In which I attempt to explain my politics, in the form of a letter to my children.
Dearly beloved:
I have tried to resist the temptation to hit you over the head with my political beliefs, and have hoped to let you develop your own opinions about the world. But a man ought to explain his politics to his children at some point in his life, and this seems like as good a time as any to write mine down, in the hopes that maybe someday you will read this. I am a conservative, and I am not (in the modern sense of the word) a liberal. (When I use the term "liberal" in these thoughts, I do not mean to speak pejoratively of everyone who holds left-of-center political opinions. My ire is primarily directed against liberals in places of power: politicians, journalists, and intellectuals. I have many good friends who are Democrats. We don't talk about politics.) There are many reasons why I am a conservative. This letter explains some of them.
One reason is because of something that happened to me when I was 18.
During my Senior Year of High School, I was ambivalent about politics, confused enough by the left wing propaganda which had been spouted down upon me from my instructors that I hadn't bothered to vote in the Presidential Election of 1984, the first election in which I had been old enough to cast a ballot. Yes, it's true, to my everlasting shame, I missed out on my one and only chance to vote for Ronald Reagan, the man who won the Cold War. What's that Simon and Garfunkle song about the camera? "When I think of all the crap I learned in High School, dee-dee-doo-bee-do-be-do, it's a wonder I can think at aaaaallll." Reagan, it turned out, didn't need my support, winning re-election 49 States to 1, in what was obviously a very different Country than we have today. I had, you must understand, been taught to fear that re-electing Ronald Reagan would lead to a worldwide nuclear holocaust and the end of all life as we know it, just as you are taught that electing a Republican President will lead to a global warming holocaust that will cause the end of all life as we know it.
This is an important point, so let me pause in my narrative to make this digression. If you find yourself speaking to someone who presents himself as either Al Gore or THE SAVIOR OF ALL HUMANITY (and those terms can be used interchangeably), who wants you to live in constant fear and convince you that you must ACT to AVERT the GREAT CRISIS of your time by giving your money (in the form of money) and your freedom (in the form of both money and power, but mostly money) to THE RIGHT THINKING PEOPLE IN THE GOVERNMENT, or in other words by voting for Democrats, you are, by definition, speaking to a modern liberal. The great CRISIS, which requires that the government be given more power, you will find, is always changing. In my life there's been the imminent worldwide famine crisis, which would be created by the imminent overpopulation crisis (which we could only avert by losing all of our religious beliefs, subsidizing abortion, and buying Paul Ehrlich books), the imminent worldwide gas and energy shortage (which we could only avert by allowing Jimmy Carter to tell us how fast to drive), the imminent lack of landfill space, the imminent invasion of the Ford Pinto (against which only Ralph Nader could protect us), the imminent arrival of nuclear winter, the imminent arrival of a heterosexual AIDS epidemic (which we could only avert by teaching Kindergarteners about the evils of abstinence education), the imminent death of all children due to allegedly skyrocketing handgun deaths among minors, the imminent arrival of killer bees, the imminent arrival of genetically modified high fructose corn syrup, etc., all of which could only be averted if we voted against Republicans. And now, of course, your generation has been bequeathed the mother of all CRISES, the CRISIS OF CRISES, the CRISIS which will, in your lifetimes, give liberal politicians their raison d'etre: the imminent arrival of global cooling/global warming/climate change, which can only be averted by (1) large and irrevocable transfers of power and wealth to the Democratic party, (2) transferring all of America's manufacturing and oil drilling capability to our economic competitors in other parts of the world, (3) shutting down economically efficient coal-burning energy production facilities, in favor of far more expensive and less efficient "Green Energy" power plants, thereby impoverishing, through sky-high energy bills, anyone who lives in a place that requires air-conditioning in the summer or heat in the winter; (4) "stimulus" spending in the form of government transfers of money to fly-by-night "Green Energy" businesses who happen to be top Obama campaign contributors, (5) the establishment of a liberal one-party State, like they have in Mexico and California, (6) providing Sandra Fluke and Bill Clinton with free birth control for the rest of their natural lives, and, finally, (7) the revocation of all Constitutional provisions which might prevent items (1) through (6). Oh how I pity you. End of first digression.
A few months after that missed election, the summer after I graduated, I had the chance to go to Europe with my parents. One day during our travels we got on a bus in West Berlin and passed through Checkpoint Charlie, to go from one side of the Berlin Wall to the other, and tour the worker's paradise of communist East Berlin. While parked at Checkpoint Charlie, a large East German woman in a military uniform (who appeared very much as every James Bond film I had ever seen had conditioned me to assume a large East German woman in a military uniform should appear) got on the bus and looked through all of our baggage to ensure we were not bringing any "contraband" into East Berlin. Contraband would include western newspapers, books, or magazines. Apparently, in East Berlin, you weren't allowed to read any material which might not be approved by the government. We toured through East Berlin, a city from which no one could escape into West Berlin without finding a way through the Wall which kept them all imprisoned. Where West Berlin had been a thriving and busy metropolis, there seemed to be few people on the streets of East Berlin, and fewer cars, which didn't look very well made. I didn't know anything about economics at the time. I'd never heard of the book Wealth and Poverty or the names Milton Friedman and F.A Hayek, but it seemed pretty clear to me from a few hours looking out the Bus window onto East Berlin, after a morning in the busy western part of the City, that this socialism thing led to pretty drab architecture and no one apparently having any reason to be outdoors. We toured some very nice museums with artifacts from ancient Babylon, and ate at a cafe that was allowed to take West German money. We then got back on the bus and went back through Checkpoint Charlie into West Berlin.
Here's where I thought things got interesting. Before leaving, we were given a brochure that discussed how wonderful life was in East Germany. The government guaranteed, this brochure said, that everyone had a job, free health care, guaranteed food, etc. No one, the brochure said, had anything to worry about in The German Democratic Republic. That phrase about not having anything to worry about is what has always stuck in the back of my mind. I remember my father making a caustic remark that what he loved about America was that he did have so much to worry about. I felt like I'd just been given a brochure for Satan's plan in the premortal existence: no freedom, no worries. The obvious question that was not answered, or even addressed, by the brochure was, if life in East Germany was so good, then why did the people have to be walled off from the Western world to prevent their escape, as though they were in prison (where, it might be noted, the inmates are also guaranteed free food and health care)? But what really interested me, and left a lasting impression on my 18 year old brain, was this: as we crossed back through Checkpoint Charlie, no one from West Berlin got on the bus to take the brochure away from us, as illicit "contraband." In the West, for all its problems, there was freedom of thought, even freedom to read about ideas that were directed at destroying, fomenting revolution in, and destroying, the West. Ever since that day I have gotten a little bit nervous when some politician promises me freedom from worry or some free government benefit, in exchange for my vote. I fear such security comes with a Wall. Also, I have ever since that day had an adverse reaction to the word "free" especially when spoken by a government official or a would-be government official. I don't buy it. I think of the word "free" spoken by a politician the way Inigo Montoya thinks of Vizzini's use of the word "inconceivable": "You keep on using that word, I do not think it means what you think it means." And so, that day, something clicked in me, which eventually made me a conservative, and not a liberal. I'm sure I didn't put the idea into those words exactly at that point, but something lodged in my brain and festered to produce the conservative I later became.
This is also when I began to doubt the mental capacity of socialists. I had to wonder: Is the government of this nation really so stupid as to not understand the impression that is made by going through this exercise, of making sure we don't have any western literature with us to smuggle into the East, but then giving us Eastern literature no one will take away from us on the other side of the wall? Are they really so stupid that they do not understand that that experience is going to leave a much longer-lasting impression on us than what's written in their silly brochure? Yes. Apparently. Socialists really are just that stupid. And therefore should not be allowed to govern.
(There being, thanks to the President my High School Government and U.S. History teachers dissuaded me from voting for, no more Berlin Wall to drive through today, it is now much more difficult to experience a similar youthful epiphany. Nevertheless, reading the "Grand Inquisitor" chapter of the Brothers Karamazov, or comparing the current economic conditions of majority-Democrat California and majority-Republican Texas during any given year can lead you down essentially the same path.)
But there are many other reasons why I'm a conservative: my own personal pushback against a news and entertainment media whose unfairness annoys me to no end (if we had a truly objective press in this Country, half my motivation for voting would disappear); my belief that, where tensions exist between liberty and equality, liberty is the more important value; my respect for the rule of law as opposed to the rule of raw political power; and perhaps as important as any: my love for the writings of Thomas Sowell, one of my favorite political writers of all time. For my money, Thomas Sowell's best book is A Conflict of Visions.
In this book, Sowell tries to explain why the same people always seem to be on the same side of various ideological divides over issues which seemingly have nothing in common. What does gun control, for example, have to do with the proper role of the judiciary, and why can you often predict how someone will come down on one of these issues, based on their position on the other? According to Sowell, there are competing views ("visions") held by different people in society, about the underlying facts of human nature, and the human condition. These underlying visions determine people's reactions to a variety of issues, which seemingly have no commonality, and allow us to predict their political preferences.
Conservatives, argues Sowell, have a constrained and pessimistic view of humanity and its potential in this mortal sphere (the "tragic vision"). They recognize that scarcity exists such that no political or economic choice can be exercised in a vacuum, but that all choices require a trade-off. They see human beings as selfish, greedy, and aggressive, and likely to respond only to incentives which personally benefit themselves. This mindset produces certain political responses. Conservatives are skeptical of the idea that giving power to government will allow that government to create a better and more utopian society, fearing instead that (i) the human beings who are given such power will inevitably abuse it, based on the inherent evil of human nature, and (ii) utopia is not possible on this earth in any event, such that attempts to forcibly move society in an allegedly utopian direction will lead to unintended adverse consequences. (You want more equality, then get ready to take away individual rights.) Conservatives also have a constrained view of the amount of knowledge that one human being, or small group of human beings, can have to make decisions for an entire society. They therefore believe that power should be diffused, for example through individual decisions taking place throughout the market, rather than concentrated in the hands of a small number of persons trying to direct a command economy. Similarly, a small group of judges are more likely to get things wrong than a large group of people making democratic decisions, such that a Judge's role should be limited to deciding particular cases and controversies within the parameters of laws established democratically based on objective criteria that will apply as uniformly as possible, rather than making sweeping societal changes from the bench.
This view of human nature also leads conservatives to be wary of innovation, no not technological innovation, we like our iPhones just fine, but innovation in fundamental societal institutions, such as the family, or the meaning of marriage. Again, the idea here is to trust in the wisdom of the many, as represented by the hard-won wisdom of generations past, rather than the innovative ideas of some vanguard few. A perfect example of this "constrained" or "tragic vision" is found in this quote from historian Will Durant, as quoted by Sowell: "Out of every hundred new ideas ninety-nine or more will probably be inferior to the traditional responses which they propose to replace. No one man, however brilliant or well-informed, can come in one lifetime to such fullness of understanding as to safely judge and dismiss the customs or institutions of his society, for those are the wisdom of generations after centuries of experiment in the laboratory of history."
Liberals, argues Sowell, have a more optimistic and expansive vision of human nature and the human condition (the "vision of the anointed"). Thus, for example, a classic liberal response to war prevention is to argue for unilateral disarmament, in the optimistic view that a nation's enemies will respond in kind if only all the goodhearted people of the world will start the ball rolling. The thought that military weakness might provoke an enemy is much more likely to occur to a person with a tragic vision of human nature than with the more optimistic vision of a liberal. What's more, the liberal believes that one human being, or small group of persons, if expert in a particular field, may be able to make sweeping decisions for an entire society, which will benefit that society, since, under this expansive view of human nature, it is possible for one individual or a small group of individuals (the anointed experts) to be sufficiently wise and expert enough to make such decisions, if only given enough power to do so, with potentially beneficent consequences, and little likelihood of unintended adverse consequences. The liberal tendency to discount tradition is therefore perfectly in keeping with the liberal tendency to approve of an activist judiciary overturning democratically created laws. In both cases, it is the wisdom of the few, expert and anointed, that is being favored over the wisdom of the many. In lieu of Durant's view on the wisdom of tradition, liberals are moved by the words of the serpent in George Bernard Shaw's play Back to Methuselah which Robert Kennedy made his catchphrase: "Some men see things as they are and say, 'Why'? I dream of things that never were and say, 'Why not'?"
Just recently, while watching the PBS Newshour, I heard two opposing views of how to bring down healthcare costs which was a microcosm of these two worldviews: one conservative expert (whose name I don't remember) arguing for the need to deregulate the field and allow market competitive forces to bring down costs, with the liberal expert (the New York Times' Paul Krugman, who really should have auditioned for Grima Wormtongue in Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings films) decrying the conservative faith in the "magic" of the markets and arguing for the need for an expert panel to be appointed to oversee certain health care determinations. That the "magic" of the market had beaten the command economies of the 20th century every time did not keep Krugman from a disdainful liberal sneer at anyone who would trust the diffuse economic decisions made through the market.
This leads me to my second digression, on the nature of the "disdainful liberal sneer." The disdainful sneer is, of course, the fallback position of every liberal who does not want to bother to articulate a coherent response to a conservative position. Liberals are not to be blamed for needing this fallback position. Because 98.7% of High School Government and History teachers, University professors, journalists, and the reigning elite of the news and entertainment media are all liberal, it is possible (without even trying) to live one's entire life without ever being exposed to a conservative idea as actually articulated by a conservative, rather than as caricatured and straw-manned by a liberal. (See, for example, The Righteous Mind, by Jonathan Haidt, in which he expresses his astonishment, as a well educated adult, when he, for the first time, picked up a book of conservative philosphy and discovered that there were actually coherent ideas in there.) It would, by contrast, be impossible for a conservative to live his or her entire life without ever being exposed to a liberal idea, because those ideas are so pervasive in the culture that surrounds us. Thus, conservatives, of necessity, are required to think through and learn to articulate a defense for their political beliefs, which liberals are simply never required to learn how to do (like squirrels who live near a well-travelled national park trail, and thus never learn to forage).
Because of this, when a liberal is actually confronted with a conservative who is capable of articulating their positions in a manner which does not conform to the caricature, the liberal (having no training for such an event) is incapable of responding, and will at first, albeit momentarily, look on with disbelief, and then resort to the disdainful sneer. A perfect example of this may be found by reviewing the 2012 Presidential Debates. Both Mitt Romney and Barack Obama are extremely intelligent human beings, and if they had both taken the other's ideas seriously enough to form a response, the first debate might have led to some enlightening discussion. But, clearly, only one of the candidates had felt the need to bother to do this. Therefore, in the first debate, which everyone on all sides of the political aisle unanimously agreed was a clear Romney victory, Obama started to get this sort of stunned look on his face, as though he could not believe that an actual human being had shown up to debate him, and that this human being bore no resemblance to the cartoon character which Obama's palace guard in the press had spent the past several months creating. Watching the subsequent debates on television, it was immediately clear that team Biden and Obama had spent at least as much of their preparation time practicing their sneers and guffaws as they had memorizing dishonest talking points.
Every generation of liberals is given a charismatic spokesperson or two who teaches liberals that they do not need to be able to articulate any basis for their political philosophy, if they simply know the right moment to sneer. For your generation, this role is being filled, quite well and admirably, by Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert. But they are only the latest in a long line of such elite tutors to the liberal masses. C.S. Lewis described their schtick perfectly decades before they were born, in the Screwtape Letters, in which his Satanic character Screwtape explained the Stewart/Colbert sneer as follows: "But flippancy is [from the devil's point of view] the best [form of humour] of all. In the first place it is very economical. Only a clever human can make a real Joke about virtue, or indeed about anything else; any of them can be trained to talk as if virtue were funny. Among flippant people the Joke is always assumed to have been made. No one actually makes it; but every serious subect is discussed in a manner which implies that they have already found a ridiculous side to it. If prolonged, the habit of Flippancy bulds up around a man the finest armour-plating against [God] that I know, and it is quite free from the dangers [as Satan would see them] inherent in the other sources of laughter. It is a thousand miles away from joy: it deadens, instead of sharpening, the intellect; and it excites no affection between those who practice it." Id. End of digression.
The American Revolution was led by people who believed in the tragic vision. The Federalist Papers are full of pessimistic comments about human nature, the human condition, and the potential abuses of concentrated power. Shortly after winning the Revolutionary War, our founders, realizing they needed a more powerful central government than that provided under the Articles of Confederation, nevertheless placed systemic separations of power within that stronger government which would prevent too much power from being concentrated into too few hands, and which would, it was hoped, harness human nature's natural selfishness into checks and balances against any one branch of government growing too strong (as the holders of one branch of government would selfishly fight against encroachments by the other). Our founders also created a free market economic system which allowed economic decisions to be diffused broadly across society, rather than a command economy controlled by anointed elites.
The French Revolution was, by contrast, pursued by those with a vision of the anointed. As Sowell points out, Condorcet, one of the architects of the French Revolution, criticized America's Constitution, because its checks and balances would prevent the government from obtaining enough power to do what it needed to do to remake society. (Condorcet may have had a change of heart shortly before he died in jail as a political prisoner of the more powerful kind of government the French revolutionaries espoused, but we'll never know.) The communist revolutions of the 20th century were also based on an expansionist vision of the anointed, as Stalin, Pol Pot, and others, took up the power necessary to remake their respective societies into new Utopias, in the process killing millions of their own citizens and affirming that the tragic vision of human nature, while less appealing than the vision of the anointed, has the advantage of actually being accurate.
I just finished another Sowell book.
Intellectuals and Society is Sowell's attempt, in one volume, to trace how the liberal vision of the anointed, taken up by the intelligentsia and reigning supreme in academia, journalism, the media, and the courts, has adversely influenced virtually all aspects of 20th Century American life, from military policy to family structure and everything in between. It is a 416 page wail of protest against some of the stupider ideas that impacted the last 100 years of our history. It is not, in my opinion, as good a book as
A Conflict of Visions, if you prefer depth to breadth, but if you are only going to read one Sowell book, and want a basic overview of his main theories and their application to various political and historical events of Sowell's lifetime, this is the book to read. It will be, I fear, endlessly applicable to the 21st Century in which you, my children, will live.
So here then, is my political philosophy:
The rule of law not of men.
Hobbes and Locke not Rousseau and Robespierre.
The American revolution not the French.
The Minutemen not the Jacobins.
Adam Smith not Karl Marx.
The invisible hand not the supervision of the elites.
Free markets not command economies.
Checks, balances and separation of powers not unfettered bureaucratic power.
The text of the Constitution not the political opinions of the judiciary.
Liberty not dictatorship.
Equal opportunities, not equalized outcomes.
Rights defined as what the government cannot do to you, not rights defined as what the government must give to you.
The dispersion of economic and political power not its concentration.
Reverence for the divine not the political cult of personality.
A government wealthy and powerful enough to protect against foreign enemies and domestic criminals, provide a physical and legal infrastructure for free market economic activity, and protect against business monopolies and externalities, but not powerful enough to attempt utopia.
Family structures that put the needs of children, not the wants of adults, first.
Education which teaches children knowledge and how to think, not ideology and what to think.
The promotion of greater personal responsibility, not the celebration of increasing personal license.
Your Dad,
November 2012
