print“Faking It” was a gem of a book published in 1999, if I am not mistaken. Its thesis was that ours is a society whose every facet is permeated with phony sentimentality, and with the elevation in every sphere of “feeling, image and spontaneity,” over “reason, reality and restraint.” The fraud and the poseur have the run of our institutions and cultural products!
And, as was evident from the 2012 Democratic National Convention that has finally ended, things have only gotten worse.
Granted, the Republicans might be “the drag queens of politics,” and should not be trusted until they repent, in earnest and in action.
It goes without saying, moreover, that the men and women who took to the podium at the RNC did not talk Austrian economics. They did, however, mix it up with economist Milton Friedman, so to speak.
In other words, Republican representatives—irrespective of their invariable and inevitable political treachery—do still evince some intellectual familiarity with the natural principles of the economic order, something that was utterly absent from the sensibilities expressed by the repulsive Democrats, decamping from Charlotte tonight.
In the introduction to F.A. Hayek’s “The Road to Serfdom,” Friedman put his finger on the backdrop to the growth of collectivism: “The argument for collectivism is simple if false; it is an immediate emotional argument. The argument for individualism is subtle and sophisticated; it is an indirect rational argument.”
Of course the NPR-cited Fact Checker found no errors of fact in Michelle Obama’s endless emoting. How can emotions be graded for factual content? There were no facts that mattered in the First Lady’s remarks!
In well-functioning people, the intellect is not separated from the affect (i.e. the emotional). They are integrated. When people are rational, they observe reality as it is, and are more likely to be concerned with justice and avoid misplacing compassion.
What we witnessed at the 2012 DNC was a mud-slide of sentimentality, unmoored from reason or reality, and backed by the might of voracious electoral majorities.
UPDATE: Apologies to readers on Facebook who said I got too wordy. My fault. I had to “medicate” to watch BHO and the other offal. I will get back to my solitary glass of wine a day now that the orgy is over.