A Liberal Whiff Of Panic

PEGGY NOONAN thinks that the American people are disheartened. Recently she talked to a mid-level man in Big Pharma. In the old days, it seemed, people were confident; they could see a way through the nation’s problems.

Now they don’t. The most sophisticated Americans, experienced in how the country works on the ground, can’t figure a way out... Americans are starting to think the problems we are facing cannot be solved.

It is, I suppose, natural that when an elite is on its way out, it thinks that everyone agrees that “the problems we are facing cannot be solved.” But Noonan is mistaken. We have been here before, and she ought to remember.

In the Carter years, after the second explosion in energy prices, after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, after double digit inflation, after Carter’s “malaise” speech, we had the same liberal funk. It was an era of limits, the liberals told us. Energy was running out; the US was entering a decline; nothing worked any more, nothing could be done.

If I were a liberal, I’d certainly be feeling a bit discouraged right now. After all, how could it be, how could it be, that the nation’s most intelligent and most tolerant people are are facing a hard two-year slog to get the economy back on track?

How could it be that it won’t be possible to throw around a trillion in stimulus for Democratic special interests, a trillion in a complete makeover of the health care system, and a trillion or more on a complete makeover of the energy economy? Oh wait, President Obama has already committed himself, his administration, and the nation’s elite to all these “nice-to-haves.”

Now you understand why all the people that Peggy Noonan knows are in a funk.

But Noonan hasn’t really penetrated to the heart of the problem. It is this. The year, 2009, is the first time in living memory that Democrats have taken over the White House in the nail-biting phase of a recession. They are rookies when it comes to recession fighting.

Bill Clinton in 1993? He ran on “the worst economy in the last 50 years.” But the recession had ended in 1991.

Jimmy Carter in 1977? In the aftermath of Watergate he ran on never lying to the American people. But the recession had ended in 1975.

Jack Kennedy in 1961? He ran on getting the country moving again. But the recession had ended in 1958.

Over the last half century, Democrats have become experts in barracking from the sidelines as Republican presidents struggled through recessions. In 1969 Richard Nixon struggled with inflation and recession. Democrats were busy enacting standby wage and price controls.

In 1981, Ronald Reagan struggled with the Carter mess of 10 percent inflation and 10 percent unemployment. Democrats opposed his agenda of tax cuts and spending cuts as trickle-down “Reaganomics.”

In 1990 George Bush struggled with recession in the wake of the S&L meltdown. Democrats opposed and defeated his plan for capital gains tax cuts.

In 2001 George W. Bush struggled with the high tech recession and the NASDAQ meltdown. It took two years before he could talk a 50-50 Congress and John McCain into supply-side tax cuts. Democrats opposed his policy as tax cuts for the rich.

Well now, finally, it’s the Democrats’ turn to fix the economy.

No wonder they are panicked. They’ve never had to do it before. They’ve never had to slog through a two-year march with nothing but hope and courage to keep their spirits up. They scorn the warrior virtues and their harmless sublimation into the success ethic. So they have never practiced the art of sucking it in and pushing through to victory while everyone sneers at their “stubbornness.”

The only thing that Democrats understand is politics and force. They know how conjure up a helpless victim and and order the American people to cough up money and pay liberals to help the victim. And they know how to bully Americans with the race card.

Here is a paradox. Liberals tell us that in national defense and in policing, force is counterproductive. “Soft power” is best. But apparently force is just dandy when it comes to Social Security, Medicare, public education, and relief of the poor. So we spend $1 trillion a year on government health care, according to usgovernmentspending.com. So Americans need to be bullied to take care of grandma? We spend $905 billion on education. So Americans must be bullied to educate their children? Hello? Whatever happened to “soft power” and moral suasion?

Is there really no way out of the current mess? Of course there is a way. But there’s probably no way for Democrats to dodge a really big one-two combination to the solar plexus.

No wonder Peggy Noonan’s liberal friends are panicking.

Christopher Chantrill blogs at www.roadtothemiddleclass.com. His Road to the Middle Class is forthcoming.

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Faith & Purpose

“When we began first to preach these things, the people appeared as awakened from the sleep of ages—they seemed to see for the first time that they were responsible beings...”
Finke, Stark, The Churching of America, 1776-1990

Mutual Aid

In 1911... at least nine million of the 12 million covered by national insurance were already members of voluntary sick pay schemes. A similar proportion were also eligible for medical care.
Green, Reinventing Civil Society

Education

“We have met with families in which for weeks together, not an article of sustenance but potatoes had been used; yet for every child the hard-earned sum was provided to send them to school.”
E. G. West, Education and the State

Living Under Law

Law being too tenuous to rely upon in [Ulster and the Scottish borderlands], people developed patterns of settling differences by personal fighting and family feuds.
Thomas Sowell, Conquests and Cultures

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The primary thing to keep in mind about German and Russian thought since 1800 is that it takes for granted that the Cartesian, Lockean or Humean scientific and philosophical conception of man and nature... has been shown by indisputable evidence to be inadequate.
F.S.C. Northrop, The Meeting of East and West

Knowledge

Inquiry does not start unless there is a problem... It is the problem and its characteristics revealed by analysis which guides one first to the relevant facts and then, once the relevant facts are known, to the relevant hypotheses.
F.S.C. Northrop, The Logic of the Sciences and the Humanities

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“But I saw a man yesterday who knows a fellow who had it from a chappie that said that Urquhart had been dipping himself a bit recklessly off the deep end.” —Freddy Arbuthnot
Dorothy L. Sayers, Strong Poison

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I mean three systems in one: a predominantly market economy; a polity respectful of the rights of the individual to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; and a system of cultural institutions moved by ideals of liberty and justice for all. In short, three dynamic and converging systems functioning as one: a democratic polity, an economy based on markets and incentives, and a moral-cultural system which is plural and, in the largest sense, liberal.
Michael Novak, The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism

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Annie Dillard, Holy the Firm

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James M. Ault, Jr., Spirit and Flesh

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The recognition and integration of extralegal property rights [in the Homestead Act] was a key element in the United States becoming the most important market economy and producer of capital in the world.
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