Submitted by: Mike Spindell, guest blogger
Some comments in the ongoing debate regarding the candidacy of Elizabeth Warren got me to thinking about our political system and people’s reactions to it. Warren is criticized by the Right for obvious reasons, given her strong stances on managing the economy and controlling the excesses of the Corporate Culture. In a sense she offends their sense of political purity, but then that is but a given because she is a Democrat. We have seen though on the Right that such conservative stalwarts as Richard Lugar have gone down to primary defeat because he failed the Tea Parties test of what a “true” conservative should be. Richard Lugar failed the “purity” test even though his conservative history is impeccable. In my conception political purity conforms to “party line” thinking, punishing those that fail to adhere in all respects to the standards of a given faction’s concept of standards their candidates must adhere to in order to retain enthusiastic support. I use “faction”, rather than “party”, because our two party political system actually represents an amalgam of various factions imperfectly coalescing under the rubric of a “Political Party”.
From a Left, or even Centrist perspective, there has been both amusement and trepidation about how the “Tea Party” faction has exerted control over the Republican Party. Then too, there is the same reaction to the power exerted by Fundamentalist Christians, a group that at some points overlaps with the “Tea Party”. A human trait is to see the foibles of groups we define as “other”, while being oblivious to the idiosyncrasies of the groups we are aligned with. Liberals, Progressives, Radicals and even Leftist Centrists like to believe that they are immune from the turmoil that they see in their Right Wing opposites, yet the “Left” and even the “Center” also routinely define people in terms of litmus tests of political purity. This was highlighted by certain comments on the Warren thread where people who were seemingly in tune with her domestic policy views, disliked her positions on the Middle East and appeared to hold them against her. This has definitely been true with many progressives and/or civil libertarians in viewing this current Administration. My purpose here is not one of castigation for anyone’s perspective; rather I’m interested in exploring the phenomenon of the belief that political figures need to meet all of our expectations in their positions, or be unworthy of our support. My own perspective is that tests of political purity are self defeating because it is impossible for any particular political figure to be in perfect agreement with all that any of us individually believe and politics becomes oppression without the ability to negotiate. The process of real negotiation requires compromise. What follows is why I believe that is true. Before my discussion though, I think a definition of perspectives would be helpful. There are some of us, including myself to a certain degree, who believe that we are living under a corporate oligarchy and as such the common pretense that our national fate is in the hands of the majority’s vote, is but pleasant mythology. I wrote about this in my guest blog Published 1, March 17, 2012: http://jonathanturley.org/2012/03/17/a-real-history-of-the-last-sixty-two-years/ .One logical conclusion that can be drawn from believing that democracy is an illusion, is that voting is a wasted effort, since whatever person we choose will either be a corporate stooge, or unelectable. I can respect those who draw that conclusion since the evidence of its truth is quite convincing. My own conclusion is not quite there yet, even though I do believe that we are under the rule of a coalition of the Military Industrial Complex and of the Corporate Elite. The redeeming feature to me is that I don’t believe in the homogeneity of the “ruling classes”. I think that they are made up of various factions and roiled by clashing egos. In my estimation voting for politicians thus has value because the vote affects the competition among our oligarchs. There is a qualitative difference for instance between Buffett/Gates and the Koch Brothers, in the sense that the former believe in more humane social policies and the latter have a draconian social view.
If one believes that Democracy is completely illusory, then why bother voting, since voting is a futile exercise? The logical conclusion of such a belief is to disdain all of American politics and politicians as being tools of the Oligarchy. From that perspective it isn’t a question of particular policy, since almost every player in normative politics is not to be trusted. So the question becomes how do the people change things when the political process is believed to be non-existent? Obviously, if it is ones view that America politics is a total sham, then a massive uprising of the people would be needed to make change. How does that uprising occur? Will its’ nature be peaceful, or violent? While I know there are “militias” out in the hills of places like Idaho, are they capable of banding together to overthrow our current government, I think not. Violent revolutions always seem to breed unforeseen and unpleasant excesses, which make their original aims moot. So the question becomes how do we effect a peaceful revolution? The answer is simple, but the process itself is immensely complex. A peaceful revolution can come about when you are able to convince an overwhelming majority of the people that the current system needs change and that they need to refuse to cooperate with it. Think of the Montgomery Bus Boycott. When the media is in the hands of corporations though, the issue is one of how does the message of change come across to reach the populace? It’s a question I’ve pondered for years.
Back in the 60’s there was the idea of “dropping out” of a corrupt system. Its problem was that it was espoused by many and practiced by few. The truth was that for those “dropping out” the system didn’t miss their participation, nor would it now. A current conservative stratagem is to make voting harder, thereby limiting turnout of voters negative to their cause. We solve nothing by not voting. We could vote, but cast our votes for nascent opposition parties. This is not a bad premise in my estimation, even though in our loaded political system, minority party effectiveness is more limited than under parliamentary government. Let us think though about a minority party legislator’s ability to be effective once elected, since I assume that the process of gaining political power through organizing a minority party opposition would be slow and could be violently opposed. Think of the police reactions to Occupy Wall Street. However, OWS does show that the elite can feel threatened by a mass movement.
When we discuss the election of someone whose political views are outside of what the “mainstream allows”, we need to take into account how much positive influence they can have on the political process, if they are unwilling to compromise their “political purity”. Let us take the real instance of Senator Bernie Sanders, a socialist, as he does his job in the Senate. I believe that Bernie is the most ethical and perceptive Senator we have had in the Senate in a long time. He is also an effective Senator in terms of being able to not only put forth a progressive point of view, but to actually influence Senate activity. In order to be effective in the Senate, Bernie has had to compromise on certain issues and thus would certainly be seen from the orthodox socialist perspective to have sold out. In contrast let us take another man whose career I’ve admired, Dennis Kucinich. Dennis has been an aggressive/effective spokesman on a national level for unpopular, yet valid causes. Within the house though he has not been able to effectuate change simply because Dennis does not do compromise well
In today’s world a political change process is mainly effectuated in four ways:
1. Violent revolution, which is highly problematic at best.
2. Massive non cooperation with the system, ala Gandhi and King, which can be very successful based
upon the right circumstances.
3. Organizing and creating an opposition political movement, a possibly fruitful, yet hard process to carry
out with success..
4. Working within the system, imperfect as it may be, to effect slow change.
All of the above can be work to effect change in a given context, but one factor is a given no matter which method is chosen. To build a mass movement in a diverse population the need to compromise is paramount. This need to compromise is called “coalition building”. The Right has been effective at this for years when you think of the coalition between religious fundamentalists, lukewarm objectivists and outright corporatists. What would Jesus, Ayn Rand and even Adam Smith think of the ways their teachings have been presumably melded? In the past the Left also coalesced around certain issues, bringing together groups that were hardly homogeneous. However, from the 60’s onward building of coalitions on the Left has broken down. “Centrists” and “Liberals” became anathema to “progressives” and “radicals”. After all that he had accomplished Martin Luther King became an “Uncle Tom” in the minds of “Black Power” advocates for his refusal to entertain the concept of violence as a tool.
The Left coalition also began to break down in the 60’s over the issue of Viet Nam. Working class union members generally supported the war that was drafting and killing their children. The leadership of the AFL-CIO, who had striven to disassociate themselves from Marxism during the McCarthy era, had become part of the country’s establishment. As George Meany, the AFL-CIO President, began to play golf with Eisenhower and major industrialists, the Union movement swung away from its Left Wing roots. The fact that the labor movement was overwhelmingly “white working class” in an era where Blacks were demanding equal status also took its toll on the coalition between Big Labor and the Democratic Party. The AFL-CIO and Teamsters supported Richard Nixon in 1968..
The labor movement’s departure from coalition with the Democratic Party was to have devastating consequences for its strength. Their workers, doing well financially aspired to a scaled down version of the American Dream. The threat that competition with Blacks for jobs and with the Left’s critique of muscular foreign policy, helped drive white workers into the Republican Party. The fact that their leadership had become cozy with Management and Republicans led the way. The power of the labor movement waned until today it is a shadow of what it once was. The Left coalition forged under FDR and informed experientially by the “Great Depression”, began to fight amongst themselves. The battles increasingly became issues of “purity of political belief”. When a person’s political value is weighed on only specific issues that are politically “black and white”, coalition becomes almost impossible. Without the ability to coalesce “Movements” face severe limitations in their ability to grow.
I believe that in the desire for reforming our governance to work for the interests of all the people, all viable methods must be used. Of the four methods I list above I believe that only the latter three are really viable. A violent revolution in this country will only hasten the totality of oppression, since violent revolutions never seem to work out the way people have planned and that the people once having risen find themselves ruled harshly by those they so hopefully followed. Refute this premise if you will, but please don’t cite the American Revolution. While it certainly had violence it was a rebellion of colonies against an overseas colonial state. By revolution I mean the rebellion of a people in a certain geographical area against their own government.
Methodologically, none of the three methods can work without bringing together people of differing standards via a coalition that accepts deviation from a “party line”. This seems obvious to me since rarely do those who wish change agree on all issues. Are there “deal breakers” that cannot brook compromise? That depends upon the individual, the perceived threat and the current circumstance. I have my own deal breakers, certainly, but I invoke them in context of my reading of the perceived threat.
What do you the reader think of the argument I’ve made? If you disagree please let me know, since I understand that on any given subject I can be wrong and I am really willing to learn. If you agree with me then what are your “deal breakers”? Perhaps if you show me yours, I’ll show you mine.
Submitted by: Mike Spindell, guest blogger
Bron,
You, as the messenger, were not attacked. Rather the substance and the source of your message was attacked. How typical for someone unable to sell their bad ideas and propaganda or the bad ideas and propaganda of others to proclaim they are the victim.
“I think the key is justice and the idea of competing justice systems is the only thing that I’ve ever seen that has the potential of working.”
And your thinking is ridiculous. The very notion of “competing justice systems” invites a lack of finality of judgement (key to any judicial operation as they are specifically finders of fact set up to resolve disputes with finality), invites forum shopping, and it encourages social instability because of these things. You don’t like what one court rules? Go find another that will rule for you! Pure genius that in the end equates to not having any courts at all.
The primary function of any court system is to help keep domestic peace. WIthout an institution accepted by the citizens of a society as an impartial and authoritative judge of whether a person had committed a crime and, if so, what type of punishment should be meted out, vigilantes would be invited to “dispense justice” as they individually (and usually not so impartially) might see fit. If no social agency were empowered to authoritately and impartially decide private disputes, people would have to rely upon self-help to settle their disputes with simple brute forcer rather than legitimate authority likely being the basis of such decisions, i.e. the result would be the tyranny of the strong over the weak. This is a blueprint for anarchy. Even the most primative of societies have a final arbiter of disputes to avoid the social disorder self-help creates. Having competing justice systems is antithetical to the idea of a justice system in the first place and as a matter of defintion.
Of all the stupid crap you’ve suggested, skip, that ranks right up at the top.
Gene, you really need to read that essay “The Myth of the Rule of Law”. http://rsjexperiment.wordpress.com/ by John Hasnas. If the parties except the decision, that is all we want. The pure idea that the court can overturn a prior decision proves that there is really no finality to any decision. Government does not have to be the final arbiter. You’re letting your own perspective, limit your creativity and open mindedness.
The rule of law has long been controlled by the oligarchy in this country that has long stopped in providing rational context to many of their decisions. How do we stop this? The Judicial system has basically subverted the Constitution and turned our country into a fascist oligarchy. The basic premise of being able to go out into the world and pursue life, liberty and our happiness without having to get government permission, as long as you don’t harm others, is gone and that is the principle of an individual right. So what’s the rule of law, what ever our corrupt courts say? Is this what you want your kids to live under? How are you going to get the wolves to give up their power?
Also you continue to use terms like plutocracy and autocracy that are passé in economics.
Tony C — I’m not being cheeky, just do not understand the thing about gunpoint. Can you explain it for me?
Matt Johnson:
I guess they succeeded too well since there is an obesity epidemic now. Or maybe people werent undernourished and it was just a ploy to expand government yet again.
@skiprob: If you think this system of taxation and regulation is so great let’s step it up a notch. Let’s try everyone working for the government.
Let’s not, since it wouldn’t work. This is the problem with the asinine Aynish, they think everything is all or nothing, they understand nothing about proper proportions, about recipes, about interactions or enabling or a foundation of operations.
My house has a concrete foundation. My house is not 100% concrete, nor do I want it to be. The foundation provides an anchor for my house, and a rigid and reliable load bearing support structure for the walls, flooring and furniture. It keeps my house safe, and because my foundation is properly constructed and sound and my house is firmly attached to it, my house is not cracked or leaking, and isn’t breaking pipes to endanger my health or property.
That is what government does, it provides a foundation upon which people can do whatever they want to benefit themselves and others as long as they do not harm others in the process. Nothing but government can accomplish that.
If no laws are enforced at gunpoint, then gunpoint will be the only law.
Mike Spindell:
How typical of the left when they dont like some one’s ideas, attack the messenger rather than refuting the ideas.
I must say I [dont] put great weight in what a person who was fired by an individual has to say about said individual. I also [dont] put great weight in what a newspaper had to say 20 plus years ago about someone who was only 10 or 15 years into his career. Add in the newspapers back then had a decidedly liberal bias and what have you got?
Not too much.
**where he learned all of his history. **
Bad fingers. Bad! Get under the house!
Thanks, Tony, but to give credit where credit is due, I appropriated that joke from “The Simpson’s”. Grandpa was giving Bart an absurd history lesson on one episode and Bart asked where get learned all of his history. Grandpa’s response was “I mostly pieced it together from the back of sugar packets at Denny’s.”
@Gene: Thanks for the reply to Skip; I was busy, but you were right on point.
@Gene: …the back of sugar packets at Denny’s.
That was hilarious.
@Brooklin: The earth is flat.
It certainly appears that way when you are standing on it.
Which is the problem with the Aynish, they are so unbudgingly selfish and self-centered they cannot see anything from any other perspective other than selfishness, no matter how brutal or unfair the outcome.
Ha! Are you telling me that government providing people food when they have none is an example of government NOT protecting people? Holy crap you Aynish have your minds twisted into knots.
==========================================================
Don’t feed the children in school. Do you know why the school lunch program was instituted? Because too many draftees, cannon fodder, were found to be malnourished.
Skip and Bron,
You both suffer from what has become a common malady these days. You take diverse pieces of information (44 million people on food stamps), combine it with uninformed premises (anyone who defends government is a socialist and the “free market solves all problems”) and mix that in with self-serving propaganda sources (Ayn Rand, John Agresto) to synthesize what to you seems a coherent political philosophy, but is in fact
a logically inept hash. This is not to say that there are no arguments to be made for your viewpoints, just that most are as incoherent as your own.
@skiprob: Our govenrment has also bankrupted our society in doing the few thing you suggest.
No it hasn’t. Are you literally bankrupt? Are you even in danger of being bankrupt? The vast majority of Americans are neither, and that is what society is. If anything is responsible for the current economic downturn, which is NOT a bankruptcy, it is the deregulation of banks, and the subsequent risk-free speculation they engaged in and lost at.
The GDP of the USA is $15 trillion, which also happens to be our debt. If a person earned $50K and owed $50K, would we call them “bankrupt?”
Almost anybody that has owned a house has been in debt for two or three times their annual income; including me (and at about five times the interest rate the US Government has to pay for its debt).
All you can do is spew hyperbole designed to mislead.
Bron,
John Agresto? Really?
http://exiledonline.com/mugged-by-mediocrity-dr-dolan-schools-neocon-imbecile-john-agresto-in-the-art-of-character-assassination/
Bron,
You’re going to quote obvious propaganda from a News Corp. outlet as some kind of proof?
That’s cute. Ridiculous, but cute.
“Movements and associations of most ordinary Americans seem to lack the elements of destruction and hate we see on the fringes of the ideological left. And there is something about the left that seems to regularly produce a violent, even nihilistic fringe.”
Not at all like those fine upstanding right wing movements such as the KKK and the Aryan Nation. Oh, wait! Those are “fringe” groups at the “ideological edge of the right” aren’t they?
That whole big of rightwing polemic is based on the dual use of the fallacy of composition and division, Bron. He uses the composition error to attribute to all the motives and actions of the few to the whole and the dividion error to take the actions of the few to impugne the motivatations and actions of the whole. As political polemic propaganda, it’s really fairly well put together. As fact, it’s utter bullshit.
skip,
Once again you’ve demonstrated your knowledge of law, sociology, logic, argumentation and history apparently comes from what you’ve read on the back of sugar packets at Denny’s.
“Governments have also killed 170 million people in the 20th century alone.”
The fallacy of composition and incomplete comparison. Governmental actions has saved far many more lives than it has taken and not all governments are created equal in form or function.
“Our govenrment has also bankrupted our society in doing the few thing you suggest.”
Our government is not insolvent.
“How many millions of people are suffering from mesothelioma.”
You mean at the hands of industry who knew the risks of asbestos but did nothing until regulation forced their hand and created a remedy for those wrongs?
“There is no such thing as a natural monoploy by the way, only government granted monopolies like Florida Plunder and Loot (FPL) and the Federal Reserve Bank – read some of the books on the subject.”
You deny that oligopolistic competition arises even when an industry’s cost conditions involve natural monopoly characteristics such as in the semi-conductor industry? The kind of coercive monopoly that Microsoft is currently engaged in with hardware manufacturers to force them to build in firmware blocks against other competeing operating systems? The kind of deliberate anti-competitive actions by business such as Standard Oil that led to the creation of the Sherman Antitrust Act in the first place? Just because you don’t think monopolies or oligarchical market domination can occur from anticompetitive business practices doesn’t make it so, skip. I know this because history – including current history – tells me so.
“You really believe that it was the govenrment that stopped children from being killed in factories?”
That’s simply too ridiculous to address without laughing. Are 10 year olds in America being forced to work in slave labor conditions like they were before child labor laws? No. Instead industry exports manfacturing overseas where they can continue that exploitive practice without government interference.
” Despite Osha, how many people have been killed in mining accidents and all the other people killed on their jobs in the last 50 years.”
Far fewer than would have absent any kind of controls placed on industry. A fine example of the Nirvana fallacy in rejecting a solution for being imperfect.
“All that crap you were fed in Middle School is wrong. They tried teaching you to be a good little socalist and succeeded.”
Too bad for you many of us posting here have terminal degrees and aren’t relying upon middle school education (no matter how you choose to mischaracterize middle school education). Also, you’ve demonstrated time and again you don’t understand socialism and use it as a demon word. Value loaded language will get you no where as Tony pointed out.
“You have this illusion of govenment as being our protector. “Taxation and regulation have quintupled your standard of living.” Tony there are 44 million people on food stamps.”
Who would likely be starving absent the Food Stamp program.
“The amount of foreclosures and bankruptcies is staggering.”
Due to a lack of proper regulation and enforcement of the financial industry.
“We have the same social problems today that we had 50 years ago but as government has grown, the problems have gotten worse. Is that light bulb going off yet.”
No. We have some of the same problems and some completely new ones that didn’t exist 50 years ago, but concurrently we have a lot few of some of the problems of the past such as discriminatory hiring practices and the ability of industry to pollute without consequence.
“You don’t need regulation if you have a good justice system.”
Actually you precisely need regulation to have a justice system period. Courts require laws – including regulation – to even operate. Otherwise they are not courts of law.
“People won’t board up the back door of a factory if people won’t work there or the insurance companies won’t insure them.”
Really. And how exactly does a business survive without workers or survive a catastrophic loss in the absence of proper insurance coverage for thier risks?
“There is no utopia, but thinking that government is the savior of all things is dilussional.”
Thinking that the absence of government is the savior of all things is the delusional and childlike belief in anarchy and that there are no bad actors in society.
“If you think this system of taxation and regulation is so great let’s step it up a notch. Let’s try everyone working for the government. But we have the Soviet Union to show us that this didn’t work our very well.”
“So let’s try substanically less govenrment like our founders had invisioned and worked pretty good for a long long time.”
Which included the ability to regulate commerce.
“There is no doubt that the protection of individual rights works.”
And it works when it works through the coercive power of government used for keeping others from taking what is yours without consequence be it by economic or physical coercion directed against you. Steal with a pen or steal with a gun, without government, your only recourse against the theif is self-help. Good luck with that, Charles Bronson.
“The question should be what system does that the best. It can’t be government because government has to take away rights to fund it’s programs.”
Begs the question that taxation is theft – more Rothbard idiocy. There is no government of any form without taxation. Taxes are the only way to make sure that all members of society contribute to the costs of the mutually derived benefits of government like protecting your civil rights, promoting the general welfare of society and providing a common defense.
Tony C,
The earth is flat. It was created 6000 years ago or less. Global warming doesn’t exist, can’t exist, because 99% of scientists agree it does exist, and if it did exist, human activity would have nothing to do with creating it by the same irrefutable logic; namely, 99% of scientists agree humans are the cause of global warming, so it MUST mean government is the root of all evil cause someone somewhere is probably lazy and if you multiply that times your imagination (l x m) what more proof do you need that theyare all out to get your tax dollars, especially since your corporation doesn’t pay any tax dollars and so there you have it, concrete proof that socialism is government coercion in a system where government runs a socialized mail service right along side of a private mail service because – duh – the private mail service is doing just fine cause the government coercion ran it out of business.
So There! Now prove it ain’t so.
“Governments have also killed 170 million people in the 20th century alone. Our govenrment has also bankrupted our society in doing the few thing you suggest.”
Skip,
Alright, so what exactly is your alternative? That is what I keep missing from your argument. If it is as I assume, the complete unfettering of “a free market economy” along with no governmental structures, then I think you are being totally naive. An objectivist society that you envision will quickly become one where jungle law rules. Those with power will fight it out until the hierarchy is established and the woe be to those lower down on the food chain. If the sequel to Atlas Shrugged would have bee written with honesty, John Galt would be ruling the world and woe be to those who opposed him. This has been the history of the human race, despite the naivete of those that believe economic freedom mean human freedom. Ayn Rand was a rather mediocre writer and a terrible political philosopher. She became a best seller among those whose own personal selfishness found a comforting voice in her nonsense.
First, this is a site I read almost every day and today it just so happened to be on regulation so I put the below URL for the group to read. He uses a very interesting style — http://www.thedailybell.com/3968/Wisdom-of-Regulators-Systemic-Risk-Group-Formed-to-Supervise-Wall-Street
I think the key is justice and the idea of competing justice systems is the only thing that I’ve ever seen that has the potential of working. It would be open participation by those interested in trying to develop and improve our system of justice, but it would not be through force or privilege. I don’t know if even this will work, but throwing in some competition into the current system might have some benefits. The problem is that we are going up against a government grated monopoly that has the full force of police power behind it. It would allow people to start looking at other ways of improving our world and hopefully stop thinking that they can sit back and let government do it. We have to try something different because the system we have now, in my opinion, has too many fatal flaws and the results appear to support this.
I have began thinking about how best to implement a new system and I’ve come up with some ideas of at least how to start putting it together. It’s basically a web based highly encrypted super communication system that’s combined with a voting system and private and public blogging, that allows interested participants to work together in developing concurring and dissenting court opinions. It faces the same problems of our current system, but opens up the number of participants to whatever the group would be able to manage. I think that it is a little strange to have only 9 Judges determining the Constitutionality of a law for a society of some 325 million people. That surely fits the definition of an oligarchy.
At the very least, it would be very interesting to see how the opinions of the group would match up against the current judicial system. Of course I would try to stack it with as many libertarians as possible but in all fairness, we would not even discourage the communists from joining in.
I think our Constitution is a pretty good document, if you understand its intent. Of course that intent is debatable as any good lawyer will surely introduce a multitude of complexities into the mix.
If something like this doesn’t work, I see 6,000 more years of adversity and continued violence. When is it going to hit the U.S. really hard concerns me.
Robin Hoods Don’t Smash Shop Windows
Shouldn’t supposedly selfish conservatives—not idealistic liberals—be producing nasty mobs?
By JOHN AGRESTO
The myth persists that the left—while it might often be naive and unrealistic—still has its heart in the right place. Those who want to redistribute income are the gallant Robin Hoods of contemporary life. “Occupiers” and socialists clearly have real concern for the downtrodden and poor. Those who demand social justice are more sincere, more compassionate, more spiritual, and surely more Christian than the rest of us.
Fairness and decency are the heart of the left; materialism and selfishness the hallmarks of the bourgeoisie, Wall Street, the tea party crowd, and, well, ordinary Americans in general. So we are told.
Of course, every now and then this narrative unravels. An Occupy crowd goes on a rampage smashing the windows of small shopkeepers, stealing, destroying private and public property, throwing bricks at the police, and threatening the lives of ordinary citizens. In social-democratic Europe, gangs of idealistic youths take over universities, riot, and firebomb their way to achieve what they characterize as justice.
“Outliers,” we are told. “Fringe elements,” the media strains to label them. And, yes, so they are. While these men and women are clearly left in their outlook and desires, they’re not your ordinary center-left liberals. Nancy Pelosi may praise their passion, but she doesn’t have it in her heart to join them.
Yet two things seem as obvious as they are curious. Movements and associations of most ordinary Americans seem to lack the elements of destruction and hate we see on the fringes of the ideological left. And there is something about the left that seems to regularly produce a violent, even nihilistic fringe.
Shouldn’t it be exactly opposite—shouldn’t selfish conservatives be the ones to produce nasty mobs and shouldn’t the left, with its vaunted idealism and love of neighbor, produce on its margins those even more idealistic and more loving?
But we’ve all seen the images on television or even, perhaps, been to rallies and demonstrations of the left. And all too often what we see looks like the opposite of compassion and virtue.
Maybe we have the narrative exactly backward. Perhaps it’s the more centrist and even conservative side, with its constant call for individual liberty, for self-reliance, for individual responsibility and hard work, that results in stronger virtue and greater neighborliness—and the left, with its constant striving for equal results, greater redistribution and more entitlements, that results in a weakened moral sense and an erosion of moral character. Perhaps the more we tell people that their problems are always someone else’s fault, that “others” are robbing them of all they are “entitled” to, the more we corrode peoples’ character.
What happens in those supposedly more virtuous places where welfare is “owed” and the expectation that others are morally bound to take care of you has become the rule? Exactly what we see in socialist Europe as it declines, or the street gangs of Britain, or the worst elements of the organized entitlement crowd in the United States: When things do not go well, it’s other people’s fault-the successful, the wealthy, the “speculators,” the powerful, the Jews, selfish and racist Americans, whomever. They all have too much money, aren’t sharing, are unjust, are keeping you down.
And since it’s their fault that you are poorer than they, and their fault that you are not “fairly” being taken care of, we have not only the politics of resentment and envy but the politics of anger and hatred. And it’s hard to make anger and hate into virtues, no matter how much the left likes to vaunt its superior morals.
Whether it be Marxism, Christian Socialism, Rawlsian fairness or legalized economic equality, these movements’ followers come to the same conclusion. We on the bottom are owed, and you supposedly above us owe.
Historically, all the various ideologies that struggle to equalize humans and redistribute their possessions eventually find that they can only do it through force, often the most oppressive totalitarian force. This is not an accident but has a real and unshakable philosophic base.
Those who wish to have what others have worked for, those who think there should be “preferential options” for their kind and those they favor, those who believe that they are entitled to have their desires satisfied, can only see other people as means to their ends and not as ends in themselves.
They can only see that others have what they do not, that others possess what they want, and they command the redistribution of these things to themselves. That principle-that others must give when they demand, that others are means and not ends-is the father not of generosity of spirit, not of love of neighbor, but rather of the worst immorality.
Mr. Agresto is the former president of St. John’s College in Santa Fe., N.M., and the American University of Iraq. He is the author of “Mugged by Reality: The Liberation of Iraq and the Failure of Good Intentions” (Encounter, 2007).
A version of this article appeared June 2, 2012, on page A15 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: Robin Hoods Don’t Smash Shop Windows.