printIn “America’s Open House,” I said about Tamar Jacoby (among other things) that she “squints at flesh-and-blood Americans; to her, America is a mere proposition, nothing but an idea.” I then demolished her assertion that [cop killer] Quintero’s illegality was irrelevant to his crime. You can read the one-liner that did her in.
Paul Gottfried, a brilliant scholar, once an active participant in American political discourse, wrote to warn me that, “After this insensitive invective against… TJ you’ll no longer be invited to neocon cocktail parties.”
Of course he was pocking fun at my popularity among the official thinking class. However, I missed the subtlety. Despair over politics and culture in this country occasionally (not often) takes a toll on my sense of humor.
The occasion was as good as any to ask him if the burlesque that is American politics doesn’t cause him to despair. Here we are, years after the fact, and the “elites” are only now discussing Iraq as a not-so-swell idea vis-a -vis terrorism, and the Bush administration as the less-than heavenly outfit Fox News said it was. Meantime, the prevalence in national discourse (conducted on cable) of “good looking” illiterates grows (and the book deals these incompetents get), while the demand for truly bright, principled, interesting people diminishes. Does this not cause him to despair?
I received this wise reply: “At my age I have ceased to despair but simply try to keep going. The liberal-neocon media won’t ask our opinions because we’ve been branded extremists, at least by the standards of permissible, sensitive views. All of this belongs to an historical process that neither you nor I can influence any more. Whatever the elites do or do not do is perfectly OK with the PEOPLE, as long as they get social programs, consumer goods, and instruction about what they should believe.”
What we need on cable are good-looking literates!
I tend to agree with Dr. Gottfried. I have no hope for the USA as it is currently constituted (note the little c), in the long run. Meaning the institutions of the state, mainly, but also many parts of the culture. But the long run is very long indeed, and there is much ruin in a nation. Very, very much in a nation as strong as ours.
When will the crash come? Who knows, but I’m not even willing to bet in my lifetime (I’m 41).
When I was younger, I never thought that the “revolution” would happen, or anything as foolish as that. But I did think that the libertarian message was so obvious in contrast to the malfeasance of the state that it would catch on, and that there was hope there. That some sort of real change would come. I no longer think that. I don’t think the common man will be awakened from his TV dream for anything less than a catastrophe.
Meanwhile, I see the function of the libertarian movement mainly as that of the Remnant, an idea I got from Gary North. Real change is impossible in the system as it is now. (I do give money to the IJ, hoping to effect change at the edge, so I’m not completely hopeless about the Constitutional order. But I wouldn’t bet my bottom dollar there.) We can’t hope to ever have a majority. But we can hope to eventually become the default ideology of intellectuals, much as the socialists did. Then when the catastrophe does come, we will be positioned to make real change in the right direction.
Though I don’t generally hang in elite circles, I have had occasional contact with such, and in another life briefly attended an elite prep school. (It was, shall we say, not to my taste.)
My observation on “elites” is that they are made of no special stuff different from the rest of us.
This realization often causes dispair, both among those who wish for a benevolent, paternalistic government and those who would like to believe that a uniquely evil conspiracy is running things. (That notion is perversely comforting, conspiracy is more reassuring than chaos.) Sorry, the closer you get to the top the more you realize that the folks up there are most remarkably like us, just hanging on and trying to make sense of it all.
This was the brilliant insight of the Founding Fathers, who were themselves a fortuitous collection of natural elites. In setting up a reasonably free and prosperous order, you have to work with what you’ve got, not “angels in the form of kings” (Jefferson’s phrase).
I think this has been lost sight of, even among many Classical Liberal/ Libertarians. The original notion that power is dangerous to liberty and securtiy and must be “limited, distributed and balanced” is often misunderstood as “power is dangerous and must be abolished” the Anarchist position, and “concentrated power is dangerous and must be localized”, the small-is-beautiful sentimentalist position.
We yearn for today’s world with a government more intent on the original words of the Constitution.
Yet we also realize that often freedom is traded for today’s security. Did I just see that politicians are now suppressing free speech just before an election?
But it doesn’t follow that the PEOPLE are docile, unthinking followers. We’re all just trying to keep going, as your writer friend says. But all the choices are the same. Most everyone I meet in a fundamental sense understands that now. It’s too late, for now.