Why I Am Not a Liberal

8/14/2019 Why I Am Not a Liberal

1/18

Why I Am Not a

LiberalA Political Discussion betweenConservative Sally Morem and Liberal

Virrudh

After 520-some posts responding to a wonderfully acerbic Ann Coultercolumn at Townhall.com some months ago, I ran into a series of posts by a

liberal with the handle virrudh in which he really vented his spleen againstconservatives and conservative ideals. I took the opportunity (handed to meon the proverbial silver platter and served up with the proverbial silverspoon) to respond. As I did so, Townhall.com readers and participantslearned many reasons why I am not a liberal. Ill republish this discussionhere, with minor corrections of spelling and grammar.

We begin with virrudh in italics and continue with my responses in plaintext.I also include outtakes and quotes from other sources to make my pointsmore pointed. These are highlighted in boldface. Virrudh begins thefreewheeling discussion of all things American thusly:

And maybe that is because we are spoiled. We have not had to go through so

much that other countries struggle with on a continuing basis, and so we

can indulge ourselves with nitpicking.

And the problem is? Why DONT we have to go through the problemsother countries struggle with? Is there something special about America andAmericans? Something that has permitted us for generations to build up the

kind of wealth and power that other empires could only dream of?

Or is it because we Americans are merely lucky. God protects drunks, foolsand the United States of America. That sort of Bismarkian snide derisioncombined (oddly enough) with frank admiration by European monarchs andintellectuals. (After youve read all my posts in response to virrudh, youdecide whether were special or lucky.)

Page 1


2/18

But I will state very clearly that I do not apologize for being a liberal even

though there are many things that liberals (and others) do that pain me orinfuriate me.

What are those things? Showing disrespect to those who deserve respect?Showing ingratitude toward what we should be grateful for? Lying throughtheir [liberal] teeth about their opponents actions and motivations?Attempting at every turn to shout down or criminalize conservative speech?Treasonaiding truly vile and vicious enemies of the United States whiletrashing America? Anything else about what liberals do that infuriates you?Anything else you want to get off your chest?

I am tired of having people who believe that the earth began less than

10,000 years ago making pronouncements about our educational system.

Do your really think Creationists control our school boards across America?Really?

And these same people taking it upon themselves to decide who is a

Christian or not.

Christians have been doing that since Christianity was invented. Payattention.

And then telling us who should have civil rights and who shouldn't. The

amazing gall, when you think about it.

Christians have been doing that since civil rights were invented. Payattention.

I do not believe that we should make laws because they have a nice fit with

what the Bible says, even though I have been a dedicated life long Christian

Which laws have a nice fit with the Bible? Ones against murder or stealing?They fit. Of course our laws against combining church and state dont fit sowell. Perhaps youre referring to those notorious American laws on sacrificethat mandate slaughtering an unblemished lamb at the temple on Holy Days.Or perhaps those other notorious American laws against worshipping golden

calves. Does Virrudh REALLY think weve become such a theocracy?

Page 2


3/18

* * * *

And then he discusses geopolitics:

Then along came the European Union. Its predecessors, of course, havebeen around for 50 years now, but it was only fairly recently that the EU

itself has been gaining some real power. And that (presumably) was thebeginning of the U.S. being demoted to just another country on the other

side of the ocean.

In actuality, that is an exaggeration. The Europeans know they need us when

push comes to shove, but we have not yet admitted that we need them too or

have ever bothered to find out what was going on over there unless it is

some Muslim riot that we are thrilled to hear about. But as our dollarcontinues to weaken and their Euro continues to strengthen that may change

too.

This is the same European Union that could only stand by helplessly as theold Yugoslavia tore itself up and engaged in Hitlerian ethnic cleansing.The EU was born helpless. And it remains so. No state (and the EU isattempting in its bumbling way to become a state) can exist without masteryand use of the most lethal force necessary to ensure domestic tranquility

and provide for the common defense.

As a result of 60 years of American protection against the predations of theSoviet Union and now Islamofascist terrorists, Europeans are in the situationdescribed so well by Robert Kaganthey live in their (presumed) pacifist

paradise (minus the Balkans), while America remains in the Hobbesianworld of war. As long as this remains the case, and I see no indication thatthe Europeans are facing up to their situation and doing something about it,the EU will remain what it has been: an American protectorate, with as littlereal world power as that phrase indicates.

Here is an outtake from that essay quoted in boldface:

...Europeans have stepped out of the Hobbesian world of anarchy into

the Kantian world of perpetual peace...In fact, the United states solved

the Kantian paradox for the Europeans. Kant had argued that the only

Page 3


4/18

solution to the immoral horrors of the Hobbesian world was the

creation of a world government.

... By providing security from outside, the United States rendered it

unnecessary for Europe's supranational government to provide it.

Europeans did not need power to achieve peace, and they do not need

power to preserve it [due to unseen US power operating outside of

Europe].

Those European leaders and intellectuals with a semblance of knowledgeand rationality know all of the above. How else do you explain theirdecades-long, even centuries-long, obsession with America? They knowthat America matters in the world and to the worldand they dont.

The hostility didn't come (that I noticed) until the beginning of the Iraqi war.It hurts when your allies don't like you. It hurts even more when you start

not liking your own country yourself.

Now why do you suppose Europeans would care at all about what we did inIraq? With the noble exception of Great Britain, the Europeans have onlysent token forces or stayed out entirely. I dont believe the furious ventingof anti-Americanism recently is due to our efforts in Iraq. I believe its anexcuse. And that its been going on a lot longer than virrudh noticed. Also,Id question seriously if any of these anti-American activists are actually

anything near allies of ours. At least I hope they arent.

There are a number of sites addressing the problem of anti-Americanism.Check out for yourself. Learn the truth of what I say from the horsesmouth. Here are outtakes from two such sites:

During anti-war demonstrations in Britain left-wing marchers have

unashamedly waved banners defending known terrorists, shouted abuse

at American tourists and British pro-American supporters and

described George Bush in terms usually reserved for serial killers.Banners decrying the attacks of 9/11 were nowhere to be seen. When

Daniel Pearl was murdered there was no outcry from the left in Britain.

Instead, leftist and liberal commentators concentrated their critical

faculties on the treatment of Al Qaeda and Taliban prisoners at

Guantanamo.

Page 4


5/18

http://hnn.us/articles/9091.html

Since September 11, 2001, the attitudes of Europeans toward the United

States have grown increasingly more negative. For many in Europe, the

terrorist attack on New York City was seen as evidence of how

American behavior elicits hostilityand how it would be up to

Americans to repent and change their ways. In this revealing look at the

deep divide that has emerged, Russell A. Berman explores the various

dimensions of contemporary European anti-Americanism. The author

shows how, as the process of postcold war European unification has

progressed, anti-Americanism has proven to be a useful ideology for the

definition of a new European identity. He examines this emerging

identity and shows how it has led Europeans to a position hostile to any

"regime change" by the United Statesno matter how bad the regime

may bewhether in Serbia, Afghanistan, or Iraq.

http://www.hooverpress.org/productdetails.cfm?PC=1043

And then theres some downright strange wingnuts in positions of realpower:

Her theory? It seems the U.S. had to do something to weaken the

influence of the pope, who was an outspoken opponent of the war in

Iraq. Vollmer finds it all very suspicious that after the war, "Poland was

made a top occupying power in Iraq, naturally to weaken the pope'shinterland. Or how then, of all times, the campaign against the Catholic

Church and the pedophilia was started, which was, of course, totally

justified, but at this point in time was definitely a tit-for-tat response."

Vollmer found it somehow strange that the US presidents traveled to the

Vatican despite the "tough power struggles."

http://www.spiegel.de/international/0,1518,350763,00.html

Like a good conspiracy theorist, she doesn't point fingers directly, but lets

her comments hang in the air so that others can piece together the message.In essence, with her bizarre ramblings she was saying that the US tried toundercut John Paul II's political influence in Poland by giving hiscountrymen an important role in occupying Iraq and instigating a pedophilescandal against the church as a sort of smear campaign against the Catholicleader.

Page 5
http://hnn.us/articles/9091.htmlhttp://www.hooverpress.org/productdetails.cfm?PC=1043http://www.spiegel.de/international/0,1518,350763,00.htmlhttp://hnn.us/articles/9091.htmlhttp://www.hooverpress.org/productdetails.cfm?PC=1043http://www.spiegel.de/international/0,1518,350763,00.html


6/18

Clearly, Europeans have their own issuesthe resurgence of anti-Semitism,a deep-seated (well-earned) fear of rising radical Islam, and an equally deep-seated inferiority complex in response to the growing power of its Americandaughter. Wishing these problems away by calling for Americanappeasement of Islamofascism solves nothing. Instead, it very well maylead to our doom.

* * * * *

And then, virrudh cuts to the core of the differences between conservativesand liberals

Big government is not an evil concept for me.

It is an evil concept for me. It means:

1. Its $2.5 trillion budget means that the Federal Government is doing waytoo many things, things that state governments, or local governments, or

private enterprise, or individuals should be doingor no one should bedoing.

2. If the Federal Government stuck to its knitting, doing the things that itand only it can do and really needs to do, it would be able to specialize inthose things, concentrating on them in such a manner that it would soon

learn how to do them superbly. Instead, it spreads its energy and spends itmicromanaging every aspect of our lives. And does so VERY BADLY.

3. By so doing, it deprives us of our individual freedom at every turnthefreedom to create, to invent, to succeed, and yes, to fail.

4. And by so doing, it deprives us of the full blessings of a trulydecentralized, self-organized system of distributed intelligence as described

by Fredrich Hayek.

I have been to too many places where people would give their souls for agovernment

Which is precisely what they would have to do, metaphorically speaking, ofcourse.

Page 6


7/18

that could and would give them clean air and water, build highways for

them, make transportation safer, could pay their public servants a living

wage so that bribery would not have to be a way of life, so that half theirchildren would not die before they reach the age of five, so that their

children could go to school, so that there was some semblance of

infrastructure within their society that would actually help their societysurvive.

All of these good things are developed and built only by wealthy societies.You cant have a clean environment without wealth. Ask any citizen of aThird World nationor a former Communist nation. You cant buildhighways and the rest of a nations infrastructure without wealth. You cant

pay government employees without wealth. You cant buy your children ahappy, healthy, carefree childhood without wealth. You cant build, supply,

and staff excellent schools without wealth. It may be necessary for local,state, or Federal government to do some of this work, but they cant do anyof it without a robust national economy to finance it.

The creation of wealth by necessity precedes spending by government.Wealth is not hand-me-downs from a kind and compassionate government toits client-citizens. It is the creation of a free and inventive andknowledgeable people. Wealth bubbles up. It doesnt flow down. And

people who are blessed with growing abundance always, Always, ALWAYSlive in and participate in free enterprise systems. Those are the only systems

that can manage scarce commodities and skills efficiently and make themgrow, not to mention managing the immense dataflow of large HayekianExtended Orders.

Government CAN NEVER create wealth. It can only spend it. Wealth cantbe mandated into existence by law. It cant spring forth from the businessend of a gun. Why? Because government by dire necessity is a societysenforcement arm. It retains a monopoly over the most lethal forms of

physical force. As such, it cant create; only confiscate, normally in the

form of taxes, sometimes in the form of eminent domain.

Statists seem to believe that government can create wealth. They are in errorthe most fundamental error of liberalism. This is one of the mostimportant reasons I am not a liberal. The assumption that government andonly government can build and maintain civilization is what Hayek called

Page 7


8/18

the Fatal Conceit. It attributes to government the kind of power and insightno government has ever had or could ever hope to have.

In the Broadway musical, Camelot, King Arthur woos his soon-to-be wife,Guinevere by singing the title song about happy-ever-afterings. The mostamusing line to this Minnesotan was And theres a legal limit to the snowhere in Camelot. We know that the character King Arthur didnt really

believe that. He was trying to charm Guinevere with his wit. But there arelarge numbers of liberals who do believe that sort of thing. What else canexplain the absurd belief that human activity can cause climate change andthat government mandates can stop it? This line in Camelot stands as the

purest statement Ive ever read or heard anywhere of the sloppysentimentalism of statism.

The establishment of individual freedom as Americas core principle is farmore kind and caring than statism can ever hope to be because it is inessence a bow to Reality, an acknowledgement by those who would lead usand those who follow that everyone can know something, do something, saysomething, think something that is of great importance at some time. Thefact that we can never be sure which insight will turn out to be important inthe fullness of time requires us to be open to innovation from anyone at anytime. This openness to the insights of everyone is as different from statismas a thing can be. It explains our love of individual freedom.

I thank God for those things.

I dont. I thank the American people who had the wisdom over thegenerations to let it alonethe most direct English translation of thatnotorious French phrase, laissez faire. As a result, millions of people byfreely interacting produce those things.

And I beg Him to help me not be so angry with people who shout "it is everyman for himself; that is what makes us strong." ROT. It is community that

makes us strong. And it is community that gives us humanity. No man is an

island, and no man is meant to be an island.

Every man (and woman and child) IS an islandto the following extent: Weare limited by our own perception and our own experiences. We can onlylive in our own bodies and minds. We dont do Vulcan mind-melding.However, we islands are part of an enormous archipelagoof socialintercourse with our fellow islands, er, humans. We can tap into others

Page 8


9/18

insights indirectly and engage with them through spoken and writtenlanguage. Community is not a gaseous abstraction; it is individualislanders in aggregate. As we participate in Hayekian Extended Orders,vast catalytic chains of exchange permitting huge numbers of people tofreely cooperate in all areas of life, we create, often without meaning to,extraordinarily complex and utile social structures.

I am tired of having a whole group of people think that the US is better off

with the rich getting filthy rich and the poor getting poorer, with the help ofthe lowest minimum wage in the western world and an absolutely niggardly

attitude about helping the poor and needy. In case you haven't discovered

this members of the upper management in big companies take care ofthemselves first, the stockholders second, and the worker last (if they keep

him at all). And these are the guys you are so busy protecting!!! Let's build

yet another Wal-Mart. Forget the benefits. We wouldn't want that stock totake a dip. And we would certainly be embarrassed if one of our most prized

companies wasn't led by a multi-billionaire. Amazing!

We assume that if a human system exists, some one specific human being orgroup of humans must have deliberately designed it, and by so doing,deliberately left in any weaknesses or immorality we perceive. Perhaps themythic Lawgivera Moses or Hammurabi. Perhaps a scientista Galileoor Newton. Perhaps a captain of industrya Carnegie or Gates. This ismanifestly falsea wrong assumption on all levels. These people did createtheir own specific part of systems we now enjoyjurisprudence, modernscience, capitalism. But they did not create these systems qua systems.They participated in their creation as each of us does. We are misled by ourin-built prejudices inherited from hundreds of generations of hunter-gathererancestors who by necessity lived very close, intense, communal lives intothinking thats how human societies work today. Statism is our naturaldefault position when we attempt such erroneous explanations of verycomplex human systems and institutions.

Religion inherited the same default position. It tends to attribute statistcharacteristics to their god(s) and by extension, religious dogmas andstructural characteristics of religions. Theology may mislead us; experiencemust be our guide.

There is simply no way any human can know what tens of millions of peopleknow in an Extended Order or monitor what all the many and varied things

Page 9


10/18

those people do. We ignore the existence of Extended Orders and theirtendency to catalyze unanticipated consequences at our peril. So, when we

blithely take the statist default position, we naturally assume that whateversystems evil people deliberately foster, much more kind, compassionateand caring people (socialists, government bureaucrats) can fix. The historyof the 20th century stands as witness to the horror that results when power-hungry ideologists play with human lives, driven by their earnest belief inDear Leader, the Party, or the Internationalein a word, statism.

Here are some key words and some sites that explore the concept of self-organizing systems of growing complexity, the ones Hayek and von Misesdescribed so ably.

Friedrich Hayek

Ludwig von MisesLeonard ReadExtended OrderSpontaneous orderGrowing complexityDistributed intelligence

NetworksFeedback loopsAutocatalysisChaos Theory

Complexity TheoryFree marketsWealth

Once you develop a feel for self-organization, youll find it everywhereAND you will, at least partially, free yourself from that statist bias that lieswithin all of us.

* * * * *

Virrudh begins to show his liberal cultural snobbery:

Page 10


11/18

I am tired of having to go search for people who have actually been to a fine

arts museum, a symphony, or an opera.

Apparently, you need a new set of friends. Americans are far moresophisticated culturally than given credit for by snobbish Europeans anddisdainful American Leftists. Check these outtakes:

The U.S. now has 125 professional opera companies, 60 percent of them

launched since 1970, according to the trade group OPERA America.

The U.S. has more opera companies than Germany and nearly twice as

many as Italy. In the most comprehensive recent study, the National

Endowment for the Arts found that between 1982 and 2002, total

attendance at live opera performances grew 46 percent.

Annual admissions are now estimated at 20 million, roughly the sameattendance as NFL football games (22 million, including playoffs, in

200607). In part, this reflects a shift toward seeing opera domestically.

Foreign opera destinations like Salzburg and Glyndebourne are more

expensive, and more Americans are staying homeand probably feeling

safer for it, says Richard Gaddes, general director of the Santa Fe

Opera in New Mexico.

http://www.american.com/archive/2007/july-august-magazine-contents/america2019s-opera-boom

With almost endless choice of music at ones fingertips, one may well

wonder about the audience that remains for live music in America

today. Among adults, 41% said that they attended a live musical

performance within the past 12 months. This finding is drawn from a

study completed by Leo J. Shapiro & Associates this July, with 450

adults interviewed by telephone in a nationally representative sample of

U.S. households. The study finds that increasing electronic accessibility

to music of ones choice has not done away with desire to hear music

performed live. Most Americans are taking time out to hear musicperformances often paying admission substantially higher than the cost

of hearing that music on disk or tape. Nearly one-third of American

adults 30% have attended a popular music concert in the past 12

months and 27% have attended a performance of classical music,

including 22% a symphony concert, 9% a chamber music concert, and

6% an opera performance.

Page 11
http://www.american.com/archive/2007/july-august-magazine-contents/america2019s-opera-boomhttp://www.american.com/archive/2007/july-august-magazine-contents/america2019s-opera-boomhttp://www.american.com/archive/2007/july-august-magazine-contents/america2019s-opera-boomhttp://www.american.com/archive/2007/july-august-magazine-contents/america2019s-opera-boom


12/18

The audience for live music is substantially greater than attendance at

major league baseball games. In the past 12 months, 19% of adults

attended a major league baseball game, compared to 27% attending a

classical music performance, and 30% a pop concert. Nearly one-third

of adults (32%) say they have attended a theatre performance of either

a play or musical in the past 12 months. This exceeds the 27%

attending a performance of classical music, and the 30% of adults

attending a pop concert, but is below the combined live musical

audience of 41%.

While popular and classical music performances are often considered to

be worlds apart, the popular and classical musical audiences overlap.

More than half of adults who have attended a pop concert in the past

year have also attended a classical music performance (51%).Conversely, 58% of adults attending a classical music concert in the past

year have also attended a pop concert.

http://www.ljs.com/Americas%20Live%20Music%20Audience%20(8-3-05).htm

Ive not been able to find comparably comprehensive overall figures forAmerican attendance at art museums. But, I did note a survey made in the

Nineties showing 40 % of American adults claiming they visited an artmuseum in the previous year. Even if many were actually lying to the

pollsters, this would still indicate tens of millions of Americans hadattended.

I am sick to death of being surrounded by a whole bunch of mean little gnatswho believe that the poor are poor only because they are lazy, too stupid to

make good choices, and/or drug addled and if we must punish the kids fortheir parents' sins, too bad.

The poor arent poor only because theyre lazy, stupid, or drug-addled oreven largely because of those attributes. They are poor because they werelured and trapped into those Great Societys programs from which there isno escape:

As we survey the plight of these unfortunates, we are usually unaware of

the role we have played in creating their poverty. For example, we fail to

Page 12
http://www.ljs.com/Americas%20Live%20Music%20Audience%20(8-3-05).htmhttp://www.ljs.com/Americas%20Live%20Music%20Audience%20(8-3-05).htmhttp://www.ljs.com/Americas%20Live%20Music%20Audience%20(8-3-05).htmhttp://www.ljs.com/Americas%20Live%20Music%20Audience%20(8-3-05).htm


13/18

notice that when minimum wages go up in a particular region of the

country, welfare payments increase to the newly unemployed. Without

such awareness, we repeat our mistake of using aggression as we try to

help the destitute. As a result, we used the aggression of taxation to

support a massive "War on Poverty."

Two "wrongs" don't make a "right." Welfare, which is charity by

aggression, ensnares the poor in a never ending cycle known as the

poverty trap.

In the 1970s, welfare payments and other forms of aid available to poor

families (e.g., food stamps, medical care, etc.) increased to such an

extent that total benefits exceeded the median income of the average

U.S. family! In 1975, working heads of households needed to make

$20,000 to give their families benefits equivalent to what they could haveon welfare. Only 25% of U.S. families earned this much!3 In 1979, the

median family income was $1,500 less than the potential welfare benefits

for a family of the same size.

In the 1970s, two working parents had to make more than the minimum

wage to match what they would receive on the dole. (4) A young working

couple with children might find that their net income after child-care

costs would be less than what they could receive on welfare. In these

circumstances, accepting aid instead of working would seem like the

smart thing to do.

Opting out of the work force at a young age has grave consequences

later on, however. While a working person might start out with less than

those on aid, experience would eventually result in raises and a higher

standard of living. On welfare, however, little progress is made over

time. Since most welfare benefits can be used only for food, medical

care, and shelter, saving is almost impossible. When their working

contemporaries are ready to buy their first house, those on welfare are

still unable to afford a car.

The attraction of the short-term gain encourages many individuals to

choose poverty for life. One study estimated that one-sixth of aid

Page 13


14/18

recipients could have worked but chose leisure and the other benefits of

being supported by tax dollars instead. (5) An elaborate study involving

almost 9,000 people documented the deleterious results of a guaranteed

income. One group of subjects, who served as controls, received no

benefits. An experimental group was told everyone would be given

enough money to bring total individual income to a specified target

amount. Those in the experimental group who worked would receive

less money than those who didn't, so everyone would have the same

income for three consecutive years.

http://www.ruwart.com/Healing/chap11.html

James Nuechterlein, editor of the religious periodical, First Things, wrotean essay on one of his favorite philosophers: Edward C. Banfield. After

reading his scouring critique of the Great Society, The Unheavenly City,published in 1970, Nuechterlein gave up his wishy-washy moderate viewsand became a true-believing conservative. The Great Society is the posterchild for disastrous unintended consequences, the kind that happen whenyou dont account for what people really do when offered financial supportwith nothing given in exchange, as opposed to what you hope they do. Afteryou read what Banfield said about the Sixties welfare state, you may well

join Nuechterlein in his conservatism.

The really sad thing is that the welfare state is much worse now:

The Unheavenly City could not have gone more radically against the

grain of the conventional wisdom on the causes and cures of the

intertwined issues of race, poverty, and civil unrest. In the wake of the

Detroit riot, the Presidents National Advisory Commission on Civil

Disorders (the Kerner Commission) blamed the continuing outbursts on

"white racism." Banfield did not, of course, deny the existence or

malign influence of racial prejudice, but he insisted that the

fundamental cause of black poverty was based more in class culture

than in skin color. It was important to distinguish, he said, between thehistoricaland the continuingcauses of black disadvantage.

Banfield marshaled a vast array of evidence to show that for most

blacks, conditions of life had improved across the board. But there

remained, especially in the central cities of the nation, a significant

minority whom progress had passed by. The problems within the black

Page 14
http://www.ruwart.com/Healing/chap11.htmlhttp://www.ruwart.com/Healing/chap11.html


15/18

underclass (as it later came to be called) relating to crime,

unemployment, poverty, and education stemmed less, Banfield said,

from external discrimination or indifference than from a dysfunctional

way of life endemic among lower-class people everywhere.

He cited an earlier sociological study ofwhite lower-class behavior-A. B.

HollingsheadsElmtowns Youth (1949)-to demonstrate his point.

Banfield quoted Hollingshead at length to show that the behavior

attributed ("more or less correctly") to lower-class whites-disrespect for

law, disregard of the future, laziness, promiscuous sex, indifference to

education-and the disapproval of that behavior by the larger society had

obvious correlates with the current situation of the black underclass and

of attitudes toward it. The culprit in the situation was culture, not race,

and cultural patterns of behavior were notoriously resistant to change

through public policy. Improvement was possible, Banfield argued-especially through general economic expansion-but it could only be

incremental and would mostly have to come from inside the black

community itself.

The response to The Unheavenly City by liberals was instant and

unforgiving: Banfield was "blaming the victim." For those who were

persuaded that the essential, even the sole, black problem was white

prejudice-and that that prejudice was so pervasive and over whelming

in its effects as to leave poor blacks helpless to succeed in America so

long as it persisted-reference to behavior patterns in the black

community was but a diversion and an evasion. Racism was the

problem, its elimination from the white psyche the only solution. In the

meantime, amelioration would come for blacks only from "massive"

government programs of aid and support that might to some degree

circumvent the all-devouring prejudice that doomed reliance on private

initiatives, white or black, to inevitable failure.

The liberal response could not have surprised Banfield. Indeed, he had

anticipated it. Among the causes of urban discontent, he said, wasprecisely the altruistic bias of middle-class opinion leaders, seized by the

urge to "do something, do good." But, Banfield insisted, we cannot solve

fundamental social problems simply by exertions of social will. It was

unfortunate, he thought, that the old urban political machines had been

supplanted by liberal caucuses. The smoke-filled room had been

superseded by the talk-filled room, and too much of that talk consisted

Page 15


16/18

of unappeasable righteous indignation. The "moral shrillness" of liberal

opinion, caught up in fantasies of transformations in the "hearts and

minds of men," had weakened the consensual bonds of society-had,

indeed, invited the urban outbursts that liberals now used to assault the

nations conscience.

Banfields conclusion was mordant: Faith in the perfectibility of man

and confidence that good intentions together with strenuous exertions will

hasten his progress onward and upward lead to bold programs that

promise to do what no one knows how to do and what perhaps cannot be

done, and therefore end in frustration, loss of mutual respect and trust,

anger, and even coercion."

As this passage indicates, Banfields conservatism was rooted in a

refusal of sentimentality and a resolute anti-utopianism. Having readhim, I simply knewthat he had urban policy right and the Kerner

Commission had it wrong. He saw people and situations as they were,

not as, were the world a different place than it is, they might be. Edward

Banfield taught me (more precisely he reminded me) that the wisest

social policy-and yes, the most compassionate-begins in an utter disdain

for illusions. To do good we must be undeceived.

http://www.firstthings.com/article.php3?id_article=3245

* * * * *

Page 16
http://www.firstthings.com/article.php3?id_article=3245http://www.firstthings.com/article.php3?id_article=3245


17/18

And then virrudh harshly critiques some conservatives style of politicaldiscourse:

I am sick to death of the lack of intelligence and wit and originality of the

types who come up with descriptions like libtards, dumbbuttcrabs,

dimmocrats, hitlary. I mean, really. The first time it is written is bad enough,but then it gets repeated over and over and over by people who apparently

think it's a cool thing to say. I feel as though I have walked into an

unsupervised room full of junior high boys trying to outgross each other.

Why do you feel that this open hostility is so necessary?

Pure frustration. For most people, thats the only way to express their purefrustration at elites who dont have a clue as to the needs and desires of

ordinary Americans. They may not have the political philosophicalbackground to express and explain what they believe is wrong, so they enterthe land of expletive deleted.

This also explains why Rush is so popular. Its not, Oh finally, I now knowwhat to think about political issues. Its more like, Oh finally, someonessaying what Ive thought forYEARS, and better than I could say it. Whichwas exactly my reaction to Rush and precisely why I am not a liberal.

Page 17


18/18

Sources

Heres the link to the original column and the resulting discussion thread:

http://www.townhall.com/columnists/AnnCoulter/2007/08/08/absolutely_fabulist?page=full&comments=true#1b5eed76-8773-4070-b06c-e8377dc5dffd

Check out Robert Kagans original essay, Of Paradise and Power, which was laterturned into a book. Heres the link:

http://www.vinod.com/blog/Books/OfParadiseandPower.html

Here is information on Kagans book:

http://www.amazon.com/Paradise-Power-America-Europe-World/dp/1400040930

Page 18
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/AnnCoulter/2007/08/08/absolutely_fabulist?page=full&comments=true#1b5eed76-8773-4070-b06c-e8377dc5dffdhttp://www.townhall.com/columnists/AnnCoulter/2007/08/08/absolutely_fabulist?page=full&comments=true#1b5eed76-8773-4070-b06c-e8377dc5dffdhttp://www.vinod.com/blog/Books/OfParadiseandPower.htmlhttp://www.amazon.com/Paradise-Power-America-Europe-World/dp/1400040930http://www.townhall.com/columnists/AnnCoulter/2007/08/08/absolutely_fabulist?page=full&comments=true#1b5eed76-8773-4070-b06c-e8377dc5dffdhttp://www.townhall.com/columnists/AnnCoulter/2007/08/08/absolutely_fabulist?page=full&comments=true#1b5eed76-8773-4070-b06c-e8377dc5dffdhttp://www.vinod.com/blog/Books/OfParadiseandPower.htmlhttp://www.amazon.com/Paradise-Power-America-Europe-World/dp/1400040930

Documents

Why I Am Not a Liberal