Exploitation, "naked, shameless, direct, brutal", according to Marx, is the characteristic of the modern capitalism. Compared with the exploitation veiled by religious and political illusions of the old regime. Then he went on to beuild his tortuous analysis of labor value in his Capital, which turned out to be rubbish.
The center of Marx's complaint is the old one of the worker or the peasant. How come that the middle man gets to mark up the labor of the worker? To the piece-worker, the putter-out pays ten cents a piece, and then sells it for twenty, or more. And by the time that the garment reaches the consumer it sells for a dollar or more a piece. Where is the justice in that?
The justice is that the employer or the putter-out is doing a lot of work so that the piece-worker can sell their piece. In the modern workplace, the employer provides the workplace, the tools, heating, cooling, refreshments, and often does all the legwork to make benefits like health care and other insurance easily available. Then he researches the markets, finds buyers, finds investors, finances the work in progress. Then, of course, he takes the risks of profit and loss. So who is exploiting whom?
And what about the politician that is levelling the charge of expoitation? Does not he take a chunk of the full value of the laborer's product? Does not he take his taxes off the top, whether sales, excise, payroll, or income tax, without particularly thinking about the worker's need or worth?
Ah yes, you'll say. But with those taxes, the worker buys civilization, as Justice Holmes wrote a century ago. Excuse me, Mr. Justice, but it is with his wages that the worker buys civilization. It is invidious to single out your particular preference--and a judge lives off taxes, after all--and call that civilization. In fact all governments, civilized and other, impose taxes, starting with the meanest guerrilla group in the mountains. It is the civilized nations that mitigate the brute force of government, naked, etc, with the veil of credit, exchange, capital, universal wealth, and ease.
Our liberal friends have made a nice business out of critiquing the exploitative tendencies in early modern capitalism, and no doubt they are right. But our task in these latter days is to deal with the problem of big-government exploitation. And that is about as "naked, shameless, direct, brutal" as you can get.
Tuesday, February 21, 2012
Sunday, February 19, 2012
Temperance is Moderation in All Things, Except Courage
When Aristotle applies his doctrine of the mean to the virtue of courage, he has a problem. The epitome of courage for the Greek polis is the courage of the heavy infantry hoplite solider, and a mean between rashness and cowardice doesn't cut it. The hoplite must have the courage to surrender his life, no matter what. That's just how the shock battle of heavy infantry with shields and spears works.
But once we get away from courage then the full meaning of Aristotle's virtue theory can work. A person with practical wisdom, equipped to live a life of eudaimonia, has learned to live a life of the moderate mean in between excess and defect, in the right way at the right time for the right reason. And right action is directed by the ability to think the right thoughts. Action is preceded by thought, and the temperate man "is so called because he is not pained at the absence of what is pleasant and at his abstinence from it."
The man of practical wisdom knows that "if appetites are stong and violent" they can overcome moderation, so he cultivates moderation and develops the habit of moderation. He knows that the only way to live a happy life is to make sure that "the appetitive element should live according to rational principle" and not the other way around.
Once you get away from the moderate rational principle then you are in danger of succumbing to the appetitive element: self-indulgence. There may be some that are so insensitive to the urges of pleasure, but they "are hardly found," says Aristotle. So the question of temperance is largely a question of the regulation of self-indulgence, the appetitive urge. And that requires a life-long devotion to a life of moderate rational principle, the practical wisdom of living, doing the right thing for the right reason in the right way at the right time.
But it's worth it, because it all leads to eudaimonia.
But once we get away from courage then the full meaning of Aristotle's virtue theory can work. A person with practical wisdom, equipped to live a life of eudaimonia, has learned to live a life of the moderate mean in between excess and defect, in the right way at the right time for the right reason. And right action is directed by the ability to think the right thoughts. Action is preceded by thought, and the temperate man "is so called because he is not pained at the absence of what is pleasant and at his abstinence from it."
The man of practical wisdom knows that "if appetites are stong and violent" they can overcome moderation, so he cultivates moderation and develops the habit of moderation. He knows that the only way to live a happy life is to make sure that "the appetitive element should live according to rational principle" and not the other way around.
Once you get away from the moderate rational principle then you are in danger of succumbing to the appetitive element: self-indulgence. There may be some that are so insensitive to the urges of pleasure, but they "are hardly found," says Aristotle. So the question of temperance is largely a question of the regulation of self-indulgence, the appetitive urge. And that requires a life-long devotion to a life of moderate rational principle, the practical wisdom of living, doing the right thing for the right reason in the right way at the right time.
But it's worth it, because it all leads to eudaimonia.
Thursday, February 16, 2012
If Virtue is Voluntary, So is Vice
Virtuous actions are voluntary, we want to say, for "the end... is what we wish for, the means what we deliberate about and choose". Yet we like to think that people don't actually choose vice, but only happiness: "no one is voluntarily wicked nor involuntarily happy". Aristotle wants to attack this because it obviously threatens his notion that both virtue and vice are choices.
It could be that a man is ignorant of the means of happiness, but it is notable that legislators do not agree. They say ignorance of the law is no excuse. It may be that a man is careless, and thus his slack life ends up in his being unjust or self-indulgent.
But Aristotle says all this is a choice. You can suppose a man is ill involuntarily, but maybe in the past he had the choice, and disobeyed his doctor. So we could say that he threw away his chance to be well. Thus blindness from birth is one thing, but blindness from drunkenness another.
Of course, we inherit some virtue by nature, but the good man adopts the means of virtue voluntarily. Thus virtue consistently practiced becomes a state of character, as one who trains for a contest becomes excellent by training.
Clearly, Aristotle finishes, all our actions are voluntary: we have a choice each time we act. We start in the right direction, but the progress of our state of character is not so obviously voluntary, just as health is not the result of specific actions. But since we had the power "to act in this way or not in this way" states of character are voluntary.
And that takes us back to the basic position. Virtue, the state of character, is the result of right action in the right way at the right time. And vice is the reverse.
It could be that a man is ignorant of the means of happiness, but it is notable that legislators do not agree. They say ignorance of the law is no excuse. It may be that a man is careless, and thus his slack life ends up in his being unjust or self-indulgent.
But Aristotle says all this is a choice. You can suppose a man is ill involuntarily, but maybe in the past he had the choice, and disobeyed his doctor. So we could say that he threw away his chance to be well. Thus blindness from birth is one thing, but blindness from drunkenness another.
Of course, we inherit some virtue by nature, but the good man adopts the means of virtue voluntarily. Thus virtue consistently practiced becomes a state of character, as one who trains for a contest becomes excellent by training.
Clearly, Aristotle finishes, all our actions are voluntary: we have a choice each time we act. We start in the right direction, but the progress of our state of character is not so obviously voluntary, just as health is not the result of specific actions. But since we had the power "to act in this way or not in this way" states of character are voluntary.
And that takes us back to the basic position. Virtue, the state of character, is the result of right action in the right way at the right time. And vice is the reverse.
Wednesday, February 15, 2012
America's Verdict on Obama
When Jonah Goldberg wrote Liberal Fascism back in 2008, liberals blew it off; they weren't interested in engaging its arguments. It wasn't surprising. Liberal Fascism said what conservatives have been saying about liberals for ages. It said that there was a fascistic streak in liberals that goes back to William James and the "moral equivalent of war."
Liberals want to mobilize the nation for great tasks, but not for war. They want to mobilize us into a civilian army to fight the good fight for education, for helping the poor, for health care. Specifically, they want us to follow their lead and pay for their plans for the welfare state. And anyone that doesn't follow is a rotten egg, expressed more elegantly these days as a racist, sexist, or homophobe.
There is a point to the "moral equivalent of war." From time to time, we the American people need to mobilize to respond to some great national emergency that is not war related: Think Hurricane Katrina. But health care, education, welfare, superannuation, the great liberal programs that are bankrupting the nation, are not national emergencies. They are the normal challenges of life that people come together and solve, generation by generation, in social cooperation. These tasks do not require extraordinary mobilization--as if for war--and they do not get solved well under conditions of compulsion. They are the normal complex interactions of the great panorama of the challenges of life, so they are unlikely to respond well to the one-size-fits-all strategy of war, moral or otherwise.
You could say, a century and a half ago in the middle of the chaotic transition from agricultural society to industrial society, that the emergency required decisive action. But not today. That is why liberals use the language of justice more often than war to justify their extraordinary powers. They say that people are poor because other people are rich, because of greedy bankers and corporate greed--or exploitation or inadequate education or anything that comes to mind.
The big problem, and it gets bigger all the time, is that every time our liberal friends capture an area of social cooperation and place it under the yoke of compulsion they wither the natural instincts and virtues of the American people for unforced, willing and voluntary social cooperation.
In the 19th century, foreign critics noted the extraordinary talent for cooperation in the American people. Whenever Americans saw a need, remarked Tocqueville, they formed an association to tackle it. But the modern, liberal approach is that whenever liberals see a need, they agitate for a government program to solve it. The difference between the old method and the new method is the difference between black and white. But it is a mistake to critique the liberal approach to society with the normal shibboleths of "justice," "corruption," and "abuse of power." The problem is bigger than that. The result of the liberal project, its culture of compulsion and regimentation, of enlisting the whole nation, as if it were an army, in its moral projects, is a vast human tragedy that is tearing our society out by the roots and that withers the tendrils of social nutrition and individual moral growth.
Now of course, we have Charles Murray's latest, Coming Apart, which puts numbers and percentages on the indictment served up by Jonah Goldberg. When we talk about "coming apart" we mean precisely the loss of social capital, the goodwill and willing cooperation, that is the unintended consequence of each new liberal program and each new ratchet of the culture of compulsion.
This year, 2012, Americans are getting a momentous opportunity to vote "yea" or "nay" on the liberal project. Right now, of course, everyone is talking about the weakness of the Republican candidates on the one hand, or the utter cynicism of the Obama FY13 budget on the other. People want the president to be defeated for the right reasons, and they despair of the prospects for a decisive rejection of the president and all his works.
Politics is seldom as clear-cut as that. Just as Al Capone was not convicted of racketeering but income tax evasion, the great liberal project of social regimentation will not be defeated purely on its merits but most likely upon subsidiary issues. Maybe it will be defeated just because people don't like liberals and especially don't like Obama.
But those of us that believe in American exceptionalism have faith that the American people will deliver their verdict on Obama, and it will not be Four More Years.
Liberals want to mobilize the nation for great tasks, but not for war. They want to mobilize us into a civilian army to fight the good fight for education, for helping the poor, for health care. Specifically, they want us to follow their lead and pay for their plans for the welfare state. And anyone that doesn't follow is a rotten egg, expressed more elegantly these days as a racist, sexist, or homophobe.
There is a point to the "moral equivalent of war." From time to time, we the American people need to mobilize to respond to some great national emergency that is not war related: Think Hurricane Katrina. But health care, education, welfare, superannuation, the great liberal programs that are bankrupting the nation, are not national emergencies. They are the normal challenges of life that people come together and solve, generation by generation, in social cooperation. These tasks do not require extraordinary mobilization--as if for war--and they do not get solved well under conditions of compulsion. They are the normal complex interactions of the great panorama of the challenges of life, so they are unlikely to respond well to the one-size-fits-all strategy of war, moral or otherwise.
You could say, a century and a half ago in the middle of the chaotic transition from agricultural society to industrial society, that the emergency required decisive action. But not today. That is why liberals use the language of justice more often than war to justify their extraordinary powers. They say that people are poor because other people are rich, because of greedy bankers and corporate greed--or exploitation or inadequate education or anything that comes to mind.
The big problem, and it gets bigger all the time, is that every time our liberal friends capture an area of social cooperation and place it under the yoke of compulsion they wither the natural instincts and virtues of the American people for unforced, willing and voluntary social cooperation.
In the 19th century, foreign critics noted the extraordinary talent for cooperation in the American people. Whenever Americans saw a need, remarked Tocqueville, they formed an association to tackle it. But the modern, liberal approach is that whenever liberals see a need, they agitate for a government program to solve it. The difference between the old method and the new method is the difference between black and white. But it is a mistake to critique the liberal approach to society with the normal shibboleths of "justice," "corruption," and "abuse of power." The problem is bigger than that. The result of the liberal project, its culture of compulsion and regimentation, of enlisting the whole nation, as if it were an army, in its moral projects, is a vast human tragedy that is tearing our society out by the roots and that withers the tendrils of social nutrition and individual moral growth.
Now of course, we have Charles Murray's latest, Coming Apart, which puts numbers and percentages on the indictment served up by Jonah Goldberg. When we talk about "coming apart" we mean precisely the loss of social capital, the goodwill and willing cooperation, that is the unintended consequence of each new liberal program and each new ratchet of the culture of compulsion.
This year, 2012, Americans are getting a momentous opportunity to vote "yea" or "nay" on the liberal project. Right now, of course, everyone is talking about the weakness of the Republican candidates on the one hand, or the utter cynicism of the Obama FY13 budget on the other. People want the president to be defeated for the right reasons, and they despair of the prospects for a decisive rejection of the president and all his works.
Politics is seldom as clear-cut as that. Just as Al Capone was not convicted of racketeering but income tax evasion, the great liberal project of social regimentation will not be defeated purely on its merits but most likely upon subsidiary issues. Maybe it will be defeated just because people don't like liberals and especially don't like Obama.
But those of us that believe in American exceptionalism have faith that the American people will deliver their verdict on Obama, and it will not be Four More Years.
New Federal Budget up on usgovernmentspending.com
So now, a week late, the president has submitted his FY13 budget. And of course usgovernmentspending.com/current_budget has all the data.
But what does it mean?
There's the higher deficit, $1.3 trillion for the election year of 2012 instead of the sub-trillion deficit budgeted for FY12 just a year ago. But we expected that, from the sub-par growth in this sub-par recovery.
There's the gigantic contribution of the Fed's QE2, a convenient $1.6 trillion of public debt that was bought by the Federal Reserve System in FY11. Goodness knows what the impact of that will be in a year or so when credit demand picks up and the $1.6 trillion gets converted into $5 trillion or so in money and credit.
If you are looking for a report card on Obama spending, you can see it in the Estimated vs. Actual for FY11, the spending year that ended last September 30. You can see the estimates for FY11 for the major functions starting in the FY07 budget. You can see the sudden jump of about $80 billion a year in Health Care, the $40 billion a year in Education, and the $100 billion a year in Welfare. Oh, and the $70 billion a year in Other Spending. Pretty soon we'll be talking about real spending increases!
The big story, of course, is that the president has punted on restraining spending. He's done nothing about the entitlements, especially Medicare, which is already hemorrhaging $280 billion a year over its payroll tax revenues--unless you consider the smoke and mirrors and bureaucratic trick ponies in ObamaCare as serious attempts to address the Medicare problem.
It's frustrating for everyone, liberal and conservative, that the nation is drifting on down the river towards the waterfall, and nothing is being done to fix the government's finances. But that is politics. Politics is not really a system to compromise or settle anything. Politics is power, and the national political power today is contested. That's what we mean by the culture war, by "50-50 nation," by the liberal complaint about the loss of civility and all the other terms used to describe the stalemate in national politics. We will keep drifting downriver until we really go over the waterfall. In the emergency, the question of how much in taxes and how much in spending will be resolved in a great trial of political strength.
Until then Republicans will refuse to agree to new taxes and Democrats will refuse to agree to "cuts." But one thing is certain. When the crisis comes, it won't just be "minorities and women hardest hit." It will be ordinary people across the spectrum who will be hurt, from the working stiff wanting a decent wage, to the college graduate looking for corporations that will hire them to the retiree trying to get a decent interest rate out of his lifetime of savings, to the government beneficiary suddenly finding out that all the old scams don't work any more.
It's such a shame. Because if we cut back the power and the spending of government all Americans would get a better deal.
But what does it mean?
There's the higher deficit, $1.3 trillion for the election year of 2012 instead of the sub-trillion deficit budgeted for FY12 just a year ago. But we expected that, from the sub-par growth in this sub-par recovery.
There's the gigantic contribution of the Fed's QE2, a convenient $1.6 trillion of public debt that was bought by the Federal Reserve System in FY11. Goodness knows what the impact of that will be in a year or so when credit demand picks up and the $1.6 trillion gets converted into $5 trillion or so in money and credit.
If you are looking for a report card on Obama spending, you can see it in the Estimated vs. Actual for FY11, the spending year that ended last September 30. You can see the estimates for FY11 for the major functions starting in the FY07 budget. You can see the sudden jump of about $80 billion a year in Health Care, the $40 billion a year in Education, and the $100 billion a year in Welfare. Oh, and the $70 billion a year in Other Spending. Pretty soon we'll be talking about real spending increases!
The big story, of course, is that the president has punted on restraining spending. He's done nothing about the entitlements, especially Medicare, which is already hemorrhaging $280 billion a year over its payroll tax revenues--unless you consider the smoke and mirrors and bureaucratic trick ponies in ObamaCare as serious attempts to address the Medicare problem.
It's frustrating for everyone, liberal and conservative, that the nation is drifting on down the river towards the waterfall, and nothing is being done to fix the government's finances. But that is politics. Politics is not really a system to compromise or settle anything. Politics is power, and the national political power today is contested. That's what we mean by the culture war, by "50-50 nation," by the liberal complaint about the loss of civility and all the other terms used to describe the stalemate in national politics. We will keep drifting downriver until we really go over the waterfall. In the emergency, the question of how much in taxes and how much in spending will be resolved in a great trial of political strength.
Until then Republicans will refuse to agree to new taxes and Democrats will refuse to agree to "cuts." But one thing is certain. When the crisis comes, it won't just be "minorities and women hardest hit." It will be ordinary people across the spectrum who will be hurt, from the working stiff wanting a decent wage, to the college graduate looking for corporations that will hire them to the retiree trying to get a decent interest rate out of his lifetime of savings, to the government beneficiary suddenly finding out that all the old scams don't work any more.
It's such a shame. Because if we cut back the power and the spending of government all Americans would get a better deal.
Sunday, February 12, 2012
Obama Punts on Budget
The federal budget is out today, and the advance word is that it doesn't look beyond the election in November. Writes Douglas Holtz-Eakin:
The president and his campaign team obviously think that nothing has changed. They are offering goodies and handouts for the election with no eye on the future at all (and they blame corporate greed for short-term attitudes).
But the aftermath of the Crash of 2008 showed that Americans absolutely hate bailouts. At some point the American voters are going to start voting on fiscal sanity. It might be as soon as this November.
Here in India, in the Times of India, an Indian transplant to Britland, Sunil Khilnani, worries about the Indian government's inability to deliver services the "last mile." Really, what planet is he living on? Governments have never delivered on any services, except the handing out of goodies to their supporters and the punishing of dissenters.
Governments everywhere and in every time have taxed the people and rewarded their supporters as much as they dare. They have delivered on mighty little. Because there is no advantage to the average elected politician or the local thug dictator in delivering over that last mile.
Delivering services is what capitalism does, and it does it very well.
As a campaign document, it will be straightforward. Tax increases as a sop to those who blame their economic misery on the affluent and Wall Street. Billions of dollars in new “investments” as the president restarts his successful campaign-as-handout factory.Let's leave out the overall budget deficit of about a trillion dollars in FY13. Let's look at the real spending programs. Social Security is hemorrhaging $60 billion a year and Medicare is bleeding $280 billion a year in spending over and above payroll tax revenues.
The president and his campaign team obviously think that nothing has changed. They are offering goodies and handouts for the election with no eye on the future at all (and they blame corporate greed for short-term attitudes).
But the aftermath of the Crash of 2008 showed that Americans absolutely hate bailouts. At some point the American voters are going to start voting on fiscal sanity. It might be as soon as this November.
Here in India, in the Times of India, an Indian transplant to Britland, Sunil Khilnani, worries about the Indian government's inability to deliver services the "last mile." Really, what planet is he living on? Governments have never delivered on any services, except the handing out of goodies to their supporters and the punishing of dissenters.
Governments everywhere and in every time have taxed the people and rewarded their supporters as much as they dare. They have delivered on mighty little. Because there is no advantage to the average elected politician or the local thug dictator in delivering over that last mile.
Delivering services is what capitalism does, and it does it very well.
Friday, February 10, 2012
Let's Epatez the Liberaloisie!
Traveling the long hours across the Atlantic on Thursday I got a chance to catch up on some "classic" movies. As in Planet of the Apes and Close Encounters. Not to mention Sunset Boulevard.
I admit it. I had never seen those great movies.
I had no idea. No idea that the Charlton Heston vehicle was in fact an allegory on our horrible racist, speciesist, fundamentalist society. Or that Close Encounters was a gentle poke (gentle because of Steven Spielberg) at the Vietnam era government that, you'll recall, was always lying to us. Unlike the administration of the wonderful One.
Nor did I know that Sunset Boulevard was an entry in the good old hard-boiled genre, including cameos by all the old Hollywood moguls like Cecil B. DeMille. But that is another story.
Let's get back to Planet of the Apes. Ever since the invention of the German cult of the creative, or what Charles Taylor calls "expressive individualism," a favorite reflex of the creative class has been the "challenge" to bourgeois hypocrisies. The Sixties was a bumper decade in that regard, especially in popular culture as all kinds of mainstream entertainment mocked the old Protestant and anti-Communist pieties and hypocrisies. Thus M*A*S*H, Star Trek, Archie Bunker. Young liberal artists were granted open season to epater la bourgeoisie.
The great cultural offensive of the counter-culture wasn't quite as brave and noble counter-cultural as liberals liked to pretend, because the transgressive "challengers" of the status quo actually had quiet and not so quiet support from the cultural establishment.
You can appreciate just how substantial that support was if you try to imagine a Planet of the Conservatives where conservatives own the culture and rule over liberals and mouth liberal pieties about race and global warming and wind farms and silence their critics with PC.
Yes, the measure of political and cultural power is the extent to which you can silence the opposition. No, let's correct that. The measure of political and cultural power is the extent to which the opposition doesn't even have to be "silenced" but rather never dares to venture its opinion. How many people today think heretical thoughts but fear being branded as racists, sexists, homophobes, and know that there would be no support from a liberal media for their transgressive opinions, unlike the "kids" of the Sixties.
But some people are detecting cracks in the liberal monolith. The flap over contraception in the Catholic hospitals is a marker. How far can the Catholics bend over for the liberal bullies without disappearing into the liberal cultural hegemony?
Let's look at the mortgage meltdown.
Here's President Obama praising a $25 billion deal over abusive bank foreclosures.
Imagine, if you like, a sit-com about a single twentysomething mortgage broker that's always out of town at some Fannie-Freddie shindig where they are pushing mortgages to under-served communities. And his flatmate is an ACORN activist that organizes demonstrations at banks when she is free from those endless voter registration drives with no ID required. I know, it's the stuff of fantasy.
But we won't start to turn the corner on hegemonic liberalism until a new generation of transgressive artists has the cojones and the conservative establishment backing to stage frontal assaults on liberal lies, shibboleths, and hypocrisies with satire, investigative journalism, and allegory.
Perhaps that new era is just beginning. We can but hope.
I admit it. I had never seen those great movies.
I had no idea. No idea that the Charlton Heston vehicle was in fact an allegory on our horrible racist, speciesist, fundamentalist society. Or that Close Encounters was a gentle poke (gentle because of Steven Spielberg) at the Vietnam era government that, you'll recall, was always lying to us. Unlike the administration of the wonderful One.
Nor did I know that Sunset Boulevard was an entry in the good old hard-boiled genre, including cameos by all the old Hollywood moguls like Cecil B. DeMille. But that is another story.
Let's get back to Planet of the Apes. Ever since the invention of the German cult of the creative, or what Charles Taylor calls "expressive individualism," a favorite reflex of the creative class has been the "challenge" to bourgeois hypocrisies. The Sixties was a bumper decade in that regard, especially in popular culture as all kinds of mainstream entertainment mocked the old Protestant and anti-Communist pieties and hypocrisies. Thus M*A*S*H, Star Trek, Archie Bunker. Young liberal artists were granted open season to epater la bourgeoisie.
The great cultural offensive of the counter-culture wasn't quite as brave and noble counter-cultural as liberals liked to pretend, because the transgressive "challengers" of the status quo actually had quiet and not so quiet support from the cultural establishment.
You can appreciate just how substantial that support was if you try to imagine a Planet of the Conservatives where conservatives own the culture and rule over liberals and mouth liberal pieties about race and global warming and wind farms and silence their critics with PC.
Yes, the measure of political and cultural power is the extent to which you can silence the opposition. No, let's correct that. The measure of political and cultural power is the extent to which the opposition doesn't even have to be "silenced" but rather never dares to venture its opinion. How many people today think heretical thoughts but fear being branded as racists, sexists, homophobes, and know that there would be no support from a liberal media for their transgressive opinions, unlike the "kids" of the Sixties.
But some people are detecting cracks in the liberal monolith. The flap over contraception in the Catholic hospitals is a marker. How far can the Catholics bend over for the liberal bullies without disappearing into the liberal cultural hegemony?
Let's look at the mortgage meltdown.
Here's President Obama praising a $25 billion deal over abusive bank foreclosures.
We have reached a landmark settlement with the nation's largest banks that will speed relief to hardest hit homeowners and some of the most abusive practices of the mortgage industry. And begin to turn the page on an era of recklessness that has left so much damage in its wake.This continues the Democratic talking points on the mortgage meltdown, that it was unregulated "greedy bankers" that enticed innocent homeowners into deals they couldn't afford. It flies against a competing Republican narrative that the banks were strong-armed into floating mortgages to people that couldn't afford them by Big Government regulation in the Community Reinvestment Act and the two mortgage GSE giants, Fannie and Freddie.
Imagine, if you like, a sit-com about a single twentysomething mortgage broker that's always out of town at some Fannie-Freddie shindig where they are pushing mortgages to under-served communities. And his flatmate is an ACORN activist that organizes demonstrations at banks when she is free from those endless voter registration drives with no ID required. I know, it's the stuff of fantasy.
But we won't start to turn the corner on hegemonic liberalism until a new generation of transgressive artists has the cojones and the conservative establishment backing to stage frontal assaults on liberal lies, shibboleths, and hypocrisies with satire, investigative journalism, and allegory.
Perhaps that new era is just beginning. We can but hope.
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