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The Paradoxical Popularity of Progressive Professionals
Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, and other progressives of that era envisioned a government of professionals. Vaguely like Plato’s philosopher kings, they would be highly educated and would spend their lives selflessly serving society, using their expertise to help the common citizens with the complexities of the modern world. A bureaucracy should be a centralized repository of knowledge, designed to help commoners with all sorts of things. And all sorts of things would have their own bureaucracies. After all, who wouldn’t benefit from some expert guidance, from time to time?
Like many progressive ideas, this sort of makes sense if you don’t think about it too much. But when this concept was actually applied in governments around the world throughout the 1900s, one catastrophe after another demonstrated the flaws inherent in such systems. It became painfully obvious to everyone except bureaucrats and academics that the world is too complex to understand and certainly too complex to manage. It also became obvious that you cannot control a creative process without destroying it, and that any organization (including government) will consider its own interests above those of its clients as it becomes more powerful. You might think that all this would create problems for today’s Democrat party. And I suppose it probably does. But I think there’s something else which has more impact. And it’s their own fault.
The study of literature and philosophy has always been an effort to understand the thinking of the greatest minds in history. But in the ’60s and ’70s, academia became more interested in clever interpretations of Plato and Shakespeare than they were in the actual thinking of Plato and Shakespeare themselves. This gradually diminished the perceived authority of the wisdom of the ancients, and elevated clever interpreters of their work, like modern academics. Academics probably thought this was a good thing, at the time.
When the pill came out, American society was poised to move further from the guidance of traditional authorities, like religion and traditional systems of ethics. After we abandoned the wisdom of the ancient thinkers, and then abandoned the Bible, many started to believe that one’s wisdom or expertise could be called into question simply by their actual wisdom or expertise. “Never trust anyone over 30” sort of made sense, in that environment. So academics managed to elevate themselves over the greatest thinkers in history, and then managed to elevate children over themselves, losing all the authority they had just gained, all in one generation.
I suspect they didn’t understand what happened until after it was over. Imagine their surprise.
One of my kids is taking a marketing class in college right now, in which they discuss the difficulties this presents in modern marketing campaigns. Nobody cares what the experts say. Rather than researching your product, the first thing prospective customers look at today is online reviews, written by people just like them, who know nothing about your product. Which means companies no longer have any control over their own marketing campaigns.
Imagine trying to work in marketing in this environment.
Imagine trying to work in academia in this environment.
Or, just for fun, imagine trying to promote bigger government in this environment.
“We’re the experts! We’ll take care of you! No problem! You can trust us with your retirement, your health care, your security, and just anything else that troubles your little mind! Most of us went to Harvard! You can trust us!”
This is poison to a modern audience. The Democrats have a problem.
The above reasoning all sounds really good, except for one slight problem: It’s wrong.
The young, the rebels, and those who don’t like being told what to do, tend to vote Democrat. In overwhelming numbers. I find this astounding.
A college student can shout, “Keep your laws off my body!” while wearing an Elizabeth Warren t-shirt. It’s surreal.
As I often say, I feel like I’m missing something important here. But for the life of me, I can’t figure out what it is.
The only explanation I can think of is that as we have abandoned wisdom, experience, and even logic itself, we have started making more and more decisions based purely on emotions. And Democrats are good at emotions. It’s all about the children. Or the baby seals. Or whatever.
But surely there’s more to it than that. Surely.
Why do we scorn experts and authorities, and then beg Democrats to run our lives for us?
I’d appreciate any explanations for this paradoxical behavior. So would the Republican party.
Published in General
Yes. Several years ago a friend was telling me about something mechanical that was basically a perpetual motion machine. When I explained why it cannot work, he was aggravated and exclaimed, “But I want to believe in it.” A couple years ago I read about a survey of the American people that asked about Social Security. A surprisingly high number of people do know that it is going to run out of money. But when a list of proposals was given and people could choose which fix they thought was best, they were all rejected by the majority. People know there is a problem but want to believe in the fantasy that it can be fixed without anybody given up anything. Why are there dozens of new miracle diet books every year? People want a fantasy.
Except just as Germans of the Third Reich let their victims know “We have ways of making you talk” so do today’s progressive leaders “have ways of making your lives work.”
I don’t remember being nervous about anything when I was young. I really felt that sense of immortality that seemed to be part of my generation.
Sadly sometimes I think we Boomers used all the fun up, which is why so many of today’s young adults are glued to their devices.
Yet there still are many young people who go outside their comfort zone. My step daughter recently volunteered through her church to go over to an impoverished village in Africa and help people. Together they all worked on their obtaining a well and water delivery service. Then she spent some time going around Europe on her own.
When she came back from these two adventures, she had changed her thinking on several issues. Of course, she was raised in a very Christian environment, via her adoptive mother’s lifestyle, so I am sure she would say her courage came to her via her strong belief in the Lord. Whenever I worry, she always says to me, “Pray and then let God take care of the matter.” I find this advice very reassuring.
I just read a book by a Slate writer who moved his family around the world to see what life was like. Of course, they went to the Netherlands, and they’d love to remake our hilly suburbs into their cyclist-centered paradise. But they also realized how very conformist the Dutch actually are. That seemed to be a big reason why everything works so well there.
schools and universities and the mainstream media and silicon valley are progressives.
they brain wash students.
they believe in this elitist vision or the ‘vision of the anointed’ (sowell).
the term progressive is vapid… who doesn’t believe in progress?
I believe the left stole the term ‘liberal’ during the new deal because progressivism was at the time tainted with eugenics (wilson, keynes, sanger, etc.)
i think the biggest problem is the public school system.
one, they suck.
two, they become retirement funds for the teachers unions.
three, teachers don’t teach – they indoctrinate.
http://ricochet.com/podcast/the-learning-curve/steven-wilson-on-anti-intellectualism-in-k-12-education/
let’s not forget woodrow wilson was the first president to public declare he dislike the constitution. he thought separation of powers weakened the executive. he preferred the parliamentary system in great britain.
FDR clearly had no regard for the constitution with his original new deal and his threat to pack the court.
why did delaware become the capital of corporate america?
as governor of NJ, woodrow wilson overtaxed and overregulated every business in NJ which drove them to Delaware.
Milton Friedman said welfare programs are more sustainable in homogenous countries like the Dutch and Scandinavia
of course he said this long before the migrant crisis from Syria