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My Response to New York Times Op Ed Columnist David Brooks: 'Liberal Democrats'by Gary North Recently by Gary North: Collapse, No. Huge Losses, Guaranteed
David Brooks, a resident columnist at the New York Times, asks this question: Why aren't there more liberals in America? I'm glad he asked! He begins by offering some reasons that are not valid, in his view.
It seems to me that this is a very good place to begin. When Brooks' list of segments of the society that vote far-left Democratic are these, he has begun to answer his question about the decline of liberalism. University professors are part of a self-screened, self-regulated profession who owe their careers to the existence of a cartel maintained by federal and state laws governing the accreditation of colleges and universities. This is a crucial barrier to entry. They are rent-seekers in a closed profession that screens out conservatives, beginning in the freshman year in college, and has ever since 1948. I recommend this milestone: Economics, by Paul Samuelson, first edition (1948). As for national journalists, he is correct. These people are ignored by most people and always have been. They have influenced politicians and government employees, but hardly anyone else. They are now in a doomed profession. The World Wide Web is eliminating newspapers, including the New York Times, which sold off a large chunk of its capital a week ago, and whose CEO has resigned. The gray lady is at long last headed for a convalescent home, meaning God's waiting room. Politicians respect power, and newspapers no longer have much. Movies are indeed liberal. Michael Medved's book, Hollywood vs. America, did a fine job in exposing that cultural reality two decades ago. But movies are a fading influence. Ever since 1962, movie attendance per week has been flat, despite a rising population. As for network TV, music, and publishing, the World Wide Web is undermining all three of these industries. They have been weighed in the digital balance and have been found wanting.
This has been true ever since 1973. Liberals were dominant in Washington, 1973-1995, when the Republicans took control of the House of Representatives. If, in two decades, the policies of the Democrats could not change the direction of senior corporate salaries (up) and household earnings (flat), why should anyone expect that this will change? Obama got his shovel-ready $787 billion stimulus law in 2009. He got his $1.3 trillion Keynesian annual deficits thereafter. The Federal Reserve bought T-bonds in QE2 in 2010. What would the Democrats do any differently with whatever solvency remains of the U.S. government? It's not because liberalism's opponents are going from strength to strength. The Republican Party is unpopular and sometimes embarrassing. Are we ready for a vaudeville line? "How's your political party?" "Compared to what?"
He assumes here that which he is trying to prove. In fact, later in the essay, he offers cogent reasons why this is not a golden age of liberalism. But, to preview my response, we are witnessing the twilight of faith in the state as an agency of social redemption, which is the religion of liberalism.
Looking back 40 years, we arrive at 1972. That was the era of Democratic control in Congress. Lyndon Johnson, the incarnation of New Deal politics, had been harried out of the Presidency in 1968. He had succeeded in getting his Great Society legislation into the law books. He also did what FDR did and Harry Truman did. He got us into a major war. He could not win it. Congress could have stopped it at any time by refusing to fund it. The Democrats in Congress voted for the funding without a hint of resistance. They remained unindicted co-conspirators right up until the fall of Saigon in 1975. Nixon did not run against the New Deal or the Great Society. He implemented it and added more. He created the Environmental Protection agency by executive order. In 1971, he removed the last remaining traces of the gold-exchange standard. And, it should be noted, he ended the draft, which remains his enduring legacy to this day. Kennedy didn't. Johnson didn't. It was an act of real liberalism, pre-Wilsonian liberalism. On the issue that got the protesters into the streets -- the draft -- the hated Nixon pulled the moral rug out from under Democratic liberals.
Here, he comes to the heart of the matter. But he frames it inaccurately. He describes it as the Instrument Problem. On the contrary, it is the Substantive Problem. It is not a matter of procedure. It is a matter of ethics. It is not a matter of technique. It is a matter of worldview. Let me spell it out:
That speech was the watershed event which transformed the Old Democracy of Jefferson, Jackson, and Cleveland into the New Democracy of Bryan, Wilson, FDR, Truman, and Johnson. He then asks a highly relevant question:
It's more likely because they think the whole system is rigged. Or to put it in the economists' language, they believe the government has been captured by rent-seekers. This is the disease that corrodes government at all times and in all places. As George F. Will wrote in a column in Sunday's Washington Post, as government grows, interest groups accumulate, seeking to capture its power and money. Yes, he really is onto something. He has identified the problem. This is the side effect of the corporate state. Let us not forget, however, that "side effect" is a phrase we use to describe effects we do not like. There are no side effects. There are only effects. January 13, 2012 Gary North [send him mail] is the author of Mises on Money. Visit http://www.garynorth.com. He is also the author of a free 20-volume series, An Economic Commentary on the Bible. Copyright © 2012 Gary North
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This
is true. He is onto something.