If, as I have, you have reduced your understanding of life to two maxims, that government is force, and politics is division, it rather colors your experience of, say, the Democratic Debates for 2020.
Because when everyone on stage holds their hand up to pledge free health care for illegal immigrants, they are saying that average Americans -- or at least income taxpayers and property taxpayers -- should be forced to pay for other peoples' health care. Really? Is the problem of health care for illegal immigrants so vexed a question that force is the only option?
And when Kamala Harris lays a haymaker on Joe Biden on the race question, suggesting that she was a poor helpless little black girl being bused to school in lefty Berkeley, CA, you can see that the whole point of politics is to divide people and stir up enmity.
And that is why I have created this idea of leftism being a Great Reaction to the modern era.
See, the astonishing thing about the modern era is that it proposes, gently, tentatively, that maybe we don't need as much force and division as we thought.
In day-to-day economic production of the necessaries and the not-so necessaries of life we have stepped partially away from the age-old notion of subordination. Instead of the workers being confined and subordinated to a feudal warrior lord, we have found that workers can wive and thrive perfectly well as free labor.
But there is a cost, and that is that, when the market moves on and makes your skills obsolete, or at least less well paid than in days of yore, then you have to get on your bike and update your skills and find a new job. And that is hard.
But notice what happens with government in the economy. You get Bernie Sanders saying that government must take over the whole of health care, period, full stop. Really Bernie? You mean that health care could not operate the same as retail, where you can get bare-bones from Walmart, and cheap too. Or you can buy at an upscale department store attended by numerous assistants and buy only the very best. I wonder what Walmart health care would look like? Hey, I know. Why don't we try? We could always call the whole thing off if it turns out that cheapie health care is no bargain at all.
In the day-to-day relations between people we have found that trust need not be limited to people of our own blood, or "race," or language. We have found that the question of trust is simple. You trust people that demonstrate trustworthy behavior and you interact and exchange with them. But people that don't act trustworthy? Those guys you try to keep away from.
But with politics we rely on politicians to tell us who to trust and who to beware. I wonder whether this is a good idea. For instance, if I were to encounter Kamala Harris in real life I would be very reluctant to trust her. A woman that got her start in politics as the mistress of a headline politician? I don't think so. A woman -- the daughter of two PhDs -- that uses the race card to humiliate an old white guy that obviously can't hit back? Not quite out of the top drawer, old chap.
It's my belief that we are living in an unprecedented era, where all the old assumptions are being transformed. And people are asking whether the transformations are really as good as advertised. For instance, my Greek friend tells me about life in Greece 70 years ago when the men in the villages did about two months work a year -- harvesting grain for the animals, and olives for cash -- and spent the rest of the year drinking and playing cards. What a life! Today we all work for wages, and we mortgage ourselves up to the eyebrows to live in a city with a decent school system, and we are taxed at about 35 percent of income. We are, indeed, under enormous pressure to conform and be useful, to our employers, to our governments, to our spouses. In fact we labor night and day. Is that really "freedom?"
Now, the point about government is that government is force. But what is force for? Answer: to meet an existential peril, such as criminals despoiling people, and invaders threatening to conquer us. But suppose that our leaders kinda fake the existential threat? Of the streets being full of criminals? Of aggressive foreign empires that want to bury us? You can see there is a real temptation to overdo the existential threats, because only then can the government leaders get more power.
And again, politics as division. You can see that with no division, no "hate" for the other guy, there is very little for a politician to go on. You can see how this works with our present generation of political activists that are determined that racism, sexism, and homophobia are monstrous perils, even when civil rights is the law of the land and gays get to marry. Really? Things are that bad?
But imagine a world with a lot less government, in which people are a lot less energized to do everything by force? What kind of a world would it be? It's hard to imagine, because in the normal politics of today we are constantly assailed with a huge list of existential perils that require resort to force. What would we do, how would we live, if there weren't a whole list of frightful perils terrifying us and needing our immediate attention?
And what would life be like without the constant moral battle for hearts and minds, the constant battle of good vs. evil, that has to be conducted on our agenda, and death to the other agendas!
As I say, we are living in an unprecedented age, where the need for force and division is battling with a counterargument that maybe we don't need to be fighting each other all the time.
And there is no telling how it will all turn out.
Because, if we humans weren't battling and fighting all the time, what would become of us?
Because when everyone on stage holds their hand up to pledge free health care for illegal immigrants, they are saying that average Americans -- or at least income taxpayers and property taxpayers -- should be forced to pay for other peoples' health care. Really? Is the problem of health care for illegal immigrants so vexed a question that force is the only option?
And when Kamala Harris lays a haymaker on Joe Biden on the race question, suggesting that she was a poor helpless little black girl being bused to school in lefty Berkeley, CA, you can see that the whole point of politics is to divide people and stir up enmity.
And that is why I have created this idea of leftism being a Great Reaction to the modern era.
See, the astonishing thing about the modern era is that it proposes, gently, tentatively, that maybe we don't need as much force and division as we thought.
In day-to-day economic production of the necessaries and the not-so necessaries of life we have stepped partially away from the age-old notion of subordination. Instead of the workers being confined and subordinated to a feudal warrior lord, we have found that workers can wive and thrive perfectly well as free labor.
But there is a cost, and that is that, when the market moves on and makes your skills obsolete, or at least less well paid than in days of yore, then you have to get on your bike and update your skills and find a new job. And that is hard.
But notice what happens with government in the economy. You get Bernie Sanders saying that government must take over the whole of health care, period, full stop. Really Bernie? You mean that health care could not operate the same as retail, where you can get bare-bones from Walmart, and cheap too. Or you can buy at an upscale department store attended by numerous assistants and buy only the very best. I wonder what Walmart health care would look like? Hey, I know. Why don't we try? We could always call the whole thing off if it turns out that cheapie health care is no bargain at all.
In the day-to-day relations between people we have found that trust need not be limited to people of our own blood, or "race," or language. We have found that the question of trust is simple. You trust people that demonstrate trustworthy behavior and you interact and exchange with them. But people that don't act trustworthy? Those guys you try to keep away from.
But with politics we rely on politicians to tell us who to trust and who to beware. I wonder whether this is a good idea. For instance, if I were to encounter Kamala Harris in real life I would be very reluctant to trust her. A woman that got her start in politics as the mistress of a headline politician? I don't think so. A woman -- the daughter of two PhDs -- that uses the race card to humiliate an old white guy that obviously can't hit back? Not quite out of the top drawer, old chap.
It's my belief that we are living in an unprecedented era, where all the old assumptions are being transformed. And people are asking whether the transformations are really as good as advertised. For instance, my Greek friend tells me about life in Greece 70 years ago when the men in the villages did about two months work a year -- harvesting grain for the animals, and olives for cash -- and spent the rest of the year drinking and playing cards. What a life! Today we all work for wages, and we mortgage ourselves up to the eyebrows to live in a city with a decent school system, and we are taxed at about 35 percent of income. We are, indeed, under enormous pressure to conform and be useful, to our employers, to our governments, to our spouses. In fact we labor night and day. Is that really "freedom?"
Now, the point about government is that government is force. But what is force for? Answer: to meet an existential peril, such as criminals despoiling people, and invaders threatening to conquer us. But suppose that our leaders kinda fake the existential threat? Of the streets being full of criminals? Of aggressive foreign empires that want to bury us? You can see there is a real temptation to overdo the existential threats, because only then can the government leaders get more power.
And again, politics as division. You can see that with no division, no "hate" for the other guy, there is very little for a politician to go on. You can see how this works with our present generation of political activists that are determined that racism, sexism, and homophobia are monstrous perils, even when civil rights is the law of the land and gays get to marry. Really? Things are that bad?
But imagine a world with a lot less government, in which people are a lot less energized to do everything by force? What kind of a world would it be? It's hard to imagine, because in the normal politics of today we are constantly assailed with a huge list of existential perils that require resort to force. What would we do, how would we live, if there weren't a whole list of frightful perils terrifying us and needing our immediate attention?
And what would life be like without the constant moral battle for hearts and minds, the constant battle of good vs. evil, that has to be conducted on our agenda, and death to the other agendas!
As I say, we are living in an unprecedented age, where the need for force and division is battling with a counterargument that maybe we don't need to be fighting each other all the time.
And there is no telling how it will all turn out.
Because, if we humans weren't battling and fighting all the time, what would become of us?
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