Posted on 09/14/2013 4:49:32 AM PDT by Kaslin
Do you know of any place you can go to find a rational, well-thought out economic argument for liberalism? I can't. And that's really strange considering the degree to which this political philosophy dominates our culture.
By the term "liberalism" I mean the intellectual effort to apologize for and defend economic programs primarily associated with Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson. There are four main ones:
•The substitution of regulation for markets,
•The substitution of social insurance for private provision,
•The nationalization of welfare, and
•The manipulation of the economy by the government.
It is difficult to exaggerate how completely this intellectual movement dominated thinking in the post-World War II period. During the 1950s and 1960s there was virtually no book, no journal, and no college campus where you could find a serious competing point of view.
When I was an undergraduate at the University of Texas in the 1960s, there were only two people on the entire liberal arts faculty who you could describe as right of center — a moderate Republican in the English department and a libertarian in the Political Science department. And this was a campus with 27,000 students!
Then in 1962 Milton Friedman wrote Capitalism and Freedom. Friedman called himself a "classical liberal" and his book was a wholesale assault on modern liberalism and all its major programs. In place of Social Security, Freidman proposed private savings accounts. In place of the income tax system, a flat tax. In place of a monopoly public school system, educational vouchers. In place of the welfare state, a negative income tax. And so forth.
Whether you agree or disagree with Friedman, the book represented a coherent statement of a political philosophy. From cover to cover, you could see how it all fit together. Starting from a few simple values, you could see how the entire set of recommended polices cohered.
So here is the obvious question: Where can one find the counter to Friedman? Where is there a book that makes the case for modern liberalism as persuasively and as coherently as Friedman's critique?
I can't find any.
How could so many people hold a viewpoint that has never been written down, explained and defended? Hold that thought for a moment.
Since I can't cover everything in a single article, let's stick with regulation. There are three things you need to know:
1.Virtually every federal regulatory agency created in the 20th century came into existence at the request of the regulated industry.
2.In virtually every case the regulatory body viewed maintaining industry profitability as its most important goal.
3.In almost every case the bulk of the agency's time was spent not protecting consumers from price gouging, but protecting the industry from "ruinous competition."
However, to get economic favors from government, the industries were expected to make a devil's bargain. Since the Republicans mainly believed in hands off government, the producers had to give political support to Roosevelt and other Democrats who were granting the favors.
This approach started with the progressives, who were the forerunners of modern liberalism. They were not the first to pass special interest legislation, of course. But they were the first to give an intellectual justification for the rejection of free markets while they were doing it, a justification that often belied their real intent.
For example, the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) — our first federal regulatory agency — was ostensibly established to protect the general public from greedy robber barons. But, as the leftist historian Gabriel Kolko has documented, the ICC was primarily dominated by, and served the interest of, the railroads themselves. The Meat Inspection Act of 1906 was passed ostensibly in order to protect the public from bad meat — exposed, for example, by the novelist Upton Sinclair. However, the regulatory apparatus the act created served the interests of large meatpackers instead. Safety standards were already being met — or were easily accommodated — by the large companies. But the regulations forced many small meatpackers out of business and made it difficult for new ones to enter the industry. This same pattern — of regulatory agencies serving the interests of the regulated — was repeated with the establishment of almost all subsequent regulatory agencies. For this reason, Kolko called the entire Progressive Era the "triumph of conservatism."
As I reported previously, in the Franklin Roosevelt era, the ICC became a cartel agent for the trucking industry as well as the railroads. The Civil Aeronautics Board became a cartel agent for the airlines. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) became a cartel agent for the broadcasters.
Even the pretense of consumer protection was blatantly tossed aside with the passage of the National Industrial Recovery Act. The goal of the NIRA was to allow each industry to set its own prices, set its own wages and control its own output. Had Roosevelt gotten his way, we would have had predatory monopolies in every market.
What was happening at the national level during the 20th century was replicated in spades at the local level. Virtually every professional licensing requirement in the country was requested not by consumers, but by people in the trade. Today, almost one in every three jobs requires a license.
Where can you find an intellectual defense of all this? You can't. What I'm describing contradicts not only Adam Smith, but also almost all of modern economics. Special monopoly privileges designed for one group create benefits for that group, but harm everyone else. And the harm to society as a whole is inevitably much greater than the benefits to the special interests.
So back to the question posed earlier: why do so many intellectuals apologize for and defend the indefensible? The only answer I can think of is that what we call liberalism is not an ideology at all. It's a sociology. And that would be okay, if it were comparable to one's preference for natural food or artsy movies.
It's not okay when it imposes costs on millions of innocent people.
Because they think they’re smarter than everyone else
Seeking peace and rehabilitation with liberals is like asking the insane some tips on self help and success. They are the ones in need of rehab and seeking peace, but they are the ones demanding our accomodation. They always bully and expect others to worship them.
They essentially have flipped what God meant to keep subconscious (sex) to the conscious, and what was supposed to be thought out consciously. (Family) to some forgotten subconscious aspect that should naturally occur with the help of government programs.
It is a mental disorder.
I disagree. I know many successful liberals. They are wealthy and well off. They believe in their abilities but do NOT believe others are just as capable. They believe government exists to "help" those they see as incapable.
Those are the elitists. They believe themselves far above the rest of us and surely those they seek to "help".
They have gone about creating a class of people who rely on them for their subsistence. This accomplishes two things: It makes them feel good about themselves giving them a false sense of superiority. And, it creates a group of people who laud them and look up to these liberals for their needs perpetuating the cycle.
Liberals are easily explained: They have inflated egos and need to keep those egos fed. The easiest way is to create subjects.
The one thing they do fear are those of us who are capable of doing for ourselves. They fear their "help" will not be needed and as a result they would get no "energy" from our adulation.
Liberals are not complicated. They seek control. Plain and simple.
They seek fealty.
They seek to subjugate. They need subjects to sit at their feet and look up to them.
I clicked on this article hoping for a more meaningful discussion of why people reject logic and rational thought in favor of mystical thinking and belief in Santa Claus (in the form of a government that provides everything to everybody). I didn’t get that. In fact, I’m going to have to disagree with most of the author’s arguments. There *is* a place for regulation within the conservative world view.
The issue with regulation is that too many totalitarians want to regulate everything, instead of just those things that directly affect public health and safety. How a meat packer conducts his operations should be directly up to him. But it is absolutely reasonable to regulate the quality of his products such that they are reasonably free of microbial contamination, contain the claimed ingredients, and are safe to eat.
This author never did speculate why some people become loony leftists. I would love to better understand that issue, since the first step in solving a problem is correctly defining it.
Indeed. Say it again. Public school is evil, inherently so.
A family with interests in children sending them to school of lesser care is the first act of economic self discrediting in favor of a lesser entity. This blackmail by the schools of those who work to build the school building itself is the biggest fraud ever.
It sets a trend of acceptance of teachings from increasing degeneracies and exploitation. Schools and school unions are inherently politically pedophile.
Speculations are just that, so why should he?
Indeed, it is not a natural neutral sociology, but a satanic worship enforced ultimately, sharia style.
Why Do Liberals Believe What They Believe?
FANTASY IS THEIR MEDIUM OF INFINITIZATION.
Stupid is as stupid does. Then it gets elected.
The communists have influenced a whole generation in our schools, media and govt. to believe all they do. Have you noticed the arrogance involved whenever they express their beliefs? They view themselves as morally superior in their caring for others and in their assessment of things and they cannot be reasoned with because they are only emotional. They are demoralized and only the most intellectually honest among them can ever see the truth. This is the reason they have been calling us fearmongers and racists even when the facts show quite the contrary. They trust their sources and no facts even make a dent in what they believe. Try speaking against what they believe they need in the form of govt. welfare (such as Obamacare) and you become an enemy very quickly. They feel the need to control everyone because they believe they know better than you what is best and it is all about the collective and not the individual.
Good post. I’ve worked around a lot of liberals over the years and fundamentally there seems to be a common thread running through all of them. They see themselves as morally and intellectually superior to the rest of us backward “hayseeds”. They are the enlightened ones who have a spiritual duty to guide the rest of us.
Your point about liberals being incapable of competing, fearing humiliation and being faulted ties right in with the superiorist theme. Liberals hate those who challenge their self perception of superiority.
Do you know any humble liberals who don’t have a superiority complex? Liberals have an irresistable urge to judge and blame everyone as criticizing their “inferiors” makes them fell even more superior. Look at Obama for a prime example of this.
Liberals brains are wired differently. They don’t really think; they just emote. They are incapable of acknowledging any of the consequences of their utopian schemes. They want what they want, and never consider the costs in any terms. Unlike most normal people, they manage to block contravening thoughts completely out of their minds.
Being a liberal means never having to say you’re sorry.
That’s a no brainer. Evil, stupid, non thinkers.
It sure is.
Well partly, conservatives have given away too much.
Bring back AMERICAN jobs, and stop sending everything to foreign competitors.
Hire Americans. Now.
The Righteous Mind by Jonathan Haidt has some interesting thoughts about why people believe ad they do and are resistant to revision based on reason. Having what we already believe confirmed by events is almost like a feel good drug to the brain. People seek confirmation rather than truth and so that which seems to confirm is embraced, whilst anything which would go contrary to already held beliefs is discounted. According to the author we are emotional beings rather than rational. He takes this too far in my opinion. Still, there some very interesting roundtables in this book.
“...liberalism is not an ideology at all. It’s a sociology. ...”
More like a “Cancer” IMHO.
“...liberalism is not an ideology at all. It’s a sociology. ...”
More like a “Cancer” IMHO.
Concise and accurate.
People within the “church” can’t agree on much. But one thing that 90% DO agree on is that it’s just fine to send their children to government school. It absolutely blows my mind away.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.