In the illegal road race classic The Gumball Rally, Franco, the race car driver portrayed by Raul Julia, told his boss and co-driver “And now, my friend, the first rule of Italian driving, (pauses to rip the rear view mirror off the windshield and throw it behind him), what is behind me, is not important.”
It’s a brilliant moment, and this morning it occurred to me that it is a succinct summation of modern progressivism.
The word “progressive” itself tells us the story, but it’s not something that rational individuals would believe is a cornerstone of an entire branch of political thought. How else, though, can we describe the willing blindness to the lessons of history?
Consider:
- The nation is stumbling through a tepid-to-lousy economic recovery following a recession that was addressed with an unprecendently massive government stimulus spending effort. The stimulus didn’t work, and should have put the final nail in the coffin of Keynesian economic theory. The Great Depression was also a massive failure of big government, while the Depression of 1920, which was met with enormous tax and spending cuts, was a clear example of how to recover quickly and strongly from a recession. Yet all we hear about is more government spending and more government regulation.
- Health insurance has been increasingly expensive, messy, convoluted and distorted by government’s involvement and regulation, yet all we hear about is how we need MORE government involvement in health insurance.
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Public education spending per student has been steadily climbing over the last few decades, with no improvement in outcome. The proposed solutions for our terrible public education system are limited to MORE spending without any structural changes.
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Government programs such as Head Start have been shown to produce no positive results, yet the demand from the Left is that the programs receive MORE funding rather than being terminated for their uselessness.
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The financial meltdown was a textbook demonstration of moral hazard, but the government chose to embrace “too big to fail” and do little to curtail moral hazard.
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The 2008 housing bubble collapse was rooted in government’s efforts to force banks to make loans to higher risk borrowers for the sake of diversity, but today we are hearing rumblings of repeat efforts in that regard.
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The right-to-carry movement of the past quarter century has coincided with a dramatic decrease in gun crime, but we continue to hear demands for increased restriction on law-abiding gun owners.
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The mandate that gasoline contain a percentage of ethanol for environmental reasons has been shown to be harmful to the environment. Still the enviros won’t let it go. If ever a program warranted termination, this one is it.
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Dozens of government-subsidized solar energy companies have failed since the “green energy” movement began, yet all we hear is how the government needs to do more to underwrite green energy.
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Government’s nutrition guidelines of the past correlate with the rise in the nation’s obesity levels, and many of its past recommendations have now been reversed. Still, progressives continue to insist that government should not only recommend, but actually incentivize or disincentivize eating habits and choices.
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The big entitlement programs, Social Security and Medicare, have turned out to be grotesquely underfunded Ponzi schemes that will eventually collapse (as all Ponzi schemes do), yet progressives insist they not only continue but be expanded. Social Security taxes started at 1% of income, now they’re over 6%, and the program’s future viability will require this number increase.
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Government’s meddling in agriculture dates back to the New Deal, with countless examples of failed and counterproductive policies, yet progressives continue to insist that government continue its involvement.
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Environmentally-minded progressives achieved the banning of DDT nearly half a century ago. Despite evidence that the ban was based on disproven theories and junk science, it continues today, and has racked up a death toll in the tens of millions.
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In 1994, the government enacted an assault weapons ban. It subsetted after 10 years, and the evidence is clear that the ban accomplished nothing. Progressives nevertheless want it reinstated.
The list is endless. It’s also meaningless to anyone who refuses to look in the rear view mirror. Philosopher George Santayana wrote:
those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
This is even more true when people choose not to remember the past. That deliberate choice speaks of a deliberate desire to perpetuate and repeat actions and policies that have demonstrably failed.
What’s worse than ignorance? Willful blindness. The willfully blind are, sadly, the ones who are demanding they lead the rest of us into the future.
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“Government’s meddling in agriculture dates back to the New Deal, with countless examples of failed and counterproductive policies, yet progressives continue to insist that government continue its involvement.”
Actually, it should read “Government’s meddling in agriculture dates back to Hamurabi (probably even before that), and led to writing, mathamatics, surplus food (and famine) and indeed, civilization itself.”
You can’t seperate it out. If you wind up in a room with three people, and are given a task, (gee it would be nice if we don’t starve next winter), bingo! you have a government.
At that point, when you have to consider what to do next, thats when the first rule of Italian driving comes in.
List the potential solutions, even the bad ones, figure out why they didn’t work (if you can), discard the ones you can’t fix and move forward.
Forword, forward, Avanti!
Its not “dont look back”, its ” What is behind me is not important”
Merry Christmass! and get out more.
Not all human cooperation is “government,’ and certainly not in the context of this or most other political debates. To assert so is nothing more than equivocation.
And, not all solutions are born of government. Government, we must not forget, is coercive, whereas countless solutions (really, the free enterprise system itself) is cooperative.
A view across history tells us that a certain baseline level of government is beneficial, but beyond that, market forces produce better outcomes. By far.
Equivocation? I am cut to the quick!
However the point I was trying to make is that any governing philosophy (liberal or conservative) must not be hamstrung by the past.
Cooperative? Grow up in a turn of the century coal community, or indeed in my own back yard in Louisiana where both the economy and the government are run as fossil fuel company plantations. See how “cooperative” that is.
And really isn’t it time we consign ” market forces produce better outcomes. By far.” to the ash heap of history?
Bad governance is bad governance. Corporate or National.
Why would we consign the reality that free markets produce better outcomes than managed economies to the ash heap of history? It’s as valid as ever.
Do not, however, conflate corporatism, i.e. the leveraging of government by big business, with free markets. The former is coercive, the latter is cooperative. The opposite of Big Government is not Big Business – they are butt buddies of the first order. Being pro-market is not the same as being pro-business.
The remedy to all of these iterations of “ism” is a smaller government, not one “done better” or however it might be phrased.
Because the reality is that free markets (that is “truly” free markets) rarely exist in the “real” world.
I’m glad you realize that corporatism is an issue of all this.
The natural tendency of all capitalists is towards corporatism and monopolistic practices. That does not make capitalists evil, the risk reward system is built into the process. It’s how the game is played.
The struggle against monopoly (and all its attendant evils) has been going on since before Marx. At least two hundred years. Yet, as far as I know, there has never been a conservative (Or Libertarian) argument against it, or even any proposal to, in some way, mollify its worst effects.
There was a sense during the first administration of Franklin Roosevelt that the “New Deal” was saving capitalism from itself. Indeed it did.
The struggle to maintain the balance between the vigor of a capitalist economy and security of the welfare state has consumed the politics of this country for a long time. I (perhaps optimistically) expect it to continue.
In the end, we have the example of the Egyptians.
Life for the pre-pharaonic Egyptians must have been pretty insecure. The floods (and harvests) were unpredictable, there was no infrastructure to speak of and tribes went to war for reasons no one could decipher.
There then arose a system of Chiefs, and scribes and warriors that brought peace and above all stability. Stability became the absolute standard by which the Pharaohs derived their power.
They became so stable they did not change for two thousand years.
No thanks. Let’s keep the fight going
Monopoly is not, in and of itself, a bad thing. A company that truly offers a better mousetrap may drive all others out of business. It’s only when the monopoly then elevates costs to consumers that it turns “bad,” and even then, absent government protections, it won’t be that long before the market punishes.
Show me an unprotected monopoly that harmed consumers in excess of the earlier benefit it provided. If you scratch below the surface of the biggest examples, you find that they were either created or prolonged by government protectionism.
This does not condemn capitalism, it condemns corporatism and big government. Our elected representatives in government should not be bestowing favoritism. That they do is unfortunate, but also the voters’ fault.
And, most importantly, such favoritism is a *feature* of every other form of governance. At least when you strive to freedom and capitalism, you get some of it.
I will respectfully disagree on the ” it won’t be that long before the market punishes” (coff, coff ATT). I would also contend that corporatism can and will flourish whether the government is big or small.
As a matter of fact, I’ll trust a bureaucrat, secure in his job and protected by the law in a government unintimidated by corporate wealth, over the machinations over some corporate suit any day.
LLAP Dan deLauréal Lacombe
Ah, yes, Ma Bell.
Created *and* maintained by government protectionism.
Bureaucrats are the most insulated of all – they have *nothing* to keep them in check. The vast majority of what’s wrong with the nation can be traced to the expansion of the Fourth Branch of government. People almost wholly unaffected by either election or market forces. At least the suits are working to tear each other down, and playing with money that hasn’t been coerced out of people’s pockets.
I think you’re terribly mistaken in that trust. They’ve no reason to do the right thing.
Well, if you’ve never worked in government you might think that is true, but it is not. I can tell you from long and bloody (metaphorically) experience in the military, government bureaucracy and the private sector that the freedom of movement for any of them is remarkably narrow.
Everybody has a boss. and the higher you get in any organization your ability to get out of your lane diminishes.
Who says bureaucracies are unrestrained by election or market? You need to get out more.
Elections have consequences. Budgets are serious matters. Nobody lives in a vacuum.
And why would I trust some-one who is in an economic life or death struggle for their very existence to make decisions that will benefit me?
Desperation is capitalism’s fuel, but is not conducive to good decision making.
Look, I’ve been on both sides of this fence. I’ve been to countries where unrestrained capitalism is the order of the day. All of them are hellholes.
I’ve been to countries where the social safety net is deep and even for my taste a little too intrusive. None of them are hellholes. My experience mind you.
That’s an interesting turn of conversation – an assertion about my personal experience base, or lack thereof. And then a “you need to get out more” ad hominem.
Now, please tell me which “hellholes” you’ve been to where there is unrestrained capitalism. The freest nations in the world are invariably the most prosperous, and capitalism has produced virtually all the world’s innovation in living standards.
One need only look at the history of centrally planned nations to see how awful the results are, in comparison.
Oh, and if you want this conversation to continue, defend your position and views without casting aspersions at me. If you want to know my employment history and first-hand experience, you need only ask. Or, just infer it from my bio – at the end of the blog post.
Sorry, you are correct, I have no knowledge of your personal history or your ability to get out into the world and it was wrong of me to make any statement in that regard.
A misplaced attempt at humor.
That being said, my own experience was that Vietnam, Thailand, Cambodia, and the Philippines were the worst for personal comfort but great for business. Virtually no government, taxes/bribes were cheap. I have heard that Somalia and Afghanistan were similar but I have no personal experience in those places.
Singapore, HonkKong, Japan, Canada, Mexico, Ireland, The UK, Denmark,Holland, Belgium, Germany, France and Italy are definitely NOT hellholes and they all have in common: large well regulated economies, Large well staffed bureaucracies and educational systems, and,with few exceptions, universal health care of some form. And, all their people seem completely free to do as they please without governmental interference.
Please name any country that meets your criteria of “small government ”
free economies.
LLAP Dan deLauréal Lacombe
Singapore and Hong Kong have among the highest degrees of economic freedom in the world.
I suspect you are conflating “small government” with anarchy. Capitalism is not anarchy. Its foundation is a system of robust property rights.
Bribery, by the way, is not part of capitalism either.
There’s a lot of equivocation going on here.