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Are we in the throes of a Second Revolution? I am not talking about classical revolution by arms, but a revolution of ideas. I have been watching, and in may ways participating, in the growing split between world views that is contemporary America. I have little time for the fabric of the leftist views, although I have little problem with many of the lifestyle threads they support. They have now moved so far away from my own ‘center’ that I am much more inclined to throw in my lot with the ‘Country Party’ discussed in this The American Spectator article.
It is well worth reading, and although not perfectly congruent with libertarians, it is certainly far closer than the positions of contemporary liberals.
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We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
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From the reactions seen out on the ‘net since this went up, we may look back on this essay decades from now as a prime exhibit of the state of the nation just before the great turning of American politics. Read the whole thing.
More and more can see that this cannot continue. That said, we sit here and look over the brink with apprehension – if you don’t have your heart in your mouth, you haven’t been paying attention.
Watch the market.
Nothing on even the merest possibility of a potentially elected Country Class, with nothing but their integrity and honor at stake (the human factor), simply repealing 50% of gub’mint “protective” legislation, as well as the pay stubs of “newly employed” for enforcers? (the logic factor)
Good writeup by Wretchard at
http://pajamasmedia.com/richardfernandez/2010/07/18/as-time-goes-by-2/
There’s a crystallization that the Ruling Class truly intends to rule, and the Country Class has to first hold off, and then decisively defeat them.
The Ruling Class finally ran out of other people’s money.
Most agree with Dale.
I don’t disagree with any of the analysis in this article, only with its conclusions. The “Country Class” lacks power because those who comprise it don’t want power. If they did they would aspire to join the Ruling Class which, whatever its other faults (and they are legion), is nothing if not egalitarian. Rather, the Country Class wants to be left alone, and its “members” aren’t going to rise up and become politicians merely because they are staring into the abyss. Lethargy and momentum will combine to take us all over the edge. I fear that the Tea Party movement is merely sound and fury, signifying nothing (nothing meaningful or lasting, anyway).
I think it’s time to quote Yeats:
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Note especially the last two lines. You won’t find a better description of the current state of affairs in the US.
Nice Yeats quote.
I read that whole essay in the Spectator because it really caught my attention, and it seems to have made quite a splash.
I think he’s right about the Ruling class, but note that he is coming from a straight Conservative point of view. Libertarian allies, yes, but Conservative first.
What he wants is not simple freedom, but for power to be transferred locally, where people like him would then be able clear out stale business regulations…and ban the things they don’t like, deport the immigrants, and jail the people they disapprove of. You can see this in several references to things conservatives find irritating in American politics, like abortion and immigration.
The Cato institute put out an essay a couple of weeks ago reminding libertarians of the fundamental differences between libertarian thought and conservative thought. They’re pointing out that libertarians focus on the right wing far more than on the left, but there are some issues of freedom that are better represented on the left. It’s a good read:
http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=11971
paul – I think I know the essay you mean. The one by Lindsey?
I read that essay and it was total crap – from start to finish. Jonah Goldberg and another person (whose name I can not recall) torn it apart.
Even when Lindsey was attacking someone who was NEITHER a libertarian or a conservative – such as Joe McCarthy (a progressive Republican – people forget that). He managed to make a mess of things.
For example, Joe McCarthy can be (RIGHTLY) attacked for many things (housing subsdies being the first thing that sprang to mind) – but NO, Lindsey has to attack him for “McCarthyism” i.e. from thinking it was a bad thing that Communist agents were working in the Federal government.
And they were Communists paul – they were not “honorable men and women slandered by McCarthy” as the left claim. But Lindsey seems to have bought the whole “liberal” (not liberal at all – Marxism not being liberalism) Bill of Goods.
Why the ritual attack on “McCarthyism” anyway? There could only be one reason (Joseph McCarthy haveing died in 1957) – the reason being to attack people who are trying to expose Communists NOW.
How do you defeat someone like Glenn Beck?
Do you dispute his EVIDENCE – of course you do not (the evidence is too strong – and Lindsey knows it), you just use the word “McCarthyism” and that is supposed to stop debate and discredit anyone working against Communist influence.
Does covering up for Marxists and attacking anyone (as “McCarthyites”, “conspiracy theorists” etc) trying to expose them, sound “libertarian”? Since when has libertarianism been about allying with the Communists to destroy the West?
And using words like “liberal” to cover Marxists (such as Van Jones, Bill Ayers, Jeff Jones and the rest of Obama’s people) does not alter the above.
I will smash a conservative over the head (figure of speech) when one comes out with something that is not true – for example the dismissing of Darwinism (something that conservatives like Noah Porter or James McCosh or even the original “fundementalists” did NOT DO). I am happy to attack Glenn Beck (or Ann Coulter or whoever) when they suggest that Darwinism is not true (something, I repeat, that many leading conservatives of the 19th and early 20th centuries did NOT do – because they accepted Darwin).
But that is attacking some conservatives for their ERRORS. That is NOT what Lindsey wants to do.
Lindsey wants to suck up to the left – to the Marxists and their allies (again falsely calling them “liberals” changes nothing).
That is not libertarian – period.
The vile essay that paul cites not being dealt with (I think I put some comments on the Reason magazine site showing how Lindsey did not produce a shred of evidence and how he worked by implying things about people that just were not true).
Anyway back to Dale’s work and the essay HE cites (a much better one).
“Country party” was a term that used to matter much more than “Whig” or “Tory” when dealing with policy.
When a person (in 18th century Britain) told you he was a “Whig” or a “Tory” that told you almost nothing about what “economic policies” what ROLE OF GOVERNMENT IN SOCIETY that person would support.
The terms were almost useless as guides to policy.
However, if someone told you they were “Country party” (a term that some Whigs and some Tories used) that told you quite a lot.
Some country party Whigs eventually became “Rockingham Whigs” (Rockingham, Edmund Burke and so on – although sadly with people like Fox waiting to take over when Rockingham died) and such people were happy to cooperate in rolling back the state with “Country” minded Tory folk (on everything from cutting the expenses of govenrment to getting rid of the tax on cider).
In America “Tory” meant loyal to the British Crown (so it died a death in the Revolutionary War), but “Whig” did not automatically mean anti big government (any more than it did in Britain).
Indeed most of the Henry Clay “Whig Party” were full of ideas for new things for the Feds to do (not for nothing does “Jon Stewart” call himself a “Whig” – he may be lieing, but it is not a total lie).
Country means (in both Britain and the United States) opposition to the elite – the COURT interest.
In modern America the “Court” is not just Washington D.C. it is the interests allied to it.
Not just direct government employees, but also those corporations (not just banking and other financial ones) that depend on government. Corporations run (just as much as the “mainstream media” is) by a class of people educated (brainwashed) by the collectivist ideology of the universities.
People like Woodrow Wilson did not hide this – their open intention was to get wealthy young people (men in their day) and indoctrinate them in collectivists ideology.
In Wilson’s day it was NOT Marxism – it was ultra Prussian (going much further than Prussia had) state socialism (hence the love/hate relationship Progressives had with Prussia – they copied Prussia, but they also regarded Prussia as a rival to their own power, a rival to be utterly destroyed).
Wilson’s own works, such as “The State”, and those of his friends such as his “other self” E.M. House (his Valerie Jarrett – the “sister” of the President) such as “Philip Dru: Administrator” make this clear (even if it took a lot of effort to get a certain person to mention this on his T.V. show).
What the essay quotes is interesting.
In 1914 Wilson says that everything is getting worse – and he is NOT talking about the start of World War One.
For many decades American cities had been getting safer (not less safe), Americans had been higher (not lower) standard of living, American literacy and other educational attainment measures were improving, and in every other way “the condition of society” was getting better – all without the intervention of the Feds.
Yet Wilson convinced himself (on the basis of no evidence what so ever) that everything was getting worse “was going down hill” that only ever more control by the Federal government could save the day.
This is a mind of a person utterly separated from reality – a person filled with the lust for power. Power without limit and without end – seeing human beings as simply clay to be shaped in any way the government wishes them to be shaped. A view that society is not the civil interactions of human beings – the true social “evolution” (to use a word of which was so fond) but a sort of managed fake “evolution” in which the ruler (the Philosopher King – put in power by “managed” elections) shapes society according to his desires.
This is the mind not just of Wilson – but of the typical modern academic (indeed it goes all the way back to the first academic – Plato).
Perhaps this is why some conservatives are so hostile to the concept of “evolution” – they see it as “man playing God”.
But that is not what evolution means – Wilson and so on usurped and distorted the term to mean their own power to shape everything according to their “educated” whims.
In biological terms Wilson’s view of evolution would be a man in a white coat making monsters in a lab – whilst saying they were “beyond good and evil” (like Fred with the big tash).
Real evolution is the animals and plants that are most “fit” (to quote that unfairly despised “social Darwinist” Herbert Spencer) for various environments (not one evironment – there are all sorts of different ones) and passing on their genetic fitness to their offspring – so that by “natural” (NOT govenrment planned) selection) every different environmental niche on the planet had an animals and plants that evolved (over great period of time) to fit it.
No external man “decides” what is going to evolve – or “plans” it. Eugenics is the OPPOSITE of what true evolution is about.
This is not “man playing God” (like Woodrow Wilson, with his false view of evolution, trying to “plan society”) this is God using an astonishing method (and astonishing periods of time – beyond anything that a human being can really get to grips with) to create all the wonder and diversity of creation.
On education:
The American obsession with government subsidy of education and the belief that an educated elite should control everything (even private business enterprises) goes way down into society.
For example, the idea that “getting an education” is a passport to all good things is not even as widespread in France as it in the United States.
Many civilized and cultured French people actually despise the university crowd and the fake “intellectuals”. But this “other France” (Catholic, traditional) is in no way “Redneck” or “anti intellectual”.
In just thinks the ideas of the FALSE “intellectuals” are just flat wrong – and that, in any case, a university education is of little help in running even the most complex business enterprise (experience being much more help).
The American obsession with education is Prussian – it goes back to H. Mann (and later people such as the Bellamy brothers and Woodrow Wilson) with their love/hate relationship with Prussia. Something I have gone into in my comment above.
Basically they admired Prussia – but they also wanted to go much further than Prussia had (to out do it in collectivism) and do without such things as a King or traditional landowners or family business enterprises.
“But education is essential for a modern society”.
An OBSESSION with “education” is not.
For example in Switzerland (a nation with virually no natural resources, but with higher living standards than the United States – and NO this is not just because of banking, manufacturing is much more important for many of the millions of people who make up the Swiss than banking is) the school leaving age is 15. And Swiss schools tend to concentate on rather practical skills (rather than molding the minds of the young – H. Mann style).
And only about 25% of Swiss go to college.
Most Swiss speak German – but the Prussian (and American) obsession that all aspects of life most be controlled by the “educated” simply is not there.
paul, I read that Brink Lindsey article where it originally appeared (in Reason Magazine), but please note that there it was coupled with two dissenting essays. All are worth reading. (I hope people can open this link without being subscribers.)
Ah, thank you, reading them now 🙂
What I’m really getting at is my frustration that conservatives play to libertarian sentiment in order to get elected, then totally betray us with wild spending and illiberal policies once they get into office.
At the moment, the only thing the Republicans offer is a slightly slower slide into the abyss. If they can’t offer economic freedom, then nobody is really offering it and it is not really on the table.
If the Democrats suddenly said, “We’ll end the war on drugs, but we’re going to raise your taxes and spend like drunken sailors,” I’d vote for them if I found their promises believable. The simple reason is that the taxes and spending are going to go up no matter what, so if I can get liberty from another direction, may as well take the deal.
Of course, the Democrats have no intention of doing any such thing, any more than the Republicans plan on truly reducing spending. But as a strategy, a little more flexibility in choosing allies may help keep conservatives from taking libertarian votes for granted.
“Nor had the schools and universities that formed yesterday’s upper crust imposed a single orthodoxy about the origins of man” (from the article).
Can anyone explain what exactly the author is trying to say here?
I read that as not too subtle cheerleading for creationism as a valid viewpoint.
which is, coincidentally, when I stopped reading the essay.
Valid politically or scientifically?
I agree with you, Paul. Incidentally, that’s what makes those three essays in combination such an interesting read. We libertarians are indeed “homeless”.
I don’t know what “politically valid” means. Does that mean making it publicly-acceptable for a politician to be a creationist? (I don’t see why it wouldn’t be: it’s not really relevant to the county assessor’s job although I wouldn’t want a creationist on the school board;)
Scientifically, creationism is just freaking dumb. But I suspect the essayist probably didn’t intend to go there.
Yes, Sunfish, I believe he was referring to school curricula.
Paul – George Walker Bush was no conservative (although he sometimes, falsely, claimed to be one).
Actually he was quite open about his statist agenda – no-child-left-behind, the Medicare extention and so on.
Like John McCain – George Bush was simply on the nationalist (Teddy Roosevelt) wing of the Progressive movement – rather than the internationalist (and fully collectivist) Woodrow Wilson wing of the Progressive movement.
Of course in Wilson’s day the assumptions of the universities were ULTRA Prussian State socialism (going much further than Prussia had in practice) and to day these assumptions are Marxism (the word may not be used – but the assumptions built into the study of the social sciences and humanities are clearly Marxist in most universities today).
Richard Ely (of the “Wisconsin Model” – hat tip to the late Murry Rothbard, old articles on the decline of the study of economics in teh United States, and to Jonah Goldberg, “Liberal Facism”, for writing about him) was NOT a Marxist – (he also disliked the traditional elements left in Prussia) but he was certainly no conservative – he was a socialist to the core of his being.
And both Wilson and Teddy Roosevelt followed Richard Ely and men like him – THEY SAID SO.
So if conservatives want a candidate they need to ask some questions.
“What is your opinion of Teddy Roosevelt” being an obvious one.
If the reply is “he was a great Republican” then the person you are dealing with is either totally ignorant or is a statist (either way – one should not support them).
Evolution:
I repeat what Wilson meant by “evolution” is utterly different to what Darwin meant by the term – and it has nothing to do with what Edmund Burke and so on (long before Darwin) meant by the evolving of society.
Woodrow Wilson was an academic – i.e. he used lies and deceptions (conservatives and libertarians should be able to agree that the “noble lie” totalitarian notion of Plato, the first academic, is a bad thing).
Edmund Burke was utterly opposed to the state controlling civil society – indeed he spent his whole life trying to roll this back (in Britain and everywhere else – Ireland, America, Revolutionary France, India……).
Yet Wilson managed to pretend that Burke would have have supported the evolution of the state (a “planned evolution” – which is a contradiction in terms) to control everything.
Still Conservative Creationists.
One should not stop reading and walk away – one should do more than that.
They are WRONG and must be told that they are WRONG.
There is no need for a Conservative Christian to deny biological evolution – i.e. to deny basic science.
The “common sense” philosophers (especially James McCosh) showed this almost one and half CENTURIES ago.
And the ORIGINAL “fundementalists” (the people who set out to fight the socialist take over of religion – to fight the forces of the “social gospel” and “social justice”) were NOT anti biological evolution.
Read what these people (the “fundementalists”) actually wrote in the early 20th century.
Not what a modern “Creationist” would have wanted them to write – but what they actually did write.
Read the “original sources” as a certain good man is fond of saying.
Although, in this, he has NOT followed his own rule.
Paul, can you please name one or two?
Given that this is an essay about the separation of the political classes from other people I think he is merely pointing out how much has changed in terms of conformity. I think this is a point worth making. When the “Origin of Species” was published everyone, by and large, was a Christian. Over the time since, people have become convinced by the theory of evolution even whilst they lived in the midst of a pre-Darwin orthodoxy. That is to say, the truth came out without the aid of government agencies to force it upon people.
As individualists we have to believe that truth will emerge without the aid of governments because the alternative is state mandated truth.
I do not believe in Creationism or Intelligent Design, or in a God, but I do believe that States should not be in charge of determining truth and to that end I am forced to allow people, who I think are fools, to have the freedom to set up institutions that teach what I consider utter bunk. I require only the freedom to set up or send my children to institutions that teach what I consider to be true.
Consider, “Planning”. This is the economic equivalent of creationism. It is without a shadow of doubt a greater danger to people and freedoms than any foolish idea about Adam and Eve, yet it is still the default way of thinking in the majority of western universities.
I don’t care if a Evangelist or Muslim school in Britain taught Creationism or any other foolishness. I only care that the state considers that the unemployability and poor life chances of people who believe foolish nonsense is my fault.
Words to live by.