Villainous Company

EJ Dionne, strangely enough, has been thinking about the collective good. He calls it one of the Left's big ideas:

The biggest change is that moderates and liberals have begun to accept the fact that they cannot simply adjust to conservative dominance of the political debate and alter their ideas to fit the current consensus. As Michael Tomasky writes in the current issue of the American Prospect, Democrats and their allies must destroy the current political "paradigm" based on "radical individualism" and replace it with a politics of the "common good." Only a larger argument rooted in a different conception of government and society, Tomasky argues, will allow the party to "do a lot more than squeak by in this fall's (or any) elections based on the usual unsatisfying admixture of compromises."

In describing his common-good approach, Tomasky notes it has implications in challenging Democrats to stand for more than "diversity and rights," however valuable these commitments might be. Both diversity and rights, he argues, would be better defended in a common-good framework.

There are arguments to be had with Tomasky -- I think he needs to not only talk about citizen sacrifice but tell us more about self-interest, rightly understood. Progressive ideas do best when a majority of citizens believe their own self-interest is implicated in a common project, something Tomasky recognizes but doesn't stress enough.

I was heartened to see the Left return to thinking about ideas rather than jabbering about tolerance and rights in the absence of any intellectual framework for defining these terms. I have always thought the Left had a better chance of competing on ideology than thinly-veiled pork, and I also think classic liberalism has much to offer both Republicans and Democrats. Our more Libertarian friends are no doubt aware that I think individualism, taken too far, is just as flawed as Communism. Both become means for the less principled to prey on the rest of society: only the means used seem to differ.

And society is, like it or not, collective in nature.

All of human history is built on this premise: this generation learns from the one before, families rise in the world by pooling resources and taking care of each other. The social contract itself is an agreement to hang together, lest we all hang separately - otherwise, who would agree to go to war, to fight and die for others who stay safe at home? Humans combine to accomplish jointly what they could never do individually.

But like this author I had to laugh at some of Dionne's prescriptions:

Dionne was arguing with a fellow liberal who wrote what the Democrats need to do is destroy today's "radical individualism" and replace it with "a politics of a "common good." That's fine, Dionne said, but we need to hear "more about self-interest, rightly understood."

That phrase made me cringe. It still does.

"Self-interest, rightly understood" is a fancy-pants way of saying, "I know what is in your interest better than you do." It is, in my view, a politically stupid and morally diseased position. Democrats, by temperament, are slightly more susceptible to it than Republicans.

I do not mean to condemn Dionne for a phrase. But I will. It reminded me of something written on the very first page of a book that lots of Democrats think is absolutely brilliant, "What's the Matter with Kansas" by Thomas Frank.

In the third paragraph of his book, Frank writes: "People getting their fundamental interests wrong is what American political life is all about." That, too, is a fancy-pants way of saying: "I know what is in your interest better than you do."

Frank spends the rest of his book explaining why the people of Kansas go against their obvious self-interest and vote for Republicans and not Democrats. His explanations are fascinating and interesting. His premise is intellectually totalitarian.

What follows is a great discussion of positive vs. negative liberty, which, simply stated, means the freedom from having to do certain things vs. the freedom to do certain things. Conservatives generally prefer the former, liberals (I think) believe the former is worthless unless one also has the latter. The trick, again, is in the definitions. A perfect example is FDR's Second Bill of Rights, as scary a proposition as any cold-hearted conservative can imagine. It wants to enshrine in the Constitution such positive "rights" as the right to a job that earns a living wage, the right to a home, the right to earn an adequate profit, etc. The problem with all these positive "rights" is that they must be paid for by someone, usually a conservative who doesn't particularly wish to be told he has to fork over the fruits of his labor to subsidize less productive alternative lifestyle choices.

I remarked earlier that I thought neither collectivism nor individualism, by themselves, were inherently good or evil. This is where I believe ideology comes in. If the best the Left can come up with to justify collectivism is "the common good", their intellectual resurgence is doomed to fail. Who gets to define the "common good"? Instead, they should put forth a compelling vision of what the common good is, and why we should hitch our individual wagons to their star. As Dionne observes, tolerance and diversity in and of themselves aren't "big" enough, and as the UN clearly shows, without a compelling moral vision, tolerance and diversity are too easily highjacked by bigotry masquerading as inclusiveness. Wanting a kindler, gentler world, we get Libya on the Human Rights Commission and the ICC relentlessly persecuting a people who a mere 60 years ago were persecuted by Hitler almost to extinction. Some tolerance.

Returning full circle to Patrick's essay, in the end the Judeo-Christian tradition is one "ideology" which, despite the paranoia with which it is habitually greeted in this country, offers the best chance of marrying the best qualities of individualism and collectivism. Humans, believing in something greater than themselves yet reigned in by a tradition which mandates respect of (and tolerance for) people of other races and creeds, have ended slavery, stood up to totalitarian dictators, and even given their lives gladly to free others. It is not God we need fear so much as the imperfections of man, and failings such as zealotry are no more peculiar to religion than the sin of pride. One need only look to the tens of millions slaughtered in the 20th Century under wholly-secular Communist dictators to see this. There is a reason the first thing these evil men did was to repress the Church: they knew that in suppressing these profoundly collective organizations, they were snuffing out the ideology which gave courage and willpower to numberless individual consciences.

There is always danger where humans ally that in consensus they will absolve themselves of the moral responsibility for their choices. This is, after all, what the UN has done time and time again. It seeks to preserve the status quo at the expense of what is morally right, and if any dare question the club of collectivist internationalism is raised to quiet the disturbing voice of conscience. In the end, only ideology - and an ideology that is at heart profoundly moral - can temper both collectivism and individualism. We need - deeply - to believe in something larger than ourselves. If that 'something' is not God, then perhaps the ideals in our Declaration of Independence and Constitution are a good proxy.

But believe in something we must, or we are nothing more than an unruly mob. And the world is fast becoming too connected - and too dangerous - a place to accommodate mobs of people who believe in nothing. This being so, it behooves America to reject moral equivalence and consider carefully the kind of lazy logic which asserts: all beliefs are created equal. We should not confuse tolerance with the half-baked apathy which comes from no longer caring.

Because I have a feeling that one day soon, "What do you believe?" may come to be the most important question any of us has ever heard.