I
offer this earlier blog of Deneen as proof that the solution to a truly-human political and economic society
cannot come from the abstract ideologies of capitalism and/or socialism, but
from the rise of the working person, and that this cannot come except by an
identification with Jesus Christ, the worker.
William
Galston has written an important
column in the Wall Street Journal, devoted to an
assessment of Tyler Cowen’s new book, Average Is Over.
The book tells of a coming(?) nation of two economic classes, the meritocratic
elite and an increasingly poor, even third-world economic class of
underemployed who gather in large ghetto areas (e.g., Texas) with poor public
services but plentiful distractions (think: internet porn, 24/7/365 football,
and soon-to-be legalized marijuana delivered by e-joints).
Aficionados
of science fiction know that Kurt Vonnegut predicted this world already in
1952, with the publication of his first novel, Player Piano. There
he describes with chilling accuracy this world ever-more coming into view—one
divided between a meritocratic class with all the right degrees (even the
secretaries will have Ph.D.s in a credential-inflated future) and the
“Reeks-and-Wrecks,” who a visiting dignitary from the Middle East insists on
calling “Takaru”—”slaves.”
We
should be unsurprised, as Galston seems to be—shocked, shocked!—that this world
comes ever more clearly into view. Indeed, as domestic policy advisor for
President Clinton, Galston assisted in the expansion of this social and
economic arrangement, participating in one of the most libertarian
administrations the world has ever seen. According to Cowen, “technology” is
displacing middle-class workers into either a shrinking class of “winners” or a
growing class of “losers,” but assuredly, part of that “technology” is a regime
of free-trade agreements and a host of other government incentives that have
supported the infrastructure of globalization and worker replacement.
This
inconvenient fact makes Galston’s closing paragraph a real
howler: “Whether by accident or design, Mr. Cowen’s book represents a
fundamental challenge. To government-hating, market-worshiping conservatives,
it poses a question: If this is the consequence of your creed, are you prepared
to endorse it? To liberals and progressives: What are you going to do about it?
And to all of us: Is this a country you would want to live in?”
It is
altogether risible that Galston, or anyone, thinks there is any significant
difference between Republicans and Democrats in this regard. One need only look
at the widening chasm of income inequality under Obama who—as a candidate
running for his first presidential primary—dispatched
Austan Goolsbee to Canada directly after pretending to be a
populist for rust belt voters in the 2008 Michigan primary, to assure the
Canadians that he would do nothing to touch NAFTA.
The
fact is that this project was readily discernible to the likes of Vonnegut in
1952 and Michael Young (author of The Rise of the
Meritocracy) in 1958, and national and international elites have
been busy constructing this world ever since, regardless of political label.
The Right laments the decline of “family values” as it supports economic
policies that support this arrangement (even as it has garnered votes from
those displaced by an increasingly rapacious economy, attracted to its message
of traditional values. Notably, many of these voters simply
stayed homeduring the last election, rightly perceiving that neither
of the major candidate was in their corner.). The Left laments the income gap,
and proposes various forms of social welfare that will cushion the blow, all
the while even more enthusiastically constructing the meritocratic society and
populating government and leading thinkeries with Ivy League “winners.” These
button-down hipsters increasingly accumulate in a select number of urban
echo-chambers described most recently byCharles Murray, where
they lament the rise of a growing underclass while sipping $7 lattes. These
social policies are purportedly to be supported by a tax base of theoretical
future citizens that are not being born,
a logical outcome of an aggressively expanding and government-subsidized sexual
revolution, contracepting, gay marriage, and abortion culture advanced by the
very same Left.
I would
add two additional observations to Galston’s justified worry about the future
of the Republic. First, it has never failed to strike me that it is
libertarians (perhaps of a certain stripe) that advance an “inevitability”
thesis. Cowen, according to Galston, argues that “resistance is futile.”
There’s
nothing we can do, says Mr. Cowen, to avert a future in which 10% to 15% of
Americans enjoy fantastically wealthy and interesting lives while the rest slog
along without hope of a better life, tranquilized by free Internet and canned
beans.
This
echoes similar arguments, advanced by libertarian Lee Silver in his bookRemaking Eden,
that a post-humanist future of biotechnologically enhanced humanoid creatures
will come to pass, whether we wish it or not. Similarly, he predicts a future
not only of two classes, but of two races: unenhanced humans
who become a servant class to their enhanced overlords, and increasingly
“perfected” humans who, as their mastery of human biology becomes ever-more
complete, even begin to entertain the notion that the God that was once
imagined by the underclass is none other than the creature staring back at them
in the mirror.
Thus, a
philosophy that places in the forefront a theory of human liberty arrives at
the conclusion that certain historical, technological, and economic forces are
inevitable, and it is futile to resist them. One might bother to ask the Amish
if this is true, but they didn’t go to Harvard. Clearly, they don’t value human
freedom, since they are not on the historical merry-go-round to inevitable
human liberty—and degradation.
The
second point worth asking is whether, in some deeper way, this increasingly
discernible “future” is in any way related to current government and civic
dysfunction. We are, of course, all prone to explain contemporary debates in
terms of electoral strategy and personality dysfunction. But if, in fact, we
are in the midst of a re-definition of the basic nature of the American
polity—from a republic to a banana republic—then we should not be surprised to
witness some inevitable political disruptions, dislocations, and even wild and
undisciplined opposition to the unfolding arrangement. While the Tea Party
receives unending scorn from the chattering classes, forgotten in the mist of
time (well, in the course of only five years) is that the anger of this
uprising was fomented by the not-unsubstantiated suspicion that there was a
deep collusion between government and economic elites in the nation (and
beyond) that existed to assure that their growing take would be sustained by
policies and even government fiat. This fact, often hidden from plain view by
political coverage worthy of ESPN, was exposed in 2008 to ordinary Americans
who “played by the rules,” and suddenly plainly saw that their betters had
brought their casino to the brink of catastrophe but that access to the levers
of power and wealth assured a soft landing, while ordinary citizens were
increasingly stripped naked and exposed in a ravaged landscape.
Five
years later, with economic disparities growing and social mobility shrinking,
the elites regard these voices as unwashed rubes, while cheering for the brief
but wholly confined movement of “Occupy Wall Street” that succeeded in—nothing.
The Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street have been wholly
shorn of a language and tradition by which they could properly protest the
current arrangements. Such a tradition would be found in democratic populism,
stressing decentralized politicaland economic arrangements in which
policies and national priorities are first and foremost oriented toward the
dignity of self-government, not get-rich-quick schemes in which the winners win
and the losers move to Texas. But instead we debate whether government or
corporations are to blame, while our betters increase their take and enjoy the
show.
Lost
amid all the discussion of Pope Francis’s many recent statements is the
following remark that he offered in the interview with Eugenio Scalfari in La
Republicca:
Personally
I think so-called unrestrained liberalism only makes the strong stronger and
the weak weaker and excludes the most excluded. We need great freedom, no
discrimination, no demagoguery and a lot of love. We need rules of conduct and
also, if necessary, direct intervention from the state to correct the more
intolerable inequalities.
“Liberals”
may celebrate the Pope as a liberal, but he is a deep critic of liberalism in
its bipartisan form, a set of arrangements by which the State supports the
growing strength of the strong and bribery of the weak, in the form of social
welfare that poorly substitutes for care of the community, and unceasing
entertainment.
Galston
is correct to raise alarm bells about this “inevitable” future. But there is
currently no major figure in the public sphere that sees with any clarity the
deep collusion of the all key players in its construction. So we continue down
a road that will give rise to two nations, the winners wringing their hands all
the way to the bank, the losers narcotized on a steady diet of cheap and
deforming delights.
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