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Capitol Ideas
Fifty Years in America
Our longtime Capitol Ideas columnist looks back.
(Page 2 of 2)
In some ways, present-day liberalism is far more radical than Communism ever was. Consider, for example, the current pretense that there are no real differences between the sexes, or that same-sex marriage is a desirable policy goal. Communists entertained no such delusions.
But there have also been opposing trends since the Hiss days. Blue-collar workers, once known as the working class, have shown they are not revolutionists. They aspire to join the middle class, not overthrow it. Think “Reagan Democrats.” It’s intellectuals who are, and always have been, the core of the revolutionary party.
Another change is that market forces, despite the liberals’ regulatory zeal, are far stronger than they were in 1962. The world’s two most populous countries, China and India, are becoming market economies, and we should no more fear their growing wealth than we did Japan’s after World War II. Regulatory agencies, including the EPA (a Nixon creation!), may hamstring the U.S. If so, China will move ahead all the faster. Don’t think of China as “Communist” either. True, that’s what their government calls itself, but they seem to be pulling off the unprecedented feat of both staying in power and encouraging capitalism. Taiwan may be the mainland’s undeclared model. China is not our enemy, and the same goes for Russia.
In Europe there’s a comparable lesson. Bond markets are now more powerful than politicians, despite the best efforts of the IMF. This frustrates the intelligentsia, who want Europe to submit to their foolish Euro-diktat. It won’t work. Europe is fragmenting, not uniting. Its countries are subdividing and will continue to do so. The EU is emerging as one of the great planning disasters engineered by the postwar ruling class.
Technology meanwhile is ushering in huge changes. I am thinking of the digital world, the Internet in particular. It is so recent that predictions about it are hazardous. But its major effect will be to decentralize power. This is already happening, and the mainstream media can tell you about it. But they would rather not. Their semi-monopolistic mainstream is dividing into a thousand rivulets. Television is finally waning. The stock price of the Washington Post has fallen by two-thirds, while that of the New York Times is down to one-sixth of its peak a decade ago.
Technology they cannot stop, but conservatives they can. “Media bias” seems to be stronger than ever. When the Dow fell 313 points immediately after the election, what was not responsible? Obama’s win. Reuters was particularly bad. The sharp market decline was attributed to the fiscal cliff, which we have known about for months. The underlying philosophy is that a faltering economy must not be attributed to Obama’s policies. It’s a gross anomaly for a free press to constantly advocate the expansion of government power. Why do they? Because it suits the pretensions of journalists, who see themselves as the custodians of righteousness. Also, their “free press” exemption expands their own power relative to the dwindling private sector. Notice the word “sector,” by the way, implying something cordoned off.
Another huge development has been the revival of Islam. What are we to make of that? Islam today probably threatens us as much as international Communism once did, but with this big difference: The intellectuals, who often secretly admired Communism, loathe Islam. They are afraid—rationally afraid—of those who are willing to die for what they believe.
Whittaker Chambers identified Communism’s great strength as the recovery of faith abandoned by many Christians and Jews. But liberals today have no such faith. Many believe little more than that we should make women equal to men and make amends to the planet by ceasing to reproduce. Meanwhile we should feel free to enjoy ourselves by treating sex as fun without consequences. But these ignoble causes are not things liberals will die for and the Islamists probably know this.
Hilaire Belloc wrote in his book The Great Heresies that “in Faith we have fallen inferior to [Islam].” That is far truer today than when he wrote it in 1938. He also saw Islam as a faith that was determined to destroy the Catholic Church. Today, the progressives aim to placate Islam at every turn. The latest notion, to install democracy in overwhelmingly Muslim countries, makes no sense. The Arab Spring is already turning into Islamic winter.
The restoration of Israel, in what the Islamists regard as their own land, has turned Islam from a somnolent to a fiercely crusading faith. Today it is Israel that Islamists really want to destroy, and many secular leftists both here and in Europe quietly feel the same way.
My guess is that over the next 50 years, the rise of China and the fate of a beleaguered Israel will dominate the news—but don’t ask me how it will turn out.
About the Author
Tom Bethell is a senior editor of The American Spectator and author of The Politically Incorrect Guide to Science, The Noblest Triumph: Property and Prosperity Through the Ages, and most recently Questioning Einstein: Is Relativity Necessary? (2009).
Letter to the Editor View all comments (11) | Leave a comment
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Pecos Pete| 12.12.12 @ 8:02AM
Mr. Bethell: Excellent!
ArmyAviator| 12.12.12 @ 8:32AM
Democracy will NEVER be installed in the Arab nations. It's simply impossible! Islam is it's own political system. Democracy implies certain inalienable rights. There are no inalienable rights in Islam. One has no right to criticize Islam. To do so, is to seek ones own death sentence, which will be dutifully carried out by a father, brother, or even a sister if needed, in order to maintain the "honor' of the prophet. Yesterday's Liberals are today's Liberal Socialists. Liberalism has morphed into Liberal Socialism and thus the seeds of destruction for our nation have been sown and are now sprouting with vigor. The USA will survive, but as a fragmented, weak and fractured nation, incapable of thwarting any future Tojo's and Hitler's. We will be a nation of followers, not leaders. The Free Enterprise nations will lead the world in the 21st Century and the USA will be left behind, in a cloud of dust and Liberal Socialist confusion.
C. Vernon Crisler | 12.12.12 @ 9:54AM
A unitarian faith like Islam always has a problem with diversity. Islam provides unity for people who often feel isolated and alone, but it requires a level of conformity that has no place for differences. It is the opposite of moral anarchism, but it substitutes external unity in place of inward freedom.
The Big E| 12.12.12 @ 9:09AM
China may not be our enemy, but they may soon be our landlord.
I think there is one other area of the world which will dominate the news over the next 50 years along with the rise of China and the fate of Israel - the Mexican drug war. It will inevitably spread across our borders, along our interstates, and into our cities as the ever more powerful drug cartels extend their reach northward and battle for distribution routes inside the US. The battles on the streets of Juarez today will be fought in Los Angeles tomorrow, St. Louis the day after that, and eventually in Baltimore, Boston, Philadephia, and other major US cities.
ArmyAviator| 12.12.12 @ 5:40PM
When the US defaults on it's multi-TRILLION dollar debt to China, there will be Hell to pay. China is not going to bend over and take it! They will want something from our collapsed and fractured nation. An Obama or Obama-type could easily decide to pay off China with LAND GRANTS. The US Government owns VAST TRACTS of land. The majority of Alaska along with it's minerals and OIL could easily be ceded to China. States might not be able to secede from the Union, but I'd bet it's as legal as anything else Obama does, to CEDE land to a foreign power. China will soon have the power to project her will over the mass of the earth, the way we once did. With aircraft carriers and marines. China may not be our enemy, but may well soon be our nextdoor "neighbor." Close up and personal, so to speak.
CJW| 12.12.12 @ 10:54AM
Excellent article. You state the goals of socialism were the destruction of the family, private property, and religion. Those are the goals of the leftylibs that have taken over the national leadership of the Dem party.
cicero| 12.12.12 @ 1:50PM
A walk through modern history. The big difference I have seen (having graduated from undergrad in '66, and law school in '69), is that the students of then, while liberal as young became conservative upon reaching political and economic maturity. The young since have had their education so polluted that they have remained politically immature. Rather than progress from liberalism to coonservatism, they have failed to even enter the fray. They have gone from a desire to lead to a desire to be entertained.
They have surrendered their birthrights to the charlatans of the grasping class.
The blame can be spread far and wide. Organized religion relaxed its moral standards in the name of tolerance. Education - don't even get me started - I don't have enough spacee or time to go into it. Parenting had been pushed aside for following the least line of resistance, and serial marriages. Although I see a real change for the better with this generation. While they seem to be having fewer children, they are parenting those they have better. And finally, our government has gone from attempting to lead the citizens of this country to the top of the mountain, to plunderers of the wealth of the country for their own agrandizement.
Marc Jeric| 12.12.12 @ 5:06PM
It is a personal tragedy for this former refugee from a communist hell to see the ongoing communization of this country under Mullah Obama, our marxist Muslim President from Kenya. Except it is worse since this ongoing onslaught on freedom, capitalism, and free markets is waged by racist communists.
Claudius| 12.12.12 @ 10:52PM
Kudos to Mr. Bethell; he tells it like it is. He's one of my favorite authors at TAS; I always turn to his article first when my issue arrives. Clear, succinct, and no BS.
He's tracing the tendencies of our liberal class: something compels them to rebel at boring status quo institutions. Liberal causes are chic. Big oil, big pharma, big business, marriage, and parenthood are boring. Being destructive toward boring, unchic institutions shows how chic you are, and shows that you care.
In the late 1930s and early 1940s, Communism was chic, America was boring, hence Alger Hiss thought it would be cool to work for the Communist cause. Of course, he could never admit this; that wouldn't be chic (on several levels).
Time has shown that Capitalism works, even though it might be suspect to liberals. Even the Chi-Coms now realize this. Bethell is right about Capitalism being seen by liberals as necessary for funding liberal causes. What is really amusing to see is where Obama is drawing the line during the Fiscal Cliff crisis. He expects his spending program to be accomplished without the support of Capital; he's happy to tax it out of existence.
Conservative common sense has trouble breaking through now because the "intelligentsia" (including media) are nearly all liberal now. In quotes, because many members of that class are about as intellectual as Obama's Phone Lady ("Romney? Romney S**ks!!!" - that one).
Marc Jeric| 12.13.12 @ 2:56AM
Mr. Bethell ha a history similar to mine. after my escape froom a communist hell in 1957, and after living and working in France while waiting for my conditional 2-year immigration visa I finally arrived in the USA in 1962. The country survived Johnson, Ford, Carter, that impeached disbarred felon Clinton, and now is trying to survive the 8 years of Mullah Obama, our marxist Muslim President from Kenya. I will bet that the USA will not survive; and I am too old to go anywhere else -perhaps Greece or Zimbabwe?
Brian Richard Allen | 3.17.13 @ 9:18PM
.... All the best black music in this country, and there was a lot of it, was created in the era of segregation ....
Translation: All the best "black music" in America -- and there was/is a lot of it -- was/is created in ... um ... America!
Unless in once-great Britain. By Slow Hand the Peerless! And his imitators.