The Road to Serfdom Comic Book
It took a week, but I'm finally finished with an analysis of the Tea Party for the new Weekly Standard. Check it out!
The article discusses (and critiques) Glenn Beck at some length. But I forgot to mention that Beck has done us all a favor by re-igniting the reading public's interest in Freidrich Hayek. Beck's endorsement of the Road to Serfdom has led this 60-plus-year-old book to become an Amazon.com bestseller.
Now, I would have preferred if Beck had endorsed Hayek's Constitution of Liberty or Fatal Conceit instead. But maybe Road to Serfdom will serve as a gateway to those other books. In any case, for those of you who don't have time to read the Road to Serfdom, check out the Road to Serfdom comic book. And here I thought the 9/11 Commission Report was the first "serious" political book to get the graphic novel treatment. ...
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Re: The Road to Serfdom Comic Book
Even comic-book Hayek's a massive genius, Matt. But Peter Lawler's challenge to the Road to Serfdom is powerful:
Re: The Road to Serfdom Comic Book
James Poulos: Even comic-book Hayek's a massive genius, Matt. But Peter Lawler's challenge to the Road to Serfdom is powerful:
Not sure I agree. It seems to me that more and more, people are comfortable with the bizarre idea that government is supposed to provide (or guarantee) all of the important stuff: health, education, retirement savings; and whatever the citizen has left over after his paycheck has been ransacked to pay for it all, well, that's his to keep. Like an allowance. Mom and Dad pay for everything important and the child is allowed to spend his pocket money on comic books and candy.
Re: The Road to Serfdom Comic Book
Rob Long:
Not sure I agree. It seems to me that more and more, people are comfortable with the bizarre idea that government is supposed to provide (or guarantee) all of the important stuff: health, education, retirement savings; and whatever the citizen has left over after his paycheck has been ransacked to pay for it all, well, that's his to keep. Like an allowance. Mom and Dad pay for everything important and the child is allowed to spend his pocket money on comic books and candy. · Jun 21 at 10:50am
This might be generational. For younger liberals, it seems to me, Obamacare is such a moral good that affordability was incidental. The general vibe I get from Americans under 40 is that they know SocSec will not be there when they retire, and even suspect that the only way to get big government programs is to run giant deficits. Student loans? Grab 'em before they're gone. Fatalism is in the air.
May '10
Re: The Road to Serfdom Comic Book
You just listed all the complex reasons why people undefinably like Sarah Palin, as well. How interesting that while it makes sense that you can't put The Tea Party into one identity bucket, Sarah Palin accomplishes the same thing as one person. This makes me wonder if she's brilliant at a deliberate strategy (you can't effectively attack what you can't define)...or, it's just an unintended result of her being herself (a smart, passionate, complicated female). An MSNBC Kool-Aid drinker told me once she's convinced The Tea Party is going to assassinate her beloved Obama. I immediately pictured Steyn's metaphor of the typical Tea Party activist...a family sitting on the Capitol lawn with their puppy and a picnic basket of packed sandwiches...holding a yard sign. I tried, but I can't picture a gun.
May '10
Re: The Road to Serfdom Comic Book
James Poulos This might be generational. For younger liberals... Obamacare is such a moral good that affordability was incidental. The general vibe I get from Americans under 40 is that they know SocSec will not be there...Fatalism is in the air.
I started my comment when I was the first one to post anything. Pausing to feed my three and the other random neighbor children always in my house I find the thread changed. Sorry. My comment was a response to Matt's analysis of The Tea Party.
James, I think you should add some of the older, already retired generation to that summary. Like many other retired Americans, my parents need their Social Security payments to subsidize their insufficient nest egg. They are hovering above panic and desperately clinging to anything that will preserve their income. They're too old for any other option. So, in their fear to remain above Maslow's lowest tier they are heaping their faith on Obama's magic pot of money. And, in their grab for self-preservation they are willing to relinquish their grandchildren's ability to freely determine their own fate and have the same country they got to have. I have never seen anything like it before.
May '10
Re: The Road to Serfdom Comic Book
I'm not an accountant, so maybe this already exists, but this discussion gave me an idea. Why not encourage the old model of how the multi-generational family unit used to function pre-New Deal where family helps family...by giving the Sandwich Generation significant tax breaks for financially helping the older generations? I know there's an allowed $10,000 tax-free gifting, where the person receiving doesn't pay a tax, or at least there used to be, but this would be different. A tax write-off for the person writing the checks, as well. Just a thought if, I mean when, the Social Security bank is empty.
May '10
Re: The Road to Serfdom Comic Book
Matt,
I very much enjoyed that piece, and I hope it garners wide attention. In fact, were I a book editor, I'd have your agent on the phone, because I think that the paranoid style in American politics, as another writer once put it, is ruining the ability of some conservatives to understand what motivates progressives and liberals, a prerequisite for mutually beneficial compromise and especially for effectively opposing their most misguided ideas.
I'd add this (without implying that you agree) -- it isn't just Glenn Beck who is misleadingly casting American politics as a struggle between a liberty loving right and a left that seeks tyranny. It's also, to name one bestselling example, Mark Levin, whose Liberty and Tyranny operates from the premise that on one side of American politics are "statists" who are motivated not by a desire to improve the country, but by a project to increase the power of the state as an end in itself.
Or to name another bestselling example, Andrew McCarthy, who argues that there is a Grand Jihad being waged by an alliance of radical Islamists and "the hard left," a group in which he includes President Obama.
May '10
Re: The Road to Serfdom Comic Book
Geez, Conor, that old chestnut again? Look, it's not paranoia if you can actually provide direct evidence for your thesis, which at least Levin and McCarthy have done on several occasions. I can't vouch for Beck because I haven't listened a lot to him recently. If you're going to accuse them of, essentially, making stuff up, you need to be very sure you're right.
Re: The Road to Serfdom Comic Book
Well, Conor and Jimmie, here's my take. The real argument is whether or not we basically have to choose between abetting a team that tends to pull us toward more individual control and a team that tends to pull us toward more government control. Now, it's clear that a pundit who is convinced that this is the case is simplifying matters, and rhetorically amping up the stakes, if and when he sums up the choice in a way that makes it seem as if (a) everyone on each team is an active, ideologically committed agent, and (b) each team is ideologically devoted to defeating the other and permanently installing the sort of regime their policies tend toward. It's safe to say those impressions are misleading. I wouldn't want to mislead like that, even if I believed the stakes were pretty high. And I make it a practice not to. But by the same token, I wouldn't want to focus criticism on people who might do so at the expense of frankly and fully considering the question behind what I opened with as 'the real argument'. Because that's not a misleading question. And it's an important one, too.
May '10
Re: The Road to Serfdom Comic Book
It is not at all a misleading question, James. I happen to think it's the most important question we can ask about our politicians (and the wonks who love them). It bothers me when some self-professed moderates decide that it's more important to argue style, regardless of substance or result. I do not prefer bomb-throwers but I won't stop the bomb-throwers on my side from doing their things because they are vital to the conservative cause. Politeness and compromise has its place, but there's a reason there is not book called "Rallying Cries of Famous Moderates".
I liked Matthew's article, right up to the end. His recollection of Reagan is quite simply wrong and that mistake sets up a false choice for the Tea Parties.
Re: The Road to Serfdom Comic Book
I do think it's possible to offer friendly criticism of bomb-throwers and bomb-throwing. The main issue for me -- and I bet others too -- is time, which is finite. We all must pick our battles. In theory, I don't at all imagine that the bomb-throwers should be made immune from criticism of any kind because they're Soldiers Of The Movement. If you really want the movement to succeed, you want even its most outrageous figures to be taken at least a little seriously by most people and, yes, even some significant number of opinion leaders. I don't think it's a victory for the left every time folks on the right make an effort to elevate their conversation. But in practice, I have my own hobbyhorses to ride. And I barely have the time to ride them all to meaningful effect! One consequence of raising a family: learning to pick one's battles.
May '10
Re: The Road to Serfdom Comic Book
I'm frightened to step into this debate but will attempt to side with James.
It's not enough to be right. You also have to be effective. And that means wooing the muddle-headed middle who may be inconsistent in their application of philosophy and logic. It means picking battles instead of engaging in every single one. It means offering temperance and reason and good humor as an alternative to sputtering fury. It means acknowledging points to the other side once in awhile. It means being sensitive to the glass side of your house. It means acknowledging off-shore drilling as a necessary evil rather than a reason to celebrate. It means letting people feel good about your side rather than simply bad about the other side.
May '10
Re: The Road to Serfdom Comic Book
Jimmie, my disagreement with Mr. Levin isn't merely style -- I think he misstates what actually motivates the vast majority of liberals and argues against a straw man of statism. W/r/t Mr. McCarthy, my substantive objection is that the American left is not engaged in an alliance with Islamist radicals: they're loyal Americans and opponents of the radical jihad against us.
As a journalist, and someone who cares deeply about public discourse and its ability to test ideas, I do sometimes write about argumentative style, and for good reason, I think.
James, I agree with everything you wrote, and however much I believe in the necessity of my projects and obsessions, I am glad that others have their own hobbyhorses. Especially but not only when they're yours.
Tracy: Be not frightened!
May '10
Re: The Road to Serfdom Comic Book
Connor writes, “...it isn't just Glenn Beck who is misleadingly casting American politics as a struggle between a liberty loving right and a left that seeks tyranny.” A notable criticism because it does leave out, well, Connor and, for instance, Justice Kennedy. And thousands of academics, and pastors, and guilty rich, and young people who are just stuck in the middle. Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right... Then Connor, et al, (i.e. the adults in the room) stuck in the middle, looking down from their vertiginous perspective with compressed lips and a big sigh. Why can't we all just get along?
Let me be clear. What we've learned from the past is that there IS a left that seeks tyranny.
China, Russia, Germany, Cuba, Venezuela.
The left seeks tyranny.
Bolsheviks, Maoists, Nazis, Chavestas, Marxists, Jacobins, Fabians, Socialists, Communists, Greens, Alinskyites, etc.
The left seeks tyranny.
A twentieth century characterized by mass murder and genocide.
An England with more spy cameras than citizens.
A European continent controlled by an unelected governing body (EU).
The left seeks tyranny.
May '10
Re: The Road to Serfdom Comic Book
....
Matthew and Connor are of the opinion that we are experiencing just another time-warn and largely superficial political struggle in America today. Essentially, we are to act as though these are the days of Clinton v. H. W. Bush where there is mutual respect among politicians, a pleasant apathy from the public, and a sense that no matter who wins everything will turn out just fine. This is post-WWII America after all. We have our important differences, but we all just want what is best for the country in the end.
Except the left seeks tyranny.
May '10
Re: The Road to Serfdom Comic Book
AfflatusPA,
Who specifically on the left seeks tyranny? If you're right, it should be an easy enough question to answer with multiple responses.