Leftist Conceit

A recent comment on one of my columns runs as follows:

"What you will never seem to comprehend because your (sic) stuck on Reagan's Cadillac Driving Welfare Queen myth is that we can act for the collective good. In times of crisis it is what IS DEMANDED OF US." (Caps in original)

If the present crisis motivates my correspondent to action, to service in the local soup kitchen, helping out at the Salvation Army, picking up litter, giving blood, volunteering at a hospital, magnificent!! I submit that such is something we should all do anyway, and which, likely, all of us do much too little of. And I pass no judgment upon my anonymous heckler; I don’t know what he personally does to assist those in need.

But, alas, he employs the traditional nostrums of the economically illiterate left, using phrases like "trickle down", "selfish" and "on your own" to describe freedom. Permitting people to chart their own destiny, he contends, represents a philosophy of "screwing everyone else".

This betrays the essential conceit of liberalism. First, it displays a child-like faith in the beneficence of government, a faith one would imagine should have been routed by the performance of government over the last 20 – or 2000 – years or so, whomever is running it. People in power simply cannot be trusted to act disinterestedly, for the "collective good". If the Left wishes to point to Bush’s alleged incompetence in handling (say) Katrina, the right properly responds that both the Mayor of New Orleans and the Governor of Louisiana were liberals (and, a conservative points out, Bush was no kind of conservative). Any fair observer looks at NJ – run almost exclusively by Democrats and exclusively by liberals over the course of the past 40 years or so – and sees a government so dysfunctional as to disabuse anyone of the pretense that liberals have the slightest clue how to run much of anything.

But, more fundamentally, the single greatest failure of modern leftism lies in its arrogance: that they KNOW what the "collective good" requires. And they will impose it on all of us, whether we like it or not.

Look around at the programs the left pronounces as "collective good" successes: Social Security (bankrupt, with trillions in unfunded liabilities, which will drop like a hammer on our children); Medicare (ditto). Medicaid (ditto ditto). For whom does the left really make education policy: kids or the teachers’ union?

And Obama’s proposals make things worse. He wants $840 BILLION spent and promises that spending will create 3 million new jobs (only a paltry 600,000 of which will be tax-eating governmental employees). Well, math’s not my strong suit, but is that not $280,000 per job? Even assuming Obama’s predictions are correct (about as likely as getting hit by an asteroid tomorrow) is it really in the "collective good" to spend that kind of money for such paltry results?

One might ask my gentle correspondent: what; exactly, is the "collective good", and what person possesses the right to "demand" anything of "us"?

We can agree, perhaps, that all of us owe a moral obligation to assist the least of our brethren (caveat: obviously, the left excludes the very young from any legal or moral protection whatsoever) to the best of our ability. But I respectfully dissent that any governmental official knows my circumstances well enough to pass judgment on my ability to "help". A free society, I submit, leaves the decision of when to help, how to help, and how much to help, up to its individual citizens.

Indeed, the indictment of the American people – that, absent coercive governmental "demand", they will simply ignore their neighbors, permit them to starve, freeze, etc. – is so fundamentally insulting as to merit little in the way of reparte. Americans ALWAYS respond to those in need, without the necessity of a "demand". They do it for the same reason people volunteer to serve in the military, volunteer to serve as firefighters or EMT’s, etc.: because they KNOW that we’re all in this together and they don’t need some a commissar to compel them to serve.

But would it not be a great assault against freedom if the government "demanded" that all of us present ourselves, a few days a month, to public service in the "collective good"? If it scheduled each of us to donate blood by "demand" rather than by request? What differentiates these "demands" from the "demand" that we sacrifice an increasing amount of our labor – through taxes – in the purported "collective good"?

The "collective good", I aver, is that which maximizes individual freedom. The evidence conclusively establishes that the people, as a whole, do best when they’re left alone to determine for themselves how best to pursue their own destiny. All around the world, when government avers that the "collective good" requires less individual freedom, the result is inevitably greater collective misery.

Put simply, no simple definition of "collective good" exists. It’s akin to defining "happiness". An Eagles fan defines "happiness" differently than a Giants fan. Perhaps my correspondent defines "collective good" as that which benefits everyone? Such a policy does not exist; inevitably, under any program, some will benefit, and some will pay. Is the "collective good" measured in purely material terms? If so, should the policy adopted not be that which maximizes the benefits to the greatest number – which is to say, a free market – or is the "collective good" only served when EVERYONE receives something? Is the "collective good" served by equal distribution of a small pie, or unequal division of an exponentially larger pie? My correspondent claimed to be the child of a WW II soldier, begging a question: " Is ‘from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs’ really what your Dad fought WWII to secure?

Governmental attempts to provided for the "collective good" through the vehicle of "demands" wrecked the economies of western Europe and are rapidly undercutting our own, especially here in NJ. Those more inclined toward evidence than ideology understand that the "collective good" – defined by me as the greatest possible (material) good for the greatest number of people – is best served when there are few, if any, "demands", and when individual freedom is maximized. Put very simply, we know better how to run our lives – and help our fellows – that do bureaucrats in Washington or Trenton, and we should be left alone to pursue happiness and prosperity as we – not they – see fit.