THE PRIMACY OF CULTURE :

Good Culture Requires Good People (Jimmy Cantrell, Texas Mercury)

There are many people who believe "good" economics produces good culture. They argue that if only we adjust the economic system to near-perfection, then the best possible culture should follow, regardless of the specific people or peoples who inhabit the nation. It is true that if you believe socialist economics are good you likely will be pleased with the cultural results of a socialist system. Socialist economies, and that includes any Welfare State, produce masses of citizens who rely on Government for virtually everything. Socialist art and socialist scholarship, like socialist medicine, will appeal to the dumbed-down masses demanding their MTV right now, but they set no worthwhile standards of excellence. In fact, the dumbed-down masses--Mencken's boob-oisie--addicted to the leveling socialist sugar tit will inevitably squeal that the excellent, those beyond the ordinary and average, are harming the society and must be forced to work with the group at group level and must develop greater humility. A socialist economy produces groupthink and inevitable mediocrity in all endeavors--except in many cases the manufacture of warring tools.

The problem is, many libertarians also apparently believe a good economic structure will produce good culture: they assume that, if we can but get the many socialistic government regulations of the economy overturned, the result will be a burgeoning of good culture. Bad economics helps produce bad culture, and bad culture helps produce and maintain bad economics. But while good culture produces good (certainly better) economics, good economics does not produce good culture. In fact, if a group of people living in a country with a good (largely or totally free from Government regulation and intrusion) economic system are culturally bad and have political power, they will pervert the economic system and the system of limited government. That is true because culture, which is implanted in the marrow as well as in early learning from family, drives all people, and the basic culture that defines them does not evaporate simply because they happen to be placed in a country with limited government and consequently with a free economic system.

Mr. Cantrell here manages to discuss the problem presented by immigration to the West of groups of people from non-Western (even anti-Western) cultures without resorting to any of the demonization that mars the European nativist, nationalist Right. The important corollary of his argument is that if we reinvigorate our own culture and work harder to assimilate immigrants there's no reason that they can't become good citizens, no matter where they're from. This is very different than the European view of race and culture as a function of blood and soil. It is one of the things that makes America quite distinct from the nations of Europe and offers reason to hope that we can avert the ugly future that awaits them. Posted by Orrin Judd at May 9, 2002 8:58 AM