, say, Bernie Madoff, Charles Ponzi and John Law. (1)

Yes, There Is a Double Standard. Stop Whining About It!

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There are many traits of traditional conservatism that I like. Independence, individualism, positive attitude, willingness to work, courage, self-sufficiency and disposition to charitable acts. It appears, however, that the general feminizing of Western Society has not found conservatives immune.

Among the spokesmen for the right -- from best to least -- I cannot name one who has not succumbed to whining complaint about that leftist hypocrisy known as the double standard. "How", they ask rhetorically "would the media and liberal politicians have responded if a conservative had said (or done) that?"


If the question were not rhetorical, and if it had been asked of me, I would reply to Rush Limbaugh or Laura Ingraham, or to Glenn Beck or Ann Coulter, "Man-up for God's sake! Either do something about it or accept it for what it is. But stop your whining!"

In fact, there are measures that can be taken. Unfortunately for conservatives they mostly require collective action, which, outside the Tea Party movement, are traditionally anathema to the right. Fortunately for conservatives, on the other hand, the aggregate of individual sentiment may favor the right.

The collective actions I had in mind were demonstrations and boycotts; Hollywood, the printed and visual media and academe. If well-orchestrated, these initiatives might work to good effect, but what organized conservatives seem incapable of, middle-America seems already to be doing without leadership. When a CNN broadcast attracts fewer than 1M viewers in prime-time, when the NYT, the LAT and the SF Chronicle (not to mention many other liberal outlets nationwide) are hemorrhaging readership, advertising and (naturally) profits the message being sent is palpable.

Hollywood and academe are other matters. In the former case two things: the decline of liberal TV and press cannot be helpful to filmmakers, and more money can be directed towards the production of good conservative movies (here, Breitbart and PJM come to mind). In the latter case more funding might be provided for conservative universities such as Hillsdale, Brigham Young, University of Dallas, Wheaton and others. And there are indications that conservative student groups in liberal universities are gaining ground along with a certain panache.

Or, maybe nothing significant for conservatives can be hoped for. Worst case prevails. Accept what cannot be changed. But, please... don't whine. It is unbecoming.

Shovel-Ready Jobs (and other stupidities)

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Much is revealed about our adolescent ruling class by its use of language. Many of their phrases point to a grossly inflated sense of power and competence; the former may exist insofar as it is vested in government, but the latter is notably absent. They suggest the sense of omnipotence felt, perhaps, by a video-gamer able to conquer the hazards of his virtual environment with a joystick.

Shovel-ready This is a term that is remarkable for its elitism and its condescending view of work in America. It also betrays a third-person separation between the ruling and productive classes. We need shovel-ready jobs so they can return quickly to work.

Reset button Here we have a term that might be used by someone who is confident in his ability to restore the function of a balky electrical appliance. The notion that complex international relationships, freighted with years of mutual antagonisms can be turned around with a simple, mechanical gesture. Forget the past...

Bending the cost curve This, perhaps greatest, oversimplification conjures another simple, manual exercise capable of changing the economy.

Bottom-up economy A mantra of candidate Obama. What can it possibly mean...?

Pivot Obama looks to a hard pivot on Iran. A foreign policy danse macabre?

The educated classes Elitist self-caricature. Who, we may ask, are the persons not included in the educated classes? Certainly George Bush, Sarah Palin, Rush Limbaugh. By usage the meaning is clear enough; the speaker or writer is referring to classes not educated "like me". The candid translation is "anointed".

A recent, short article by David Brooks -- NYT's token pseudo-conservative -- has deservedly drawn considerable fire, mostly but not exclusively from the right. Brooks uses the phrase as a foil to the tea-party movement -- presumably ignorant, recalcitrant folks who disagree with the educated classes on matters such as global warming, abortion and gun control. But the writer earns high marks for one succinct and accurate observation (one, by implication, he laments):

The tea party movement is a large, fractious confederation of Americans who are defined by what they are against. They are against the concentrated power of the educated class. They believe big government, big business, big media and the affluent professionals are merging to form self-serving oligarchy — with bloated government, unsustainable deficits, high taxes and intrusive regulation.

What characterizes the users of this patrician language is elitism (of course), a sense of aloof separation from the (unwashed) non-elites*, an unalloyed belief in their own power and wisdom, and the presumption of their own moral superiority (they care). All the necessary elements of hubris.

As the "educated classes" may exclude the educated (in the normal sense), so do they include an alarming number who are not educated (again, in the conventional sense). Pop culture would seem to confirm this in the gagging smarminess of Ben Harper's lyrics to the song, With My Own Two Hands (a staple at PBS). They explain to us how the current president and his myrmidons will effect world peace, manage a changing climate and rebuild the world's economy; how they can change the world, make it a better place...

*--------
Noblesse oblige demands of the educated classes that "ordinary" people, being incompetent, must be led -- failing that, coerced. Tough love.

Parting comment
In 1994 (if not earlier) Charles Murray foresaw with some alarm the trend toward separation of elites from society at large . His phrase was "cognitive partitioning", which described the natural and circumstantial bonding of persons for reasons of a commonality of intelligence, education, career choices, income and neighborhood preferences. Murray drew a distinction between the polity at large and persons who were truly elite, that is, the best and brightest in their fields. I'm not sure he anticipated the artificial division between elites and elitists. Fides necessary to the latter being often superficial and closely associated with school status, wealth from any source, political affiliations, celebrity, and especially disdain for the common man. In short the best and brightest by self-acclimation.
--cf., The Bell Curve by C. Murray and R. J. Herrnstein

In Praise of Wikipedia (Mostly)

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As the title suggests, I have some reservations about Wikipedia, but, on balance they are few.
Criticisms of Wikipedia are numerous (1) and broad, but correcting as best one can for the uniqueness of the Wiki model, they are much the same as for traditional encyclopedias. The Wiki staff, itself -- refreshingly -- examines the matter at some length. For a good overview see this New Yorker article.

I find that on matters not in general dispute, Wikipedia is generally a convenient and reliable source. As is the case with traditional print encyclopedia, one must maintain a healthy skepticism, and, when in doubt, examine source documentation.

Since many contributors, presumably, are academics or academically oriented, one might expect a certain liberal bias. An interesting study of contributors finds them "grumpy" and "disagreeable", but I'm not certain what to make of that...

In summary, discounting my own and others' perception of liberal (or PC) bias, I find Wikipedia a welcome, useful and convenient resource with few serious shortcomings. Still, caveat emptor.

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My last Google inquiry of "Wikipedia bias" returned in excess of 3M hits.

American Socialism: Can It Be Stopped?

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Probably not. At least not by traditional methods of incremental change.

The problem is one of inertia. Regardless of who occupies the White House and congress, the enormous bureaucracies and career staff -- which if not uniformly ideological liberals -- are statists who favor the left's bias toward the constant expansion of government. In terms of political effect it is a distinction without a difference. That is unlikely to change given the fact that these firmly established institutions are loath to hire new applicants for employment who are conservative. (1)
Beyond the machinery of government (but connected) are the entrenched liberals in media, entertainment, organized labor and education who promote socialist principles. It is perhaps in education (K12 through graduate school) that the deepest and most lasting damage has been done. (2)

A resurgence of popular conservatism (or conservative populism) might "boot the rascals out", but the new lot would quickly find that, in fact, it has little real power to change or override the dominant bureaucracies and institutions.

Ugly Alternatives

We find ourselves at a place where popular revolt in one form or another may be the sole alternative that will drive political change. Methodologies would seem most likely to include the following: a widespread refusal to pay federal taxes; states firmly exercising the powers reserved to them under the Tenth Amendment and, finally, secession.

A tax revolt might have the most immediate effect -- a Cloward-Piven strategy turned on its head. (3) But, like belling the cat, it is fraught with practical difficulties. Given the general fear of the I.R.S., and the anticipation of draconian government reprisal, I think it would difficult or impossible to enlist the commitment of enough citizens -- particularly among the top five per cent of taxpayers -- to make the strategy work.
State exercise of Tenth Amendment rights seems more promising, and an increasing number of states are paving the way. The usurpation of powers reserved to the states is not new, but under recent administrations -- particularly the current one -- it has become blatantly aggressive, and it seems certain that the constitutional principle will be tested in the near future. In fact the testing has already begun, but it has not yet attained high-profile status.
Once a federal-state conflict (likely over medical marijuana, guns or universal healthcare) becomes the focus of news media attention, it will be interesting to see the response of federal government. We may reasonably expect that the initial tactic will be denial of federal funds to the offending state followed by the filing of lawsuits in federal courts. Assuming that a state refuses to be intimidated, what form of coercion might follow? And how would the state respond?
Which leads us to the possibility of secession -- the last and most parlous alternative to federal tyranny. I will deal with this in a future post that will attempt to make the case for secession and account for the probable consequences.


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1. This series of articles by Hans von Spakovsky gives a revealing insider's account of institutional bias.
2. Whether wittingly, unwittingly or half-wittingly, educators have been drawn into the Gramscian mold of progressivism.
3. This strategy is designed to bring down government by overwhelming it with financial demands. A tax revolt would have a similar effect by depriving government of revenues.

America and the West: Out With a Whimper?

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When we think about what's happening in America we sometimes fail to see ourselves as a part of a larger collapse -- that of the West, taken as a whole. What is happening here -- reckless deficit spending, multiculturalist abandonment of our heritage, failure of our educational system, Leviathan government, usurpation of sovereignty and liberty -- has been moving apace in Western Europe for decades and is rapidly approaching critical-mass momentum. The American left is in near-perfect alignment with the European left, and the right, as in Europe, forsaking principle, capitulates.

What happened to the right? Some say that, by that by the absorption of liberal memes, (1) the fundamental beliefs of conservatives have been attenuated. I prefer this explanation: that the prevailing cultural curriculum (embedded in education, media and political power) is essentially dominated by liberal feelings and ideas. In short the left owns the Western narrative, and conservatives, wanting critical skills not taught, have failed carefully to examine the assumptions to which they have unconsciously stipulated. Simply put, received knowledge that forms the basis of our thoughts and beliefs is shot through with unrecognized error. It is fair to say that, from the middle of the last century, the right has been intellectually and spiritually neutered.

This is commonly demonstrated by the thinking of "moderate" conservatives who pathetically appeal to the assumed but rarely seen good will and comity of liberals. The politics-as-war disposition of the left offers no quarter, takes no prisoners. The right, ignoring contrary evidence, repeatedly takes the pure hypocrisy of the left's feel-good mantras at face value, denying or failing to see that liberals have no interest in ideas but are solely driven by the lust for power. On this issue the conservative learning curve remains flat (2). Charlie Brown with Lucy and the football.

The singular need to manage and control the lives of others the first principle of the left (3). The history of socialism -- from the communist regimes in Russia and China to the fascism in Europe that served the ends of socialist power to the more recent events in Cuba and newly in Venezuela -- clearly illustrates the arrogation of power by the few to control the many. Worth noting is the glaring contrast between the stated goals of these regimes (improving the lot of the people) and the consequences measured in tens of millions of lost lives, imprisonment and servitude. Power and control.

The latest manifestation on the grand scale is the creeping domination of states by the European Union. With Ireland having caved on the Lisbon Treaty there seems little resistance left to overcome in the EU consolidation of power (4). Improving the lives of the people, again, is the ostensible purpose of this emerging Leviathan. What is exchanged for the organization's stated altruism is personal liberty, jurisdictional sovereignty at every level and, ultimately (ironically) what robustness remains in the economy. Power and control.

What is interesting in the case of Europe is that the brazenness of the EU seizure of authority is met by a near-total meekness of popular opposition. Europeans, more than most, should recognize the resurrection of the patterns from the last century. But they are spiritually and intellectually neutered.

If there is any hope for the survival of the West, it lies in America; but I am concerned whether America -- especially seen in the context of the present administration -- is only a couple of steps behind Europe. Still, there are elements in the traditional American character -- independence, individualism, belief in capitalist meritocracy, robust religious convictions and an innate distrust of government -- that are distinctive. The question is whether these traits have been bred out by liberal indoctrination. The tea parties, townhalls, Tenth Amendment initiatives and the rise of conservative media suggest they have not. The next questions would address numerical distributions, determination (will), and suitable methods of resistance.

Changing the administration at the polls will not be adequate to restore American conservatism. Much of the real power of the left in government is held outside the immediate confines of the White House, Congress and the courts. The enormous, powerful and bloated bureaucracies, like the education establishment are overwhelming liberal. A new Republican administration -- even if conservative -- has little power to curb the ongoing subversion of bureaucracies.

To date there have been no serious confrontations between states asserting Tenth Amendment rights, but I think it is only a matter of time, and that in the short term. How aggressively the government will act may determine the future course of this movement (5).

Modern secession is not out of the question. To be effective it would require a new confederacy of states that would be drawn outside the geographic lines of the Southern Confederacy. Despite the position taken by the left to the contrary, secession -- like nullification -- rests on solid legal ground today as it did prior to the Civil War (6). The Lincoln government responded by illegally asserting Northern power outside the authority of the Constitution. A similar government response to a new secession can be expected, but more swift and violent.

Summary

Whether the Western Tradition survives the postmodern philosophy that is the foundation of modern liberalism is anyone's guess. The erosion of critical thinking and sound education augurs against it, but there are signs of a modest revival of conservatism in Europe, and what may be the beginning of an energetic popular sovereignty movement in America.

I believe we have gone too far along the road to centralized government power to effect a reversal at the polls; change, if it comes, will be occasioned by a confrontation between state and federal powers. What form that confrontation might take and what consequences would follow cannot be known. On the other hand, the states may choose not to assert their rights against the general government. Therein lies the choice between whimper and bang.

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1. Memetics, a hypothesis that wants to become a theory, is superficially attractive because it seems to add explanatory power to cultural shifts. In the end, though, it is at best shorthand for an old idea (learning by osmosis), and it adds little benefit to social analysis.
2. Conservatives naively assume that the left shares their commitment to the traditional rules of civil society.
3. Capitalism, individualism is anathema to control. Free people are by definition unpredictable -- hard to control.
The need to control is an interesting human phenomenon. I find myself wondering if there is a genetic marker at work. If one if discovered some day, I believe I could predict the outcome of a correlation with political leanings.
4. The Lisbon Treaty essentially establishes the EU constitution that was initially rejected by referendum. That document, running to about 40,000 pages, will empower Brussels to micromanage every aspect of the lives of European citizens.
5. About 17 states have either introduced or passed Tenth Amendment resolutions. The resolutions do not have the force of law, but they serve notice to the Federal Government that they are prepared to exercise powers of nullification.
6. There remain legalistic arguments to the contrary, but it is clear that it was generally acknowledge as the right of every state prior to the Civil War. Lincoln, himself, endorsed the concept in an 1847 speech supporting the secession of Texas from Mexico. Only when he became president and sought to consolidate Northern power did he argue against it. He based his new argument on the idea of the "perpetuity" of the union, which was written into the Articles of Confederation but was expressly rejected by the Founders during the Constitutional Convention.

Note: In future posts I intend to address questions of states' rights and secession in some detail. There are some signs that interest is growing in both Tenth Amendment initiatives and secession. About a month ago I ran a Google search on the string, "new secession" and found about 3.3M returns; yesterday the same search yielded 4.45M. Google Trends shows an interesting graphic report.
It is interesting to observe that certain groups are anticipating the emergence of civil conflict. Federal law enforcement produced a study designed to identify possible enemies of the state. On the other side of the coin, an organization called Oath Keepers (law enforcement and current and former military) has made a preemptive move to pledge that they will refuse orders to disarm or use force against citizens. Still others are concerned about the growth of anti-riot/crowd-control weaponry being acquired by law enforcement.

Assault on Western Civilization

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What do ACLU-led attacks on public religious observance and the increasingly scant attention now given to Greek and Roman history by the K12 curriculum have in common? Together they symbolize the consequences of a powerful, ubiquitous, longstanding, relentless and largely successful assault on the values and traditions of the West. It is not confined to the Western Hemisphere or to Europe; it is virtually worldwide. We have come to expect it from the UN, controlled by Third World despots, but it is the West, itself, that leads this suicidal charge.
The pillars of Western civilization are the classical tradition and the Judeo-Christian heritage. Perhaps the true value of the Western canon lies in the fact that it best accommodates the strengths and weaknesses of human nature.

I argue that the best of the Western tradition was codified in the Anglo strain of the Enlightenment, and arguably achieved its zenith in the ideals, beliefs and actions of the American Founders.

The Enlightenment
I often make a distinction of convenience between the Anglo (Scottish, English and American) and French threads of the Enlightenment. It is over-simple, to be sure, but it is useful and generally avoids the margins of argument.

The French, following the ideas of Rousseau and the leadership of Robespierre and others, chose totally to embrace reason and to turn violently against religion and tradition. They set out with remarkable energy to change not only the present, but the past as well. The Anglos also embraced reason, but they opted to integrate it with traditions of the Western heritage. The Muslims, curiously, decided to abjure reason altogether and strengthen their faith as an alternative frankly hostile to reason. One might say that the French welcomed reason and rejected God and the Western tradition; the Anglos welcomed reason in the context of tradition and thanked God for it; and the Muslims rejected reason and turned to God as an antidote.

The French (and German) philosophes laid the foundations of post-modernist thought, which elevated pure reason beyond the realm of praxis (experience, observation) to the point of logical absurdity -- cultural, moral and intellectual relativism -- leading ultimately to nihilism. This school of thought is very much with us today, and its heritors -- people of the left (1) -- are determined to do all possible mischief to Western Civilization. Interestingly, they are in many ways allied with those who rejected reason -- Muslims.

The People of the Left - Part I
It is commonly observed that liberals are largely concentrated in media (entertainment and news), education, organized labor, minorities and "victim" identity groups, NGO's and government bureaucracies. This is largely true of the world-at-large, but it is certainly the case in Western Europe, North, Central and South America and Canada. It is noteworthy that these entities have much in common. With few exceptions, they are insulated from free-market competition; they are not existentially accountable for their performance -- the consequences of financial failure. Many have lost the traditional linkage between productive work and earnings. Apparently unaware of their debt to it, liberals tend to despise capitalism. One suspects the sentiment is a holdover from European aristocracy.

Insulation is perhaps a key concept. After generations of prosperity and security, unknown in most of the world, notions of existential threat have taken on an abstract (unreal) quality. In places where economies are weak and governance bad concern with survival is likely to be a constant among the people; they are daily threatened by the possibility of death by starvation, disease, violence and natural catastrophe. Life cannot be sustained without an intimate knowledge of quotidian reality.

Liberal separation from the consequences of thinking and behavior is the foundational point I want to make here: I'll have more to say about secondary characteristics -- assumptions and beliefs of the left and about the non-ideological, "accidental" spread of liberalism.

Affordable Self-Deception
In societies that are relatively free of real poverty, infectious disease (medically amenable where it exists), and death by violence, and that have infrastructure to minimize the consequences of natural disaster, things are different. People can afford to maintain a (delusional) distance from reality. If one observes a rattlesnake, safely caged, or a human predator contained in a prison cell, he can indulge in attributing to them qualities altogether superior to their nature. Similarly, a person living in comfort and security may be dismissive of such "abstractions" as tyranny, jihadi terrorism or economic collapse.

Liberals ignore the lessons of history at their (and our) peril, but they are constitutionally unable to recognize or acknowledge peril. They tend, for example, to favor various kinds of collectivism -- from democratic socialism to Marxism -- over individualism while ignoring the devastation wrought under socialism in the last century -- crippled economies and death and imprisonment suffered by tens of millions and, generally, the tyranny that socialism always engenders. Collectivist social structures inevitably suppress the best qualities of human nature and encourage the worst.

The Founders, to their great credit, understood the reality of human nature and how best to account for it in the organization of government.

The People of the Left - Part II
Is the assault on Western Civilization deliberate, planned and maliciously intended? Yes and no.
Since the beginning of the 20th Century, there have been individuals and groups actively and frankly hostile the Western Tradition and dedicated to its destruction. Many were the intellectual descendants of the French philosophes, but others were motivated by ambitions to power, tribal mentality, anti-individualism, antagonistic cultural differences or politically organized religious beliefs.

What unites liberal ideologues is a vision of social perfectibility -- whether utopian or eschatological. These are people who measure reality against their imagined standards of Utopia or heaven.

At the other extreme are non-ideological persons influenced by liberal memes in popular culture and the orthodoxies of the educational establishment adopted since the 1950's. They are not consciously anti-Western primarily because the don't understand the concept. In a word they are ignorant -- of history, economics, politics and government. They act upon beliefs uninformed by knowledge or analysis. Excluding functional illiterates this group is theoretically salvageable.

Of all the intellectual bigotries and prejudices the abhorrence of liberty seems to top the list. Flowing from that position are the following corollary fears of and enmity towards: anything that is unorganized or regulated, and thus unpredictable; individualism; capitalism; free markets. In short they seek control over the lives, organization and behavior of others; control from which they, themselves, are exempt (2).

A set of sacred beliefs characterizes the left, and these are zealously guarded: social Darwinism, the idea that men are perfectible if properly governed; multiculturalism, which follows from the fear of making value judgments, in part leading to anti-patriotism and contempt for national sovereignty; the conviction that economies (not governments) are zero-sum; a natural affinity for national governments (particularly fascist and socialist) that use oppressive power to control their polities; wars are caused only by failures of negotiation; all men are inherently good, and when behavior indicates otherwise it is because of environmental factors; nature, in all its manifestations, is superior to mankind; all men and societies are literally equal and many more. All contrary beliefs are intolerable.

Finally, there is a set of behaviors most commonly associated with left. These include: intolerance of dissenting opinion (above) expressed in vicious attacks on opponents; intensity of feeling antithetical to a sense of humor; avoidance of honest debate (on the issue of Global Warming, for example); denial of reality not congenial to their prejudices and contempt for factual verification where it would challenge ideology (they simply rely on repetition of fallacious ideas to counter evidence); the use of intimidation, institutional coercion and violence in service of ideology; willingness to lie in furtherance of the "greater truth"; the use of third person plural in reference to grievance groups (they can't afford health insurance). Again, a sampling.

As I have said elsewhere, there is a remarkable similarity between the left and Islam. Opponents are allowed three options: conversion, submission or death. If this statement strikes the reader as excessive, consider the death tolls at the hands of socialist governments in the last century. I believe that in contemporary Europe and North America the left is restrained only by an incomplete consolidation of power.

Future Of the West
Or, in the language of game theory, does the future of the West cast a shadow? The answer to this question is impossible to forecast with confidence, but weight of evidence bodes ill for the survival of Western Civilization.

As Plato has his revenge on Aristotle, so Rousseau has his on Burke. Cultural, moral and intellectual relativism infects and cripples the governments and peoples of Europe, much of Latin America and Canada and is hard at work in the U.S. The model of infection -- pandemic -- seems appropriate, for spread of collectivist memes appears to have a viral quality and is abetted by intellectual elites and allied institutions such as the UN and the EU -- precursors to world government.

Some assert that the populations of Western countries (taken as groups of individuals) are far more conservative than their governments. This may be the case, but they lack the necessary institutional wealth, power and organization of ruling parties that exert their will through the instrument of government. And managed economies (which most increasingly are) effectively destroy the incentives and motivation for the expression of individual will.

The problems arising out the growth of the left, are greatly exacerbated in Europe by growing Islamic populations hostile to the values of their host countries, routinely living on the dole, and not held accountable by feckless governments that seek cover under the suicidal mantle of multiculturalism. These countries willing or fearfully yield sovereignty to malign immigrants who contribute negatively to their economies and, under direct threat of violence, ridicule existing law and insist on Sharia jurisprudence -- not only for themselves, but their countries of residence entire. The US, so far, has not been similarly affected, but it is only a matter of time.

So the outlook for the survival in strength of Western values seems generally poor. If Western Europe is to overcome the decline, Denmark is most likely to lead the way; on the global scale the US must lead. In neither case are the odds favorable.

Some readers of this essay will inevitably question the importance of Western survival. What's the big deal, they may ask. Political change and the realignment of cultures and values, after all, is the natural course of history.

So it is, I would reply. But consider that in all the past, no better organization of human society, governance, and economy ever existed than that informed by the classical tradition melded with the Judeo-Christian heritage that culminated, by way of the Anglo Enlightenment, in the thoughts, actions, systems and structures passed on to us by the American Founders.

Today's Western Civilization has created and deployed, via free-market capitalism and sound, moral, republican political systems grounded in the rule of law, more wealth and security
worldwide than would ever have been thought possible a century ago. The practical work of that civilization has never been surpassed outside the realm of hypothesis.

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(1) The terms, "left" and "liberal" -- as I use them -- refer to persons who have adopted (consciously or otherwise) the ideology and thought of the continental philosophes.
(2) Think of neighborhood and condo associations. While many persons who offer service to these organizations act out of a sense of civic duty, others seem attracted by a fundamental need to organize and manage the behavior of others.

Thank God For Barack Obama

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Hillary Clinton could not have carried off the feat so effectively as has BHO. His singular achievement has been to awaken and energize the essential conservatism of the American plurality.

The robust elitism of Mrs. Clinton could not have rivaled the malignant narcissism of Obama -- a narcissism which prevents him from concealing effectively his sinister and wholly pernicious anti-American agenda.

The president has created for himself a persona* that some have seen as magisterial, sanctifying and noble. But a little scratching at the surface reveals a buffoon, profoundly ignorant of history, lacking a foundation in common knowledge and common sense, innocent of the values of the Western Tradition, but keenly attuned to Marxist principles. His persona might have been more skillfully crafted -- more marketable -- with the benefit of a true understanding of "America as it is".

It is frankly amazing that the American heritage of distrusting the centralized power of government has not entirely been bred out of our citizens -- casualties of K12, academe and the media. But apparently some notions of individual sovereignty yet persist.

Middle America seems to have awakened sufficiently to perceive the threat that Obama poses to the the nation. One can hope that it will lead -- even modestly -- to a revival of appreciation for founding principles. Thank God for Barack Obama.

____*
Because the narcissist has no innate sense of self, he creates a persona -- an image -- of what he wants to be. In the words of Drew Pinsky (The Mirror Effect), "The key to understanding the Narcissus myth is not that he fell in love with himself, but that he failed to recognize himself in his own reflection."

Alien Obama - Part II

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Given a provenance as dubious and murky as that of our current president, an antique would find no market among careful buyers. Matters of interest include his mentors, associates and academic and professional records. Yet we have invested the treasure and security of our nation in a cipher -- Barack Hussein Obama.
Who is this man? What do we know about him? By deliberate concealment the public record is scant, but to many of us the little that is known is in no way reassuring. What we do not know may be even less so.

"Birtherists" is the derisive term coined (presumably by the left) to mock citizens who have a legitimate interest in verifying the details of his birth. Elitists of all political stripes assert that the question is settled and to pursue it further is unworthy and smacks of conspiracy paranoia. Though attributed to the strawman malign far right, I believe the desire for definitive resolution has popular support.

The verification of Obama's birth alone, however, focuses much too narrowly. It is a proxy for a plethora of other information deliberately concealed or suppressed. The concealment of information, in itself, raises questions.

Those questions include troubling personal and political associations, lack of information (records, grades, papers) regarding his education, early trips to Pakistan and elsewhere in the Middle East, close connections with the Socialist party in Chicago, his communist mentor in Hawaii, the absence of written records.... The list goes on. Yes, these are things we have been able to learn, but only in the most superficial way. The president and persons with whom he was associated refuse to add probative detail. As many writers have already noted, Mr. Obama's record -- opaque as it is -- would disqualify him government employment requiring security clearance.

So in what way is President Obama an alien? I believe (despite K12, academe and the media) there remains a strong current of individualism, common sense and distrust of government among most Americans; core beliefs and opinions that are shared by the great majority but not by Mr. Obama and his cohort on the hard left. Two issues, for example, are the sanctity of life and the second amendment, but those differences with mainstream America are only ideological symptomatic of foreign worldview.

Therein, I believe, lies the clear disconnect that defines Obama as alien. In his speeches, actions, writing and thinking he has shown himself to be postmodernist, Eurocentric and elitist. He views The Constitution (which is at the heart of American values) as a malleable document that impedes the exercise of dirigiste government power. He is not a patriot in the deeply embedded American sense, seeing himself – as do all 'enlightened' persons – as “a citizen of the world”. How much at variance he is with the mainstream is suggested by a citation from the Washington Post:

Traditional values in the United States, Baker found, are very different than in other nations. Unlike nations where collective identity is based on common ancestry, in the United States, he wrote, the imagined community is "a shared set of ideas." These are the ideas of the Constitution: personal liberty, equality, democracy and the rule of law. America was invented, not inherited. Our traditional values don't come from the fatherland, the volk or an ancient regime. Nor are our most basic shared values a selection of moral positions held by conservative American Christians.
Seen in this way, it is clear that traditional American values are alive and well. Constitutional ideals have unchallenged legitimacy, as do the worth of family, religion (or spirituality) and national pride. This is a stark contrast to the countries that have radically rejected their traditional values: Germany, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Japan and the former Eastern Bloc nations.

I close with an anecdotal reference that seems telling. Even allowing for the giddiness of campaign fatigue -- putting myself in the candidate's position -- I simply cannot imagine myself ever uttering the phrase, "57 states" or the revealing, "America as it should be."

Alien Obama - Part I

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When we think of aliens our imagination may turn to the spacemen of the Roswell, NM or to the melded Robert Heinlein* sort. Of more recent vintage, sliders, conjured up by sci-fi writers who follow eleven-dimension physics -- parallel universes in "inner" space. Or infiltrated spies. More mundane, we may simply consider immigrants -- especially those reared outside the Western Tradition.

Whatever the kind of alien, the term conveys a sense of strangeness, otherness. It means strange, foreign, of or belonging to another. A person who is among us but not of us. It is notable that"Alien" and "Alias" derive from a common root.

Which brings to our president. Is he an alien or an alias, or both? If an alias, we might say, Obama A.K.A.... How to finish the sentence? Is he an original thinker or is he a creature of puppeteers? As I said in an earlier post, we know what he is by his actions and by those of his words that manage to make sense. But we do not know who he is.

I confess that I find it extremely difficult to understand, let alone characterize Mr. Obama and his stranger-than-Haight-Ashbury cohort. Most of their pronouncements are, to me, so outrageous -- so alien -- that I hardly know how to respond. Cognitive overload.

Of many examples, here are two. Mr. Obama on several occasions has put forward his view of "negative" and "positive" rights. Negative rights (one suspects that the adjective was deliberately chosen for its darker connotation) are the very ones spelled out in the Bill of Rights -- those crafted to protect the people from the otherwise inevitable abuse of government power. Positive rights -- those Mr. Obama favors, on the other hand, are those which would enable the government to exercise its power over the people -- always for "good" purposes, of course!

Then there is his stated and demonstrated disdain for notions of private property. Wealth is accumulated for the purposes of sharing -- redistribution; private enterprise, on its face, is not compatible with that view. These ideas are certainly alien to our founding principles.

James Lewis, in a fine article appearing in the American Thinker, captures the idea especially well.

And yet the Obama "birther" debate is important. What's important about it is the feeling a growing number of Americans have in their bones that Obama is foreign -- to our traditions, loyalties and shared understandings about the nature of America. In a way the legal debate matters less than that bone-deep sense that Obama is fundamentally "Other than American".

[snip]

This is not a secret. Obama is foreign to America in a way that has little to do with his birth certificate. He could be American-born and still think in this very anti-American way. A lot of people are. But whatever he is legally, there is not a shred of doubt that he is steeped in an Anti-American way of thinking.



In the concluding Part II I will try to point out that the more we learn about Mr. Obama the more questions are raised.


-----*
Stranger in a Strange Land

Good Government? A Challenge to Readers (Revisited)

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This is a shot across the bow of the statist ship. Or perhaps a Socratic-style taunt. It poses, in any case, a question (or is it a thought-experiment?) that wants an answer.

This is a challenge that, given the wholly pernicious initiatives of the present administration -- healthcare reform, cap and trade, stimulus doles and nationalization of the private sector -- seems to have more urgent relevance than it did at the time of first posting.

The challenge is simple enough, really. It is this:

Cite an example of a serious problem in contemporary society -- social, political or economic -- that is not caused by or exacerbated by government.

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To date this challenge has elicited few comments, and no satisfactory answers in any forum. But in this era of trope and chains -- well, who knows?.

Fruits of K12 and Low Pop Culture

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The real sadness regarding the two vignettes that follow lies in the fact that they are so unexceptional.
A young woman tells us what is important in her life and identifies her concerns.
And, as Mary Grabar observes, a young man shows his fealty: “I thought of the people I saw on the MARTA train I took to downtown Atlanta that afternoon, especially the young man accompanied by a scantily clad young woman and three little children. He wore braids and a pendant with a photo of Obama. I would have bet money that he, like many of the students I have taught at my community college, did not know who Hitler was, much less Mussolini.”

It is well that the Founders are dead.

The Economist, Hardware Stores, Free-range Chickens and Immanuel Kant

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The Economist, like so many other mainstream publications, has become little more than a hardware store of received opinion. That fact is a great comfort, though, to many on the Left; one can shop with confidence, knowing exactly what products will be available and what prices are to be expected. They need not concern themselves with the true cost of shoddy merchandise.

Think of modern liberal orthodoxy as the Great Supply-house that efficiently and widely distributes items of dogma to uncritical retailers – universities(1), media and political elites (rather, elitists). While the products are substandard, (using a fitness-for-use criterion) they do have the virtue of immanent durability.

Since the orthodoxy of the Left (almost by definition) controls the market, it perceives no need for product innovation. Ironically, it is captive to its own creation, and absent significant competition, it is supremely self-confident, often to the point of arrogance.

Which leads me to a recent article in The Economist ‘Newspaper”, How to Fix the Republican Party. For those who find my hardware store metaphor congenial there will be little need for me to parse the article, which in essence argues, “lay down your principles at the water’s edge – join us and you will find success”. I only add that what it represents is a weary and all-too-common(2) recycling of received dogma.

It seems to me that the difference between liberals and the Republican “center” resembles the distinction between caged and free-range chickens; the latter may enjoy a more varied diet, but both remain chickens fed on dogma of one sort or the other.

“If I have a book which understands for me, a pastor who has a conscience for me, a physician who decides my diet, and so forth, I need not trouble myself. I need not think, if I can only pay – others will readily undertake the irksome work for me.”(3)


(1) Here, I think, lies a weakness in the metaphor. Universities might better thought of as manufacturers rather than retailers. In truth, they are both.

(2) Sadly, the notion that exchanging principle for political success is the certain route to Republican revival is shared by many within the party. What the “pragmatic” Conservative perceives as the “center” in actually the Liberal center.

(3) Immanuel Kant from 1794 essay. Here, he later advocates “…throwing off the yoke of tutelage…”.

Note: this submission is a proprietary cross-post.