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Our Unserious Liberals

by Christopher Chantrill
February 22, 2004 at 3:00 am

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THE HARDEST thing for indispensable people to learn is that they are expendable.

Imagine what our indispensable liberals are thinking.  In four years, the evil Republicans have cut taxes, got us into a war, and demanded accountability from our teachers!  Who do they think they are? 

It turns out that liberals are expendable, and the world is passing them by.

Liberals don’t like it one bit.  They call in to talk radio to rehearse all the wonderful things that bien pensant liberalism has done for us: public education, anti-trust, Social Security, labor unions, civil rights, women’s liberation, Medicare, environmental protection, all done for us.

So, ok, liberals. Thanks for the incandescent moment in 1964 when you harrumphed and got your racist party to pass the great Civil Rights Act that atoned for America’s original sin.   But what about the rest of the story?  How come it all costs so much and delivers so little?  And how come you want still more of our money?

Take John Kerry.  His 100 Days to Change America is a ten point plan that starts with a New National Education Trust Fund, as if we weren’t spending $745 billion each year already on education, and continues with a New Era of National Service as if America didn’t already lead the world in volunteering and community service, an End to the “Era of Ashcroft” as if the demonization of Ashcroft wasn’t all about “Christians Need Not Apply,” a Repeal of the Bush Assault on the Environment as though Bush had rolled back every environmental program of the last 30 years, Rejoin the Community of Nations as though Bush hadn’t put the United States at the head of the table by his bold action against terror and the nations that sponsor it.  And that’s just the first five points.

Then he’ll bring us Affordable Health Care as though the mess in health care wasn’t a direct result of bad Democrat ideas, he’ll Reward Companies that Create Jobs not Phony Corporate Profit as though Democrats ever gave a damn about the health of America’s businesses, Create a Middle Class Economy and End the Privileged Class Economy as though tax cuts for the rich were the drag on the economy rather than the millions of sinecures in government employment, Cut the Deficit in Half in Four Years as if we won’t anyway, and End Influence Peddling and Secret Deals as if Kerry hadn’t been the national poster boy for senatorial influence peddling.

Then there’s John Edwards and his preposterous Two Americas.  Suppose there really were Two Americas in 1900, when the richer you were, the fatter, and the poorer you were, the more hours you worked.  A century later, the poor are fat and the rich are thin; the poor may be poor but they work fewer hours than the rich. Today the real dividing line is cultural, between red states and blue states, between an America that is single, secular, and creative and one that is married, religious, and purposeful. 

Over the last half century, liberals had a pretty good run with our money, and they have The New York Times and the mainstream media to tell them how well they spent it. But Americans wonder why it costs $745 billion a year to give their kids a second rate education.  They wonder why they pay 15 percent of their wages year in and year out for a measly Social Security pension.  They wonder why houses cost so much.  They wonder why their sons are running around in baggy pants that are falling off their hips, and they wonder why their daughters need to show their belly buttons to strangers in the street.

And then they wonder why the top priority of activist liberal judges is to ram gay marriage down their throats.

Above all, they are just so tired of it all.

In 2004, most of the problems America faces are the result of liberals spending other peoples’ money, and doing it badly.  Yet the Democratic base is all riled up because Bush got them into a war that Clinton dodged for eight years.  They are all riled up because Congress passed a law to let government agencies talk to each other about anti-terrorism intelligence.  They are mortified because Bush backed a law to require a teeny bit of accountability for the education establishment.   They are mad as hell because a Supreme Court that liberals cheered for legislating on school busing, school prayer, abortion, and for gay rights, had the insolence to rule against them in a contested presidential election.

I guess there really are two Americas: Serious America, and the other America.

Christopher Chantrill blogs at americanmanifestobook.blogspot.com.

Buy his Road to the Middle Class.

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 TAGS

Faith & Purpose

“When we began first to preach these things, the people appeared as awakened from the sleep of ages—they seemed to see for the first time that they were responsible beings...”
Finke, Stark, The Churching of America, 1776-1990

Mutual Aid

In 1911... at least nine million of the 12 million covered by national insurance were already members of voluntary sick pay schemes. A similar proportion were also eligible for medical care.
Green, Reinventing Civil Society

Education

“We have met with families in which for weeks together, not an article of sustenance but potatoes had been used; yet for every child the hard-earned sum was provided to send them to school.”
E. G. West, Education and the State

Living Under Law

Law being too tenuous to rely upon in [Ulster and the Scottish borderlands], people developed patterns of settling differences by personal fighting and family feuds.
Thomas Sowell, Conquests and Cultures

German Philosophy

The primary thing to keep in mind about German and Russian thought since 1800 is that it takes for granted that the Cartesian, Lockean or Humean scientific and philosophical conception of man and nature... has been shown by indisputable evidence to be inadequate. 
F.S.C. Northrop, The Meeting of East and West

Knowledge

Inquiry does not start unless there is a problem... It is the problem and its characteristics revealed by analysis which guides one first to the relevant facts and then, once the relevant facts are known, to the relevant hypotheses.
F.S.C. Northrop, The Logic of the Sciences and the Humanities

Chappies

“But I saw a man yesterday who knows a fellow who had it from a chappie that said that Urquhart had been dipping himself a bit recklessly off the deep end.”  —Freddy Arbuthnot
Dorothy L. Sayers, Strong Poison

Democratic Capitalism

I mean three systems in one: a predominantly market economy; a polity respectful of the rights of the individual to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; and a system of cultural institutions moved by ideals of liberty and justice for all. In short, three dynamic and converging systems functioning as one: a democratic polity, an economy based on markets and incentives, and a moral-cultural system which is plural and, in the largest sense, liberal.
Michael Novak, The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism

Action

The incentive that impels a man to act is always some uneasiness... But to make a man act [he must have] the expectation that purposeful behavior has the power to remove or at least to alleviate the felt uneasiness.
Ludwig von Mises, Human Action

Churches

[In the] higher Christian churches... they saunter through the liturgy like Mohawks along a string of scaffolding who have long since forgotten their danger. If God were to blast such a service to bits, the congregation would be, I believe, genuinely shocked. But in the low churches you expect it every minute.
Annie Dillard, Holy the Firm

Conversion

“When we received Christ,” Phil added, “all of a sudden we now had a rule book to go by, and when we had problems the preacher was right there to give us the answers.”
James M. Ault, Jr., Spirit and Flesh

Living Law

The recognition and integration of extralegal property rights [in the Homestead Act] was a key element in the United States becoming the most important market economy and producer of capital in the world.
Hernando de Soto, The Mystery of Capital

presented by Christopher Chantrill

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