The essential lie of
modern progressive liberalism, the lie at the very heart of Mr. Obama's
political philosophy, and the lie I once believed but can no longer is
this: The poor and disenfranchised in
our society are where they are because of powerful forces that have put them
there and conspire to keep them down for economic gain. It is too much freedom, the greed and the operation of unfettered
capitalism, that results in poverty and political disenfranchisement. In Mr. Marx's terms, the rich are rich
because they extract surplus value from the noble and deserving poor, value
that the rich do not rightfully lay claim to.
Or alternatively, as Mr. Obama says, we've tried the market and it
hasn't worked. Because the rich get
richer, the poor get poorer. These are
the internal contradictions of capitalism that will eventually lead to its
destruction. If only we could find a
leader, young, handsome, perhaps even post-racial, that had the vision.
The only way to
redress this fundamental inequity is to redistribute wealth and opportunity by
limiting the property rights and freedom of the haves and transferring their
stuff to the have nots. The agent for
this redistribution is necessarily the government. This redistribution is accomplished in the
name of the people, specifically the oppressed, through the threat and if
necessary, the execution of legitimate violence. The constitution is an outdated and
restrictive document because, as Mr. Obama himself points out, while it
declares what government cannot do to you, it does not define what the
government should do on your behalf.
Providing you are one of the oppressed, of course. GM bond holders need not apply. They don't need property rights. After all, they've made enough money.
When I believed these things, I found them delicious. I had a
great cause to give my life meaning. I
also had an enemy that I could, if not hate, dislike very intensely. I had bad guys. And if I could turn Jesus into a
proto-Marxist a la Gustavo Gutierrez, so much the better. Life was simple and theoretically
elegant. And, oh yes, I was smarter than
everybody else because I had penetrated the veneer and spied the dark forces of
economic oppression behind the curtain - the dominant paradigm. I was the vanguard of the proletariat. I was...well, special.
I recently took a
trip to Seattle where I saw the Occupy movement breaking out windows in the
Wells Fargo bank. Although there are a
relatively few that act out thus, this is the animating spirit of anger and
righteous indignation that motivates contemporary progressive liberalism. Whether it is illegitimate violence in the
Seattle streets or legitimate violence imposed from Washington, it is violence
in support of the great redistribution nonetheless.
If you truly believe
in your heart of hearts that the inner city poor are where they are because
Wells Fargo is exploitative and corrupt, I suppose that anger is
justified. You should definitely vote
Obama in 2012 and support him in putting his boot on the throat of whatever
corporate industry or sector or ethnicity or class is causing all this
mischief. You need to take their stuff
and get it in the hands of the needy, pronto.
We have tried the market and it doesn't work. Now we need a philosopher king. The experiment in liberty has failed. We need violence or the threat thereof. We need command. We need control. We need a visionary to show us the way and shepherd us to the promised land. A free people cannot be counted on to define their own vision, to heal their own neighbors, to negotiate their own relationships fairly.
If you are a
constitutional conservative, on the other hand, that kind of attitude and
behavior strikes you as and adolescent, incongruous with your daily experience,
and...well...creepy. You will find more
constructive things to do with your time.
Read a book. Hug your child. Or do something for the least of your
brothers. Not break a window. Not take some rich guy's money away.
No comments:
Post a Comment