On Obama and Liberal Condescension

This is a good post.

The problem for me is that I'm a Vulgar Marxist too. I've always believed that people need to eat, and want to get ahead and prosper. If you give them an avenue that lets them do that, they aren't going to let their religion, their music, their sexual habits, their families or their educational system stand in their way for long. The two most obvious contemporary applications of this economic determinism are 1) China (when the Chinese have a capitalist economy they won't be able to have a Communist government, Vulgar Marxists would say) and 2) the Muslim world (if Islam needs a Reformation in order to prosper in a global market, then Islam will eventually get a Reformation). I agree with both of those propositions.

Does that mean I'm condescending too? It's hard to avoid the charge. If a Chinese Communist Party Official somehow came to me and declared that, no, China would out-compete the West while maintaining Mao-era control over free inquiry, I'd think 'You poor deluded fool. Just wait.' I support Western policies of bringing China into the global marketplace in large part because I think that means Chinese Communism will collapse even if the Chinese Communists don't realize it. Same with fundamentalist Muslims--e.g. Pakistan, when prosperous, will no longer be such a breeding ground of jihadist fanatics. They'll be too busy making money to blow up the world. My attitude toward Pakistan is roughly parallel to Obama's attitude toward rural Pennsylvanians: if the economy really delivered for them, they'd stop clinging to their God. And their guns.

I'm especially appalled by the possibility that I'm as much of a snob as Obama because I've made a big deal about social equality--how treating people as equals, rather than redistributing income, is the essential goal of liberal politics. Condescension, needless to say, is not treating people like equals. (Obama himself seemed to be quite aware of the problem, in his 2004 Charlie Rose interview, when trotting out his "What's the Matter With Kansas" homilies:

"If we don't have plausible answers on the economic front, and we appear to be condescending towards those traditions that are giving their lives some stability, then they're gonna opt for at least that party that seems to be speaking to the things that are giving--that still provide them some solace." [E.A.]

Of course, he sounded a bit condescending when saying that. .....

Read the whole thing, but keep in mind that only a squishy liberal would be bothered by condescension toward primitive Muslim terrorists.

quote of the month

Democracy and Idolatry:

This was no ordinary love. The proof was in the posters—specifically, influential “street artist” Shephard Fairey’s iconic images of Barack Obama, which proved a huge hit at campaign rallies. Rendered in blood red and gray, with his face in silk-screened, Warholian black, the presidential hopeful gazes out toward some distant point, confident and contemplative at once. Only one word was emblazoned across the bottom, in large, block letters: “Hope,” or “Progress.” Fairey describes his work as propaganda engineering and explained that, as a staunch opponent of the Iraq War, making art about Obama, who had spoken out against the war from the start, was for him “like making art for peace.” Peace, however, is not the zeitgeist of this particular graphic style. On the contrary, it recalls Bolshevist propaganda in particular, and Third World revolutionary politics in general; it is power as spectacle, power in whose name millions have been oppressed. As Lisa Wedeen writes in her 1999 study of the cult of Bashar Assad, Ambiguities of Domination: Politics, Rhetoric, and Symbols in Contemporary Syria, such idealized, heroic portraits are meant to construct “an original founding moment that signals a new golden age and an end to the miseries of the past.” Judging by the posters raised by the ecstatic masses, the campaign was not just about Obama the Democratic presidential candidate. It was about Obama, America’s long-awaited Beloved Leader.

read the whole thing.

I'm not sure how I missed this nor how I came across it now, but the award for the best column on the torturous Obama torture debate goes to Rich Lowry here. For bonus points, the article is equally applicable to all Obama speeches ever given, even returning from Cairo bringing world peace.