by Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n
PJ Media<\/em><\/p>\n How are we to make sense of flash mobbing, the London rioting, more hatred expressed for the Tea Party, more calls for ever more debt and spending, and Barack Obama\u2019s dive below 40% approval in the polls? Let me backtrack a bit.<\/p>\n Paleolithic Liberalism<\/strong><\/p>\n I grew up with die-hard Roosevelt Democrats. Packers, shippers, and distributors made all the profits; farmers, we were told, did the work. Co-ops like Sun-Maid were noble; in contrast, grasping private packers paid on \u201cconsignment\u201d: give us your produce in an oversupplied market and we will get what we can, when we can, for it. Often plums and peaches were dumped, and we paid the packing and storage fees for the privilege of losing the crop. Unfairness, not the capricious nature of market capitalism, is what we wished to hear.<\/p>\n In my youth, my mother helped out in the \u201cDollars for Democrats\u201d campaign. I remember the 1960s\u2019 talking points still, as she drove us through the poorer sections of the San Joaquin Valley raising money for JFK (Nixon would win the state by 36,000 votes). We had high hopes for Pat Brown and Sen. Claire Engle. Charles \u201cGus\u201d Garrigus was our local assemblyman. At eight I met a young Alan Cranston at a run-down caf\u00e9 on the old 99 Highway in Selma, a sort of awkward gangly guy still at that stage talking about hard-core, bread-and-butter populism.<\/p>\n After all, what was so unfair about wanting a 40-hour week, overtime pay, disability and unemployment insurance, public works and infrastructure (e.g., the California water projects, LAX, the state freeway system), fair housing, money for the new JC\/CSU\/UC tripartite \u201cmaster plan\u201d of higher California education? It was not uncommon in those days to see unpaved streets and a few outhouses \u2014 something I was told the distant wealthy could avoid but the state should not.<\/p>\n Most of my parents\u2019 and grandparents\u2019 friends, however, were Grange\/Farm Bureau\/Chamber of Commerce Republicans. I emphasize \u201cfriends\u201d since in the early sixties, pre-Vietnam-protest age, politics still never impeded friendships. Most of my mom\u2019s rural friends were amused rather than angered by her genuine liberalism, since it was directed at trying to improve the lot of the working poor, who were ubiquitous and often next door.<\/p>\n Remember, this was pre-Great Society stuff, well before globalized cheap material goods, the age of food stamps, two years of unemployment insurance, aid to dependent families, and the entire government umbilical cord. Most readers will shake their heads and now mutter: \u201cVictor, Victor, did you not see even at seven that the obvious, the logical result of that idealized government help would be something like the annual $1.6 trillion debt and entitlement culture of the present? Did not Plato warn us that the egalitarian mandate has no logical end?\u201d<\/p>\n Perhaps, but in those days it was not hard to think that the \u2018\u201dOkies\u201d and \u201cpoor folks\u201d and \u201cMexican-Americans\u201d in the San Joaquin Valley needed some sort of foundational equality of opportunity \u2014 given the scarcity of capital and endemic prejudice. My most distinct memory of first grade was hygiene and dentistry problems: half the kids had rotten teeth and clothes that were unclean. (I remember Jimmy Hopson pulling out his front [permanent] tooth in second grade and showing it off.) Stern teachers from the southwest, with Texas and Oklahoma accents, lectured us on how to shampoo and comb our hair, change socks and underwear, brush our teeth, and use soap under our arms and on the backside of our arms. We were to \u201cmake something of ourselves\u201d and be \u201cpresentable,\u201d the sort of people \u201cwe ourselves would want to sit next to.\u201d \u201cRelief\u201d carried the same stigma associated with \u201chypos\u201d and \u201cswitchblades\u201d or \u201cbums\u201d and \u201chobos.\u201d<\/p>\n Word and Deed<\/strong><\/p>\n I detour here, because late 1950s liberalism was in some sense conservative, given the rural poverty, the lack of high-tech appurtenances, the coming end of the US postwar monopoly in manufactured goods, and the worry over \u201ccommies.\u201d Of course, JFK, like FDR, personified\u00a0noblesse oblige<\/em>, but mostly the heroic Democrats were guys like Truman and Humphrey. For my dad, FDR had built the B-29s, Truman stopped the North Koreans, and JFK had stood down Castro \u2014 some mythic history in that, but not much.<\/p>\n You might think their square-deal politics were na\u00efve, but they were salt-of-the-earth types, whose lifestyles reflected the politics that they advocated, and whose personal tastes were simple. To the best I can recall, there was no manifest contradiction in my grandfather\u2019s voting for JFK in 1960, and his stern warnings about \u201clazy\u201d \u201cno-goods\u201d who came out to prune for a week, abruptly to quit when they earned enough money for \u201cbooze\u201d and \u201cwere up to no good.\u201d The new pocket transistor radios, he swore, only encouraged sloth and poor work habits \u2014 and he wanted no one on the farm listening to one, us included.<\/p>\n In those days, liberalism, if we can even call it that, was clearly an equality of opportunity idea \u2014 whatever the intrinsic contradictions of the prior New Deal that logically led to the Great Society and the other failed \u201csocieties\u201d to come. It was still not socialism of the European type, but singularly American and predicated on a \u201cfair shake\u201d as the majority of its adherents\u2019 lives were not too distant from the objects of their worry.<\/p>\n I\u2019ll skip the next half-century, since the tragedy is too well known, and focus instead on the vastly different, contemporary liberal mindset. To be blunt, what strikes us about its recent and most vocal emissaries \u2014 politicians such as a Barbara Boxer, John Edwards, Al Gore, John Kerry, Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi; or the Hollywood celebrities; or the great fortuned like a Warren Buffett, Bill Gates, or George Soros; or the credentialed technocrats who run the foundations and government agencies, or the high-paid media types in the NY-DC corridor \u2014 is how vast apart are the circumstances of their own lives from the objects of their concern. In addition, present-day liberalism finds its most numerous adherents among the upper-middle class suburbanites and those who work for government and enjoy\u00a0de facto<\/em>\u00a0tenure (e.g., the public employee unions, teachers, the public professoriate, etc.).<\/p>\n Let Them Eat Steak<\/strong><\/p>\n Insulation is the common theme here. To the degree that one\u2019s job insulates one from the vagaries of the marketplace \u2014 not just the danger of losing a job, but often the petty humiliation so often integral in making a scarce buck, by selling, peddling, hawking, or working for a business \u2014 one is now more likely to support the redistributive state and all its satellite philosophies. And to the degree that one has a good salary and capital, and can buy such insulation \u2014 where one lives, where one sends one\u2019s children to school, where one vacations \u2014 one is most likely to advocate a sort of politics that will not affect directly oneself. The key then is to insulate oneself from the worry over losing a job and livelihood, either by guaranteed employment or ample wealth. (When the London riots started to hit the \u201cbetter\u201d sections, then suddenly the police appeared in real numbers and the unapologetic public anger increased.)<\/p>\n In other words, if one opposes charters and vouchers, supports teachers\u2019 unions, praises the present-day public schools, and champions the therapeutic curriculum, one is still hardly likely to put one\u2019s child in the L.A. or Fresno school system. If one is a strong advocate for more state subsidies and redistributive policies, one will not live in an East Palo Alto, an Orange Cove, or the wrong side of St. Louis or Baltimore where the money is aimed. Liberalism is, like all politics, self-interested, embraced by those who receive transfer payments and those in charge of administering the redistributive state. But it also provides psychic exemption to a new upper class and asks little concrete in return \u2014 no tutoring of the illegal alien, no side-by-side residency in the Section 8 apartment to help create \u201ccommunity,\u201d no hiring in the progressive law firm of a ghetto intern in lieu of the Yale undergraduate. It is the worst sort of petty hypocrisy: an exemption for the guilty soul through support of the redistributive state aimed at the noble but unapproachable poor \u2014and through a clear disdain for the crass and aspiring middle class, which lacks the taste of the elite and the supposedly tragic nobility of the impoverished and victimized.<\/p>\n The Apotheosis of Barack Obama<\/strong><\/p>\n Some are surprised that Barack Obama \u2014 the community organizer, the hard-core leftist, the pal of Bill Ayers and Rev. Wright (compare the homes of each), the totem of the left \u2014 would buy a mansion and worry about the price of arugula. Or that when president, he would play golf more in three years than the aristocratic Bush did in eight. Or that in recessionary times, when iconic presidential sacrifice is critical, the First Family would favor Martha\u2019s Vineyard, Vail, and Costa del Sol over the White House grounds or Camp David. Human nature argues that contemporary liberalism does not work; but if one is not proximate to human nature in the raw, then one can find psychological penance in promoting something that will never come back to haunt you. Let a flash mob hit Park Avenue or have a group from East Palo Alto swarm the quad at Stanford, or have a Malibu star\u2019s kid shoved about in a downtown Los Angeles school, or an open borders idealist live in an apartment in Calwa, and then one sees firsthand the real-time dividends of a distant elite channeling state money to the less fortunate.<\/p>\n The Wages of Hypocrisy<\/strong><\/p>\n Barack Obama has hit 39% approval in the Gallup poll. Pundits point to the debt, to the mixed-up foreign policy, to ObamaCare, to his grating sermons on civility, to his blame-Bush fixations, to the serial banality of his inauthentic cadences and his canned Nixonian \u201cmake no mistake about it\u201d and \u201clet me be perfectly clear\u201d emphases. All that is true.<\/p>\n But much of our public weariness stems from his loud liberal hypocrisy. Our president lectures about a certain sort of school he never has sent his child to. He talks about \u201cfolks\u201d with whom he has never wished to vacation. Unlike a Truman or Humphrey, he sought office not to help those clingers with whom he might have wished to associate, but to feel good about wanting to help from a safe distance from those with whom he most certainly did not wish to mingle.<\/p>\n Golfing or walking the Martha\u2019s Vineyard beach, in the fashion of Kerry\u2019s 7th estate getaway or million-dollar yacht, makes one fret over \u201cwhy lucky me?\u201d \u2014 and requires an antidote of one or two spread-the-wealth sermons a week.<\/p>\n The weird sudden appearance of smarmy, young urban and highly-educated leftist bloggers, with little experience in the physical world or with manual labor, is likewise logical given that most do not raise families in the barrio or shop in the ghetto, or teach school on the wrong side of town or try to buy a house and support three kids on $70,000, or even hit the floor of the Chicago Board of Trade. Only such abstract liberal advocacy can square the circle of self-absorbed concerned metrosexuality.<\/p>\n As we saw last week in Britain and in some American cities, liberal redistributionism makes far worse the innate problems it was hailed to solve. But it remains a powerful narcotic to an aberrant elite, one that feels guilty over its apartheid circumstances and is desperately seeking spiritual redemption on the cheap.<\/p>\n Barack Obama was contemporary America\u2019s clearest example of just such an iconic liberalism \u2014 both as a purveyor and a recipient. Just as voting for Obama gave a pass to so many, so too for Barack Obama his own rhetoric and advocacy provide a pass for his own preferences. Liberalism has gone from a first-hand concern for equality of opportunity to a psychological condition of very blessed, but equally unhappy, people.<\/p>\n Readers\u2019 Note<\/strong><\/p>\n This summer\u2019s hike to Twin Lakes went well (4 hours compared to 7 in 2010); we had 27 join us and a cold drink afterwards. I enjoy reading the high-quality readers\u2019 responses, both those pro and con; they remind me of those who joined the hike the last two years, confident but humble, highly accomplished but not arrogant, well-spoken but moderate in bearing \u2014 reasons to be confident about the future of the country.<\/p>\n Rhine Trip<\/strong><\/p>\n Our suites are mostly sold out, but there are still the regular cabins that I always stay in and find more than comfortable. By week\u2019s end we should be over 50 or 55.This year we increased the lectures from eight to eleven, about seven devoted to military history of Western Europe and the other four to contemporary strains in the EU and Atlantic alliance, mounting debt, and historical parallels to the present crisis of confidence in the West.<\/p>\n \u00a92011 Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by Victor Davis Hanson PJ Media How are we to make sense of flash mobbing, the London rioting, more hatred expressed for the Tea Party, more calls for ever more debt and spending, and Barack Obama\u2019s dive below 40% approval in the polls? Let me backtrack a bit.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[187],"tags":[671,12,1014,165,465,665,265,670,134,387,668,175,672,205,1070],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-CU","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":6672,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/obamacare-redefines-the-shutdown\/","url_meta":{"origin":2412,"position":0},"title":"Obamacare Redefines the Shutdown","author":"victorhanson","date":"October 24, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/\u00a0NRO's The Corner\u00a0 Democratic senators up for reelection in 13 months are now embracing, in their calls to delay Obamacare, the same themes as did the House Republicans and a few senators a few weeks ago\u2014hoping to preempt mounting criticism. In this surreal landscape, three weeks\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Healthcare"","block_context":{"text":"Healthcare","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/obama-administration\/healthcare\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2032,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/obama-becomes-the-fall-guy\/","url_meta":{"origin":2412,"position":1},"title":"Obama Becomes the Fall Guy","author":"victorhanson","date":"September 19, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services Suddenly, liberal op-ed writers are trashing \u2014 even lampooning \u2014 Barack Obama as a one-term president (\u201cone and done\u201d). Centrist Democrats up for reelection in 2012 openly worry about inviting a kindred president into their districts, lest the new pariah lose them votes.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Campaign 2012"","block_context":{"text":"Campaign 2012","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/obama-administration\/campaign-2012\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":8293,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/hillary-or-bust\/","url_meta":{"origin":2412,"position":2},"title":"Hillary or Bust!","author":"victorhanson","date":"March 17, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"She\u2019s weighed down with negatives, but do the Democrats have a choice? by Victor Davis Hanson\u00a0\/\/ National Review Online Hillary Clinton will not run in 2016 on the slogan of continuing the hope-and-change policies of Barack Obama. The president has not enjoyed a 50 percent approval rating since a brief\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "America's Future"","block_context":{"text":"America's Future","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/americas-future\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"466520736-676x450","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/466520736-676x450-500x333.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1138,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/its-the-president-stupid-the-referendum-on-barack-obama\/","url_meta":{"origin":2412,"position":3},"title":"It’s the President Stupid: The Referendum on Barack Obama","author":"victorhanson","date":"November 10, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce S. Thornton RightNetwork.com The people have spoken, and what they have said concerns more than just the wrong-headed policies the Democrats have inflicted upon us in the past few years. This election was never just about policy \u2013\u2013 it was also about Barack Obama and the repudiation of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Bruce S. Thornton"","block_context":{"text":"Bruce S. Thornton","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/our-contributors\/bruce-s-thornton\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1134,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-obama-fabulists\/","url_meta":{"origin":2412,"position":4},"title":"The Obama Fabulists","author":"victorhanson","date":"November 12, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online During the 2008 campaign, Barack Obama was billed as a cool rationalist \u2014 a sober and judicious intellectual so unlike the inattentive and twangy \u201csmoke \u2019em out\u201d George W. Bush, so rational in contrast to the herky-jerky and frenetic John McCain. 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\nBut this disconnect again is logical not aberrant. It is precisely because Obama rails about \u201cfat cats,\u201d \u201ccorporate jet owners,\u201d \u201cmillionaires and billionaires,\u201d and pontificates about \u201credistributive change,\u201d \u201cenough money,\u201d \u201cspread the wealth,\u201d and \u201cunneeded income\u201d that he feels spiritually cleansed and so can satisfy his natural appetites for the rarified good life. On Monday swear that corporate jets blew up the budget, on Tuesday feel free to host corporate jet fly-in donors who pay $50,000 to hear you rail about the pernicious culture of corporate jets.\u00a0Mutatis mutandis<\/em>, so too an Al Gore or John Kerry.<\/p>\n