Posted on 04/01/2009 5:54:43 AM PDT by Tolik
In just the first 70 days of the new administration, a number of Obama supporters have expressed some dismay at their new president. Some find his ethically challenged appointments at odds with his soaring moral rhetoric.
Others lament his apparent inability to stir up supporters in impromptu speeches, at least in the manner he did with set oratory on the campaign trail. And they worry about his occasionally insensitive remark.
Many cannot quite figure out why, after lambasting George W. Bush for running a $500-billion deficit, Obama has outlined eight years of budgetary red ink that would nearly match the debt run up by all previous U.S. presidents combined.
But such disappointments should be tempered. Not only is Obama simply drawing on his past 30 years of education, writing, work, and associations, but he is also properly reflecting the worldview of many of those working for him.
What, then, is the mindset behind America’s new approach to domestic policy and foreign affairs?
If you believed that average Americans are not well educated, do not think in sophisticated and rational ways, and cannot be trusted to make good decisions, whether for themselves or for their nation, then you would expand the power of better-educated and wiser government overseers. This would ensure that, instead of millions of private agendas that lead individuals improperly, and at times recklessly, to acquire and consume, we would have benevolent and far-sighted powers directing our lives in ways that benefit the environment, the economy — and themselves.
If you believed that highly educated and sometimes distracted liberals occasionally slip on rather mundane questions of taxes, lobbying, and conflict of interest — but not at all in the felonious, premeditated manner of the corporate hierarchy — then it would be necessary to overlook such minor lapses for the greater good of marshalling talented and well-disposed experts into progressive government.
If you believed that socially minded liberals are tolerant and extraordinarily empathetic, then their rather impolite speech is not at all offensive. Constant disparagement of the previous administration, and jokes about fellow Americans — ranging from the physically or mentally impaired, to Nancy Reagan and her séances, to the stereotyped religion and culture of a clinging middle America, to the purported prejudices of a “typical white person” — are not insensitive, let alone callous. No, the evocation of these occasional infelicities reflects the tally-sheet of nitpicking right-wing agitators, keen to bring down a hard-working progressive sacrificing for the people.
If you believed that compensation in this country was intrinsically unfair — that income is arbitrary and quite capriciously rewards some while unjustly shortchanging others — then you would wish to hike income and payroll taxes on high earners to reach confiscatory levels so that a fairer government could correct the errors of an unfair market for the benefit of the many. Higher taxes on some, then, are not just a means of raising revenue, but an important redistributive tool of government to spread the wealth around.
If you believed that government does too little for the average citizen — that at present, with its unnecessary wars and perks for the wealthy, it cannot ensure everyone lifelong entitlement — then you would wish to double, even triple present federal expenditures. The key would be to borrow enough now to provide relief to the people first, and only afterwards to worry how to pay off the resulting deficit of $1.7 trillion. Once people are accustomed to the services they deserve, they will ensure that their representatives find the right revenue mechanisms to guarantee that such necessary benefactions continue. If you build programs to help the people now, the necessary taxing and borrowing for a $3.6-trillion budget will come.
If you had little idea of how businesses are created, how they are run, and why they sometimes go broke, and if you thought that the truly talented and sophisticated never go into business but instead gravitate to the Ivy League to be trained as lawyers, professors, writers, and organizers, then you would assume that our present problems are largely the fault of the former, and can best be addressed by putting as many of the latter in your government as possible.
If you believed that Main Street and Wall Street have little, if anything, to do with why publishers can afford to extend million-dollar book advances, or why the Ivy League has millions in scholarships for students, or why foundations, universities, and governments can afford to hire so many advisors, consultants, administrators, lawyers, and professors, then you would never really connect the conditions that promote good business with those that allow intellectuals, technocrats, and bureaucrats to thrive.
If you believed that those with capital have had an unfortunate head start, or have done dubious things that others less fortunate would not, then you would seek ways to forgive loans, to allow the indebted to start over with a clean slate, to ensure new borrowing with record-low interest rates, to lower or eliminate taxes on most people, and to expand in turn the financial help from the government — and not worry that stocks are down, dividends are nearly nonexistent, interest on deposits is at a record low, equity in real property has often disappeared, and accumulated capital is itself often diminished or insecure.
If you believed that the story of the United States is more a narrative of gender, race, and class oppression than of brave souls promoting liberty and trying to reify the promise of the Constitution, then you would have empathy for fellow victims of such endemic Western oppression. The cries from the heart we are hearing from Bolivia and Cuba, from Iran, Syria, and the West Bank, are not anti-American, much less illiberal: they are efforts to articulate the oppression that the people in those places have suffered at the hands of others.
While in the short run the once-victimized may need to be deterred in their anger from harming the United States or themselves, in the long run their legitimate grievances must be addressed through a variety of concessions, apologies, or dialogues in order to promote the general peace. That a Hugo Chávez calls Americans “gringos,” or Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva blames “white, blue-eyed” bankers for the financial mess, or that state-run Palestinian papers refer to Jews as “pigs and apes,” or that the Iranian president serially claims the Holocaust is a concoction of Zionists, is all an unfortunate rhetoric of the oppressed (in the same way Reverend Wright once referred to Italians as “garlic noses”), brought on by colonization and exploitation, rather than proof that a large portion of the world beyond our shores is run by racist — and rather loony — people.
If you believed that the traditions and customs of the United States are largely a story of the oppressed overcoming the perniciousness of the privileged, rather than the collective efforts of the many to stop tyranny, then you would talk about past oppression, past victimization, and past unfairness far more than you would evoke Shiloh, the Meuse-Argonne, or Iwo Jima.
If you believed that the United States is hardly exceptional, but merely one nation not all that different from others, then you would have confidence in the aggregate wisdom of the United Nations, and the cultural and economic paradigms provided by the nations of the European Union.
If you believed that wars, crises, and international tensions are brought about by miscommunications, misunderstandings, and Western insensitivity, rather than by despots trying to advance illiberal agendas whenever and wherever they sense an opening, then you would blame past administrations for our present ills, with all their bellicose and retrograde talk of preparedness, deterrence, and pre-emption. You would grandly proclaim a new age of harmonious relations, and count on your rhetorical abilities and charisma to persuade past rivals and mischaracterized enemies that, at this rare but opportune moment, there are no real differences between us — and thus no reasons for future disputes.
In other words, if you believed as President Obama and many of his advisors do, then you would do what Obama and his advisors are now doing.
Citation of Friederich Hayek’s “Road to Serfdom” should be required for such articles.
I wanna talk about me Wanna talk about I Wanna talk about number one Oh my me my What I think, what I like, what I know, what I want, what I see I like talking about you you you you, usually, but occasionally I wanna talk about meeeeee (me,me,me,me-background singers) I wanna talk about me (me,me-background singers)
The Road to Serfdomby Friedrich A. Hayek
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BTTT
The problem is that even with intellectually honest liberals,
you’re still going to argue past each other because of base assumptions. It’s very hard to change those base assumptions, and all their conclusions are (surprisingly) “logical” extensions of those assumptions.
Read Sowell’s Conflict of Visions.
Cross-reference links:
Conservatives vs. Liberals: Two Paths to Power
Townhall.com ^ | April 1, 2009 | Michael MedvedVictor Davis Hanson: President Obama’s First 70 Days. It really does all make sense
NRO ^ | April 1, 2009 | Victor Davis Hanson
“The only thing worse than stupid people making decisions for themselves is having a bureaucrat making decisions for them.
The bureaucrat cannot learn from the mistakes he causes to stupid people.
At least the stupid people can learn from their mistakes because they have to face the consequences.”
- Uncle Miltie’s summary of Friederich Hayek’s information deficit argument against Socialism.
In my discussions with leftist friends I use the words *government bureaucracy* instead of just *government*. For the most people the word *government* does not have a negative baggage (yeah, I know, I know...) but nobody likes *bureaucracy*. It helps clarify some things.
“Obama has outlined eight years of budgetary red ink that would nearly match the debt run up by all previous U.S. presidents combined.”
BUMP!
I’m not sure how much further economically ‘underground’ I can go without my life changing significantly. I did the grocery shopping this morning and I actually put things BACK on the shelf after weighing if I truly NEEDED it, and was willing to pay the additional State taxes that continue to feed the beast that is our current Local/State/Federal Government.
I hope and pray that I’m not the only one who is doing this. By the looks of the market, and another nearly 800,000 jobs LOST on 0bama’s watch in March alone, I’m thinking I’m not.
However, we can’t all stop spending for basics, so please shop locally when you can. Support your local business person...because they are gravely under attack from this Admini*SPIT*ration.
*Steps Off Soapbox* :)
A marked to read later bump
ping
Just an absolutely brilliant column.
That would make a great seminar topic: Sophistry and morality, Obammunism and its ethical challenges.
By my count, the President is already planning to spend $7 trillion this year.
My future husband hits another one outta da park.
I know a number of such people personally. They are quite sincere in these beliefs, which would be one thing, but they also tend to prefer courses of action which ought to work for the right reasons over courses of action that actually do. That's a problem when you're in control of the economy.
The ‘bammy supporters I know are just as
WILFULLY IGNORANT
of his malfeasance as they were of his incompetence and corruption prior to his election.
I can’t recommend it highly enough:
Sowell’s “Conflict of Visions”
explains this mindset down to its core - your beliefs about the essential nature of man. All these other conclusions and beliefs stem, logically, from that.
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