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The Age of Arrogance For main street conservatives as well as many moderates, it is inarguable that the title "The Age of Arrogance” best describes the post-fifties environment shaped by liberals.
Indeed, hubris afflicted liberals who mock the wisdom accumulated over millennia as either quaint or patently stupid have been so annoyingly ubiquitous over the past half century that given the human brain’s stratagems against foolishness and hypocrisy, non-liberals have become inured to their droning.
But defense mechanisms come at a cost because they often produce denial, repression, or complacency, explaining why some conservatives as well as a frightening number of moderates and independents either remain unaware of or choose to ignore the consequences of the Krakatoa-sized cloud of arrogance that has been blown over the nation.
Before getting into the who, what, and why of this unprecedented display of pride — the human frailty long ago identified as a precursor of a "fall” — a pause is necessary, because to understand it in its proper context, a brief review of the major players of the Age of Arrogance is necessary.
Heading the list, of course, are "intellectually superior” liberals, who never cease dinning our ears with pronouncements about the excellence of their worldview, which, they claim, they have based purely upon principles derived from science.
(That dinning always includes plenty of droning about the wondrous possibilities of powerful, centralized government that only perfectly reasonable liberals know how to administer — though liberals never describe their vision of political paradise with Marx’s "scientific socialism,” preferring to leave the term in the dark, the better, evidently, to preserve it for future generations.)
That preeminent group having been brought into the light, the following principals of the Age also deserve their day in the sunshine:
..."Experienced” and, therefore, "highly qualified” politicians who premise their policies upon the reality of the Free Lunch.
(The most sacred of those free lunches, of course, have to do with Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Open Borders, and the notion that "War is Dead.” However, recently brought out of its dark nook in the liberal closet, the concept of a "right to shared wealth” is gaining so many liberal adherents each day that its consecration is a lock.)
...Politicians who eschew policies that strengthen families, create good jobs for the middle class, and, in all things, reward only responsible behavior so that they may focus on "big” ideas that are vastly "more important.”
...Neo-conservative politicians and policy makers who have either instituted or lent their support to loose money policies, loose mortgage practices, and a loose financial regulatory structure that, in harmony with leftist thinking, asserts not just that God is dead but that the possibility for immoral behavior died with Him.
(Thus, when he confessed that "Those of us who have looked to the self-interest of lending institutions to protect shareholder’s equity...are in a state of shocked disbelief,” the "conservative” Alan Greenspan reminded us of a bewildered, disillusioned, aged socialist idealist who has just been knocked on the head with the truth about human nature.)
...Politicians who sing the praises of high taxation as a disincentive with regard to tobacco use or carbon emissions but deny that high taxes on capital serve as a disincentive to investment.
(A look at the movement of the equity markets since January 20 tells us that a whole lot of folks aren’t fooled by that supremely foolish, harmful, hypocritical bit of baloney.)
...Politicians so thoroughly enveloped by megalomania that they truly believe their words have "charms to soothe the savage breast” of a Kim Jong-il or Ahmadinejad.
...Corporate leaders who, having imitated liberal "science,” claim to have discovered (1) that owing to their vast expertise and astounding value, they are worth at least tens of millions, if not hundreds of millions, in yearly pay (2) that the concept of performance based pay is a dangerous legacy of a failed past and (3) that they can best serve the corporation if they imitate their counterparts in government and thus behave as if they and not the shareholders are the owners.
Although the list is far from complete, it is time to turn to the who regarding the cloud mentioned at the outset. He is, of course, the smooth talking, academically talented, prestigiously degreed Barack Obama.
With respect to the what about the cloud President Obama has blown over the nation in just a bit more than a month, the following represents what philosophers call essential characteristics:
...It plays upon the fears of the American public to accomplish nothing less than ditching the America of freedom, opportunity, mobility, risk, and reward in favor of a model that recasts our nation in the image of dysfunctional but arrogant France, where social, economic, and spiritual stagnation join forces to choke every dream to death a moment after it has breathed its first breath.
...It claims the super-human ability to achieve that recreation all at once —
1) With a loudly promoted program of massive spending never before seen in human history
2) With boasts of "fiscal responsibility” achieved in part by trillions in "savings” that careful examination exposes as being based upon the worst of decrepit political shenanigans
3) With utter silence about who will purchase the debt needed to finance every penny of the spending
4) With utter silence regarding the consequences of such debt to America’s economy, sovereignty, and national security
5) With utter silence about the piper who will inevitably demand his due in the form of inflation, enormously higher taxes (including, as Paul Krugman has finally admitted, on the middle class), reduced standard of living, and socio-economic stagnation.
Finally, there is the why of the cloud — which can be explained by saying that arrogance is the sine qua non of being a politician, most of whom (as Hillary Clinton let slip) relish the opportunity "Never [to] waste a good crisis.” But arrogance is relative, as are its wages, a truth of frightening importance as, in an orgy of spending, borrowing, and governmental expansion, the man who holds the most powerful political position on earth keeps his promise to "perfect” the United States of America, a nation that, however imperfect, has been in the building for more than 200 years by free, honest, hard working, responsible, humble individuals who build by carefully selecting and laying one sound, paid-for brick at a time. |
