The condescension of the liberals
Liberals think their campaign against Wal-Mart is a way of introducing the subject of class into America’s political argument, and they are more correct than they understand. Their campaign is liberalism as condescension. It is a philosophic repugnance toward markets because consumer sovereignty results in the masses making messes. Liberals, aghast, see the choices Americans make with their dollars and their ballots, and announce — yes, announce — that Americans are sorely in need of more supervision by … liberals.
Before they went on their bender of indignation about Wal-Mart (customers per week: 127 million), liberals had drummed McDonald’s (customers per week: 175 million) out of civilized society because it is making us fat, or something. So, what next? Which preferences of ordinary Americans will liberals, in their role as national scolds, next disapprove? Baseball, hot dogs, apple pie and Chevrolet?
No. The current issue of The American Prospect, an impeccably progressive magazine, carries a full-page advertisement denouncing something responsible for “lies, deception, immorality, corruption, and widespread labor, human rights and environmental abuses” and of having brought “great hardship and despair to people and communities throughout the world.”
What is this focus of evil in the modern world? North Korea? The Bush administration? Fox News Channel? No, it is Coca-Cola (number of servings to Americans of the company’s products each week: 2.5 billion).
When liberals’ presidential nominees consistently fail to carry Kansas, liberals do not rush to read a book titled “What’s the Matter With Liberals’ Nominees?” No, the book they turned into a best-seller is titled “What’s the Matter With Kansas?” Notice a pattern here?
The best part: they really and truly believe they are smarter and better people than you.
September 15th, 2006 at 6:49 am
Unfortunately, there are all too many who are willing to take the self-selected elite at their word. Evidently I suffered through an unloved childhood, or the delusion that I am smarter than they are; I do not.
A glance at the track record of liberal/social elite leadership should be enough to disabuse the truly intelligent among them. Since it doesn’t, I can only conclude they are unintelligent or manipulative.
September 18th, 2006 at 10:51 am
J. B. S. Haldane had a set of bogus ‘theorems’, one of which was the Aunt Jobisca Theorem: “it’s a fact the whole world knows” (from Lear’s The Pobble Who Had No Toes). I find a lot of the doctrinal cant that passes for cerebration on the Left is simply this sort of lazy, unexamined adherence to a collection of shibboleths.
There is one aspect that is strikingly conspicuous by its absence in Leftist ‘thought’ (although to dignify it with that title would be to elevate it to a level it does not deserve) and that is economics. I don’t mean the dry-as-dust mathematical economics at a University level, but simply the gut-level intuition that the subject gives you when thinking about things sociological. Theodosius Dobzhansky said of Evolution that nothing in biology could be understood except in its light. Nothing in sociology can be understood except in the light of microeconomics. If the average Leftist – or person at large – could simply learn to re-examine his assumptions through the lens of Econ 101 (basically: a) incentives matter (supply and demand) b) choices matter (opportunity cost)) then a lot of silly nonsense would be avoided. Then you can start expanding the theme into such areas as: why employers are willing to give jobs only to people whose productivity exceeds their compensation (and thus why minimum wages increase unemployment).