In saying that I don’t understand what’s generally known as the ‘right wing’ mentality, I’m not prejudging it, rather my own lack of understanding. Many intelligent and effective people obviously believe in it, and so there must be some substance. Only a fool decides their intellectual opponents are stupid, and deserves the drubbing they get. So, while this is about ‘the right wing’ it’s more about my attempt to understand.
What is the ‘right wing’? It’s not a single thought, so you have to read multiple authors, from Ayn Rand*, to this great comic by Steve Ditko. Although this is only one extreme of the position, I think ‘compassionate conservatives’ and ‘neoconservatives’ have different flavours. I can use it as example. In the ‘objectivist’ viewpoint there’s either a deeper thought that’s not clear, or it seems to come down to I’m great and I’m not sharing my hard earned stuff with those lazy assholes repeated in a 100 ways.
There’s one factor that’s carefully erased from the equation which I’ll call fate. You might scoff at such a concept, call it mystical. But is it any more mystical than the claim in these writings that anyone who strives will succeed? Strive, succeed. Take a look around you and the facts are not kind. There are good people at all levels of success and quite a few whose status is based on flatus. If that’s so, then Rand’s superman is a wonderful myth. She was smart enough in her Romantic Manifesto to state the difference between an ideal and a expectation. Others have not been so smart.
You have to start at home – I can definitely admit that my successes have involved support from a community that believed in me. And I can say that no matter how hard I scour it from my own judgements, knowing someone (not necessarily liking them) has affected how I judge them. The idea that effort alone is the key to success is a religious belief. Yet the basis of so much thinking in government and the community.
Here’s another factor – talent. Talent is a hard thing to define but I think we can at least accept that it’s there when you are born and not something that can be installed later – which is a skill. I think that the objectivists would agree that their supermen have talent. But then once you bring that in, you have to accept that some people don’t have talent. That is, no matter how many lessons, they’ll never be Picasso. If we’re going to divide people into classes on their skills it’s one thing – there’s always the chance to migrate. If we’re going to use innate talent then we’re using the ‘alphas’ and ‘betas’ of Huxley’s Brave New World and sliding from a moral position (work harder and you’ll succeed) to a hierarchy of physical types. To their credit few conservatives are prepared to go that far – at least in public.
Conservatism is often set in opposition to socialism which in some places is code for a moral failure. I find this strange, particularly in the United States which was formed by small mutually supportive communities based around a church. The ritual of ‘barn raising’ is illustrative. In the small rural community, the active men and women joined together regularly to build a barn structure (an essential for life) for one of their members. They did that knowing that next year it might be their turn to have the community assist them. In a country where many millions live, and work is not always physical, that process has streamlined into contributions of income. But it is at heart essentially the same. Next year it may be your barn.
It’s only fair to try raise some of the counter claims.
Sure, income distribution allows people to be lazy (Bismark designed it that way). Actually it allows people other than the wealthy to be lazy – wealth hasn’t been a very good predictor of hard work. The argument seems to be they are poor because they are lazy – as proved by them being poor. Just so.
The unfortunately named ‘trickle down effect’ has been in effect for quite some time now. The idea – give the leaders a lot more and they will provide more for all those below them. It seemed to have some basis over the years when things were going good. An extra million for the boss and the worker got a plasma TV. Right now when things are definitely not going well, why does this system have no connection with the downturn? Could it be that other more important processes have a larger impact than the bosses’ paycheck?
Pushing it further – doesn’t there seem to be an element of sacrificing at an altar in this idea? Cut a chicken’s throat on the altar of Baal, or award an extra few million to the CEO, same primitive impulse to appease the irrational?
Perhaps some more reading will clear up these concerns. I’m still interested in the idea of ‘compassionate conservatism’ whatever that might be. Maybe it’s just another version of the vague ‘Third Way’ that seems to be replacing socialism in a few places. It’s easy to take an extreme but the language is so woolly in the middle it’s hard to keep an open mind.
* Disclaimer – always referred to by my parents as ‘Anus’.