Any Light at the End of the Tunnel?
February 3, 2012 4:29 PM
At the end of November I uploaded a blogpost entitiled "America, an Obituary." The goal was to get my internal negativity about the prospects for the American Republic out into cyberspace, perhaps exorcising it like a demon, knowing that there were many out there who felt similarly. It didn't work. My pessimism stuck to me like napalm. Next, we got Willard "Mitt" Romney as the Republican Anointed One. I then decided to look again at the big picture. I asked myself, is there any light at the end of a big, dark tunnel? I decided that yes, there is. Faint glimmerings of light, far, far away, but light nevertheless. Here's the light, in my opinion:
The Three C's have made a comeback. I've written about them before. Let's call capitalism the first of them. Newt Gingrich was severely criticized by potential supporters for his pandering to the left by attacking the ethics of Romney's venture capital firm, Bain. When Ayn Rand wrote her "Conservatism, an Obituary" essay, which had inspired my gloomy blogpost, her main complaint about conservatives was they were unwilling to defend capitalism as a moral social system, or even mention its name. They are no longer afraid.
The Constitution has made a strong comeback, being mentioned favorably by libertarians, conservatives, and even the demagogue-in-chief himself, B. Hussein Obama. It's back, that is, in political rhetoric, though it's being ripped to shreds by the bosses of both political parties.
Even the third C, our dollar currency, is being addressed as an issue, with harsh criticism everywhere of the Fed, Bernanke, the deficit, the inflation potential, and the way Greece and her ilk have destroyed the Euro.
The Hegelian State is on the way out. Hegel, a German philosopher who lived during the early years of the American Republic, idolized big government to the extent that he viewed it as the best representation of the will of God, whom he called the World Spirit. (If you've talked to a liberal lately, you'll see that Hegel's ideas are still around, though they might be refocused on a "messianic" political figure.)
The truth is, however, that the Hegelian State is being eroded and rapidly replaced by numerous non-governmental entities: the so-called NGO's, monstrous creepy crawlies like the UN, an explosion of "public utilities" and regional planning, and, of course my favorite, multinational corporations. (They are my favorite because the Left hates them.) In other words, the Marxist (and Mohammedan) dream of totally centralized top-down power, in spite of Obama, Pelosi, and Reid, is meeting its nemesis. Hallelujah.
Tycoons. The recently departed Steve Jobs, whose philosophical premises were a muddle of vegetarianism, Al Goreism, Eastern Mysticism, and just plain meanness, was in action a real-life Ayn Rand hero. While her Atlas Shrugged hero, Hank Rearden, gave us a new stronger-than-steel kind of metal, Jobs gave us the Mac, the iPad, downloadable legal music for a buck, spiffy retail stores, generations of iPods, but especially the iPhone, which turns out to be a very useful worldwide tool of subversion against the Hegelian state. (In China, where they are made, they can't get enough of them.)
Yes, I am aware that tycoons, like automobiles and vaccines, are a mixed blessing. After all, there is George Soros, who makes Goldfinger and Starvo Blofeld look warm and fuzzy by comparison, and, yes, there is Willard "Mitt" Romney, a bland but smug tycoon who thinks he can beat Obama in the general election. (Do you think he can?) Still, imagine a world without tycoons. Better yet, visit North Korea or Cuba and see one for yourself.
Gee whiz! I still have more items on my list of glimmerings at the end of the tunnel, but I have already written well over 500 words, so maybe I'll save those glimmerings for another blogpost.