The Greening of Mickey Kaus
Glenn Reynolds recommended a Mickey Kaus appreciation of President Bush’s idea of an “ownership society” and so we went to take a look. Kaus says that much that an ownership society has to offer should appeal to liberals, which makes sense to us. Then he says this:
When you think about it, “Ownership Society” programs aren’t such an inherently right-wing idea after all. Another word for them might be “entitltements.” On the Left, in the 60s, a trendy Yale law professor named Charles Reich came up with a whole theory about individuals’ de facto ownership of govenrment benefits–he called it the “New Property.” Reich’s theory was then used to justify all sorts of judicial interference with any attempt by government to take away this “property.” (A civil servant’s job was even declared his or her “property” for constitutional purposes.)
Maybe “ownership society” only sounds conservative when it’s used as a way to erode existing collectively-administered government benefits like Social Security. When it’s used to create new individually-controlled govenrment benefits, like job training accounts, it sounds like Charles Reich’s 1960′s Yale Law school dream come true. …
Charlie Reich? Charlie Reich? We remember old Charlie from college days. Back then he was peddling The Greening of America, which had darned little to do with ownership of anything. Reich said that America was in the midst of a youth revolution, taking it from the bad old days of Consciousness I (rugged individualism) and Consciousness II (the corporate state) to a new paradise called Consciousness III — which was in reality marijuana-flavored Marxism, with a Rousseauian myth thrown in for good measure. Read the Roger Starr article from the December 1970 issue of Commentary to get a flavor of the Firesign Theater quality analysis that Reich was dishing out.
To put this another way: if Charlie Reich is for any Bush policy like his “ownership society,” this space will automatically be against it — though we did like the book that Reich and Jann Wenner did on Jerry Garcia. Far out, man.