This has been fascinating reading, and I appreciate the everyone's going at it so respectfully. I doubt, however -- this is for Tyler -- that a "reasonable discussion," can be had by someone who sees the social-democratic policies of the mid-20th century as a good thing and someone who wants to "shrink the government out of existence". If there's reasonable middle ground there, I'd be happy if you could point me in its direction. Some disagreements, I'm afraid, will forever remain heated -- or irresolvable, absent political power.
E.W.R.: Your critique resonates with much of what I've come to see, courtesy of Thomas Frank (LISTEN, LIBERAL) as the flawed approach of the current Dem ascendency. While giving lip-service to working people the DNC has since Carter embraced a neoliberal technocratic "meritocracy" that has created an educated, hereditary upper middle class that has left working people in the dust while still pretending to embrace traditional liberal values. This is the dirty secret I think you're suggesting when the hard left doesn't want to hear that economic frustration and resentment of entrenched elites, not merely racism, accounts for Trump's appeal; nor does the Dem political class want to hear that's it's lip service to working people is evident to anyone paying attention.
But there is also a growing cadre of reasonable people seeking exactly the kind of return to fact-based debate you seek: Yascha Mounk at Persuasion is one example. George Packer at the Atlantic has written about it recently. Catherine Liu's VIRTUE HOARDERS goes after the whole self-congratulatory notion of the left that it represents "the good people." Jonathan Rauch's The Constitution of Knowledge attacks the extremist pieties and anti-democratic impulses on both right and left. But I don't think we're getting out of this particular political moment without more ugliness, because it's just so much easier to strike a virtuous pose than it is to actually try to solve problems. But even here on this forum, there's often more heat than light. Meaning there's no "safe place" for folks like us, and we shouldn't want one.
P.S. Richard Rorty made many of the same critiques of the elitist left in ACHIEVING OUR COUNTRY:
“Members of labor unions, and unorganized and unskilled workers, will sooner or later realize that their government is not even trying to prevent wages from sinking or to prevent jobs from being exported. Around the same time, they will realize that suburban white-collar workers—themselves desperately afraid of being downsized—are not going to let themselves be taxed to provide social benefits for anyone else.
At that point, something will crack. The nonsuburban electorate will decide that the system has failed and start looking around for a strongman to vote for—someone willing to assure them that, once he is elected, the smug bureaucrats, tricky lawyers, overpaid bond salesmen, and postmodernist professors will no longer be calling the shots… Once the strongman takes office, no one can predict what will happen.”
This has been fascinating reading, and I appreciate the everyone's going at it so respectfully. I doubt, however -- this is for Tyler -- that a "reasonable discussion," can be had by someone who sees the social-democratic policies of the mid-20th century as a good thing and someone who wants to "shrink the government out of existence". If there's reasonable middle ground there, I'd be happy if you could point me in its direction. Some disagreements, I'm afraid, will forever remain heated -- or irresolvable, absent political power.
E.W.R.: Your critique resonates with much of what I've come to see, courtesy of Thomas Frank (LISTEN, LIBERAL) as the flawed approach of the current Dem ascendency. While giving lip-service to working people the DNC has since Carter embraced a neoliberal technocratic "meritocracy" that has created an educated, hereditary upper middle class that has left working people in the dust while still pretending to embrace traditional liberal values. This is the dirty secret I think you're suggesting when the hard left doesn't want to hear that economic frustration and resentment of entrenched elites, not merely racism, accounts for Trump's appeal; nor does the Dem political class want to hear that's it's lip service to working people is evident to anyone paying attention.
But there is also a growing cadre of reasonable people seeking exactly the kind of return to fact-based debate you seek: Yascha Mounk at Persuasion is one example. George Packer at the Atlantic has written about it recently. Catherine Liu's VIRTUE HOARDERS goes after the whole self-congratulatory notion of the left that it represents "the good people." Jonathan Rauch's The Constitution of Knowledge attacks the extremist pieties and anti-democratic impulses on both right and left. But I don't think we're getting out of this particular political moment without more ugliness, because it's just so much easier to strike a virtuous pose than it is to actually try to solve problems. But even here on this forum, there's often more heat than light. Meaning there's no "safe place" for folks like us, and we shouldn't want one.
P.S. Richard Rorty made many of the same critiques of the elitist left in ACHIEVING OUR COUNTRY:
“Members of labor unions, and unorganized and unskilled workers, will sooner or later realize that their government is not even trying to prevent wages from sinking or to prevent jobs from being exported. Around the same time, they will realize that suburban white-collar workers—themselves desperately afraid of being downsized—are not going to let themselves be taxed to provide social benefits for anyone else.
At that point, something will crack. The nonsuburban electorate will decide that the system has failed and start looking around for a strongman to vote for—someone willing to assure them that, once he is elected, the smug bureaucrats, tricky lawyers, overpaid bond salesmen, and postmodernist professors will no longer be calling the shots… Once the strongman takes office, no one can predict what will happen.”