Why Liberals Hate You

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Rare is the day when I have cause to express gratitude to Matt Yglesias, but his expression of the statist view could not be clearer:

 

 

Could we write a 10,000-word essay on the crypto-totalitarian assumptions of this statement? Sure we could. But why bother, when Iowahawk does it in 140-characters or less?

 

 

The temptation to teach a political philosophy class here is strong, but must be resisted. Let us merely assume, therefore, that our readers are familiar with those conservative thinkers who scoff at the “state of nature” in which too many philosphers have based their deluded egalitarian theories. There was never any such “state of nature.”

Government began with the family, and its authority was developed in other such organic institutions which the state did nothing to create, but which the state is obligated to defend. The state should be the servant of its citizens and not the master, and there is no “democratic” right that permits the state to defraud citizens of their property for the benefit of any special interest or political constituency. But as I say, I’m resisting the temptation to teach a class. Let’s keep it to Tweets.

 

 

At this very moment, the state’s wife is trying to get the state’s children out of the state’s beds, but they’re not going to the state’s schools to get the state’s education. The state may tax us to provide such schools, but the state cannot compel our children to attend them — at least, not yet. Matt Yglesias would probably say that my wife and I are stealing these children from the state.

UPDATE: William J. Hoge wonders, “What are they teaching kids these days?” Ah, but Yglesias was magna cum laude at Harvard.

The absolute disconnect between the statist idolatry of Yglesias and any real sense of history is not, I think, accidental.

“To live for the moment is the prevailing passion— to live for yourself, not for your predecessors or posterity. We are fast losing the sense of historical continuity, the sense of belonging to a succession of generations originating in the past and stretching into the future.”
—Christopher Lasch, The Culture of Narcissism (1979)

This is what the the statism of Yglesias neglects, “the sense of belonging” to something more permanent than a peer group, a social clique or a self-chosen political category. Yglesias is profoundly alienated from America, unable to relate to or empathize with the Founders or their vision, and thinks it “false consciousness” (or ignorant adherence to a “myth”) if others do.

Patriotism the decadent likes of Yglesias cannot comprehend, except insofar as they can redefine America to fit their philosophy, and then command your allegiance to their creation.

Nor is it an accident that such shallow self-regarding elitists contemptuously dismiss religion as another ignorant myth, because God and God’s laws must be overthrown if their own authority to dictate to others — performing the role of Platonic archons — is to be recognized without challenge. Their possession of elite credentials would otherwise be devalued, and they would be unjustly deprived of that which they most crave, an unquestioned status of superiority over others.

Their egalitarian theory is thus exposed as dishonest hypocrisy: While they are willing to redistribute the property of others, they cling with jealous ferocity to that which they most fanatically crave, namely their own prestige and privileges.

Our humility in thinking ourselves no better than our ancestors — my great-grandfather was entirely illiterate, as perhaps were your own forebears — is incomprehensible to intellectuals, who confuse their skill at articulation with wisdom and virtue. Hayek examined this confusion in “The Intellectuals and Socialism,” as did Thomas Sowell in The Vision of the Anointed. Once you understand that a man might be fluent and persuasive while yet being foolish and vicious, then you are less likely to be dazzled or deceived by the elite credentials and wordy pretensions of such impudent intellectual bullies as Matthew Yglesias.

They hate you most thoroughly, except you are so microscopically insignificant as to be beneath their notice, so that these would-be philosopher-kings regard you with complete contempt.

 





 

 


113 comments

  2. well, even a stopped clock is right twice a day.

    (unless it’s a military chronometer and then it’s right only once a day)

    So. Mike. Today was your turn.

  4. Even if you buy his premise about property, his statement about redistribution is a non sequitur. OK, so let’s assume that property only derives from the government giving us a right (for the sake of silly arguments). Forcing the owners to surrender their recognized property to another is still redistribution.

    But mostly it’s fun to watch liberals spout tautologies as though they had some deep insight. The tautology here being that in order for there to be some legal recognition of ownership, there must be some legal entity to do the recognizing. Of course, this is just another instance of a liberal raising the state to godhood (i.e., above everything else).

  5. It’s obvious — Right Reason tells us [try it sometime, Matty] — that Yglesiasis is college-‘educated’.

    I hope he’s never taken an oath ‘to preserve, protect, and defend The Constitution Of The United States’ because he lied if he did.

    Could This Be One Explanation?

    That Yglesiasis can make such a statement and still be considered worth reading or listening to is another example of The Present Crisis.

  6. Some of us dismissed Yglesias as a lockstep leftist tool years ago – not long after the Short Pants Brigade at NRO saluted him as “an honest voice on the left with whom we can have an exchange of ideas” (heh).

    This is just the thousandth or so confirmation of that assessment.

  9. Since ownership is a myth, Matt, I wonder if I could come over and get all of your stuff? There are homeless people who need your clothes, and I know of a couple of places where your furniture could be put to better use, and your computer, cell phone, etc., could also fulfill the needs of the many, as opposed to the one.

  10. People first developed agriculture (to brew beer) and stayed in one location. For the first time an economic surplus was created. Step 2, nomads raided the villagers to steal their stuff, murder, rape, then leave. Step 3, some raiders decided that they could get more stuff by staying and taking a portion of the surplus. This was the origin of the State, a gang of thieves. Step 4, this is indistinguishable from what Dear Leader calls “redistribution”. Yglesia’s is defining “property” as stuff taken by thieves. There is no theft at that time, because there was no property until it was redistributed. Lunacy, but there you have it.

  12. The statement about redistibution is stupid. However, the argument that property rights stems from government isn’t entirely incorrect historically. We live in a place where police protect our property rights. Before this, for thousands of years, it was Might Makes Right. If I was bigger and stronger, I could take your property. If I can just take it, is it really “yours” in the way we use the term now?

  13. People first developed agriculture (to brew beer) and stayed in one location.
    Anthropology is good as far as it goes. Keep in mind that those are theories, however.

  16. He’d probably counter with the same argument those fools on the home improvement shows who say, ‘we don’t consider ourselves owners of this house, just custodians’, use.

  17. Regarding Anthropology: I’ve been thinking of writing a novel that takes place a thousand or so years in the future after Islam conquers the world in the middle of this century.

    After a millennium, Islam has faded into a very watered-down version of what it is and, so, civilization starts to emerge out of this latest Dark Age.

    A curiosity for a suppressed pass arises and Anthropology makes a return, but it is, of course, a crude version of what we have.

    The novel would be a comedic one playing off the wild misinterpretation of artifacts from our age.

  21. When police forces were created here and in Britain in the late-18th and early-19th centuries, the people never gave up their right to protect their own property. Police departments were designed to free-up people to pursue other activities and to better coordinate protection of life and property, but the people never gave up their right to self-protection.

  23. As for your reading of history as divided into two eras: Might Makes Right versus Police Protection: what of The Glorious Revolution? Of, even though it be a small step, Magna Carta?

  27. I’ll have to look up his work – thanks, Wombaticus.

    Well…that will save me some time. I think I’ll go off and start my next project: writing a novel about a rich guy who’s into S&M and meets this naive young girl and…what?…huh?…oh damn….

  29. Matty needs to tell those all those American Indians, who had nothing prior to us giving them their reservations, that they need to shut up and be thankful. With the stroke of a pen (and assorted military actions) we turned them from poor nomadic tribesmen into poor sedentary citizens!

  30. I would say that the role of government as far as property is that it’s a way for society to agree on the terms of property ownership. The police protection is more incidental, and does (should?) not, of course remove the rights or responsibilities of the owner to protect his property.

    There are obviously other, less formal, ways to come to agreement over property. Might Makes Right is perhaps just the simplest and most direct.

    Liberals and their totalitarian minds cannot imagine any sort of legitimate social arrangement outside of the scope of government.

  31. It still amazes me that these people think that we live in a vacuum. That we have no evidence that statism usually turns oppressive and doesn’t work. That you have “states” like Greece that have to rely on other countrys to pay their bills (sound familiar). Capitalism is the only way to true freedom.

  32. what part of “That to secure these rights governments are instituted among men…” are you having trouble with?

    The right to property predates any government. Government is nothing more than one of the tools people use to protect rights. In our society we consider it the more just and moral approach over might makes right.

    Either way, the concept of “I made/grew/built/found/dug up out of the unclaimed ground/created this so it is mine” predates either government or might makes right.

  37. The question is: by what right(s) did this government you describe come into existence at all?

    Government is either agreed upon or imposed. Classical liberals, republicans, and old school democrats tend to agree that imposed governments are less legitimate – the whole right of self determination thing. But people can only agree or give consent over things that they already have some right to control. Otherwise they have no authority in the matter.

    Leftists, including progressives, would like you to believe that is what they believe in self-determination. Otherwise they lose all that useful populist/class warfare rhetoric. But they do not, they -including Matty- are entirely comfortable with imposed government, including government that denies you have ever had the right to property.

    Matty just marked himself as a closeted totalitarian.

    It is unfortunate that most cannot connect the few dots that make this obvious. Public school ‘education’ is the reason why.

  40. If the concept of property requires the existence of a “state,” why do hunter-gatherer societies understand the meanings of “mine,” “yours,” “his,” “hers,” etc.

  41. I know all too many like him who are college-credentialed but thoroughly uneducated. And in the ‘soft subjects’ that applies even to the Ivy League schools. (In STEM disciplines it ain’t so, since so far you can’t pass a physics exam by claiming gravity is a racist and sexist social construct.)

  45. Because the time between Plymouth Rock in 1620 and the ratification of our Constitution establishing the current federal government in 1787 just plain doesn’t exist.

  48. Police can take your stuff too — especially in countries or cities where being privately armed is not permitted.

    Which puts the distinction between “might makes right” and the modern era in a different light…

  50. The trouble is Gary: too many on our side argue for Capitalism [a term devised by Karl Marx] and refuse to understand that it must be tethered to Morality. The Libertarians are the most guilty of this.

    The Free Market benefits no one if there is no restraint on it. Now, of course, we want government barely involved in this policing because it is never sated in it’s will to control it, so Morality and it’s sister, Virtue, must be it’s spouse if it is to remain truly free.

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