It's Conservative Nostalgia Time Again

A recurring theme in conservatism is a nostalgia for the good old days. What happened to the good old days when conservatives were high-toned philosophers like Bill Buckley and Irving Kristol?

David Klinghoffer's piece in the Los Angeles Times is just the latest in the genre. He deplores the new generation of conservatives like the "potty-mouthed Internet entrepreneur Andrew Breitbart".

Liberals have an identical nostalgia. Not for the good old days when The New Republic and Herbert Croly bestrode the world like a colossus, but when conservatives were gentlemanly and consensual--like Bill Buckley.

Iowahawk David Burge delightfully burlesques the high-toned conservative brigade in the persona of T. Coddington Van Vorhees VII. who is always getting together with his pals "Dame Peggy Noonan" and the two Davids, Brooks and Frum, to grumble snobbishly about the rubes taking over the movement.

I never seem to hear of liberals deploring their potty-mouthed publicists. They seem to be quite happy letting the philosophers get on with philosophizing and the street fighters get on with their hand-to-hand verbal combat.

Why don't the liberals tut-tut about the low-rent liberals, from the MSNBC ranters like Keith Olbermann to the racist Reverends Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton?

There was a time when liberals were exclusively high-toned. That was in the days of the Progressive Era, that flourished presidentially from Theodore Roosevelt (R) to Woodrow Wilson (D). But in the 1920s the Progressives went out of favor with the American voters. It was the genius of Franklin Roosevelt to create a coalition of the high-minded Progressives and the street-fighting big city machines in the Democratic Party and call it liberalism.

However they were presented to the American people, all Democratic presidents since FDR except Jimmy Carter have been frank products of political machines. Truman came from the Prendergast machine, Kennedy from the Boston Irish Mafia, Johnson from the solid Democratic South, Clinton from an Arkansas machine that he turned into a personal political machine, and Obama, the perfumed product of the Chicago machine.

These machine politicians have understand that there are always plenty of high-toned publicists ready to perfume the air around them with high-toned words. Behind the propaganda, they get on with the job of wheeling and dealing, holding their friends close and their enemies closer, and looting the public fisc.

In my view, the last few years have seen a breakout in the power of the low-rent conservatives. The unexpected eruption of the Tea Party movement is canonical. It's the power of the Internet synergizing with genuine political bottom-up rebellion.

It is telling that the Democrats all thought the Tea Parties were a put-up job, "astroturf" organized by Republican political operatives. In fact, the Republican establishment was just as surprised by the Tea Parties as anyone else, and not a little afraid of the movement.

Conservatism will never be exclusively high toned again, so the Van Vorhees chaps had better get out the air freshener.

Beyond Corruption and Injustice

It goes without saying that the modern liberal administrative state is unjust. It's corrupt, cruel, and wasteful as well. And its deluded practitioners continue to sing its praises in the face of all its failures.

Liberalism is, after all, not just a political philosophy, but a secular religion.

The larger failure, I believe, is liberalism's culture of compulsion. Modern society under liberalism is a society of a million laws, and ten thousand regulations.

It wasn't supposed to be that way. Supposedly, the bright light of reason and justice would chase away the inequality, the indignities, the superstitions of the old regime. Then everyone would live in freedom and community.

In fact, the liberal regime requires tight regulation and widespread compulsion throughout society. Instead of the glorious future of cooperation, it turns out that in the liberal state vast structures of supervision and mandate are required. Rather than a liberal society, we now have a liberal administrative state in which everyone is forced to do the right thing.

What went wrong, and what can we do about it?

That is the core of this American Manifesto. What went wrong with the liberal dream? What turned it into a nightmare, where limited government turned into big government? What turned the poor into the underclass? What turned respectable citizens into adult adolescents? And what do we do now?

"You must suggest an alternative," said Margaret Thatcher.

It is time to toss liberalism onto the dust heap of history, and start to imagine an alternative. I call it "life after liberalism." What will it be like?

First of all, it cannot be a society where all decisions are made by a political elite. Government is force. Politics is power. Politicians only know about playing power games and dividing people so that they can win elections. The more we empower politicians, the more they will divide us. The reason we call it "society" is because it is more than a top-down administration. All must participate according to their abilities, and all must take responsibility.

It cannot be a society where all decisions are made by reason and by rule. Rules and reason are wonderful things, but they are mechanical and clumsy. "The heart has its reasons that reason knows not." Humans are social animals and the social virtues are not mechanical and rational, but instinctive and emotional. Human society must be a blend of instinct, emotion, and reason.

It cannot be a society of "one size fits all." The difference between humans and machines is that you can write manuals to maintain machines and leave a mechanic in charge. The maintenance of humans in good running order we call a "relationship." No one rule or caned procedure will suffice. Yet, of course, our ruling class attempts to rule us exactly according to the orthodox principle of "one size fits all." We have one compulsory government pension scheme, one compulsory health care program, one compulsory education system. They cannot imagine a society where people take care of their own needs in voluntary cooperation, without the supervision of the politicians and experts.

You'll find, as An American Manifesto takes shape, that there is another way. In the life after liberalism, we will demote politics to a coequal between the economic and the moral/cultural. We will re-strand the withered chords of face-to-face society and responsibility. We will discover how we already have the means for each of us to escape the compulsory "one size fits all" prison of the liberal administrative state.

As Prime Minister David Cameron of Britain puts it: "There is such a thing as society. It's just not the same thing as the state."

In other words, to call a thing "social" or "public" does not mean that the government must do it. It only means that people do it, and that they do it in the community that we create beyond the old boundaries of family and kindred. It might be government, but it is more likely to be a church, a fraternal group, a business, a charity, a sports association.

Yes, Virginia. There is life after liberalism.

Stop Gunning the Economy

Over the years one thing is sure. Government has interfered too much with the economy.

In the old days it was an just absolute monarch debasing the coinage to pay for his wars. In the 18th and 19th centuries it was proto-democratic governments learning how to leverage the magic of central banking and the national debt into paying for empire or for civil war.

Now we have massive fiscal distortions to shore up the mirage of the unfundable welfare state, its pensions and health care.

Always, of course, there have been inflationists urging governments to make credit cheap--for small business, for farmers, for crony capitalists.

It's time to rise up and say: Stop "helping" the economy, government. Your helping mostly destabilizes the economy. And problems in the economy mostly hurt the poor.

If the economy is in the depths of a depression then the cry goes out to stimulate the economy with cheap credit backed by big new spending projects. Or alternatively, tax cuts and spending cuts.

If the economy is emerging from a recession then the cry goes out to keep the economy growing with cheap credit and tax cuts, thus avoiding a "double-dip" recession.

If the economy is going gangbusters then politicians and special interests propose ambitious projects funded by debt backed by the ample revenues flowing into government coffers.

Of course, all this stimulus creates an inflationary boom and, eventually, the government's central bank starts fighting inflation instead of fighting recession. That leads to a credit crisis and bank failures and bailouts.

Then the cycle begins again with the demand for cheap credit to stimulate the economy.

We need a practical political agenda to get us out of this vicious circle.

In my view, we have to get government out of the credit business, except when spending money to get out of a crisis. This might be war, or it could be national disaster.

Heck, why stop there? Let's get the government out of education. Parents will naturally seek out education for their children.

Let's get the government out of health care. Women are obsessed with health care and will find a way to get it.

Let's get the government out of pensions. Middle-aged people naturally start saving so that they can stop working. Why interfere?

The great need in this generation is to develop a practical political philosophy, supported by the broad middle class, that would keep the government out of the economy.

Building to the Upchuck

Rich Lowry says that federal Judge Susan Bolton is a joke. Well, not her, exactly, but her decision blocking the Arizona law on illegal immigration.

But I think that the decision is just another hurl point on the road to the Big Upchuck.

You'll remember "Obama and the Upchuck Factor." That was the prescient article I wrote a year ago explaining the periodic voter upchuck of Democratic presidents. Back in FDR's time it took about 6 years for the upchuck. By President Clinton's time it took two years.

But under President Obama, the upchuck took only six months.

Can't we all get along and create a politics without the Upchuck Factor?

Not really. The buildup to the Obama Upchuck shows why.

Back in the Noughties, Democrats built up a fine narrative about corrupt Republicans, stupid Bush, extremist right-wing Christians, and an illegal war. Democrats, on the other hand, were nice moderate veterans running for Republican seats in Congress. They were all for family values and balanced budgets and went to church and provided a moderate alternative to the corrupt right-wing warmongers around Bush.

How can you counter a narrative like that, especially when the fake media echoes it everywhere?

You can't. You have to wait until the Democrats come to power and take the mask off.

Then you find out that the awful Christian right-wingers look like Sunday school teachers when compared with the left-wing ideologues in the Obama administration.

Then you find out that the moderate Democrat freshmen and sophomores voted for the extreme and unpopular ObamaCare, knuckling under to the power plays of Pelosi & Co.

Then you find out that, when it comes to disasters, Bush's Katrina response looks like a model compared to the Keystone Kops routine of Obama and the Busted Oil Well.

Then you discover that your high-toned objections to fundamentalist Christians rather pale beside the prospect of gigantic tax increases in January 2011.

Then you find out that the Obama administration has no idea of a moderate economic policy.

Then you find out that the vague words about health care reform mean a root-and-branch government takeover of the health care system.

And then you find out that the Obama administration has no intention of enforcing the laws on immigration.

Look, all this is natural and healthy. There's no way of avoiding it.

The fact is that you need a Democratic president and a Democratic Congress every decade or so just to remind everyone what the Democrats are really all about.

That way, everyone can build up to the coordinated National Upchuck on Tuesday, November 2, 2010.

National Upchuck Day. Why, there's still time for a resolution from Congress to celebrate it.

Two-Thirds of Americans Oppose Death Tax

Over at the Fiscal Times they are marveling over the unpopularity of the estate tax. Properly, writes Eric Schurenberg, Americans ought to love the estate tax, because only two percent of families pay it. Then there are the loopholes, like the first million of assets, and this:

In addition, expenses for your funeral, any charitable bequests, and every cent you leave your spouse are all tax-free. In 2008, according to estimates by the Urban Institute’s Tax Policy Center, the wealthiest 1 percent of households paid over 80 percent of the $23 billion the tax raised; the top tenth of a percent alone accounted for 46 percent of the total.

Such a deal!

In fact, two thirds of Americans oppose the "death tax" including 55 percent of Democrats. They just don't think it's fair. So how do progressives reverse the sentiment of ordinary Americans and persuade them of the truth, that a "robust" estate tax is fair? Schurenberg turns to Bill Gates, Sr.

“American society has made it possible for wealthy men, women and their families to have an elegant life, first-class education, and virtually unlimited options about where to go and what to do. Society does have a just claim on these fortunes."

Actually, it is freedom that makes this possible. Because in most societies, the elegant life is reserved for the political elite.

In reality, it is not "society" but the robust efforts of jumped-up nobodies like John D. Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie and Henry Ford and Sam Walton that make it possible for all of us to live our comfortable lives. Society and people in general get a huge benefit from the fortunes of rich men, because riches these days come from serving the consumers really well. Think Steve Jobs and Apple.

It's understandable that progressives want to recapture the fortunes of rich men. Progressivism is a philosophy of power, and progressives since the French Revolution have revolted against the idea of wealth and power independent of the political elite.

But the pressing need these days is for people of independent means who can challenge the power of the politicians and the activists. That doesn't mean we need a new cabal of feudal barons making trouble in the hinterland.

But it does mean that we need a class of people who can be summoned to testify before Congress and have the courage to tell the solons to go take a jump in the lake.

Are Dems This Stupid?

This week the Democrats tried to pass in the US Senate a campaign finance bill that would have privileged liberal groups like unions and penalized corporations. That's after they stepped back from the unpopular cap-and-trade bill, and after the passing of the unpopular ObamaCare bill, and the derisive "stimulus bill."

Don't they get it? Hugh Hewitt wonders:

The Manhattan-Beltway media elite have fundamentally misunderstood or refused to believe what is happening in front of their eyes, and their blindness has apparently led the MSM-addicted Congressional Democrats to ignore the issues that do concern voters while pushing forward an agenda that deeply offends an already outraged electorate. The president's deep-seated ideology similarly renders him incapable of understanding the depth of the rejection of his agenda that is sweeping the country.

Most ruling classes get this way. They settle into their sinecures and lose the sharp edge they maintained when they were insurgents besieging the citadel of power.

In the case of Barack Obama, thoughtful people were already saying in 2008 that Obama and his people only knew urban politics--in Chicago and Boston. They really didn't know much about the ordinary suburban American people that constitute the majority.

That's leads to a piece from Wesley Pruden that explains why the president isn't getting any traction these days. No matter how great a salesman you are, you can't ignore Rule #1 of selling:

He never learned the drummer's first rule for success: "You gotta know the territory."

You have to hand this to the Democrats. They are master tacticians of day-to-day politics. They excel at 24-7 political combat.

But they seem to lack a strategic sense of what is prudent and possible.

I'm reading Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow right now. The astonishing takeaway is that Hamilton, who was in his early twenties when he became General Washington's chief of staff, had an amazing strategic vision.

Hamilton saw, at age twenty-one or twenty-two, at the beginning of the Revolutionary War, that the patriot strategy should be one of retreat, avoiding battles with the British. He saw throughout the war and particularly in 1782, when the un-paid revolutionary army started getting fractious, that there was no substitute for a strong central government with the power to tax--and pay its soldiers.

It is this penetrating vision that Democrats lack today. They do not see into the future. They do not understand how their brazen political tricks utterly disgust the average American. They do not see the greater currents at work in our society.

And so they will fail. Hugh Hewitt again:

Taken all together the Democrats are not merely headed towards a political cliff, they are sprinting towards it.

Yes, but don't they see what they are doing to themselves? No, they don't. They have become a classic aging dynasty. They don't understand the roots of their power; they don't understand the injustices their power has spawned; they don't understand the people they rule.

And that's a shame.

Power Leads to Injustice

Last week Sen. James Webb (D-VA) wrote an important op-ed in The Wall Street Journal about race politics.

The fact is, he argues, the current "diversity" policy of the governing elite is a policy that discriminates against whites. A policy that was intended to help black victims of pervasive discrimination now discriminates in favor of all "people of color" including millions of people who came to the United States whos never experienced any discrimination.

Those who came to this country in recent decades from Asia, Latin America and Africa did not suffer discrimination from our government, and in fact have frequently been the beneficiaries of special government programs. The same cannot be said of many hard-working white Americans, including those whose roots in America go back more than 200 years.

Contrary to assumptions in the law, white America is hardly a monolith. And the journey of white American cultures is so diverse (yes) that one strains to find the logic that could lump them together for the purpose of public policy.

The fact is that, e.g., in the South, there are whites that have experienced significant and extended deprivation and hardship, even as considered in the dry-as-toast categories of liberal social science. And "diversity" programs often help non-whites that are anything but deprived.

There is a word for this sort of thing. Injustice. Injustice that will rise up out of the hinterland and sweep to vengeance one day with a terrible swift sword. And as usual, the ruling elite doesn't have a clue what is coming.

Jim Webb calls for an end to diversity programs, except for blacks: "Beyond our continuing obligation to assist those African-Americans still in need, government-directed diversity programs should end."

No, Jim. You just don't get it, not even now. What the Negro needs, above all, is to be left alone. That was true 150 years ago just as much as it is now, when Frederick Douglass wrote the following:

What I ask for the negro is not benevolence, not pity, not sympathy, but simply justice. The American people have always been anxious to know what they shall do with us... I have had but one answer from the beginning. Do nothing with us! Your doing with us has already played the mischief with us. Do nothing with us! If the apples will not remain on the tree of their own strength, if they are worm-eaten at the core, if they are early ripe and disposed to fall, let them fall! ... And if the negro cannot stand on his own legs, let him fall also. All I ask is, give him a chance to stand on his own legs! Let him alone! ... your interference is doing him positive injury.

Do nothing, Jim! Have the decency to respect the American Negro as a person as worthy and as capable as yourself. Let the Negro alone to make his or her individual journey to the center of this Nation of Nations. When he or she is left alone, no longer the darling of the political elite, then he or she will have a chance to find their place. Not the place that the Southern racists wanted for them. Not the place that the Northern liberals wanted for them. Not even the place that African Americans might think is waiting for them.

No, what is waiting for African Americans, if left alone, is a destiny that nobody can know.

Meanwhile, a horrible indictment is building up against liberals in the scales of justice, growing heavier every day. It is frightening to consider the retribution that is coming.