The Unknown Citizen
To JS/07/M/378
This Marble Monument is Erected by the State

He was found by the Bureau of Statistics to be
One against whom there was no official complaint,
And all the reports on his conduct agree
That, in the modern sense of an old-fashioned word, he was a saint,
For in everything he did he served the Greater Community.
Except for the War till the day he retired
He worked in a factory and never got fired,
But satisfied his employers, Fudge Motors Inc.
Yet he wasn’t a scab or odd in his views,
For his Union reports that he paid his dues,
(Our report on his Union shows it was sound)
And our Social Psychology workers found
That he was popular with his mates and liked a drink.
The Press are convinced that he bought a paper every day
And that his reactions to advertisements were normal in every way.
Policies taken out in his name prove that he was fully insured, (more…)

Time marches on and George Will has mellowed into one of the finer columnists in America. And thankfully, he no longer makes his name by impugning the rest of us. Nevertheless, he’s still enamored with State intervention in the lives of people. The dismal failure of the past sixty years seems to have made little impression upon him.

In his latest column, he praises the notion of “libertarian paternalism” as advocated by Cass Sunstein at the University of Chicago. As Will writes:

“Thaler and Sunstein say the premise of libertarian policy is that people should be generally free to do what they please. Paternalistic policy ‘tries to influence choices in a way that will make choosers better off, as judged by themselves.’ So ‘libertarian paternalism is a relatively weak, soft, and nonintrusive type of paternalism because choices are not blocked, fenced off, or significantly burdened.’”

Intead, the government consciously frames the available choices of individuals, thereby directing their decisions without ever putting a mandate into place.

“Thaler and Sunstein stress that if ‘incentives and nudges replace requirements and bans, government will be both smaller and more modest.’ So nudges have the additional virtue of annoying those busybody, nanny-state liberals who, as the saying goes, do not care what people do as long as it is compulsory.”

Such thinking badly misunderstands the nature of power. The notion of the government subtly, purposefully crafting and manipulating the choices of individuals is much scarier than that of government dictating those choices. When government power is bound up in statutes and regulations, people can easily identify its influence and work to change it. Such “soft” power as advocated Thaler, Sunstein and Will (and Obama), is much less easy to resist and much more destructive to real liberty. “Libertarian paternalism” creates rat mazes in which the choices of individuals are crafted from above yet leave them the illusion of freedom.

Recommended by the Bush administration, payment-card reporting would require banks and other providers of merchant account services to report credit- and debit-card payments to the IRS. All credit-card sales essentially would be pre-audited, with detailed sales information given to the government.

(Phil Kerpen, Payment-Card Reporting on NRO Financial)

“Suppose an aircraft designer talks the Boeing Company into financing an airplane which, according to its creator, is guaranteed to be faster, safer and more comfortable than any ever built. In the course of a century the company goes on to build several prototypes, but they all prove slower and less comfortable than previous models and able to return to Mother Earth only by means of crash-landings. Yet the company continues to turn them out. Certainly, the originator of such insanity would be recognized as a genius; not perhaps of aircraft design, but of conmanship. . . This year marks the 100th anniversary of the death of Karl Marx.”

Some examples:

Those surveyed were asked: ‘Is it your obligation to care for a seriously injured/ill spouse or parent, or should you give care only if you really want to?’ Of those describing themselves as ‘conservative’, 71 per cent said it was. Only 46 per cent of those on the Left agreed.

To the question: ‘Do you get happiness by putting someone else’s happiness ahead of your own?’, 55 per cent of those who said they were ‘very conservative’ said Yes, compared with 20 per cent of those who were ‘very liberal’.

There is plenty of data that shows that Right-wingers are happier, more generous to charities, less likely to commit suicide - and even hug their children more than those on the Left.

Both the World Values Survey and the General Social Survey reveal Left-wingers are more likely to rate ‘high income’ as an important factor in choosing a job, more likely to say ‘after good health, money is the most important thing’, and agree with the statement ‘there are no right or wrong ways to make money’.

If I could communicate one political truth to the American people, other than the notion that the proliferation of frivolous “rights” debases all of our historic rights, it would be this: liberal compassion is a fraud. It is actually an evasion of genuine compassion, which is personal and sacrificial. Liberalism uses government power and the money of others to accomplish certain ideological goals, and masks this in therapeutic, caring rhetoric. That’s not compassion.

In one case, the US Supreme Court overturns the recount in Florida during the 2000 election, enabling Bush to win the Presidency. In another case, the Califoria Supreme court overturns the popular vote and enables gay marriage.

The hypocrisy is astounding to me, but nary a hiccup from the left. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, democrats and the left in this country only care about rules when the rules are in their favor.

The wheels of justice grind slowly, but grind they do.

Lest we forget:

Earlier that morning, two fishermen saw the overturned car in the water and called the police.[1] A diver was sent down and discovered Kopechne’s body. The diver, John Farrar, later testified at the inquest that Kopechne’s body was pressed up in the car in the spot where an air bubble would have formed. He interpreted this to mean that Kopechne had survived for a while after the initial accident in the air bubble, and concluded that

“Had I received a call within five to ten minutes of the accident occurring, and was able, as I was the following morning, to be at the victim’s side within twenty-five minutes of receiving the call, in such event there is a strong possibility that she would have been alive on removal from the submerged car.”

With “liberal” unused, maybe conservatives should take it up. We certainly have a better claim to it than the Left does. In fact, on nearly every point modern conservatism is “liberal” in its historic sense, and the Left “illiberal.”

- Conservatives support limited, federated government; the Left consolidates power in a massive, activist government.

- Conservatives support strict Constitutionalism; the Left dismisses the text of the Constitution as a “living document.”

- Conservatives support strong property rights; the Left endorses wealth redistribution and unrestrained eminent domain laws.

- Conservatives support equality of opportunity; the Left wants to government to regulate equality of outcome.

- Conservatives support meritocracy and color-blindness; the Left supports racist identity politics.

- Conservatives support free trade; the Left has become the faction of trade restriction.

- Conservatives support unfettered Free Speech; the Left enacts campus speech codes.

The list could continue, but these are some of the hallmarks of historic liberalism. The capture of “Liberal” by the radical Left is an Orwellian shift in language. Radicalism is the antithesis of historic liberalism, and the notion that Radicalism is Liberalism is on par with War is Peace; Freedom is Slavery; Ignorance is Strength.

If you can remember that far back, this was supposed to be another one of those “Year of the Woman” elections, the first time a woman was entering the race as the frontrunner for her party’s nomination, with the big question being whether women would see this as the historic occasion it was and abandon their concerns about whether Hillary should’ve dumped Bill over Monica and whether it was her ambition that kept them together.

Consider the assumptions embedded in this paragraph.

1. 2008 was “supposed to be” a specific sort of election.

2. The “big question” was whether or not average women would be smart enough to “see this as the historic occasion it was and abandon their concerns about. . .”" Blah blah.

Assumption #1 is rather creepy — a handful of elite opinion makers deciding what sort of election it’s “supposed to be” before the first vote is cast. But Assumption #2 is the more telling. It really reveals the elitism at the core or modern liberalism. In Estrich’s America, voting isn’t a matter of free citizens picking their own leaders. Instead, one’s chromosomes should dictate your choice. I’m amazed she restrained herself from calling anti-Hillary women Uncle Toms.