Obama is busy now pitching “fairness” to the American voter — with fairness, from the perspective of the left, a kind of ideological code word for a state of being in which equality of outcome is brought about by a controlled redistribution of wealth by a benevolent (but practical!) central authority that first takes its administrative cut (allowing the rulers and bureaucrats and the enforcement apparatus to live more equal than the “masses” it claims to champion).
To administer such a state — in which equality of outcome is guaranteed regardless of work ethic or skill level or any other such form of vicious inequity (this inequality will be later addressed, as the government’s continued largess will be predicated, in a post-“fairness” society, on equality of production, or at least, on equality of effort; such is the way of slave labor) — requires an authority strong enough to wrest wealth away from those who have it to supply it to those who don’t, all the while citing as their moral imperative for doing so this idea of fairness that is, in fact, as at odds with what our founders had in mind as is the idea of “tolerance” they likewise have subverted and reclaimed. That it would require a police state to bring about should be a hint that the very notion is anathema to our founding.
From the perspective of the conservative or classical liberal, alternately, the idea of fairness redounds to equality of the individual before the law — that is, equality of opportunity — which in a free society will of course always leave inequality of outcomes, as a free market values one set of skills or some particular idea over others, but which in the end case, because it is built upon a foundation of individual freedom, will produce a more use range of equality of outcome. From such a society springs innovation and progress and the production and expansion of wealth. Too — and this is what the left, in their emotional appeals to “income inequality,” will studiously bracket — income inequality, such as it is, is not a permanent state: those who are rich can become poor; those who are poor can become rich; and in a free society, as JFK once noted, a rising tide lifts all boats, creating a country in which our “poor” are, by the standards of other countries just now embracing democracy and free markets, eg., themselves “rich.”
Equality of opportunity for the sovereign individual — endowed with rights the government cannot take away (but is designed only to protect) — is the real basis for liberty and freedom. Equality of outcome — and listen to Obama’s talk about the “collective good” for an example of how he’s revealing himself and the left’s cultural strategy — is merely a means to compress humanity into a singular “mass” of drones (with those who manage the drones exempt, as a kind of overseer class), whose existence as individuals is inherently cheapened both by the repression of personal incentives and the refiguration of individualism as subject to the will of the “collective,” itself a cynical, tyrannical formulation dreamed up by individuals who have claimed power over other individuals and codified that power into a system that pretends to be about egalitarianism.
See, eg., North Korea. Venezuela. Cuba.
So. Everything old being new again — save that this time, Obama is in the position to actually try the theoretical coup the Left elite has long strategized and conferenced over, from Cooper Union to the Midwest Academy to the faculty lounges of just about every institute of higher learning — here’s a look at how this debate played out back in 1980, from “Free To Choose”, with Francis Ford Piven, Milton Friedman, Thomas Sowell, and Peter Jay (a former British ambassador who I hope looks upon the state of his own country today and is ashamed):
So I ask you: is it really “unhelpful” of Rush Limbaugh to quip that “what we have is Barack Obama, President of the United States, announcing yesterday in full-voice that he is running for re-election as a Socialist”?
Or is it maybe helpful this time around that we tell the fucking truth and not worry about how the “progressive” media might frame such (accurate and significant) descriptions?
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update: Note how both Sowell and Friedman take care to illuminate the logic of a given worldview — the idea being, how we get there matters; which is to say, the foundational assumptions we accept and institutionalize will necessarily lead us in a given social and intellectual direction. This is the “as if,” Friedman emphasizes. What some pragmatists have cast a “fundamentally unserious” worry over the assumptions we grant to, say, interpretation, or the provenance of meaning — after all, we have elections to win, and the ends justify the means! — I have tried to argue are the very essence of why we are where we are, and why we’ve reached a point in this country where a government, of, by, and for the people, has come to accept as inevitable and inexorable a movement ever politically leftward toward a collectivist idea of society that is completely at odds with that of our founders and framers.
That is to say, we’ve become intellectually myopic, so lost in the weeds of day to day horserace politics and party maneuvering that we not only can’t see the forest for the trees, but in fact we’re no longer even standing in a forest, having over time been herded onto a preserve maintained by leftist intellectualism.
Why “how we get there matters” is because the rules we accept for the game determines the way the game is played; and once you can create a fiction that the game must be played in a certain way, you are necessarily constrained by the artificial limitations that have been imposed on you — which in turn limits the scope of potential outcomes.
Run the read option. Free your inner Tebow.
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Oh, you’re just trying to get a sweet old grandmother killed.
Liberté, égalité, fraternité!
If “fairness” is, as I suspect, just another relabeling of the usual Progg bullshit, then I’d prefer Obama not pitch it at me. Rather, I respectfully suggest Obama bury himself in “fairness” right up to his jugears.
Obama is in the position to actually try the theoretical coup the Left elite has long strategized and conferenced over
none of the R candidates think this is a fun project I don’t think
Hey, what say we go torch a couple hundred cars? For Justice!
There’s a second clip from the same broadcast in which Frances Fox Piven and Thomas Sowell cross swords on “affirmative action” (around 2:15). The dynamic between them is, I think, telling.
Obama has abandoned hope and change for his new marketing mantra of fairness.
Obama is going to make life fair.
What a guy.
OT, sort of, the federal government borrowed another $4B today, or about $13 for every American citizen. Today.
The federal government could buy every man, woman and child in this country a new car and incur less debt.
The federal government could buy every man, woman and child in this country a new car and incur less debt.
OT, but has anyone else seen recent local news reports on car dealers looking for people to trade in their used cars? There was a significant piece on KARE11 the other night on how used cars were fetching top-dollar, and I was sorely disappointed that the word “clunker” was never uttered. I was just wondering if this was a random Twin Cities thing, or if there’s a meme on the loose.
How does the proper leftist properly conceive a fiduciary responsibility as a leftist?
This is the what. The What, that is, that constitutes the state of the matter. The problem is the how. That is, the how to effect the vast change most needful? And what is that necessary change? In simple terms, to teach Americans to think philosophically, yet to do so in a time when philosophy as such is thoroughly discredited or understood to be completely worthless (another magnificent achievement of progressive-positivist-historicist education). It’s a puzzle, but not altogether an impossibility, I think. That is, such thinking is a natural kind of thing, in some respect, so if laying fallow, still laying fallow with potential to activation.
It’s not fair? We elected a ten-year-old girl President?
Oh and Squid… I’ve been looking for an acceptable used car for a reasonable price for about a year now. For what people want for used, I could get new. So it ain’t just you.
It’s just not faaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiirrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr! Really. It’s like, soo unfair. Like really. Not fair at all.
Indeed, LMC. When the wife and I went car shopping this summer, it quickly became clear that buying new wasn’t much more expensive than finding something used in good shape. So we bought new.
Broke the dealer’s heart when we said we weren’t offering the old car as a trade-in. Sold it to my niece, instead, for about half the going rate (which is to say, what it would have been worth pre-Clunkers).
Dan Mitchell: “Hey! This is not a forest. And those guns are not trees.”
The superior general chooses the time and place of battles. The superior general achieves objectives without ever going to battle.
Harry Summers, American War College writer, to North Vietnamese General Giap, at some conference in the 80’s: You never defeated us in any direct combat engagement during this entire war you know.
Giap: And yet, here we are. (I’m paraphrasing I can’t find the quote)
The Team learned to win from Uncle Ho, and Uncle Ho learned from Sun Tzu.
Per Squid’s discussion of used-car prices, another thing that must always be stressed is that government intervention distorts the market. Government action removed a lot of perfectly good used cars from the market in a time when many people could not afford to buy a new car. Now they can afford it, because buying new isn’t much more expensive than buying used.
So, they spent more of our money, and the result is we have to spend even more of our money to compensate.
Thanks, progressives!
I can affirm the shortage of used cars. We went looking for a starter car for the college girl and ended up spending almost 5K more than we planned. There was just nothing out there with less than 100K miles that didn’t look like it had been used by Jesus for some heavy bidness work. And I had three offers to buy my Mustang convertible by other shoppers while we were out looking for her car plus lots of interest from the dealers.
Try the larger dealers that have lease/buyback arrangements with businesses. Those cars don’t last long on the market and the smaller dealers don’t handle them. You will however, pay a pretty penny for one.
We ended up getting an 08 Ford Escape with 82K miles and spent almost 12K on it. We originally planned on spending about $7,500. Put that down and ended up financing the balance. (Shhh don’t tell my son as we paid $5K for his 96 Stang in 04 – he’d shit teh kitties)
Funny thing is, she still hasn’t gotten her license and is driving on her learners. Now I have 2 cars for driving while she is at college. So, Bonus! We now use her car for long trips, too. Makes shitloads more sense than taking 2 Mustangs on the road for every trip to Florida with gas at $3. What? You try getting 3 sets of golf clubs and three suitcases in the trunk of a convertible.
I’m thinking of letting em have my Stang in the spring… just when the convertible lovers are all gaga over the springyness and looking for some open roads and wind in their hair. It’s an 04 with 86K miles. I’ve got my eye on a Ford Fusion… maybe an 09 or 10… with a nice big trunk. ;)
You can’t lay all of the blame for the dearth of used cars on the stupid Cash for Clunkers program. Some of it, sure.
As early as ten years ago, GM started gutting their market for new car sales by heavily promoting their rebate programs. This caused people who were in five year loans to trade in their nearly new cars more than three years before they normally would have, causing a glut of newer used cars that demanded higher pricing. Used car lots were filled with three, four , and five year old cars retailing for upwards of $20K and if they were to be financed at a much higher rate of interest than a new car.
Keep in mind that conventional financing for used cars that are eight, nine and ten years old is difficult to obtain unless the dealers are carrying their own paper or dealing with a financial institution that caters to the financially challenged. The Cash for Clunkers program removed many of these cheap, high mileage, “rustic” cars and trucks from the lots, but most of them were going to be sold to wholesalers and “iron lots” who cater to a different clientele. Cash for Clunkers exacerbated a problem begun by the GM itself years prior. There was a piece in the WSJ about it at least 10 years ago.
Thomas Sowell rocks.
What the heck is your son doing eating kitties?