Give aways:
Most of us will die in poverty.
By who's measure?
Quality health care for all is not possible.
Who said the government was supposed to provide it?
Then I got bored and quit reading it.
I love it. But then again, look at my tagline.
This is pretty depressing. But he's right about a lot of this stuff.
A lot of what Derbyshire says is true is true, but his enthusiasm for pessimism is hard to take.
There is a connection between conservatism and realism and a connection between the Old World and pessimism, but it's not necessarily true that to be a conservative is to be a pessimist.
If Derbyshire stayed in Britain he could be as pessimistic as he likes and still vote socialist. There are a lot of people like that over there -- they're convinced that they'll never get anywhere and will die poor so they vote for the party that gets them the most freebies.
You have to have some faith or hope to keep you going. We're in a "period of transition" and things will look different at the end of it than they do now, but that hardly means that all is lost.
The world changes and things pass into and out of being, but still there is some cause for hope and even progress.
A depressed ping.
1. Far more of the world will have decent standards of living, because of the long, ongoing spread of economic freedom. Every generation since 1750 in the West has lived better by 50% than the last, and that will continue. The last thirty years have seen the first instance in history in which absolute global poverty and inequality have declined. (Mr. Derbyshire could look it up if he had the inclination.) Hundreds of millions of people have been moved out of poverty in the last 35 years, many hundreds of millions more will be in the next 20.
2. Some pop culture is admittedly miserable, and it tends to be the most visible culture. But culture nowadays is far more interesting than it has ever been, because global communications technology allows us to sample and recombine what the world has to offer. Think about American food, for example. It is dramatically more compelling than when I was a child. Americans can eat traditional sushi and Japanese can eat sushi with avocados in it, or vice versa. The world is benefiting immensely because young Chinese and Korean piano wunderkinder want to play Beethoven in New York.
3. China will be tamed by modernity. Their parents will never stomach a war fought with their only child. The Chinese are far more in control of their own lives than in 1979, and will be far more so in a decade. They are a prideful people on the rise, and that is always a dangerous combination, but they and India will be integrated into the modern global system ultimately. (Pakistan is a different story.)
4. The world is in the midst of a great Christian re-awakening, stretching from Alabama to California to Nigeria to Korea. Christianity is more vibrant, more revitalized than in centuries because of the rising up in places where long ago Europeans apread the gospel. Only this time the doctrinal disputes will be carried on without the bloodshed of the European Reformation.
5. Having said all this, I agree that the Arab world is a different story. It may well be hopeless.
American conservatives are happy because of what we are trying to conserve - the pursuit of happiness in an environment of limited government. The European right is just not like that.
This article would make me even more pessimistic than I am, but I doubt if it would do any good. </Eeyore>
He's 99% correct on every issue. Bravo.
The only -- ONLY -- thing he's wrong about is the future. The future is going to be great, because the current global system -- the "Empire" -- cannot go on for much longer. Sooner or later the whole Modernist house of cards is going to collapse, and the world as we know it will end. A Dark Age will likely follow -- but out of the darkness a Christian leader will arise, a warrior-king with the charisma, the will, and the military prowess to bring order out of chaos. This new Charlemagne will re-light the fire of civilization, renew Christendom, and unite the human race beneath Crown and Cross.
It's likely that this Christian king will speak some form of English. It's less likely, however, that he will be primarily of European or American descent, because the Empire began here. Charlemagne was not a Roman; he was a Frank. It is from the Third World -- the "Franks" of our modern Empire -- that the new civilization will emerge.
One of the disorienting things for an Old World conservative settling in America is that over here, even conservatives are optimistic. This really won't do. A conservative ought to be a pessimist, at least about human nature, human society, and the prospects for improving them. The facile cheeriness of the lefty world-perfecters are not for us, with their New Soviet Man, their Socialist Spiritual Civilization, their City of the Sun, their coming reign of peace, justice, and absolute equality. We are more of the temper of H. P. Lovecraft, who began one of his short stories with the arresting observation that: "Life is a hideous thing."
I'm not sure you can get your tongue much further into your cheek without tissue damage. Nearly all of these points are rhetorical exaggerations but nearly all have a kernel of truth as well.
"In the long run we're all dead." Keynes was a far cry from a conservative but I think Mr. Derbyshire might be pointing that direction. In the meantime there's all sorts of fun to be had poking pins into liberal (our style liberals) pretensions. Life is good.
An American evangelical Christian Randy Alcorn wrote an article 10 years ago dissing "uncompromised conservatism" by Christians. From the article, it seems Mr Alcorn would have most issues with Derbyshire/Russell Kirk's brand of conservatism:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1616901/posts
(Posted in response to this article)