Romancing the state

Speaking before a group opposed to gay marriage on Saturday, Florida GOP Senate candidate Marco Rubio discussedthe increasing power of Big Government:

“You know what the fastest growing religion in America is? Statism. The growing reliance on government.  Every time a problem emerges, increasingly the reaction in American society is well, what can government do about it? America became the greatest country because of its strong society where people did not sit back and wait for government to act.  They did it themselves.”

Rubio linked the growth of our statist religion to the decline of family and traditional religious faith.  Strong families tend to be less hungry for the smothering embrace of maternal government, as illegitimacy is one of the major causes of desperate poverty.    The support of a strong family is more likely to cultivate a view of Big Government as an obstacle to ambition, rather than a source of sustenance.  When the State tempts someone who enjoys the intellectual and material inheritance of an intact family reaching back for generations, they’re more likely to notice its greasy trench coat of confiscatory taxes and high unemployment, instead of the shiny welfare baubles tucked into the inside pockets.

The growth of the State may have been assisted by the decline of the family, but its recent surge was caused by the sense of uncertainty surrounding a complex economy, dominated by massive corporations.  Big Business inevitably creates the vacuum of confidence that Big Government rushes forward to fill.  American statism is a romance between a frightened populace, and a huge central government promising to take care of them.

Business growth is driven by economies of scale, along with advances in communication and transportation technology.  This makes products widely available and remarkably inexpensive.  It also places a wide range of complex financial instruments at the disposal of average consumers.  Mom-and-pop operations can’t provide the selection and bargain prices Wal-Mart can.  The credit industry grew along with its lending institutions.  Consumers can’t have those shopping and banking options without the enormous corporations which provide them.

These corporations also provide three crucial forms of nutrition for Big Government: a vast pool of easily taxable revenue, a convenient enemy for public flogging, and a sense of detachment from business affairs that makes the little guy feel helpless.

Big corporations are much easier to shake down for tax money than a horde of smaller local operations would be.  The size of the corporation insulates both its employees, and its customers, from the effects of taxation.  If you work for a small family business, you’re more likely to be aware of anything that affects its health, and view your own prosperity as linked to the health of your employer.  When your employer is a giant corporation, you have little knowledge of what happens at the highest levels.  Every ambitious politician fears the votes of enraged small businesses with strong ties to local communities, more than those of faceless employees in a huge organization spread over multiple states.  The VAT tax would provide the ultimate demonstration of this principle, as consumers choke on swollen prices, and unemployment lines grow, from a systemic disease largely invisible to normal folks.

The recent demonization of Wall Street illustrates how easily Big Business can be hung from the government’s strings, and used as part of its puppet show.  Not every corporation fears the destructive power of the State.  Some of them dream of harnessing it against their enemies, or exploiting it to firm up the barriers of entry to their industries.  Political influence is one of the most valuable resources in a politicized economy.  At current levels of central control, its purchase becomes mandatory.  When things go wrong, politicians love having big businesses to hide behind.

The sense of helplessness felt in the shadow of vast corporations is vital to the success of the statist.  That’s why they work so hard to cultivate it.  The public is presented with a carefully rigged choice between cold, unfeeling Big Business and noble, compassionate Big Government.  The early flourishing of socialism and communism came among the first people to be ground beneath the gears of the Industrial Revolution.  The dismal state of economic education brings young people out of high school and college into a world of shadows and mist, filled with lumbering giants.  They naturally gravitate to the giant that claims it loves them.

The public wants to judge the State on its promises, and forgive many of the results.  Anyone who has fallen for a poetic seduction knows the feeling.  Romance is blind and breathless when one party knows exactly what they want, and will say anything to get it.  As Charles Blow puts it in a remarkably foolish and vapid editorial for the New York Times, designed to stiffen the spines of nervous liberals:

Better to acknowledge that the anger and frustration felt across the country, however fanatical and freighted, must find release, and it will do so in November. Then you can accept it for what it is: not a failure of philosophy, but a fear of the future. That future can be deferred, but it will not be denied.

I am convinced that the right may win the day, but the left will win the age. That’s because the right is running an intellectually bereft campaign of desperation and disenchantment, amplified by a recession.

Great Recessions don’t last. Great ideas do.

The “ideas” he’s talking about are the empty promises and lies of liberalism.  There is nothing “great” about them.  They bring ruin everywhere they are tried, without exception… but every predator twists the emotions of its romantic prey with the promise of eternal triumph through absolute devotion.  Every lothario hopes his latest mark doesn’t dwell on the broken hearts of his previous victims.  Every seductress presents herself as perfection, and uses empty threats and insults to create the illusion she has no rivals.

The romance of the State is powerful, and should never be underestimated.  Take it from Woody Allen:

“I’m thrilled with Obama, I think it’s great. The Republican Party should get out of their way and stop trying to hurt him,” Allen said flatly in an interview with Spanish media in Cannes Film Festival, where he presented out of competition, his last film Will You Meet a Tall Dark Stranger.

In his view, the current U.S. president is “cool” and getting to do good things. So “it would be good,” he added if it could be a dictator for a few years, because it could make a lot of good stuff quickly.”

What a madly romantic notion: the benevolent dictator who can “make a lot of good stuff quickly,” presiding over a colossal State that presents the only means of accomplishing anything worthwhile.  Reason is easily drowned in a sea of obsessive love.

Cross-posted at www.doczero.org.

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