I wish I had time to respond to Ronn! in the detail that his thoughtful missives deserve. Alas, I am swamped, so I'll just have to encapsulate.
There is a core American value/trait that might be called soft-libertarian -- a belief in competition as a fundamental wellspring of creativity and many of the good things that came out of the Enlightenment. This value is fundamentally correct, even though it flies in the face of many thousands of years of preachings that cooperation (guided by state or religious elites) is a greater good. This trend had strange roots in certain branches of the Protestant Reformation (and the Calvinist versions led to very weird theology). But there can be no doubt that recognition of the value of individualist competition was a great breakthrough. Indeed, I go into great detail about this! (For a rather intense look at how "truth" is determined in science, democracy, courts and markets, see the lead article in the American Bar Association's Journal on Dispute Resolution (Ohio State University), v.15, N.3, pp 597-618, Aug. 2000, "Disputation Arenas: Harnessing Conflict and Competition for Society's Benefit." or at: http://www.davidbrin.com/disputationarticle1.html) Indeed, The Transparent Society is largely about the importance of this fundamental truth. Most civilization saw only the drawbacks of Individualistic competition (IC) and bent every effort to channel of limit it. But The enlightenment learned to harness it in regulated markets and democracy and science etc. Resulting in what Robert Wright's great book NONZERO calls the positive sum game. In America, the state's job is to maintain safety and fairness... but also to ensure that the IC systems of markets and democracy work fairly, so that all benefit. Moreover, in their urgent will to save the world, some liberals and many leftists badmouthed IC and forgot that Adam Smith was the "first liberal." There were, indeed, times when the cooperative/state approaches to problem solving that were pushed by FDR and LBJ etc lost their way. So, from the above, you folks can see that I am fully aware of the benefits of IC and the ways that liberals and democrats may have "lost their way." And... having said that... let me say that it is utterly delusional to portray this century as in any way balanced between Democrate "betraying Americanism" in - say - the 1960s - and the recent neocon betrayals of the 21st century. That's not right, for one big reason. The "betrayal" that Ronald Reagan talked about (when "the Democratic Party left me") is 90% utter fantasy, wrought by propaganda and outright misconception. In fact, liberalism has a track record of simply being right, again and again and again. About civil right, womens' rights, education, science, environmentalism, the list goes on and on and on... ...and the right has had to wholly invent its responses, time and again. McCathyist ravings about commies who were never there. A domino theory in Southeast asia. A so-called plague of immorality among the young and inthe cities (red america has higher divorce, domestic violence, teen pregnancy and down the line)... all the way to a trumped-up "terror war" in which the certain victims (blue cities) want a normal life while rural/red america yammers calls for panic. Fact: the great enemy of free enterprise markets was never socialism or bureaucracy. Across 5,000 years, it was always aristocratism. The mighty, using their power to get more and steal from others and cheat. Adam Smith knew this and railed against cheating cronies of the King. Yes! Socialism can squelch markets too. But that wasn't the trend under FDR or LBJ! When small businesses boomed and yet we had the flattest social order of all time. Think. Individualistic Competition works best when all kids get the means to grow up to be empowered competitors! Hence the state has a perfectly reasonable role in ensuring equal rights and universal education, so that the engine of markets will have the greatest possible feedstock of human talent, and a minimum of human talent is wasted. We now draw talent from all races, genders and classes. That's the good news and it arose from liberalism. But democracy and markets ARE under threat, from burgeoning class disparity and cheating. And THOSE are fruits of conservatism... at least in its recent forms. The stock market, business startups, the GDP, and budget balances all do better under Dems... by a huge margin. So what metric can the right point to? Lowered taxes for the rich. Times of peace? Lowered taxes for the rich. War? Lowered taxes for the rich. Surpluses?Lowered taxes for the rich. Deficits? Lowered taxes for the rich. Can anybody smell a rat? Look, I wish there were a decent conservatism and libertarianism around, to serve as an alternating counterbalance to some of the admitted liberal/lefty excesses. There ought to be free market solutions to many democrat/statist fixes like the FDA. Barry Goldwater (bless him) wanted some. But today's right isn't about that. It is 100% about pushing us back toward aristocratism. It has NO other agenda. Under those circumstances, I have to tell you. folks. It is about either the Democrats and America... or fear, manipulation, aristocracy and the death of all our dreams. It is that stark. _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
