Posted by Sir Four at 11:02am Feb 27 '13This part in particular resonated for me:
It's hard to argue that this is not true in all sorts of ways, larges and small. I think even to things like sex and violence in media, to which social cons say: because liberalism. But actually, it's: because capitalism. Capitalism has shaped our culture, our lifestyle, our careers, our relationships. It can render one man very wealthy and another man obsolete, and sometimes very quickly.
Sullivan says,
That last sentence--I think that is the proper way to view the safety net. FDR didn't assault capitalism; he rescued it from itself. He saved capitalism. We don't have to look far to see what happens in nations that lacked support for those left behind by the forces of wealth--in the last century, these places were ripe for socialist revolutions that promised to take care of "the least of these" (to borrow a Christian phrase).
It's a bit sad that we still argue over whether we need a safety net, and a bit strange that conservatives today are the passionate advocates of classical liberalism on the economy.
The turbulence of a growing wealth-creating free market disrupts traditional ways of life like no other. Even in a culture like ours used to relying from its very origins on entrepreneurial spirit, the dislocations are manifold. People have to move; their choices of partners for love and sex multiply; families disaggregate on their own virtual devices; grandparents are assigned to assisted living; second marriages are as familiar as first ones; and whole industries -- and all the learned skills that went with them -- can just disappear overnight.
Capitalism is in this sense anti-conservative. It is a disruptive, culturally revolutionary force through human society.
It's hard to argue that this is not true in all sorts of ways, larges and small. I think even to things like sex and violence in media, to which social cons say: because liberalism. But actually, it's: because capitalism. Capitalism has shaped our culture, our lifestyle, our careers, our relationships. It can render one man very wealthy and another man obsolete, and sometimes very quickly.
Sullivan says,
This must leave -- and has surely left -- victims behind. Which is why the welfare state emerged. The sheer cruelty of the market, the way it dispenses brutally with inefficiency (i.e. human beings and their jobs) ...
Which is why many leaders in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, conservatives as well as liberals, attached a safety net to such an unsafe, bewildering, constantly shifting web of human demand and supply. They did so in part for humane reasons -- but also because they realized that unless capitalism red in tooth and claw were complemented by some collective cushioning, it would soon fall prey to more revolutionary movements. The safety net was created to save capitalism from itself, not to attack capitalism.
That last sentence--I think that is the proper way to view the safety net. FDR didn't assault capitalism; he rescued it from itself. He saved capitalism. We don't have to look far to see what happens in nations that lacked support for those left behind by the forces of wealth--in the last century, these places were ripe for socialist revolutions that promised to take care of "the least of these" (to borrow a Christian phrase).
It's a bit sad that we still argue over whether we need a safety net, and a bit strange that conservatives today are the passionate advocates of classical liberalism on the economy.