Elites are all too prone to over-estimate the importance of the fact that they average more knowledge per person than the rest of the population -- and under-estimate the fact that their total knowledge is so much less than that of the rest of the population.
They over-estimate what can be known in advance in elite circles and under-estimate what is discovered in the process of mutual accommodations among millions of ordinary people.
Central planning, judicial activism, and the nanny state [note: all characteristics of the political left — ed.] all presume vastly more knowledge than any elite have ever possessed.
The ignorance of people with Ph.D.s is still ignorance, the prejudices of educated elites are still prejudices, and for those with one percent of a society's knowledge to be dictating to those with the other 99 percent is still an absurdity.
I should add that the particular strain of the political left here is the one that believes that the State (i.e., the federal government) ought manage, oversee, and direct the affairs of this country, outside of those "public goods" that effect all citizens, equally. It is perfectly tenable to be a progressive who doesn't believe in a bloated State; though this is seemingly a small percentage of today's progressives, they do exist. And, quite frankly, many of my views on American politics would reasonably find home here. Another name for this: classical liberalism.
Those favoring small government need to show that Americans can deal with social problems without enlarging the state. Secularized right-wingers who sneer at any kind of poverty fighting, or at the word "compassion" itself, unintentionally aid the left.
That's right: Some Americans devoted to free enterprise and lower taxes actually push policies and lead lives that push this country toward big government. Leftists who want a centralization of power bear sizeable responsibility for governmental growth. But conservatives who don't understand the importance of religious and community institutions are also part of the problem.
That's because a majority of Americans want to do something through common action to help those who are needy. That something can be either governmental, in which case tax bills and government bulk up, or it can be through religious and community institutions, in which case government can shrink. We should not complain about the taxes that fuel governmental action if we neglect volunteer work outside of government.
The politics of this are simple: If Americans have a choice between big government and small government, and if Americans think big government helps the poor and small government doesn't, a crucial mass will often vote for big government. If Americans think the only way to work together on social problems is through government, most will prefer government to giving up.
Deeds, not just words, can show that community, non-governmental action will work. We need folks who, when they see a problem, don't run immediately to their representatives in Congress. Some citizens can contribute time, others money, others both.
Progressivism is the unquestioned assumption in today's Americaposted by MD
That is my take-away from this well-written, general audience column by Jonah Goldberg, in this day's USA Today. I'm not saying that the assumption of progressivism isn't questioned by anybody; certainly it is in various intellectual circles. But most people don't seem to question the assumptions of progressivism in public education, health care, economics, and government authority/bureaucracy. These seem either to be accepted or tolerated by the majority of people (this is my guess), or people aren't even aware that progressive assumptions have so taken root.
I write constantly in this blog about classical education, and that approach flies in the face of progressive assumptions about education. Frankly, the evidence is on the side of classical approaches to education, because public education in this country is failing our children. And of course I have written before, with the argument that contemporary liberalism (which is just progressivism with a new name) is dead as a generator of sustainable ideas for this country.
Anyway, here's a good kwote from Goldberg's column:
But the truth is we might be in another progressive moment in American politics, where both parties represent the same basic assumptions about the role of government, leaving conservatives out in the cold.
What is progressivism? For our purposes, let's just say it's the belief that the government "runs" the whole country, imposing its values on the group, the way a teacher runs a class or a drill sergeant runs a platoon (this actually describes the differences between Wilson and T.R. quite nicely).
Bush-haters — you know who you are — seem to think that Bushism is all about war. But they forget that Bush didn't initially become a war president by choice; 9/11 was thrust upon him. He was a "compassionate conservative" who didn't want to leave any children behind. The strategy that he and Karl Rove (a T.R. groupie) concocted was to create a GOP version of "feel your pain" Clintonism.
The 2000 GOP convention's theme was "Prosperity with a Purpose," and in Bush's acceptance speech he insisted that "American government was made for great purposes." In some ways, Bush was ripping off Sen. John McCain of Arizona, whose campaign was a homage to Teddy Roosevelt and the need for Americans to unite in a "cause greater than themselves."
And while the war gets most of the attention, it has hardly escaped notice that the president is a proud "big government conservative" championing everything from government-funded marriage counseling to a new prescription drug entitlement to the federal government's intrusion into education.
In 2003, Bush declared that "when somebody hurts, government has to move."
That last line is a fantastic nutshell of progressivism, and I believe its sentiment is a virus upon the body America.
But what, exactly, do I mean by "progressivism"? Certainly not — or not merely — the tinfoil-hattery that gets called "progressive" on the web and elsewhere. Progressivism has overlapping meanings. It refers both to the generic leftism we associate with the word "progressive" and to the Progressive Era of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. But both of these senses rely on a more metaphysical meaning. Progressivism was perhaps best summarized by Condorcet's declaration that there is "a science that can foresee the progress of humankind, direct it, and accelerate it." Progressivism takes it as a given that mankind, not God, is the pilot of Spaceship Earth. The good is measured in material terms — greater health, greater prosperity, greater comfort — and the social sciences are the disciplines that allow us to engineer society in ways that will maximize the good. Recall that the phrase "social engineering" didn't start out as an epithet; people once bragged that they were social engineers. Even if the term has fallen into disrepute, the practice is alive and well.
Earlier this month, a German teen-ager was forcibly taken from her parents and imprisoned in a psychiatric ward. Her crime? She is being home-schooled.
Here's the nut of the matter:
Six decades after Hitler, German politicians and church leaders still do not understand true freedom: that raising children is a prerogative of their fathers and mothers and not of the state, which is never a benevolent parent and often an enemy.
People really need to realize just how pernicious it is to have the State control education. How unAmerican this is. How against liberty this is. Probably the best reading on all this is John Taylor Gatto's The Underground History of American Education. And then to realize that the first U.S. president to be educated in a public school (a euphemism for "government- or State-controlled school") was, ironically, Lyndon B Johnson. Mr. Great Society, which has worked so well.
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