Our Big Problem -- Script

Hello, I'm Chris Chantrill. I want to talk about Our Big Problem in America and the world today.

For many of us, something has gone wrong with America. What is it? And what do we do about it?

Is the problem the "oppressed peoples," the folks struggling under the yoke of systemic racism -- despite 50 years of the Civil Rights Act? No, I don't think so.

Is the problem the ordinary middle class, people who live by obeying the laws, going to work, and following the rules? Hardly.

No, I argue the the Big Problem of our age is the existential problem faced by the well-born sons and daughters of the educated class. They are taught that the meaning of life, the universe, and everything is to be creative, to make a difference, to make the world a better place. But how?

Ever since Karl Marx, the dominant belief of Educated Youth is to make a difference with politics, to smite the oppressors, to abolish the racists, to liberate the women. The best thing in life is to imagine a just world, create a political movement to implement that vision, and right the wrongs of the oppressed by bending the arc of history towards justice.

I say that this movement of Educated Youth is a Wrong Turn, that looks to create meaning on the cheap, and improve the world from the top down, for the greater glory of the educated class. And it has never worked.

The progressives, the liberals, the leftists that believe saving the world with politics live in an "Activist Culture" that reminds me of Don Quixote. Remember him? A reader of medieval romances, he wanted to be a noble knight as in ages past and do great knightly deeds. So it is with our modern activists. They long to be revolutionaries and smite the oppressors, long after the end of the age of revolution.

And they never stop to ask whether the real oppressors, the frightful white oppressors of which you've heard tell, are in fact white educated left-wing activists.

But does it matter? I think it does. I think the Activist Culture is not progressive but reactionary. I believe that wages of educated-class Activism has been a Great Reaction, a lurch towards the primitive, a neo feudalism, where the feudal lord has become the nomenclatura of the modern state and the old peasant has become the ordinary wage slave, and where lefty activists imagine themselves as knightly heroes battling the dragon of systemic racism.

But I say that Activism is baloney; I say that politics is a dead end. I say that the knightly activists, the radical children of liberal parents, the modern Don Quixotes, are making things worse.

But wouldn't it be nice to create a world that helps all kinds of people flourish -- not just knightly activists?

Is that possible? Well, if you are watching me right now, you probably think so already, but don't know how to put it into words.

So tune into the next exciting episode.

I'm Chris Chantrill, and thanks for watching.