mushin no shin

There aren’t too many professions whose lips are more permanently affixed to the teat of government than those of lawyers and royal estate agents — so it is rather amusing to see one of each going on about the evils of government. But my appreciation of the irony aside, the toxic stench of burning strawmen was far too thick over there to really wade into it.

Of course it’s partly my fault I suppose. I mean I can appreciate that it’s difficult to respond to someone whose ideology doesn’t fit into a talk radio caricature, so naturally the thing to do is to fall back on beating up the caricature. I’m not your garden variety liberal (well, part of the point of this post is that no one is a garden variety anything — something I shouldn’t have to explain to people who say they champion individualism — but bear with me). I’m someone who became a liberal by going so far to the right that I circumnavigated the political globe. (On economics I mean. I’ve of course always been a flaming ACLU liberal heathen on social issues.)

So do go on about the virtues of free enterprise (though you really shouldn’t talk about “capitalism” unless you understand the difference) — I’m right there with ya. I’m opposed to conservatism not because it supports free enterprise, but because it doesn’t.

Well that’s perhaps not fair. It *is* true, but explaining why it’s true in all cases takes us into esoteric territory that’s far beyond the scope of this post. So let me slightly rephrase it as:

The statement that conservatives believe in free enterprise is false.

…which is shown by merely noting that not all conservatives believe in free enterprise — at most it’s just those in the upper-right quadrant of the Nolan chart. Those in the lower right quadrant don’t even pretend to believe in free enterprise, and they are conservatives whether one likes it or not. See the thing is, you don’t get to perpetually redefine conservatism to suit your needs. And a statement like:

Conservatism is about the belief that, as Mark put it, “every individual is of equal and inestimable value and possesses unlimited potential.”

is just empty rhetorical nonsense. And saying that the movie was a conservative movie because hard work payed off and the human spirit triumphed is like — well, saying that Friday the 13th is a conservative movie because conservatives think murder is bad. (And liberals clearly are in favor of murder, because, ya know, they aren’t conservatives and only conservatives think murder is bad. See how that works?). What can one do but roll ones eyes at such silliness?

And how does one reconcile a purported belief in individualism with the downright bizarre notion that people aren’t different and don’t have differing abilities?

And where exactly did I say that someone with lesser abilities can’t succeed? I said that one person’s success doesn’t prove that the game isn’t rigged. Very different. And if conservatives truly believe in free enterprise, they should recognize the importance of making sure that it isn’t.

Which is a topic that takes us off the charted map and into “here be dragons” territory, requiring reforms that frankly just aren’t going to happen anytime soon. Which leaves us for now with little choice in realpolitik other than to support moderate steps to curb the worst abuses which exist due to our failure to create a truly free system — our failure to support free enterprise as opposed to the allodial corporate mercantilism that is today’s “capitalism”.

This entry was posted on Saturday, December 29th, 2007 at 4:16 pm and is filed under Babble, General Philosophy, Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.