[Update at the end]
Since the time man first appeared on the Savannah, the function of social organizations has been to manage scarcity for the good of the community. Human beings, indeed all living creatures, are in a constant struggle, a competition for resources. For most of pre-history, the tribe was the primary social organization and it did its job well, though the best that could be accomplished was to exist barely above the subsistence level. With the advent of tools and technology, the level of scarcity began to shift as wealth (excess material goods) slowly began to accumulate. The need to manage envy (a derivative of competition) became an important aspect of social structures. Especially from the time of the second World War, the balance has increasingly shifted toward abundance over scarcity; our social structures have lagged, though it has become clear that liberal democracy aligned with a form of capitalism which includes adequate "safety nets" for the least capable, provides the greatest engine of wealth creation man has ever developed. Today, for those of us who are fortunate enough to live in the core, our problem is managing envy, not scarcity. The reason that left wing ideologies are so dysfunctional is that they were designed to manage scarcity in a Utopian way. The idea that everyone should share equally, with those few people privileged by their greater grasp of the ideology gaining a larger share by virtue of their elevated moral standing, is a Utopian fantasy based on (indeed requiring) a permanent scarcity of resources. If everyone has access to unimaginable resources, there is no longer any need to manage access to the resources; then the problem becomes managing the envy which is the residue of competition. In a society in which even the poor typically own more than one TV, video game systems and cell phones are ubiquitous, $100 plus sneakers are the norm even in the most marginal parts of our inner cities, and obesity is epidemic due to the availability of nearly unlimited food supplies, the raison d'etre of communism and socialism has essentially evaporated. The left, which everyday shows itself to be deeply reactionary, is left with the shell of its ideology. It retains the fantasy based structure of the moral high ground, the idea that competition is immoral, but has no real world value. This presents a terrible dilemma for the left.
One approach has been to invent or hype various threats in order to rationalize the need for the privileged "vanguard" to exercise power. This has dual uses for the "vanguard". Since their ideology still is based on managing scarcity, by setting up crises that only they can manage, they justify their desire for power as a moral exercise rather than a mere attempt to control other people. Global Warming is the current tool by which well meaning bureaucrats in the UN and on the left hope to seize power (and assets) for the "good of all". The other important function of the current threat meme is to allow the wealthy liberal to minimize his cognitive dissonance and maintain a virtuous sense of himself. He can rationalize that if he gives some small amount of his money, and a larger percentage of other people's money, to those who presume to speak for the poor, he will absolve himself of the sin of undeserved and excessive wealth.
At the same time, by maintaining classes of people designated as victims, the use of envy to support the "need" for the "vanguard's" leadership is assured.
Another aspect of this which infects our body politic is the residue of the "competition as immorality" meme. If competition is immoral then military force, the apotheosis of competition between cultures, is always immoral. The leftist intellectual is then left believing that there is no moral use of force by the United States if such force is used to advance the American national interest.
Josh Manchester looks at a particular version of this confused intellectual thinking and makes a rather elegant suggestion in Why Intellectuals Love Defeat: [HT: Larwyn]
James Carroll, recently writing in the Boston Globe, wondered if America could finally accept defeat in Iraq, and be the better for it, comparing it to Vietnam:
"But what about the moral question? For all of the anguish felt over the loss of American lives, can we acknowledge that there is something proper in the way that hubristic American power has been thwarted? Can we admit that the loss of honor will not come with how the war ends, because we lost our honor when we began it? This time, can we accept defeat?"
...
The only problem for those such as Mr. Carroll is that we have not yet lost. It is difficult not to conclude that there is a class of well-intentioned individuals in the United States like him who don't merely feel as they do upon witnessing a defeat, but instead think this way all the time. Like it or not, this mentality of permanent defeat plays a large part in the Democratic Party. It is now up to President Bush and the new Democratic congressional leadership to see that it does not become dominant.
How to do so? A charm offensive is not quite what is necessary. Instead, perhaps a combination of sobering events that will impress upon Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid the gravity of our current situation would do the trick. Why not invite both Pelosi and Reid to the White House every morning until the new Congress is sworn in - and ask them to listen with the President to his Presidential Daily Brief, describing what Al Qaeda has cooked up of late? Or, why not invite them along with the President to one of his private sessions with the families of those who have paid the ultimate price overseas? Speaking of those overseas whose lives hang upon American policy, Pelosi and Reid could be participants in the next conference call that Bush has with Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki.
The point of all of this would be to create a true bipartisan consensus on Iraq that does not leave the Iraqis and US credibility to disaster.
I think that he is on the right track, though the far left has shown itself to be peculiarly resistant to such displays of reality. Nonetheless, it is worth a shot, especially since everyone except those still dwelling in a fantasy land of peace and love, recognizes that the results of prematurely leaving Iraq (whatever their views on the wisdom of the original invasion) would be catastrophic. The mere propaganda assertion throughout the world of radical Islam that the Democrats victory is a victory for them should be sufficient to alarm even the most partisan Democrat.
Consider that Iran is now trying to arrange a closer alliance with al Qaeda, they have declared their nuclear program near completion, and Plutonium and highly enriched Uranium has been found in an Iranian waste facility [HT: Stop the ACLU] and it is easy to understand the need for a bipartisan consensus in the War on Islamic fascism, of which Iraq is currently the key front. This could yet be the "silver lining" of the Democratic ascension to the majority in the House and Senate. On the other hand, if the Democrats believe their moral imperative is to lose in Iraq (and they would surely find euphemisms such as "redeploy" to disguise the fact) then we are in for a long two years.
Update: Dr. Sanity comments on the moral bankruptcy of the left in regard to the war in Iraq. She links to a post by Dennis Prager who remarks on the ability of some people to contradict themselves without seeming to be aware of the contradictions. Apparently there are those on the left who support pre-emptive war in the past while opposing it in the present:
George Bush made the correct moral choice in going into Iraq and eliminating Saddam Hussein as a threat. Those who claim this war is somehow immoral have their priorities and their morality completely warped. No one is saying that mistakes have not been made--what war has ever occured without mistakes --except in the bubble that passes for a brain in the leftist utopian? The essential morality of confronting this kind of evil pre-emptively should be obvious to any student of 20th century history.
Iraq has revealed the enemy for what it truly is--a mindless, death-worshipping ideology that cannot be reasoned with; cannot be appeased; and cannot be ignored. We cannot walk--or run-- away from it; we cannot make deals with it-- not in Iraq; not in Iran; not in Lebanon; not in Gaza; and not anywhere this malignant anti-human, anti-life, anti-freedom ideology has taken root. Either we fight it now, no holds barred, knowing that we are all that stands between the forces of death and destruction and those of life-- or we will be doomed to suffer even more of their barbarism in the near future.
And the horrors of the last world war will seem like a children's cakewalk compared to what the latest batch of totalitarian monsters have planned.
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