Ask almost anyone on the left -- not a liberal, but a leftist like Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi -- which society they consider more desirable, a society in which all its members were equally lower middle class or one in which some were poor, most were middle class, and some were rich (i.e., America today). And whatever they say, in their hearts, the further left they are the more they would prefer the egalitarian society.Putting aside the circular argument here, I think that we're getting tripped up by terminology. Ask any liberal or any leftist, and they'd say that they prefer a prosperous, broadly middle-class society. I've never run across a poverty fetish amongst those left of center. But I don't think this sentiment separates the right and the left--indeed, I suspect that it's one of the similarities. Most of my conservative/libertarian friends make the argument that reducing government will make people self-reliant and that they will work harder, and thus will everyone's prosperity rise. There's a kernel of truth to this, though I think it's more wrong than it's right. But my sense has always been that conservatives' sentiment is that they want everybody to be rich, as John McCain said last year. Fundamentally, if there's a difference here between the left and right I do not see it.
Ultimately, the goals of liberals and conservatives aren't really that different. It's the methods that differ. I'm more of a historian than anything else, and when I look at the society created by the New Deal and the Great Society, and the society created by the libertarian haven that existed before 1932, I know which one I'd prefer to live in. But what interests me more is that Prager is so befuddled and ignorant he's defending the worst aspects of his system as though they're the best, and the ones worth saving. It would be like me saying, "Ain't liberalism great? You get this really powerful government that has all this power that's often wielded by clueless representatives with so much money they never lose, and these yokels can make all these personal decisions for you?" Admittedly, personal freedom must be maximized as much as possible, but the reason why one is a liberal is not that one wants more power for the government, so much as it's that it's far, far more scary for that power to be in the hands of unaccountable, rich robber-barons who can do whatever they want (laissez-faire, bitches!) and nobody can do anything about it. I think that the most powerful insight of social democracy is that the alternative to government power is private power, and that being ruled by imperfect though accountable representatives is generally better than being ruled by rich people you've never heard of. This doesn't mean propping the rich against a wall somewhere and having them shot, it just means being cognizant of these concentrations of power, joined with the realization of the power that self-interest and class-interest play in the public sphere, and trying to ensure that they don't become too concentrated. I think it's especially important in America because of a business culture that seems to be returning to the robber-baron mentality, at least at a corporate level. I don't favor abolishing business, but we have to be careful because they'll steal the store if we don't pay attention. Like they just did...
Here's more good stuff:
[V]irtually every totalitarian regime in the 20th century was left-wing.That's just untrue. Nazi Germany, Franconian Spain and Mussolini's Italy were not socialist, despite a little bit of naming convention. And it was the left-wing that most fiercely opposed these folks, in those countries as well as in the rest of the West. Lots of conservatives would prefer to gush about Churchill instead of Roosevelt because Churchill was conservative, but it was the British Labour Party that was the biggest opponent of appeasement and fascism, while the Tories (save Churchill) generally dithered. Admittedly Communism happened, and it was awful, but it was socialist Old Europe that was the first line of defense against them, and let's not forget all the brutally repressive right-wing regimes that we installed around the globe, such as Suharto in Indonesia, Pinochet in Argentina, and Mobutu in the Congo, to name just a few of the most repugnant. The inevitable conclusion is that there were plenty of totalitarian regimes of different persuasions, and that has little to do with anything. But I guess the work of Jonah Goldberg is just enough to make this point stick for Prager. Shame.
But I think this is my favorite sentence:
The left imposes its values on others whenever possible and to the extent possible.Noted without comment. Of course, the value Prager is talking about seems to be an aversion to harmful consumption, with a defense of spanking tossed in:
Therefore, the morally superior [left] have the right, indeed the duty, to impose their values on the rest of us: what light bulbs we use, what cars we drive, what we may ask a prospective employee, how we may discipline our children, and, of course, how much of our earnings we may keep.And whether we can have lead in our damn gasoline! Oh, wait, that was the Reagan Administration, who decided that we should take it out. Sensibly, they decided that having tons of lead in the air we breathe wasn't a good idea. With respect to lightbulbs and cars--only the latter of which seem to have been regulated recently--one comes up with one of the most irritating aspects of modern conservatism, which is an almost insane hyperindividualism that seems to mainly manifest itself in denying any limits upon consumption. Of course, it doesn't matter that we import much more energy than any other country, or that our private debt is astronomical, in essence that our way of life is unsustainable. No limits! AMERICA! Of course, conservatives pay lip service to energy reform, but from Reagan onward they don't do anything about it, and tend to mock anyone who would deem to criticize the more ridiculous aspects of the American way of life. Then again, I suppose that getting oil company money has much to do with that.
Is this what the right has come to? Merely a defense of excessive consumption habits hailed as some sort of virtue? Ugh.
