National Review's Rich Lowry and Ramesh Ponnuru have answered critics (both negative and sympathetic) of their article on American exceptionalism.
I think it's a pretty good response. They address many of the points that we have discussed here.
Sunday assorted links
1 hour ago
I like that they sometimes qualify their statements, and realize at points their own political beliefs may have led them to exaggerate or misconstrue certain statements.
ReplyDeleteBut I don't like three quotes very much:
"While 31 percent of Americans may not attain riches by their own definitions, it is not crazy for them to think they might."
But isn't it? If statistics and research again and again finds that low levels of economic mobility, isn't the country working under some sense of delusion? What's that definition of insanity -- "Doing the same thing twice and expecting different results"?
And what to make of this doozy:
"It means something closer to the opposite: that we suspect that much of the enthusiasm for these subsidies among liberals is based on mass transit’s association with Europe."
Look, I like brie on baguettes more than most, but I don't like it because it's French or European. Likewise, I don't go ga-ga over mass transit because that's how they do it 'over there,' but because I think it might actually do our country some good.
And finally:
"Sadly, a worse institution took root here, but never became part of the national psyche."
It's a great and comforting notion, no doubt, to think slavery somehow didn't affect American culture during the centuries it existed in the country. But it's also a stupid one. Slavery's in the Constitution; it was in the laws and customs and regulations of the country until a brutal civil war, and then its legacy hung around in a brutal apartheid system for another century.
Not in our national psyche! What utter nonsense!
Re: slavery and our national psyche...I guess it depends how you mean it. From day one, slavery was in a tenuous position in the United States (hence the bitter and sometimes violent arguments about it in the Continental Congresses, the Constitutional Convention, and actual Congress. If it was a "safe" or widely accepted instituion (which I think it would have to be to be part of the 'national psyche', both sides wouldn't have been so acrimonious).
ReplyDeleteIt's worth remembering that the 3/5 Compromise was actually forced into the Constitution by Abolitionists as a way of undermining the institution of slavery and ensuring that it could be addressed and discontinued by later Congresses.
I myself think of "national psyche" as meaning widely accepted and defining because it is representative. Views of slavery were mostly regionally determined and were not held by a majority. And that a large number of Founders permitted slavery to continue after the creation of our country merely as a procedural (and not principled) decision, with the intention of removing it once they were able, says something about the psyche of the times.
I don't think slavery was really ever part of it. It existed, thanks to a powerful minority, in spite of it.
Re: your other points...
ReplyDeleteIt would seem to me that the statistics you mention about upward mobility are merely the average expected outcome. It doesn't mean that everyone is destined to stagnation and poverty.
Therefore, how is it delusional to think that if you work hard, you can be one of the exceptions to rule? And why would anyone want to live in a society where everyone is resigned to assume that they can't achieve anything? (I'd rather not live surrounded by scores of the sad robot from Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.)
Re: mass transit...I mostly agree. I thought it was a weak point of theirs. I don't doubt that there are SOME people who like the idea b/c it seems European (and therefore more enlightened to their mind), but I very much doubt the numbers of such people are remotely significant among mass transit advocates.