The liberal gloat
But if conservatives don’t acknowledge the crisis’s economic component, liberalism often seems indifferent to its deeper social roots. The progressive bias toward the capital-F Future, the old left-wing suspicion of faith and domesticity, the fact that Democrats have benefited politically from these trends — all of this makes it easy for liberals to just celebrate the emerging America, to minimize the costs of disrupted families and hollowed-out communities, and to treat the places where Americans have traditionally found solidarity outside the state (like the churches threatened by the Obama White House’s contraceptive mandate) as irritants or threats.
This is a great flaw in the liberal vision, because whatever role government plays in prosperity, transfer payments are not a sufficient foundation for middle-class success. It’s not a coincidence that the economic era that many liberals pine for — the great, egalitarian post-World War II boom — was an era that social conservatives remember fondly as well: a time of leaping church attendance, rising marriage rates and birthrates, and widespread civic renewal and engagement.
No such renewal seems to be on the horizon. That isn’t a judgment on the Obama White House, necessarily. But it is a judgment on a certain kind of blithe liberal optimism, and the confidence with which many Democrats assume their newly emerged majority is a sign of progress rather than decline.
Blowback
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Most liberals are stupid, uneducated, propagandized people who have no idea they’re being used and manipulated by white socialists who couldn’t care less about gays, women, minorities or the poor.
darwin on November 18, 2012 at 11:36 AM
Also known as “none”. Government only consumes prosperity.
fitzfong on November 18, 2012 at 11:39 AM
I thought it read “The Liberal Goat”.
Shy Guy on November 18, 2012 at 11:41 AM
It’s not a majority, it’s a plurality of uncertain size and duration.
Seth Halpern on November 18, 2012 at 11:41 AM
Douthat has been really good lately.
True.
Punchenko on November 18, 2012 at 11:44 AM
Right after World War II, the United States was the only industrialized nation with an intact industrial base. Labor unions (for example) could be as nasty as they wanted to be, the owners would shrug their shoulders, raise their prices, and because of the lack of competition, consumers would shrug their own shoulders and pay. The Left is stuck in the Sixties, before this model broke down. Everything in the liberal academic hothouse is based on the continuance of a post-WWII economy, where inefficiencies created by bureaucracy and regulation could always be absorbed by American industrial dominance.
Sekhmet on November 18, 2012 at 11:44 AM
This is a very thoughtful piece.
Kataklysmic on November 18, 2012 at 11:52 AM
The intelligent and educated are just as propagandized.
Count to 10 on November 18, 2012 at 11:55 AM
You mean the credentialed, right?
Punchenko on November 18, 2012 at 12:05 PM
Of course, no public services contribute to prosperity, nor does any government action contribute to prosperity. Undoing bondage, or protecting property, or facilitating the movement of goods and materials…these things have no place in a discussion on prosperity. Only that paragon of virtue the entrepreneur can have any hand in creating anything meaningful.
ernesto on November 18, 2012 at 12:05 PM
Here is my site for conservative gloating.
http://www.dailyjobcuts.com/
It is absolutely shocking how many lay-offs, Bankruptcies and closings are being produced by Obama policies.
esnap on November 18, 2012 at 12:12 PM
I get tired of these “America is in a death spiral” editorials. It was never the government that made this country great. It was, and still is, the people. Our parents, and their parents, sacrificed, endured, and created.
It was their determination to make a better world for themselves and their children. Us. Now, we’re given this framework and these circumstances to work with. Cry in our coffee? Act like the world is over because of some adversity? Yesterday is over. Mayberry is gone. But it’s not too late for another “Morning in America”. It’s our turn, it has to be our generation’s Morning.
Many pundits in the media want us to go Galt on our country. I refuse. This is still the land of opportunity.
RINOs are people too on November 18, 2012 at 12:14 PM
They gloat over America’s corpse.
Yeah I started posting that a while back, along with shadowstats and the consumer metrics institute which spells out the hard math on the fake GDP numbers.
dogsoldier on November 18, 2012 at 12:19 PM
On 11/28 I’m going to get the official word to cut all of my, about 80, hourly employees down to 29 hours a week.
90% of them voted for Obama.
I told them before the election this was going to happen, no one believed me. I even told my boss this was going to happen months before the election, he didn’t believe me. Then I get pulled aside last week and he was asking me about this 30 hour Obamacare thing. It seems he had an eye opening talk with HR and what our options/costs will be. All I can say to all of them is I told you so.
It’s probably wrong, but I’m excited to cut all their hours. Elections have consequences.
jhffmn on November 18, 2012 at 12:19 PM
You have so much hate for the individual but only love for big gov? How old are you anyway? Can you take care of yourself?
Weird you guys tell the right to stay out or your bedrooms but yet you INVITE government into every other part of our lives. So much for freedom ….. the only times you and your ilk are for choice is when it meets the liberal rule book.
CW on November 18, 2012 at 12:20 PM
rogerb on November 18, 2012 at 12:21 PM
They made their choice.
CW on November 18, 2012 at 12:21 PM
Move to California. You can begin there.
Punchenko on November 18, 2012 at 12:22 PM
Pink slips for pinkos! I hope mom’s basement is vacant.
Punchenko on November 18, 2012 at 12:24 PM
Not for everyone. Only for those the government and the socialists approve of.
dogsoldier on November 18, 2012 at 12:25 PM
I’m in California.
RINOs are people too on November 18, 2012 at 12:27 PM
There are a number of ugly surprises in store for Oblama’s supporters.
Hostess Twinkies are the canary in the coal mine.
dogsoldier on November 18, 2012 at 12:29 PM
How are you going to fill in the other 880 man hours?
RINOs are people too on November 18, 2012 at 12:36 PM
Hehe.
The best part is that we don’t have to worry about bleeding employees when we cut their hours because everyone else is going to be doing the same thing. Suck it libs.
jhffmn on November 18, 2012 at 12:39 PM
Hire more people.
jhffmn on November 18, 2012 at 12:40 PM
Where have I heard this before? Oh yeah.
Left Coast Right Mind on November 18, 2012 at 12:42 PM
That’s at least another 30 people you’ll have to manage. I hate interviewing people. Everyone lies on their resume. Good luck.
RINOs are people too on November 18, 2012 at 12:45 PM
I don’t know what business he’s in, but it’s also possible that not all those 880 hours will need to be covered if there’s a fall-off in business.
stukinIL4now on November 18, 2012 at 12:48 PM
Not entirely true. A strong defense protects a nation enough to allow prosperity to flourish.
That’s about it, though.
Dack Thrombosis on November 18, 2012 at 1:04 PM
Which of these things has Obama done in the past four years? I would say he is doing the opposite of these things, which is why you will see what you will see in the next four years. I hope you get exactly what you have coming. I just wish the rest of us didn’t have to get it too.
Night Owl on November 18, 2012 at 1:38 PM
Why not? Judge.
BuckeyeSam on November 18, 2012 at 1:54 PM
The writer is certainly raising good points, but I think he misses the fact that all these social conditions he laments — disassociation from faith, single mothers, lack of families, dependence on welfar due to inability to provide for one’s self — are features, or even bragging points, to the progressive. They believe that the government should provide the perfect society, and that dependence on government is exactly the way things should be. The believe faith has no particular relevance other than perhaps a vague “spirituality” that can mean whatever you want it to mean. They see a single mother as a mother liberated from dependence on a man, and a lack of families as a lack of family burdens.
In short, they are pursuing their own vision of freedom, which is primarily a freedom of demands on their lives from conscience, family, or a sense of responsibility.
The quickest way to convert the typical single woman to a conservative is to see her married. Even then, they trail behind them, sometimes for years, a fondness for the lifestyle and principles they abandoned, and an unwillingness to see other single people
give up those “freedoms.”grow up.There Goes The Neighborhood on November 18, 2012 at 2:43 PM
On the more narrow subject of liberal gloat, it’s a phase we will go through. Sort of like the conservative “I tried to tell you” that will be a constant feature of the next few years.
There Goes The Neighborhood on November 18, 2012 at 2:44 PM
Ever get tired of building straw men?
No, public services do not “contribute to prosperity,” with rare exceptions. It’s the other way around. Prosperity enables public services. In the best-case scenarios, you use prosperity to build a public service that can feed back into the prosperity that built it. Probably the best example is infrastructure, like the interstate system. But frankly, the interstate system could have been built by private industry, with no more support from the government than to clear regulatory roadblocks and allow roads passing through multiple governments to connect.
As for protecting property, that IS the basic function of government, and you’d be hard-pressed to find a conservative that does not believe in the rule of law, or in protecting transportation and shipping from thieves.
There Goes The Neighborhood on November 18, 2012 at 2:53 PM
Dude, it is the private sector that pays for the fn roads and bridges.
And typically it is a private firm the designs and builds the road or bridge.
People that work for the government do not create wealth. we have to pay their salaries too.
So, YES, Only that paragon of virtue the entrepreneur can have any hand in creating anything meaningful INDEED!
esnap on November 18, 2012 at 3:11 PM