Introduction
One of the recent discussion points on the right is related to a comment made by our vice-president about the appeal of socialism. He said, and I quote: “My warning to my fellow Republicans . . . You don’t stop socialism by throwing slogans at people about the free market. You stop socialism by making people’s lives better.”
Now the VP is exactly right in what he says here, but some are worried about what he is not yet saying, and what that might mean. If this statement ends with a period, stop, then sign me up. But if there is an ellipsis after better, then I want to see where that might be going. My observations of the political world over the course of my lifetime has made me nervous about all ellipses.
Slogans and Opportunity
Here is some broader cultural context. From Reagan down the present, a multitude of Republican candidates have done exactly what Vance is complaining about. They talk the free market talk, but they do not walk the free market walk. And if that is what Vance means when he talks about “throwing free market slogans at people,” I am on board entirely.
The challenge is this. The way you make people’s lives better, actually better, is by means of free markets. But in order to get to that point, you need to talk about it. You need instruction, study, reflection, and so on. You need to read books by Thomas Sowell, and when you read such books, you are not ingesting “slogans.” You are learning things about how the world actually goes.
Slogans come from politicians who don’t actually mean it. Teaching comes from teachers. Slogans come from socialists whose hidden premise is that a decent apartment can cost a certain amount to maintain, and that rent control can set the rents below that amount, and that it should still be possible to find yourself a decent apartment.
And slogans are also emitted by ostensible conservatives who are big free market guys while on the rubber chicken circuit, but who never met an additional market regulation when back in Washington that they weren’t prepared to wave through into law.
Markets lift people out of poverty, and nothing else does. Slogans are the enemy of this, whether they are slogans from the left or slogans from the pretendy-right. Markets create opportunities in a way that lying miscreants can never do.
Our Slogans, Their Slogans
One of the central reasons why conservatives need to abandon all sloganeering is that the commies are much better at it than we are. They are not reluctant to promise the moon and sky, and then, when the moon and sky are not delivered on time, they are much better at deploying their built-in excuse . . . one that still works for some reason. “Real socialism has not yet been tried.”
Okay, I’ll buy that. If real socialism, all-the-way communism were really tried, all the way tried, the end result would be that absolutely everybody would be dead. And we wouldn’t have to worry about any of that anymore.
But to be fair, real capitalism has never been tried either. But here is the key difference. When capitalism is attempted, running on only five of her cylinders, the end result is that millions are lifted out of poverty. When socialism is attempted, also on five cylinders, the result is misery and devastation. In the mid-twentieth century, the richest city in North America was Detroit, and the richest city in Latin America was Havana. The one thing that collectivism is really good at is creating economic moonscapes.
So Vance is right. The collectivists are better at empty promises. We should not try competing with them on the empty promises front. Rather, we need to teach when off the campaign trail—remember the importance of things like private education and publishing—and point to how the markets deliver when canvasing for votes. Campaigning in this way ought to be simple. The people who can’t tell a boy from a girl are also the people who can’t tell profit from loss.
Better As Compared to What?
Widespread gratitude is the best economic indicator for us to use. When someone succeeds in life, and succeeds big time, and he is honored and emulated, that entire society is on a good trajectory. And whenever someone succeeds big time, and the knives come out, and the reason everybody hates Elon so much is that he made their lives palpably better, the disease has taken root. The rot has begun.
There was a period in American history when rags-to-riches stories were a staple, and regular Americans did not begrudge the fact that certain others had hit the jackpot. “Making it” was admired, not envied. Now if I were in a conversation with a cynic about the days of those “robber barons,” and the cynic were to tell me that some of those johnnies were skunks and scoundrels, my simple reply would be I know that. I wasn’t born yesterday.
That’s not the issue. It is still far better to honor those men who made a pile in the market than to honor those different skunks and scoundrels who confiscated all the piles, took them home to their assorted dachas, while at the same time bestowing bread lines on their countrymen.
An apt story is told about the Soviet leader Brezhnev who was showing his mother around the new dacha that he had obtained, and truth be told, it was truly opulent. He showed her the pool, and the stables, and the grounds, and the guest quarters, and with each new thing that he showed her she was getting more and more worried and agitated. Finally, he said, “Mother, what’s wrong? I thought you would be delighted. Why are you so upset?” And she replied, “Oh, Leonid . . . but what if the communists come back?”
An Important Aside
There is one important thing that I would remind the vice-president not to neglect when it comes to his analysis of our economic malaise. We need to realize that when it comes to “making people’s lives better,” the radical discontent with the economics of America is coming from young people on the left, who are overwhelmingly from the privileged classes.
When the problem is grinding poverty, the solution is straightforward. Make people’s lives better. When the problem is envy and self-loathing, there is nothing economic that can be done that will make anything better.
The American system, as imperfect as it is, has made the lives of countless millions better. When it comes to the lives of ordinary people, we have it objectively better than pretty much everyone in the history of the entire world. It ought to be the occasion for deep gratitude. But when the problem is envy, that prosperity is the reason for all the hatred.
So the attitude of grievances-no-matter-what is an attitude that is contagious. Those young men on the right who have been targeted over the last generation or so need to make sure that they don’t get infected—which leads to my final exhortation.
When Your Dutch Uncle is a Boomer
I grant that the establishment is arrayed against you. I agree with Jeremy Carl that you are the unprotected class. I understand that their malicious bigotry is real. I know that they have closed and bolted multiple doors against you. I know that you have been made to sit through insolent workshops instructing everybody else about your toxicity. I get the fact that you have watched DEI nincompoops get vaulted past you into high positions. The outlook is awful, and the offenses against you are real. My point is that turning to porn and pot won’t be helpful to you in any way. The only thing that would signify is that you have decided to join up with the enemy in their war against you.
So I know that this is going to seem like cold comfort for those young white guys who have gotten “the treatment.” But sinking into the self-indulgence of resentment only makes everything worse. You are currently living in a time when, no matter what, everything gets blamed on you. Now you know what it feels like to be a Jew. Young white male heterosexuals are supposed to be the cancer of the planet. You will have to work twice as hard as your grandfather did in order to get the same result.
So here comes the cold comfort . . . but there is real comfort in it if you are willing to take it on board as intended. Well, then. If that’s the situation, the solution is that you need to work twice as hard.
I will illustrate this with a different skin color. I know it is a story I have told before, but it is pertinent. Many years ago, I was in a parent/teacher conference with a black woman whose son was in my class. He was not liked by the other students, and was not a good student. His mother was convinced that it was because he was black. It was actually because he was a pill, but it would have been pointless to debate that with his mom. What I said to her was this. “Let me grant to you that your son is growing up in a world that is rigged against him. You believe that he will have to work twice as hard as the white kids do in order to get to the same result. I am his teacher, and I am telling you that he is currently working half as hard. Tell me, given what you think his world is like . . . what is going to happen to him?” The answer is nothing good.
Another thing that won’t help is listening to the grievance-merchants like Candace or Fuentes. Fuentes is plainly a Fed—Nick FEDentes—and Candace is a leftist plant, the Manchurian podcaster. It is ironic that a generation of beleaguered young men decided they were done with believing all the establishment lies, and immediately turned to the two biggest lies that the establishment had told in this century to date.
It reminds me of Chesterton’s jab at the early feminists, meaning all those women who marched through the streets proclaiming that they would not be dictated to. They then went off and became stenographers.
Men facing the groyper temptation should rather get their information from a trusted source. This may be the preacher in me, but I would suggest . . . Isaiah, Jeremiah, Moses, Peter, James, and John. And tying all of that together together, I would urge them all to put their complete trust in the Lord Jesus—from the heart out to the fingertips.
Radicalism is the cancerous disease. Reaction is the flailing that tries to cure the cancer with a poultice made out of mayonnaise and cat poo. Reformation, grounded on the Word of God alone, is the only transformative option. Christ or chaos.