Our Unserious Liberals

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 www.roadtothemiddleclass.com. His Road to the Middle Class is forthcoming.

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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

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

China and Christianity

At first, we thought [the power of the West] was because you had more powerful guns than we had. Then we thought it was because you had the best political system. Next we focused on your economic system. But in the past twenty years, we have realized that the heart of your culture is your religion: Christianity.
David Aikman, Jesus in Beijing

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

Civil Society

“Civil Society”—a complex welter of intermediate institutions, including businesses, voluntary associations, educational institutions, clubs, unions, media, charities, and churches—builds, in turn, on the family, the primary instrument by which people are socialized into their culture and given the skills that allow them to live in broader society and through which the values and knowledge of that society are transmitted across the generations.
Francis Fukuyama, Trust

Class War

In England there were always two sharply opposed middle classes, the academic middle class and the commercial middle class. In the nineteenth century, the academic middle class won the battle for power and status... Then came the triumph of Margaret Thatcher... The academics lost their power and prestige and... have been gloomy ever since.
Freeman Dyson, “The Scientist as Rebel”

Conservatism

Conservatism is the philosophy of society. Its ethic is fraternity and its characteristic is authority — the non-coercive social persuasion which operates in a family or a community. It says ‘we should...’.
Danny Kruger, On Fraternity

Conservatism's Holy Grail

What distinguishes true Conservatism from the rest, and from the Blair project, is the belief in more personal freedom and more market freedom, along with less state intervention... The true Third Way is the Holy Grail of Tory politics today - compassion and community without compulsion.
Minette Marrin, The Daily Telegraph

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

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

Drang nach Osten

There was nothing new about the Frankish drive to the east... [let] us recall that the continuance of their rule depended upon regular, successful, predatory warfare.
Richard Fletcher, The Barbarian Conversion

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

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