Yesterday I read a piece in American Greatness by Robert Curry,"What's the Matter with Germany," blaming German bad behavior on the Romantic movement. Curry more or less argued that the trouble began when the Romantic movement starting whittling away at the Enlightenment. The result was two world wars and Nazism.
Well.
Yes, of course the themes developed by Herder and others helped Nazis push the idea of a national people, das Volk, about as far as it could go.
But the Romantic movement had a point. It was a critique of the Age of Reason, and it said that life, the universe, and everything could not just be reduced to reason. For one thing, in the mechanism of the Enlightenment what became of free will, or just the basic contingency of moment-to-moment life?
Look, there is plenty of blame to go around, if we want to start pointing fingers.
I would rather say that Communism is the mechanism of the Enlightenment carried to a ridiculous extreme, and Fascism is the Volk concept carried to its ridiculous extreme.
Fortunately, I just happened to read a bit by Bernard-Henri Lévy on the whole question of universals in the modern era, and he gives the philosophers a potted run through in the final chapter in Left in Dark Times.
But all this "murderous generality suffocates me, crushes me" says Kierkegaard. Then came Nietzsche, shattering universalism with his will to power and the transvaluation of all values. Finally Franz Rosensweig's Star of Redemption in the midst of the blood and horror of World War I.
In other words, everyone is stumbling around in the dark, each of these Germans feeling with their hands a different part of the elephant.
OK, so what IS the matter with Germany?
Well, I'd say it starts with the demoralization of the defeated nations of World War II. Ever noticed that all three, Germany, Italy, and Japan, are experiencing very low birth rates? If you ask me, a lot of this comes from the endless guilt-tripping that the western left has slung at, in particular, Germany.
Plus the modern feminism that teaches women to do anything but get married and have children.
So the German ruling class has allowed itself to be corralled into the European Union to make everyone feel better. But, of course, since the Germans are serious about having an economy that works, they become irritated with other nations, from France to Greece, that want to play unlimited entitlement politcs and get the Germans to pay for it all. And if their German women weren't going to have children, why then the ruling class would have to import them.
How was the German ruling class to know that everything would go frightfully wrong?
Meanwhile, lefty intellectuals like Bernard-Henri Lévy run around shouting imprecations against another fascism, as if that was humanity's Big Problem.
You know my line on that. Fascism is the desperate lunge of a people stranded in economic hell by a foolish and incompetent ruling class that can't get the economy right. It is not the sign that the people are racist sexist homophobic brutes. It is simply that, time and time again, the ruling class gets itself into a bind which can't be solved without taking previously awarded free stuff away from the people.
The problem is that the people absolutely hate having their free stuff taken away, and the ruling class knows it. Thus Greece and Venezuela.
The solution to this problem is simple. Dismantle and privatize the welfare state. Privatize pensions; privatize health care. Privatize education, and privatize welfare. I mean that the people do all these things instead of the government.
Then, when you have a nasty downturn, either due to losing a war or the aftermath of a stock market or housing bubble, the government can step in with temporary aid that helps people get over the disruption. So the government increases spending from 10% of GDP to 20% of GDP for a couple of years. No problem. But when the government is already spending around 35-40 percent GDP you can see that an additional 10% GDP in stimulus is probably not going to stimulate but rather dampen the economy.
The fact is that Romanticism got one thing very right. It focused on the vital importance of individual creativity. And these Germans were thinking this right at the beginning of the most extraordinary flowering of individual creativity in human history, the two centuries that we call the Great Enrichment. There has been nothing like it, ever.
Well.
Yes, of course the themes developed by Herder and others helped Nazis push the idea of a national people, das Volk, about as far as it could go.
But the Romantic movement had a point. It was a critique of the Age of Reason, and it said that life, the universe, and everything could not just be reduced to reason. For one thing, in the mechanism of the Enlightenment what became of free will, or just the basic contingency of moment-to-moment life?
Look, there is plenty of blame to go around, if we want to start pointing fingers.
I would rather say that Communism is the mechanism of the Enlightenment carried to a ridiculous extreme, and Fascism is the Volk concept carried to its ridiculous extreme.
Fortunately, I just happened to read a bit by Bernard-Henri Lévy on the whole question of universals in the modern era, and he gives the philosophers a potted run through in the final chapter in Left in Dark Times.
There was the Romantic crisis, a direct reaction to the Enlightenment: universality doesn't exist; the only thing that does, said Herder, are individual cultures.Then Lévy says, comes Hegel, arguing for a combination of universal morality (from Kant) and ethnicity (from Herder).
But all this "murderous generality suffocates me, crushes me" says Kierkegaard. Then came Nietzsche, shattering universalism with his will to power and the transvaluation of all values. Finally Franz Rosensweig's Star of Redemption in the midst of the blood and horror of World War I.
In other words, everyone is stumbling around in the dark, each of these Germans feeling with their hands a different part of the elephant.
OK, so what IS the matter with Germany?
Well, I'd say it starts with the demoralization of the defeated nations of World War II. Ever noticed that all three, Germany, Italy, and Japan, are experiencing very low birth rates? If you ask me, a lot of this comes from the endless guilt-tripping that the western left has slung at, in particular, Germany.
Plus the modern feminism that teaches women to do anything but get married and have children.
So the German ruling class has allowed itself to be corralled into the European Union to make everyone feel better. But, of course, since the Germans are serious about having an economy that works, they become irritated with other nations, from France to Greece, that want to play unlimited entitlement politcs and get the Germans to pay for it all. And if their German women weren't going to have children, why then the ruling class would have to import them.
How was the German ruling class to know that everything would go frightfully wrong?
Meanwhile, lefty intellectuals like Bernard-Henri Lévy run around shouting imprecations against another fascism, as if that was humanity's Big Problem.
You know my line on that. Fascism is the desperate lunge of a people stranded in economic hell by a foolish and incompetent ruling class that can't get the economy right. It is not the sign that the people are racist sexist homophobic brutes. It is simply that, time and time again, the ruling class gets itself into a bind which can't be solved without taking previously awarded free stuff away from the people.
The problem is that the people absolutely hate having their free stuff taken away, and the ruling class knows it. Thus Greece and Venezuela.
The solution to this problem is simple. Dismantle and privatize the welfare state. Privatize pensions; privatize health care. Privatize education, and privatize welfare. I mean that the people do all these things instead of the government.
Then, when you have a nasty downturn, either due to losing a war or the aftermath of a stock market or housing bubble, the government can step in with temporary aid that helps people get over the disruption. So the government increases spending from 10% of GDP to 20% of GDP for a couple of years. No problem. But when the government is already spending around 35-40 percent GDP you can see that an additional 10% GDP in stimulus is probably not going to stimulate but rather dampen the economy.
The fact is that Romanticism got one thing very right. It focused on the vital importance of individual creativity. And these Germans were thinking this right at the beginning of the most extraordinary flowering of individual creativity in human history, the two centuries that we call the Great Enrichment. There has been nothing like it, ever.
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