Tired Tweedy WASPS

      In the wake of the fall of Jon Corzine, the Progressive Media Complex is scrambling to explain the failure of another member of its vaunted meritocracy. To that end, Ross Douthat* of the New York Times crafts a new theory. It's not greed or incompetence that brought Corzine down, but recklessness. It's that Corzine was too smart to be careful.

     "In meritocracies . . . it's the very intelligence of our leaders that creates the worst disasters. Convinced that their own skills are equal to any task or challenge, meritocrats take risks that lower-wattage elites would never even contemplate, embark on more hubristic projects, and become infatuated with statistical models that hold out the promise of a perfectly rational and frictionless world." 

     Just in case anyone thought it was time to stop putting all of our eggs into this risky meritocracy basket (just as an experiment), Douthat warns us that there is no other choice, by reminding us that the risk averse "lower-wattage elites" are not actually virtuous, but just too stupid to have cocked things up as badly as Corzine and crew.  His evidence?  A "tweedy WASP waxing nostalgic for the days when Wall Street was dominated by his fellow bluebloods: "Do you think our guys could have invented, say, credit default swaps? Give me a break! They couldn't have done the math.").

    So, before we "revolt against the ruling class that our meritocracy has forged," by searching for "outsiders with thinner resumes but better instincts," don't forget that Michelle Bachman and Herman Cain (hmmm, a woman and a black guy) have not "risen to the challenge.  It will do America no good to replace the arrogant with the ignorant, the overconfident with the incompetent."  

    Come on now Ross Douthat. I guess I'm a low-wattage-tweedy-WASP and all, but I don't think Americans are turning away from the genius that is Timothy Geitner or Barack Obama because their ballsy reckless pursuit of hubristic projects is scaring them. I think they have recognized them for the over-educated bumbling incompetents that they are. Herman Cain is promising the same thing Ronald Reagan did. He is promising to leave us alone to our own pursuit of happiness the way we see fit. We aren't scared of the risks you'll take in our name. We just want you to leave us alone.

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*Russ Douthat's bio off of Wikipedia explains a bit of his apparent bias towards Ivy League elitism:


"Douthat was born in San Francisco, California, but grew up in New Haven, Connecticut.  He   attended Hamden Hall, a private high school in Hamden, Connecticut. Douthat graduated magna cum laude from Harvard University in 2002, where he was also elected to Phi Beta Kappa. While there he contributed to The Harvard Crimson and edited the Harvard Salient.  As an adolescent Douthat converted to Pentecostalism and then, with the rest of his family, to Catholicism. His mother is writer Patricia Snow.  His father, Charles Douthat, is a partner in a New Haven law firm and an award winning poet. In 2007 Douthat married Abigail Tucker, a reporter for The Baltimore Sun and a writer for Smithsonian. He and his family live in Washington, D.C."

UNDER-REPORTED: Character To Lead

     As a strict constructionist who believes deeply in the right to free speech enshrined in our Federal and State (North Carolina) Constitutions, I fully support the right of President Obama to say the following things about the following groups of people.  

     As a believer that a free press is our most important bulwark against tyranny, I contend that the media has done a poor job on reporting these comments and their possible implications regarding the character of our president and his fitness to lead.

            

     As catalogued by Victor Davis Hanson, President Obama has said the following at various times during his presidency or his campaign for that office:

African Americans: “Take off your bedroom slippers. Put on your marching shoes. Shake it off. Stop complainin’. Stop grumblin’. Stop cryin’.”

Americans: Are “not a model for the world” and have a “tragic history.” Also, “we’re hardwired not to always think clearly when we’re scared,” and, more recently, we have gotten “a little soft” and lost our “competitive edge.”

Bankers: “Fat cats”

Border enforcement: Its overzealous adherents want “alligators and moats” on the border and would arrest children on their way to get ice cream.

The Cambridge, Mass., police: “Acted stupidly” and, like law-enforcement officers in general, racially profile.

Corporate-jet owners: “Are you willing to compromise your kids’ safety so some corporate-jet owner can get a tax break?”

Democratic base: Must “shake off this lethargy. People need to buck up . . . if people now want to take their ball and go home, that tells me folks weren’t serious in the first place.”

Doctors: Needlessly chop off the limbs of diabetics and take out tonsils to increase their own profits.

Donald Trump: A “carnival barker”

Grandmother: “Typical white person”

Las Vegas: Where you are likely to “blow a bunch of cash when you’re trying to save for college”

Millionaires: They don’t pay their “fair share” and are synonymous with those who have 1,000 times more.

Nancy Reagan: Don’t “get into a Nancy Reagan thing about, you know, doing any séances.”

Rural Pennsylvanians: “They get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment.”

Sarah Palin: “You can put lipstick on a pig. It’s still a pig.”

Special Olympics: Comparable to the president’s dismal bowling scores

Super Bowl: Where you go “on the taxpayer’s dime”

Supreme Court: Would “open the floodgates for special interests”

Supreme Court Justice Thomas: “I would not have nominated Clarence Thomas. I don’t think that he, I don’t think that he was a strong enough jurist or legal thinker at the time for that elevation.”

Tea Party: “The teabag, anti-government people”

CLIMBING K-1

     In his vice-presidential stump speech, John Edwards used to say that there were "Two Americas", one that "did the work, another that reaps the reward." He asserted that that "working America" paid the taxes and was struggling to get by, while the other America got the tax breaks and could buy anything it wanted.   

     I'm not sure exactly where Mr. Edwards drew the line between his Two Americas in 2004, but I would argue that it's probably obsolete now that both Americas are struggling and neither seems to able to buy much of anything. But it does seem that Mr. Edwards was correct about America being divided. The question is, what establishes the fault line?

     Race used to be a convenient marker, but now we have a black president and it looks very  possible that we will have a black candidate opposing him from the opposition in the next election. Another formerly reliable line to draw was the relationship between big business and employee. But now the government is just as likely to bail out GM as it is the UAW, so that delineation is not nearly so bright as it used to be. How about geography? Does that matter anymore? This is anecdotal, but you can't swing a dead cat in Charlotte without hitting a guy from Buffalo or Cleveland. 

     So, are there in fact Two Americas if the old fault lines have faded so much? I believe there are, and that there is a new line of demarcation that is emerging. It is not drawn along race, class or geography but along the way Americans make a living and are taxed for their efforts. On one side are the Americans who draw a paycheck and submit a W-2 to Uncle Sam. On the other are Americans who work for themselves and are taxed off of a Schedule K-1, which reports the losses, income and dividends from a partnership or shareholder in an S-Corp. 

     There are three essential differences between the denizens of K-1 America and W-2 America that run far deeper than the differences with which John Edwards was consumed. First, K-1 Americans do not have their income tax deducted seamlessly from their paycheck every week and partially returned to them as a "favor" at the end of the year.  In K-1 America, you estimate your income for the year and write a check to Uncle Sam yourself every quarter. That check leaves a mark, and makes the drawer intensely aware of how the government is using his hard-earned cash. Second, there are no employment benefits in K-1 America. If you want health insurance, that's something for you to chase down and pay for yourself. If you don't have enough cash to pay for it (perhaps because of the check you just wrote to Uncle Sam), there is nobody to whom to log a protest except yourself, and that protest will probably be little more than "you better work harder if you want to eat." Third, the citizens  of K-1 America do not have an HR department to turn to if they don't get a paycheck or the boss fires them. They don't have bosses, they have customers and clients who may "fire" them tomorrow for reasons that would get them sued in W-2 America but are irrelevant in K-1 America. In K-1 America, you better keep those customers happy or you'll be looking for a job in W-2 America before you know it. 

     Given all that, one would expect K-1 America to be small and filled with lunatics. But it's neither. While it's by no means the majority, it's big. And its citizens are not crazy. They are people who recognize K-1 America as the place where one is still free to reap the reward of the work they are willing to do and the risk they are willing to take, without constant interference from a government that offers a dubious security blanket in exchange for their freedom to succeed and fail in proportion to their God-given talents and self-driven efforts to exploit them.

     In a sense, K-1 America is like a hard-to-reach mountaintop. While life on that peak may be harder than life in the W-2 flatlands, those who choose to dwell there have a common sense of individuality and purpose that transcends the traditional boundaries of race, class and wealth.   They are people unwilling to trade a difficult day of freedom outside the wire for a lifetime guarantee of three hots and a cot. The harder these people climb K-1, the farther away from the W-2 flatlands they find themselves. I contend that this distance, which is increasing daily, is the border that divides today's Two Americas.

INCOMPETENT PEOPLE

     Steny Hoyer is the minority whip in the House of Representatives. That is a very high and important leadership position in Congress, where Steny has served the People for thirty years. A lot of the People (82% actually) are pretty unhappy with the way Congress has managed the debt crisis and are demanding answers. Steny came up with an answer the other day that is fairly novel--it's our fault. The People are to blame. 

     The logic behind this is not self-evident, but here goes. Steny Hoyer thinks that it is the People's fault that that the People are mad at Congress for it's mismanagement of the debt crisis, because the People keep voting for candidates with "hard stances" who think that "compromise (is) not something they should participate in." So, the dysfunctional state of Congress as a legislative body is not a result of its poor leadership, for which it's leaders should be held to account to the People, but a consequence of bad elections, for which the People should be held to account to Congress. After all, "elections have consequences" and those consequences, per Steny Hoyer, are the natural and proximate result of the People's incompetent voting, not the Congress' incompetent legislating.

     I have two minor concerns with Steny's position:

           Concern One:  I have been voting for congressmen since Steny Hoyer has been a congressmen (long time) and I cannot recall ever having the choice between the Hard Stance No Compromise guy Steny says the People should stop voting for, and the Soft Stance Compromise Guy that Steny says the People should start voting for (if we were competent that is).  That is to say, in my personal recollection, I cannot recall any candidate for office actually representing himself as a Soft Stance Guy hell-bent-for-leather to get to DC and start compromising.  Who would vote for a guy like that?  So, assuming the Soft Stance Guy actually exists, how are the People going to figure out who he is so we can start voting for him the way Steny says we're supposed to?

          Concern Two:  Where exactly is Steny going with his concept of the incompetence of the voting public?  In the real world (i.e., that portion of the world which is not-Congress), we fire incompetent people who are to blame for messing up progress.  If the People are incompetent because we keep messing up our elections by voting for the wrong guy, shouldn't we be fired?  Shouldn't Steny and crew be unfettered to go ahead and fix all the People's problems for us without the distraction of the People intruding every two years with our infernal voting?  That seems to be the implication. What else could Steny be getting at other than the issuance of a stern warning from a veteran legislator: either you People start voting right, or we may not let you do it anymore.

     The governor of North Carolina had something similar in mind when she suggested taking a couple of elections off so Congress could go ahead and save the People without having to worry about what the People might have to say about the manner in which we were being saved.  So this might be an idea that is catching on with a lot of our leaders, and it sounds good in a way. But, here's a problem. Being that (for now) the United States is a representative democracy in which our elected representatives are to govern within the will of the People, how are the People to express that will if we don't get to vote? I guess they could take polls to find out our will, but isn't that what an election is, a big poll with permanent consequences? Take that  away and Congress would be free to govern us any way it saw fit, regardless of our will. And maybe, just maybe, that is exactly what the Steny Hoyers of the world would love the chance to do.  

VIKING OF EMPATHY

     Denmark is basically an island with thin gruel for soil and a blink-of-the-eye growing season.  No surprise then that the old Danes built ships and sailed all over the known world looking for a better place to live.  On the way, if they happened to need some some biscuits or diversion, they would pull into a port, take what they needed and burn the place down so word would go out that resistance was futile.  When did that, they were called Vikings.  When they finally found a place they liked and stayed there, they were called Danes.

     The Danes liked an area of Northern France a lot so they stayed there.  The people they kicked out called them the North-men, because Denmark was in the north, and the place came to be called Normandy.  After a while the Danes of Normandy decided to give England a try.  That was in 1066, and it was called the Norman Conquest.  It was led by a guy named William.  He liked England so much, he decided to be a Dane rather than a Viking and stick around.  Since he was there for the long haul, William tore up the old property books and deeded in all the land to himself, and then deeded out parcels to his loyal nobles.  Thus was born the English Crown.  If you happened not to be a noble, you were a peasant, and tough nuts to you because you had no rights whatsoever.  Oh yeah, I forgot, the Danes were a bunch of pagans.

     But some of those peasants were pretty smart, and patient.  They slowly began pulling back rights from the Crown based on what they called Natural Law, things that seemed self-evident, until (finally) England was a constitutional monarchy with a bill of rights that looks just like ours (it is just like ours actually, because we copied it a hundred years later).  This process took about 800 years and required a couple of revolutions along the way.  Towards the end of the process, the English started colonizing America, kind of like a politer version of the Danes.  Their motives for doing so were a mixture of profit, religious freedom and the need for a place to park the undesirables that they usually kept locked up in debtors' prison (Hellllo Georgia!).

     The people who went (or got sent) to the Colonies ruled themselves. Having nothing else to go by, they went ahead and did it like Englishmen, right down to the Natural Law and the Bill of Rights stuff. And that was a pretty good way to do it apparently, because the Colonies prospered enough to tempt the French to try to steal them in the 1750s. It took nine years for the King to slap the French down. Then he tried to recoup the blood and treasure England had spilled keeping the French out of the Colonists' chili by jacking up some new taxes. The King had a pretty good substantive argument for the taxes, but he stubbed his toe procedurally by not giving the Colonists a hearing on it.  Remember, they thought they were Englishmen, subjects of a constitutionally restrained monarch. The King thought . . . well, who knows what, but he wasn't going to let a Colonial rabble tell him what to do. The King and the Colonists, well they couldn't really work that one out.

     So, the Colonies went ahead and punched the King dead in the mouth and started their own country.  At first, they wanted their own king too. That might seem stupid in retrospect, but at the time, a constitutional monarchy was the best you got. After George Washington nixed the King Idea, they drafted some sketchy Articles of Confederacy which established a toothless federal government that was powerless to stop the individual states from taxing each other and raising their own armies. Seeing that something in between a King and a Confederacy was called for, they finally got working on a Constitution that would create a stronger Federal Government, but limit its power so it didn't end up turning the new Americans into a bunch of peasants.  

     Justly suspicious of the hazard of creating a new governmental entity (cue giant sucking sound), the Framers imbued the new Federal Government only with those powers specifically delegated by the States.  Then, not even trusting themselves that far, they tacked on a Bill of Rights just like the one that kept the King in check.  Kind of a belts plus suspenders approach, but they were pretty sharp guys those Framers.  Pretty sharp.  Because, despite their efforts to keep the new Federal Government in its box, the darn thing started creeping out past its limited delegated powers right from the start.  Not so much in a "no-raping-the-women-til-the-gold-is-aboard", William the Conqueror kind of way, but in a Empathetic kind of way, like "hey Sad Clown, we're here to help you, but this pesky Constitution keeps getting in our way, so why don't you just give us a little more power so we can help you through this (war, depression, national emergency-you fill in the blank) and then we'll give that power right on back."

     Sounds good on paper, but works bad in practice, because once Uncle Sam has more power (even a little), he's not giving it back.  Nope.  Not ever.  He's like a really patient Viking AND a Dane rolled into one--slowly taking what he wants, burning down the rest as a warning to the others and settling down to live in your town . . . forever. Uncle Shug, with his greasy smile and his good intentions, may not look like William the Conqueror, but the effect is the same. Little by little, he is transforming us Sad Clowns into powerless peasants of the Viking of Empathy.

GREEK TO ME

     When asked if he believed in American Exceptionalism, the President said yes, but only in the same way the Greeks believed in "Greek Exceptionalism".  To be fair, this was in 2009, before Greece had slid all the way down to Total Basket Case status.  But still, why Greece?  There is no doubt that the ancient Greeks contributed mightily to art, politics and culture, but does that does mean the modern Greek nation posesses the same unique qualities of liberty, stability and economic vitality that make America exceptional?

     Not really.  For most of its history, what we think of as Greece has either been a fairly typical old-school hegemon that sought to subjugate its neighbors, or has itself struggled under the domination of some other empirical tyrant.  For three hundred years it was a mere outpost of the Ottoman Empire, until was extricated in 1829 with the help northern Europe (which was apparently suffering under its own pre-Obamian delusions of Platonic nostalgia).  But the newly freed Greece did not revive Socratic notions of democracy.  It became a monarchy, with a German as its first King.  It stayed that way until WWII, when (like the rest of Europe) it got overrun by Hitler, and suffered from intercine squabbles with its communist faction until the Marshall Plan and the predecessor of the CIA/Special Forces tipped the scales toward nominal democracy in a civil war that lasted until 1949.  Since then, it's had a military coup or two and finally slipped into the EU, where, completely exhausted, it is about to become an economic ward of Germany.  I'll bet Hitler finds that pretty ironic from whatever special corner of Hell in which he resides.

     I don't mean to pick on the Greeks, just to point out that their history is fairly typical for southern Europe (tyrant or victim, depending on the circumstances) and nothing like the history of the American experiment which makes us exceptional.  I'll credit the President with benign diplomatic motives in his invention of a Greek history that never happened, but has it really helped the Greeks to pretend that their country has been as successful as the US in securing its citizens' rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness?  Wouldn't it be better for them in the long run to stop blowing sunshine at them, show them our playbook and help them run it?

BLACK FLY OF TYRANNY

           Last week the governor of the 10^th most populous state in the union suggested that congressional elections should be suspended  here.  Why would the chief magistrate of the State of North Carolina call for the abrogation of the first clause in the second section of Article I of the United States Constitution, which requires that the House of Representatives to be “chosen every second Year by the People of the several States”? 

Well, who knows what she was actually thinking, but here is what she actually said:  "I think we ought to suspend, perhaps, elections for Congress for two years and just tell them we won't hold it against them, whatever decisions they make, to just let them help this country recover. I really hope that someone can agree with me on that."  In other words, the Governor does not want our elected representatives troubled by the will of the people as they rule over us in our best interests during hard times.  Later she said she was just joshing, which I guess I am willing to accept.  But I keep reading that sentence trying to find the joke in there and I can’t. 

I guess you could say she was being ironic, as in isn’t it ironic that our chief elected state executive would advocate the abandonment of the foundational principles of federalism and representative government upon which the entirety of American Democracy is premised?  But if this is irony, it is not the biting Jonathan Swift  Modest Proposal kind, it is the Alanis Morissette Black Fly In Your Chardonnay variety that represents the sloppy emotionality of our current governing  class.  When the going gets tough, which it now surely is, their answer is not to more firmly embrace the principles of liberal democracy that set and have kept us free for over two centuries, but to casually kick them to the curb.  “Ahh, Elections-Smelections, who needs them?  Just do whatever you need to do up there to save us.  We won’t hold it against you if you screw up by voting you out or anything.” 

I suppose you have to give the Governor points for boldness.  It would be one thing if she had picked some obscure corner of the Constitution to tear off and wrap around her chewing gum, as in “what’s the big deal about Bills of Attainder.  Let’s go ahead and have some of those.  I really hope that someone can agree with me on that.”  She might have slid that one by us pretty easily.  But suspending elections?  Wasn’t that the whole point of the American Revolution in the first place—an extended and bloody objection to being ruled from afar by an unelected and unaccountable master regardless of how exigent the circumstances?  The Governor must really think we are asleep at the switch here in the Tar Heel Stat, so she went big.

But I think she overestimated our somnambulance.  We know that two hundred years is a blink of an eye in the vast history of man’s temptation to tyrannize his fellows.  The fact that America has remained a free and stable democracy even that long is not a given or a lucky accident.  It is the result of our brilliant Constitution and the will to defend it from political hackery, both evil and well-meaning.  If you are a soldier or a lawyer you have taken a sacred oath to continue that defense until death.  But no American needs an oath to recognize this as an obligation of citizenship in a free society. 

It’s some sweet wine of liberty we’ve been drinking from sea to shining sea.  But it takes constant vigilance to keep straining out that Black Fly of Tyranny that periodically goes kerplop in the Chardonnay when would-be tyrants think we're a bit tipsy.  Thank you Governor Perdue for reminding us of that.