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SUNDAY SPECTATOR
May 30, 2010
Transformer
A crunch is coming to a country near you; has already come to several countries in Europe; is likely to transform the entire Western world within the space of our lifetimes. It will obviate all the trends to which we have become accustomed.But while I have no doubt of this, I have no idea what will emerge from it. Human beings cannot see the future, except perhaps prophetically under divine inspiration. We can see such rational things as "three into two won't go," and easily predict the catastrophe itself. We have not only an impending fiscal collapse, but escalating "culture wars" that will be resolved one way or another. I have praised Lee Harris several times previously as a remarkably discerning pundit. His account of the "fantasy ideology of Al Qaeda" exploded from the pages of Policy Review, the summer after 9/11, and since he has written three books on "global" political issues, under titles that unfortunately cast him as a futurologist. His latest, just published, is The Next American Civil War: The Populist Revolt Against the Liberal Elite. It is in fact a smiling book by the best sort of generous, old-fashioned liberal who gives an entertaining tour-de-horizon of the whole history of creative tension between ornery know-nothing libertarians, and pointy-headed intellectual control-freaks -- from the Magna Carta forward -- including Wat Tyler, Cromwell, Andrew Jackson, everything. He is on the side of both liberty and order, as any sane person will be, and celebrates chiefly the English-speaking societies that have "evolved" through open contests between them. Harris's writing is itself an overlay of high-brow and populist: in the best sense he is a "global village explainer." My own thesis would be that the tradition symbolized by Magna Carta is being rendered extinct, by the metastatic growth of the Nanny State, the retreat of Christianity, and the uncritical assimilation of inhuman technology. Harris would perhaps half-agree that we "aren't in Kansas any more," and I would half-agree that our current conflicts were prefigured in many past ones. Familiar with the attitudes of Middle Americans from living among them (unlike the urban intelligentsia of East and West Coasts), Harris provides an apologia for them that is only slightly condescending. They are people whose whole ethos is "live and let live," yet are accused of intolerance for failing to embrace progressive agendas. They are also people who powerfully resent being told how to live. And they have been pushed too far. The Tea Party movement has arisen in the U.S. (and could easily arise in English Canada) to redress an imbalance. The election of Barack Obama put a crown on the exponential growth of the state, and his extremely ambitious statist agenda is taking Middle America, very fast, to places it has never wanted to go. Whether you like or dislike Sarah Palin or Rush Limbaugh (I adore them both), they have articulated the spirit of rebellion against taxes and debt, against sprawling, parasitical bureaucracies, and against "the culture of death." To the mainstream media -- to that liberal elite generally -- the question has not been whether we should have vast intrusive bureaucracies, but rather, what their policies should be, and how to pay for them. That is their playing field, on which they locate some "middle ground" or scrimmage line -- itself shifting constantly to the left, toward some vague, Utopian endzone. It comes as an inconceivable shock to them to discover millions of people who are not merely pushing back against this "progress" -- which they could understand -- but want no part of the game. Their lives are centred on family and church and productive labour, not on politics. They are often poorly informed about things they care little about; poorly researched on current rights and entitlements; real boobs when they stray into debates about such things; and thus, hicks to the politically sophisticated. The latter, in turn, know little enough about family and church and productive labour. The problem arises between these two amorphous groups when the latter take the former to be their milch cows. At least in America, that is the point at which the hicks suddenly become seriously interested in politics, organize themselves into things like Tea Parties, and go out looking for results. This is complicated by the fact that Nanny State has come to the end of her fiscal road. Her ambitions have so far outstripped her means, that we are faced with public finance implosions. In the case of the U.S., deficits and debts were unsustainable even before President Obama and a Democrat-controlled Congress put the country on track to double them. Any way you look at it, the crunch is coming. I do not have the illusion it will be painless, for the Nanny State is utterly unprepared for, and was anyway ill-equipped to handle, popular rebellion. Nor have we anywhere in view the sort of politicians who could ride the tiger; who have any notion how to radically downsize a government peacefully. Yet we are getting beyond the sort of thing we can vote on. David Warren
© Ottawa Citizen
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