July 12, 2008
After re-making America's institutions and traditions -- usually by demoralizing them -- the left is rushing toward the next big re-construction project. The NEW MAN/WOMAN; NEW HE/SHE; or NEW AMERICAN for short. We've seen this before in the Soviet version of czarism and Mao's latest middle kingdom dynasty.
This week, presidential candidate Senator Obama announced his intention to re-create Vista and the Peace Corps. He doesn't refer to those failed programs, but it sounds like he wants to try them one more time. In his administration, there will be a federal requirement for all high school students to perform fifty hours of "community service" per school year. One hundred hours for college students. As with the education systm as a whole, working class kids are left behind. Not that they will miss good intentions coerced.
Compulsory charity is another word for government programs. Recent studies showing that Americans spend much time and money in charitable and humanitarium efforts are not mentioned by Sen. Obama. Nor does he acknowledge that the middle and lower middle class are most prominent and sacrificing in these good works. This would not sync with their condescending view of "middle classism."
The Boy Scouts do these things and more without much government help. Their work adds civic value, especially to poorer neighbhorhhoods. But the Boy Scouts of America is an official target of the ACLU which "renders nugatory" -- to borrow Mr. Buckley's grand phrase -- one hundred years of good works. The BSA suffers additionally from its role as a "men in training" program which smells of homophobia to progressive Illinois senators and their enlightened wives.
Sen. Obama specifically calls this new initiative an alternative to the military. The ACLU's most recent attack on the Naval Academy's prayer before dinner indicates that the military's continuing shortcomings have not escaped the notice of the DNC's presidential campaign.
The left cannot tolerate anonymous, selfless service. Like Madonna whose every act and outrage must be recorded and noticed, so must every act of compassion ("Don't you do anything off camera?" Warren Beatty asked her.) DON'T ASK DON'T TELL repudiates service-as-public-relations. What's the point of being out if no one sees you?
The energy crisis reveals the left's view of what is and is not permissible in the human realm. Successful human ingenuity may be demonstrated again and again, especially since the Middle Ages and the formalization of science and technology, but it cannot be relied upon to solve this latest human problem. The risk is too great that human ingenuity and industry will rise to the occasion yet again. The purpose of the energy crisis as conceived by the left is to dismantle technology and prosperity. In other words, yet another attack on "middle classism" and all its excesses -- light, heat, medicine, convenience, abundance of food, the possibility of a better life for the next generation. As with a typical civil rights movement, the next generation must suffer to remember the sacrifices of the past. Progress without progress. You can see this on display in most center cities. (But, let's face it, only the next generation of working class and poor are forced to relive the miserable past.) Global environmental catastrophe is another way of moving us forward into the past. There are no new goals or challenges, only the same old ones -- social justice, equality, revenge. It is not coincidental that Sen. Obama is hostile to the space program.
Yet, in the face of millenia of disappointment, the left does put great faith in Human Nature. We are all basically good, or the same thing, have good intentions. The current cultural and historical vogue for diminishing Churchill and amelioring the reputations of Hitler, Stalin and Mao is not coincidental either. Churchill must be cut down to size and the "good intentions" of Britain and America's enemies elevated to good works.
I tell friends and colleagues that I have great faith in human ingenuity, but little in human nature. That isn't strictly true. One is still surprised by goodness. Evidence of things not seen.
But, when I take a shower; or a couple of tabs of acetomenophin; put ice in my Diet Coke; or email someone on the other side of the world, I am placing my faith in something smaller. But, with Divine origins after all. Paradoxically, something very big indeed. Evidence of the visible unseen.
The selflessness and selfishness of human ingenuity.
Sam Macomb
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