White Noise
Nothing
can confer a right to do what is wrong.
Even our precious freedom of speech must, in my opinion at least, be
exercised with some humility towards the verified facts, some respect for truthful
evidence, some strain of intellectual conscience. Yet lately it seems that we
see a horde of public pundits who can say anything they like no matter how
false, reckless and unfeeling.
With
the election of America’s first black president we have suddenly become victims
– captive listeners – to a debate over the menaces of Big Government attempting
to bully our cherished American freedom. Thanks to demagogues like Glenn Beck (and
others with fearless brains of steel), we are made to listen to allegations about
the growing tyranny of “bureaucrats” and “politicians” and “socialists” –
assertions that unfortunately describe nothing real. You would think listening
to Beck that the only reliable and trustworthy entity in America life is Big
Business upon which rests the future of the entire American experiment – the only
refuge from the increasing suffocations of Big Government.
Such
views are a misrepresentation of over a hundred years of history.
Take the
use of the word “socialism.” It is used as if there were only one kind – the
hateful takeover of the private sector by a central government greedy for power
and ignorant of the damage it is inflicting on American initiative, enterprise
and self-reliance.
Yet what kind of socialist is President Obama? Is he a Utopian socialist after Robert Owen or the French St. Simon? Or is he a Utopian patterned after the Webbs of Britain? Or is he a Marxist socialist or a socialist after Edouard Bernstein and the Syndicalists? Is he a disciple of Schumpeter? You will never find out from listening to the Obama critics who are addicted to using the term because, as I said, it describes nothing real. Socialism never caught on in America, ever. In any case, what part of the private sector has Obama tried to dismantle? What new sector has he taken over? The notorious bailouts of industry began while Republicans held control in both the White House and the Congress and many Republicans voted for them – a fact conveniently overlooked by the Obama critics. And because you give money to a beggar in the street, does that mean you are trying to own him?
Business vs. Government
The
quarrel over the attempt to equate freedom of enterprise with freedom itself is
old and has long been ended. In the 19th century, the power of
business was unassailable, its reach untrammeled, its aura one of haughty
invincibility. In those days individualism was a cult and the creed of Big
Business was harsh: life was full of toil, sweat, tragedy and sorrow. Life was
an endless struggle – in nature there was no compassion, no mercy, no
exceptions. The strong prevailed. The weak went under. The job of business was
to expand markets, to increase profits and performance, to pursue corporate
greatness and accumulate power. The rest of the country had to look after
itself.
American
prosperity seemed to make this true.
Yet over
time, this view began to change. “To feel much for others, to restrain our
selfishness and exercise our beneficent affections is the perfection of human
nature,” wrote Adam Smith who was also a moral philosopher.
In other
words, slowly it dawned on the public
that the pecuniary interest, the desire for enrichment, was not the interest but only an interest. Business was self-absorbed, energetic, but
actually startlingly nearsighted. The crash of 1929 had proved that. But by the
late 1930s, it was also clear it lacked strategic vision. At the time of World
War II, the military forces of the United States ranked 19th after
Portugal. The business community was isolationist. It had opposed the League of
Nations, offering resistance to Hitler, and was generally on the wrong side of
the key geopolitical questions of the time.
What
changed this was the partnership between government and business that emerged
during World War II. World War II made
the United Sates into a colossal world power. Franklin Roosevelt involved
business from the first in his war planning, aware that corporate leaders
disliked being told what to do, but aware of their genius for mass production.
The effect was breathtaking. According to historian Richard Overy, the United
States doubled its industrial production in four years, while two-thirds of all
equipment used during the War came from America. Company performance was
incredible. General Motors, for example, was responsible for one quarter of all
wartime production.
Yet during
the Second World War, there was little anxiety anywhere over the fact of the
government’s unprecedented intervention in the daily lives of Americans. During
the war the government rationed petrol, aluminum and a few consumer goods; it
compelled those unfit for the military to work at certain locations in certain
designated jobs. It also restricted travel. The government used price controls
or instituted quotas in industries crucial to the success of the conflict.
Yet calm reigned. No one cried socialism.
The Moral Vision
Perhaps the change in the public view of
government over time was the most important and lasting event of the previous
century. Especially after the New Deal, national life was seen as a joint
activity, a life in common, with government the appropriate agent with a
legitimate economic role in the nation’s betterment. In other words, the growth
of government was a counterweight to the power of big business. It also meant
that the government was tending to embrace the many rather than just cater to
the few. Sickness, poverty, unemployment were more and more seen to be someone’s
misfortune rather than their fault. It meant an expansion of the spirit of
obligation to include more and more rather than less and less. It resembled the
Buddha’s teaching that in encountering all forms of life one had to remember,
“This is you.” In other words, the humble could be home to the great. Even under President Johnson, nobody cried
“socialism” over his vision of the Great Society. This condition lasted from the 1930s to the
1970s.
Then we suddenly moved to Ronald Reagan’s view that “the government is not the solution, the government is the problem.” Trust, fairness, mercy, charitable consideration, a lessening scorn for the infirm, concern for the public good were all suddenly signs of weakness, acting to hobble American spirit of innovation. To Reagan public improvement would result if only the business community would be freed of such bothersome things as taxation, which, after all, was only a kind of theft. It was Business that carried the future with it, Business that counted, not silly mawkish sentimentalities about the little people. The strong produced strength; equality and justice were not their concerns. Under liberals, there had been much too much doting on the many. America’s future depended on the few.
Why did this view take hold? I believe because
of a growing public ignorance of the activities of Big Business, much of whose
history exhibited a contempt for basic decency and contempt for the law and a
headlong pursuit of short-sighted and selfish ends.
If Pat has the patience I propose to deal
with this next.