The underlying theme of this Blog is that “progressives” are literally intent on removing every Civilized standard of Value from the human narrative save that of Compassion.
The works of Susie Orbach and Naomi Wolf invoked in my last entry implied that the reverence for Female Beauty so integral to much of the Art and Literature of Western Civilization was actually a form of oppression, thereby turning a good bit of our Cultural Tradition to poison. It is a grossly simplistic hypothesis promoted with no concern for historical context.
While I could cite hundreds of examples of contemporary “intellectuals” who fancy themselves Humanists while nevertheless defining us as just another Mindless Animal incapable of Rational Thought, nothing better illustrates this “progressive” conviction than the impending publication of a book by the revered political philosopher Michael Sandel entitled “The Tyranny of Merit: What Became of the Common Good?”
Let us contemplate the concept of “merit” as a form of “tyranny.”
In Robert Reich’s aforementioned N.Y. Times article on “social injustice,” he discusses Jeremy Waldron’s book “The Basis of Human Equality,” stating that “Waldron sees moral equality between human beings as what’s left over when “merit” is set aside.” While this assertion in no way substantiates the absurd myth that all people are morally equal, is it really true that “morality” and “merit” are utterly distinct?
As my references to the Romantics were meant to illustrate, the last two Centuries have seen the growth of the infantile notion that having to deal with the exigencies of the real world is an imposition, that life itself is a form of victimization. Marcuse railed against the “tyranny” of Capitalism because it interfered with his urge for “polymorphous” sexual satisfaction. In essence defining Man strictly on terms of his animal urges, was he an inspired visionary or a self-indulgent child?
The decision to confront the world with courage and energy in an effort to secure a better life for both oneself and one’s loved ones would seem to be an inherently “moral” decision. Succumbing to mindless self-indulgence while claiming to be a Victim would seem to be decidedly “immoral.” While certainly there are those in the Third World incapacitated by circumstance, the insistence by the Left that there is no co-relation between one’s intellectual/moral status and one’s success in life constitutes a brazen denial of the realities of the human condition.
In the numerous articles available online heralding the September publication of Sandel’s book, one is met with repeated references to his contention that achievement is mostly a matter of luck, that the odds are heavily stacked in favor of the already fortunate and that the latter are not only full of hubris but harshly judgmental of the “disenfranchised.” His assault on the concept of Meritocracy is of course an assault on Capitalism itself. While those “conservatives” who would defend the efficacy of a free-market economy typically cite the pervasive dysfunction of the present day regimes of Cuba and Venezuela, apologists for Socialism invariably go to the countries of Norther Europe in support of their Ideology. Yet I have just watched a video in which Denmark’s P.M., while granting the plethora of social programs designed to help the “disenfranchised” within his country, asserts unequivocally that those programs are funded by businesses operating successfully within a Free-Market Economy.
Sandel exploits the stereotypes typical of all Leftist literature. Aside from the several billionaires who have exhausted a significant percentage of their fortunes in charitable ventures, the vast majority of my successful, White, Upper Middle Class acquaintances are eminently concerned with the plight of the poor, their compassion typical of the citizens of most Western Capitalist Democracies who have chosen to elect governments given to to taxing almost every breath they take in the pursuit of a more “equitable” distribution of wealth.
Am I suggesting our economic system is a perfect meritocracy? Of course not. Am I suggesting there are not those among the 1 percent who do everything in their power to avoid paying their fair share? Of course not. But it is Human Nature and not the freedom engendered by Capitalism that is to blame. In the wake of the financial meltdown of 2008, two books, Bill Emmet’s “The Fate of the West” and Jesse Eisinger’s “The Chicken-shit Club,” while both reviling the abuses which led to that meltdown, pointed out the irony that the oftentimes corrupt relationship between the financial sector and those government agencies consigned to control it seem to remain the same whichever U.S. political party is in power. Yes, those compassionate “progressives” devoted to eradicating economic inequality have proven to be just as corruptible as their supposedly heartless “conservative” opponents.
The notion of a tyrannical meritocracy is oxymoronic. Replacing the Rational co-relation between Achievement and Success with the imposition of coercive Government Power designed to impose some arbitrary concept of social justice is an open invitation to real Tyranny. Moreover the ever expanding gap between the rich and the poor is not, as relentlessly implied, the result of human greed or some systemic inequity but of the inarguable fact that the accumulation of wealth by definition brings with it the ability to acquire even more. It is perfectly Rational, perfectly Organic! It’s the way things happen in the Real World.
But Reality is of little interest to “progressives.” The essence of Sandel’s thesis is that the child born to Upper Middle Class parents in the West rather than to the residents of some Somali slum is merely the benefactor of random good luck. It is an assumption shared by most on the Left. But it is unquestionably human achievement or the lack thereof that has led to those disparities. Of course no child has any control over the circumstances to which he is born, but the denigration of “merit” as some arbitrary Western construct entails the elimination of all of Human History from political discourse. A “conservative” who expresses compassion for the residents of various Third World countries while at the same time defending the Principles and Values of Enlightenment Europe as demonstrably superior to the cultural traditions of those countries, will inevitably be denounced as a White Supremacist, Racist, Neo-Nazi, etc. It’s the fundamental absurdity of “progressivism,” a mind-set given to compassion for the downtrodden while in no way interested in discussing the self-evident failings, both historical and contemporary, responsible for their condition.
Yep, the sophisticated narrative of the Left is that everything just kind of happens independent of the Mind and Character of those involved. Hence Sandel’s suggestion that rewarding “merit” could actually be a veiled species of tyranny, his solution to those disparities in human achievement so evident throughout history being that we replace a system which aspires, however imperfectly, to be Free, Fair and Objective, with one actually based on the Tyrannical imposition of Government Power!
Sandel’s book sanctimoniously invokes the concept of the Common Good. It is a concept inherently dismissive of the rights of the Individual; a concept which inevitably leads to the death squads and concentration camps of Soviet Russia and Communist China; a concept celebrated by those on the Left with all the fervor of the religious fanatics that they truly are!