Category Archives: Media Criticism

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Popular Culture

The Growing Disconnect

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…between the people and the politicians:

Some years after The Road to Serfdom, Hayek wrote an essay called “Why I Am Not a Conservative.” In it, he describes “as liberal the position which I hold and which I believe differs as much from true conservatism as from socialism,” and he proceeds to argue that “the liberal today must more positively oppose some of the basic conceptions which most conservatives share with the socialists.” Of course, Hayek uses liberal in its classic sense, referring to someone whose aim is “to free the process of spontaneous growth from the obstacles and encumbrances that human folly has erected.” (John Galt couldn’t have put it better.)

Moreover, what Hayek says about conservatives applies equally well to many who today call themselves progressives:

“Conservatives are inclined to use the powers of government to prevent change or to limit its rate. . . . They lack the faith in the spontaneous forces of adjustment. . . . The conservative feels safe and content only if he is assured that some higher wisdom watches and supervises change, only if he knows that some authority is charged with keeping the change ‘orderly.’ “

In this view, neither today’s “progressives” nor today’s “conservatives” are liberal, which is to say committed, in Hayek’s words, to the “set of ideals that has consistently opposed all arbitrary power.”

Happily, a good many people in America remain committed to just those ideals, and what the burgeoning sales of books such as those by Hayek and Rand really suggest is that more and more of them are becoming aware that, precisely in regard to those ideals, there is a growing disconnect between the country’s political class and its citizens. It was manifestly on display last month when the House approved the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill, which in its final form was longer than Atlas Shrugged and which none of the members voting on it had read.

It’s a shame that the Atlas Shrugged movie won’t be out until after the 2010 elections. But it will be before the 2012 elections. Perhaps by then, having done it once, the people will have gotten the “how cool it is to vote for a black guy” thing out of their system.

[Early afternoon update]

A commenter expands on my thought above:

That will be a big problem for Obama’s reelection efforts. In 2008 it was a big deal to many people to take part in electing the first African American president, but that argument vanished on January 20. Taking part in assuring the first African American president gets an eight-year term doesn’t seem likely to pull as many voters, especially since his policies are now manifestly far to the left of the majority.

It’s ironic that the first black president got there via a form of affirmative action (as he did throughout his career). People who crow about his high approval ratings (which have nothing to do with his policies) forget that he only got 53% of the vote in a very Democratic year. Gerry Ferraro had it right–there’s no way someone with his thin resume would have been nominated if he’d been white.

I absolutely agree that this will be a big problem for his reelection (assuming he runs) in 2012. Of course, he might have a problem anyway, if he’s viewed as Jimmy Carter redux, on energy, fiscal policy and foreign policy. And that’s certainly the direction he’s headed.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary

What Do Israelis Know?

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…that American Jews don’t?

Barack Hussein Obama received nearly eighty percent of the Jewish vote and still garners strong approval among America’s Jews. In contrast, only six percent of Jewish Israelis support Obama.

Even before the election, Israeli Jews, unlike their sycophantic American brethren, saw through Obama. Israelis were the least supportive population anywhere in the Western world of the inexperienced politician turned presidential candidate.

To support Obama, liberal Jews had to engage in a set of incredible mental gymnastics. They had to ignore his twenty-year relationship with the anti-Semitic minister Reverend Jeremiah Wright. They had to ignore his strong personal relationship with the virulent anti-Zionist Rashid Khalidi. They had to ignore his statement to the Iowa caucuses that no one has suffered more than the Palestinian people. They had to ignore his support of his Kenyan cousin and genocidal strongman Raila Odinga, an advocate of Sharia. They had to ignore Obama’s own Muslim heritage. They had to ignore that anti-Israel policy experts such as Samantha Power (who now has her own special seat on the National Security Council), Susan Rice, and General James Jones had the real inside track on advising Obama on the Middle East.

Part of the problem, of course, is that they aren’t liberal. They’re leftist. And they value their leftism above their heritage, and ignore the history of how the left ultimately treats Jews, from Hitler to Stalin. And as noted in comments, the more recent Jewish emigres from Russia know better — it’s the European Ashkenazim who have been here for generations, and remain steeped in their socialist past, that are the problem. Ever since Likud won in Israel, and it was no longer viewed as properly socialist, they (like Barack Obama) seem willing to throw the nation under the bus.