The thought plagues me. Are the American people so unwitting that they are willing to let into power a cultural entity so inimical to human flourishing? Is this “wisdom”, as in the “wisdom of the American people”? The congery is nothing but a patronizing and trite slapstick mouthed by grasping aspirants of power and worth about as much.
Democracy, after all, is just a game of voting and counting them up. As in a game of baseball (when the coaches and players aren’t kneeling), there are runs (votes) and a total score. The outcome is a matter of math, not “wisdom”. The result only becomes “wisdom” if it validates the presence of a benign culture from which sprang the result. But as a pundit from long ago would say, this ain’t your grandmother’s culture.
Something happened along the way. This is not a culture infused any longer with the beatitudes, the Genesis and Exodus stories, The Passion Play, the recognition of human failing in the presence of original sin, and the founders. Instead, the vacuum is filled with state-love and its cult of the “expert”, smothering group identities, obsessive hand-wringing over innumerable inequalities, and a rejection of personal accountability and self-reliance.
In other words, we have a mess. The mess has been foisted on us by our “betters”, all of whom are networked by a common social experience, an experience much at odds with realities for the bulk of the population. Many had middle class, suburban upbringings – the only mundane aspect of their backgrounds – and attended elite universities. Church might have had some relevance in their early years but it’s hardly detectable now. The corporate boardroom isn’t that much different from the faculty lounge in resumé and belief.
Church attendance in the broader society is way down, and we are starting to see Bibles burnt in the public square and the desecration of churches and statues of saints. The fundamental premises of these actions are increasingly found in the Democratic Party. Christianity will only have a role if it serves the Party’s post-truth doctrines. Daily, you can watch Nancy Pelosi mangle the Bible’s persistent refrain for PERSONAL involvement in the lives of the needy into a command for a near-socialistic nanny state. That way, she and the rest of us can wash our hands of them by turning them over to civil service-protected, unionized public employees. It’s shameful.
The rise of socialism is key to the Party’s corruption. They protest – Elizabeth Warren, “I am a capitalist” – but the charge is unavoidable. If not now, when can we call them socialists? When does their claim to be capitalists give way to the reality of their socialism? Is it a difference of opinion over the choice of the verbs “own” and “control” between “power” and “property” in the definition, as in “government power to own/control property”? At a certain point, it’s difference without a difference. They propose such an immense expansion of government controls in The Green New Deal, Medicare for All, and increased taxes (they say on the “rich”) that a deed becomes a meaningless piece of paper.
This is where we are heading if today’s Socialist Revolutionary Party, aka Democratic Party, is rewarded with victory in November. For many of you, it’s what you will vote for, knowingly and unknowingly, and what you’ll get. Your exclamations about Trump’s language and behavior can’t hide the fact of Bernie/AOC’s platform as scripture for policy-making. Some hate Trump so much that they are willing to sacrifice your children’s future. Elites won’t be affected because they will be still guaranteed legacy admissions into Harvard, not your kids.
The decline in you and your children’s fortunes is a certainty since socialism doesn’t work. A foul-mouthed executive can still function successfully, but socialism can’t, even if it is headed by Mother Teresa. Turning loose the rewards of unproductivity while increasing the penalties for productivity is not a prescription for national well-being.
The polls are troubling enough to keep me awake at night, particularly one about majorities of both parties favoring a “radical restructuring of the American economy”. I know, I know, the phrasing is so broad that it entices people to check it. Regardless, a thinking person would have to ask, who will do the restructuring? We don’t have a “structured” economy. Ours is one of spontaneous associations, also called freedom, also called a free market.
“Structured” economies have central planning, i.e., someone to structure them – like Gosplan in the USSR. Therein lies the rub: no small group of people can manage an economy, and it will have to be small since large groups undermine “planning”. It’s through planning that things are “structured”. The result is a Havana society of the largest open-air museum of classic 50’s automobiles and crumbling apartment buildings.
So, go ahead, hate Trump for his indelicate language and tweets and vote the socialist wolves into the American hen house. You’ll set back your children’s prospects for decades.
RogerG