July 9, 2004
DISTRACTED BY TRIVIA, LIKE THE QUALITY OF THE CULTURE:
The left, at a loss in Kansas (George Will, July 8, 2004, Townhall)
It has come to this: The crux of the political left's complaint about Americans is that they are insufficiently materialistic.For a century, the left has largely failed to enact its agenda for redistributing wealth. What the left has achieved is a rich literature of disappointment, explaining the mystery, as the left sees it, of why most Americans are impervious to the left's appeal.
An interesting addition to this canon is "What's the Matter With Kansas? How Conservatives Won the Heart of America." Its author, Thomas Frank, argues that his native Kansas -- like the nation, only more so -- votes self-destructively, meaning conservatively, because social issues such as abortion distract it from economic self-interest, as the left understands that.
Frank is a formidable controversialist -- imagine Michael Moore with a trained brain and an intellectual conscience. Frank has a coherent theory of contemporary politics and expresses it with a verve born of indignation. His carelessness about facts is mild by contemporary standards, or lack thereof, concerning the ethics of controversy.
He says "the pre-eminent question of our times" is why people misunderstand "their fundamental interests." But Frank ignores this question: Why does the left disparage what everyday people consider their fundamental interests?
How can you worry about 40 million abortions when I want you to demand a higher paycheck and fewer hours? Posted by Orrin Judd at July 9, 2004 1:41 PM
The disconnect runs deeper than that. It is a fundamental inability to believe that people who do not think and act the way you do are intelligent and rational human beings. It is this inability that leads to the chage of elitism and to the conservative perception of liberal arrogance.
It is not a new or temporary feature of liberal thought. Kantian ethics to the contrary not withstanding, Plato's Myth of the cave and the ideal of the Philosopher King are its first embodiment. Rousseau, in his Social Contract, says that if men do not want to be free they will be forced to be free. (Samuel Johnson said: "Rousseau, sir, is a very bad man. A badder man has not been transported from the Old Bailey in many years.") And in the 20th Century Lennin called the idea the vanguard of the working class.
Now we have Michael Moore running aroud Europe, telling everybody that: "They are possibly the dumbest people on the planet . . . in thrall to conniving, thieving smug [pieces of the human anatomy]," and "We Americans suffer from an enforced ignorance. We don't know about anything that's happening outside our country. Our stupidity is embarrassing." and Barbara Eherenreich tells us that Moore is not elitist.
Moore is an elitist. Eherenreich is an elitist. And so is Frank. Liberalism is, and has been for the last 2500 years an elitist theory. Deal with it.
Posted by: Robert Schwartz at July 9, 2004 2:46 PMRegardless of abortion, just because he says Kansans are voting against their economic interests does not make it so.
The history of leftist policies resulting in economic improvement is even shorter than valid Creationist arguments against Evolution. (is there an emoticon for tongue in cheek?)
Posted by: Jeff Guinn at July 10, 2004 7:01 AMRobert:
Michael Moore is too stupid to be an elitist. He is a huckster, and probably can't even spell Marseille. And of course all the French (who probably can't spell Lubbock) are in the same boat - it cuts both ways.
Posted by: jim hamlen at July 11, 2004 11:46 AM