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Perhaps Hope Is More Important than Resentment
Somebody smarter than me (citation please) said that before WWI, leftism was about hope, and after WWI, leftism was about resentment. Or something like that. But it is obvious that modern leftists look at the world and are profoundly disappointed that things are as they are. They don’t like centralized power any more than you and I do, but what other options do they have? In order to fix big problems, they need big power. So there you go.
Modern conservatives look around the world and see problems, as well. But they also see much that they would hope to preserve. Self-respect and respect for others. Respect for family and religion. The rule of law over cult of personality. Property rights and democratic principles. Even if someone else does better than me under this system of personal liberty, I remain devoted to the principles of enhanced individual liberty and constrained government power. Conservatives are reluctant to destroy that which has gotten so many things right.
Except. Except for the point that in my view, the reason that I’m a conservative is that I take a dim view of human nature. That’s it. If I thought that men were angels, I would be more accepting of government power, even if I wasn’t sure that it was as necessary as modern leftists tend to believe. I fear human nature as much as leftists do. But I take a different view on how best to manage the worst of our impulses.
It’s senior night tomorrow. I’m flying up to Georgetown to recognize my daughter’s accomplishments on the volleyball court. I would prefer to stay here and drink bourbon. But I should be in DC this weekend. So that is where I will be.
It takes time and effort to build anything worthwhile. My daughter has done that over four years as a Division I athlete. And a Computer Science major. And a leader of her peers. And we should pause for a moment, to recognize her efforts.
The barbarians will be at the gate, forever and always.
We should celebrate the good. At least recognize it. We must not allow our tolerance of the intolerable to lead to intolerance of all that is good in our lives.
Just that sentence alone leads me to conclude this essay before I have any more bourbon.
I may write a post on this topic in the future. Or perhaps I don’t have the energy. We’ll see.
But not tonight. I’ve got to pack. Big day tomorrow.
There is much worth preserving in our world. Tomorrow, I’ll do my small part.
I remain concerned about all that is bad in our world. But I will do my best to appreciate all that is good in our world.
Perhaps the second one is more important. Perhaps leftists were right the first time. Perhaps the 10th Commandment has a point. Perhaps jealousy is toxic. Perhaps ambition is healthy. Perhaps our world is falling apart because leftists were right the first time, and they’re wrong now.
Perhaps hope is more important than resentment.
Just perhaps…
Published in General
You’ve harshed my mellow. How dare you?
I was coming here to ask the same.
“leftists don’t like centralized power any more than you and I?”. Say what? Sure liked those cool environmental regs on gas mileage per car that destroyed most of Detroit in the late 70’s. And shutting down the coal mines and frackers for the CO2 poison. While nixing the only way for more juice without carbon d – nuclear plants. Those idiots have been seeking, and getting, leverage over limited government conservatives for 50 years. Even before the woke nuts of the last 10 years. Sorry for the rant after another great post. You can go back to the bourbon now. I will just keep swilling some cheap champagne.
Please preserve what is good. Like you I see an evil trying to destroy everything that is good. It stalks on college campuses. There is a horrific evil of nihilism that atalks the land and hates what is beautiful and good. But goodness is always inspiring.
Just ask Raphael the Mountain Ogre about his dad.
They don’t like centralized power under which they (leftists) are controlled. That is obviously wrong. Other people deserve to be controlled by centralized power, though.
It’s like you can be against slavery, by which you mean it’s wrong for you to be enslaved. That doesn’t mean you think your own slaves or anyone else’s should be made free.
The Age of Englightenment got people thinking in terms of universal human rights. People didn’t always think that way. In fact, universal human rights tend not to work when different rights come into conflict with each other, with no way to prioritize or arbitrate among them. We’re running into a lot of that these days.
I don’t disagree with @drbastiat often, but I cannot agree that leftists dislike big government as much as we do. They dislike big government only when they are not in charge. They have a weird belief in the ultimate goodness of big government. They have blinders when it comes to government misconduct in their favored programs (welfare, DEI, political prosecutions of anyone on the right, etc).
Leftists view themselves as plucky outsiders, analogous to the Star Wars rebel alliance standing up to the Death Star of Republican efforts to control our behavior.
“Keep your laws off my body” is a typical “Speak truth to power” type of slogan you might see on a hand made sign on a college campus. Leftists view themselves as fighting against the status quo.
It seems odd to us, now that leftists ARE the status quo.
But that’s how they see themselves.
That would be Chicago Boyz contributor David Foster, in a comment in this thread:
Read the entire thread. I hope David Foster will offer his thoughts here.
On the eve of WWI, European socialists called upon the working class to refuse to fight, but instead they supported the war and volunteered for the armies of their respective nations. Thus, they “betrayed” socialism and gravely disappointed the socialists who had expected them to join them in “boycotting” the war in general strikes. The socialist idea of a single international working class, united in class solidarity, turned out to be a dope dream. This failure of the internationalist idea was a key factor in the development of fascism as an explicitly nationalistic form of socialism.
The Second Socialist International dissolved in 1916, in part because of the irreconcilable division between pro-war and anti-war factions.
Prior to WWI, there were no socialist nations, and thus socialists were all mere theoreticians opining about how they thought socialism could be achieved and made to work. But after WWI, their theories were put into practice in the Soviet Union–which turned out to be a nightmare of poverty, cruelty, and death. The socialists were emotionally unable to admit that their theories were wrong, and this led them to make ever greater excuses for ever greater evils and hence put them on the road to nihilism. Today we have cultural Marxism which mostly sidelines traditional Marxist economic theory to focus on fascistic theories of race, ethnicity, sex, sexuality, religion, and even criminals as a victim class.
“That wasn’t real Socialism!”
They claim to dislike centralized power, but that is only a pose: They have always loved power, all the way back to the first utopian socialist thinkers. They only dislike power when it is in someone else’s hands.
Yup. The inevitable road from “You can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs” to “That wasn’t real socialism”.
I encounter that progression/degeneration over and over with leftist “friends”, starting with “There is no cancel culture, there are no rioters/arsonists/killers” and ending up at “They’re racists/sexists/islamophobes and deserved to be canceled/beaten/burned out/killed”.
Not sure if I’m smarter than you or not, but the line “leftism was about hope, and after WWI, leftism was about resentment” was something I took from Peter Drucker in his first book, The End of Economic Man, which is about the factors behind the rise of Fascism. The
Concerning whether Leftists really like big government, or just think it unfortunately necessary, I think the answer depends on the particular Leftist. Some are certainly power-worshippers, and these are the ones that tend most to seek political office. Some think like the following…
The idea of centralized economic planning is a very seductive one. It just seems to make sense that such planning would lead to more efficiency…less waste…and certainly less unnecessary human suffering than an environment in which millions of decision-makers, many of them in competition with one another, are making their own separate and uncoordinated decisions, resulting in pointless product redundancy, economic cycles driving unemployment, and lots of other bad things.
The above is from my review of Francis Spufford’s book Red Plenty, which is about Soviet economic planning as seen by those on the front lines of that system and does a good job of showing why it can’t work.
Regarding the ‘hopefulness’ of early socialism.
I’ve read lots of and about Marx and Engles. And I’ve always suspected that resentment lay at the core of their world view. Especially Engles. He was the scion of wealthy German industrialist parents with mills in Prussia and England. But his parents refused to let him turn into a trust fund baby. They demanded that he start at the bottom of the firm as a lowly office clerk. Even when he was sent to England it was to work in the family business. Wrote his father ….
“[He] is like a scabby sheep in a flock and openly opposes the beliefs of his forefathers … I hope however to give him plenty of work to do and — wherever he may be — I will arrange for him to be very carefully watched so that he does not do anything to endanger his future career.”
I’d love for someone with a psychological bent to look at his personal history. But my amateur suspicion is that his socialism was as much a resentful attack on his parents as anything else.
Jordan Peterson has read a great deal about this; perhaps he could be persuaded to speak at length about his assessment of Engels’ personality and motives.
That would be leftists in the larval stage. They molt into people who define hate speech as speech that they hate. They are more than prepared to have the government stamp that out.
Pretty soon the typical leftist is up in everyone’s business all the time. For their own good. The government hammer renders every problem a nail.
Something someone wrote on a blog several years ago:
If you are bitter, you are basically announcing to the world that you are a failure in your own eyes.
If this is true…and I think it largely is…then we surely have a whole lot of people who are failures in their own eyes.
That’s very interesting. I think you’re right.
That is how they used to see themselves. Times have changed. Now they like big government telling us what to do, although probably not telling themselves what to do.
Congratulations to your accomplished daughter! Whoo-hoo! With the “default” setting for so many young adults being one of apathetic existence, one should absolutely recognize the accomplishments of those who strive and fight for their own betterment (and ours as a society beneficiary). D1 athletics and a real major – quite an accomplishment!
Quick query: My son will be in DC this Spring for an internship. He is a masters level Materials Science engineer with a semester to burn because he just has his thesis defense left for this Spring semester. He is hoping to work for a representative, senator, committee or think tank in the science area. If nothing else, he has been accepted to work for Texas A&M in DC so he will be there either way. This mom is worried about crime etc. Should I be? Any tips or advice are welcome!
The place is a hotbed of criminality. Stay away from the DOJ, the White House, the Capitol, and dark alleys.
Thanks for your kind words – she’s an amazing kid. She may use her redshirt year to get a masters, but she’s sick to death of volleyball, and of school. So we’ll see.
DC is not a safe place. Georgetown is better, but the crime has been extending into neighborhoods that were safe until recently. But if he uses his head, pays attention, and uses common sense, he should be fine.
Texas A&M is a great school, especially for engineering. My oldest daughter almost accepted a basketball scholarship there (we were at the A&M head coach’s kitchen table when Duke called). But I loved A&M. You don’t have to hide your Christianity there, or your conservatism. Their career networking system is enormous, and very productive. That’s an opportunity I would strongly consider.
If he ends up at Georgetown, I can ask my daughter to help him out a bit, if you like.
Agreed! His undergrad and his masters are from TAMU. We were at Kyle Field for Jimbo’s last game this past Saturday night. (We just didn’t know it was his last until breakfast on Sunday!). My son is 6’5″ former (high school) O-lineman so I am hoping that his size will serve as a deterrent to the criminal element on the subway etc. in DC. But he is also fiercely independent and I can see him taking off at some late hour at night by himself for fried rice or something. Of course, grabbing a bite at 1 a.m. in College Station is a different prospect than in DC. This mom will be preaching the difference over semester break!
I was up there a few weeks ago, and after her game, I suggested we go to a great curry place just off M Street. She said, “No, somebody was killed just outside that place this afternoon. We were told to stay in if possible, and call the police if we saw the suspect, who was wearing red sneakers. The police can’t mention the suspect’s race, so they always mention their clothes. And hope they don’t change their clothes. I guess.”
I just looked at her.
She said, “Nice place, huh? Gotta love DC.”
Again, this happened in early afternoon – broad daylight. Georgetown used to be mostly immune from this stuff.
Our cities are falling apart.