An Enlightened Character

Easy, in your post of May 10 ("Debt Up to Our ...), you state: "For the Administration, however, American economic dynamism is precisely what is wrong with America and the world.  America's economic power feeds the American Beast of Capitalism (bad), Colonialism and Exploitation (worse), and a War-Mongering Militant Culture (evil), which is edging the world ever closer to Nuclear Annihilation." In an interview with Michael Totten, Paul Berman makes much the same point vis a vis the mind-set of the Western apologists of Islamism: "We look at ourselves in the Western countries and we say that, if we are rich, relatively speaking, as a society, it is because we have plundered our wealth from other people. Our wealth is a sign of our guilt. If we are powerful, compared with the rest of the world, it is because we treat people in other parts of the world in oppressive and morally objectionable ways. Our privileged position in the world is actually a sign of how racist we are and how imperialistic and exploitative we are. All the wonderful successes of our society are actually the signs of how morally inferior we are, and we have much to regret and feel guilty about." The real basis for screwy thinking like this is the historical degeneration of the Western Enlightenment into bilious abstractions no more concrete than the older religious metaphysics.  Rich societies are rich because they enjoy the freedom to form mini voluntary associations with others in mutually beneficial exchanges.  This concrete rational conclusion about what capitalism is totally escapes our current intellectual elite because they are locked into quasi-Jungian/Freudian/Marxist abstractions that care not for the intentions and motivations of real, concrete people, but point rather to a deep, unconscious reality of which real people are just pawns. Continue......  Thus, a capitalist may not be consciously racist, but he is inevitably racist, because of the sweep of World History which makes his actions de facto racist.  In this context, there can be no appeal to the pawns to heal themselves of racism.  Pawns are what they are and will do what they do, unless they are taken forcibly off the playing field by other chess pieces, more powerful and enlightened, aligned with the "correct" Historical anti-racist forces. Which is, of course, complete clap-trap.  Our so-called intellectuals lack the very thing that a true intellectual needs: the ability to make an informed judgment about the connection between a theory and the facts, a connection that is at best murky.  This connection may be found via the suppleness of a genuine intellect, but more important than that, the investigator must have the moral humility and genuine ethical honesty to be willing to accept the reality that is, rather than the reality desired. This demand for ethical honesty rather than personal prejudice in the pursuit of the truth of things is where the Enlightenment truly began, producing unparalleled advancement in the human condition.  Unfortunately, its birth was in opposition to the reigning abstractions of its day, which were religious, and in its growth it has never matured beyond those youthful controversies.  Its trajectory has therefore been evermore secular.  As a result, coincident with the extraordinary advancement of our understanding of things, has come the appalling collapse of intellectual honesty, leading to our present state when the Enlightenment impulse has become subordinate to base human desires for power and control. In this sense, President Obama is as grand a Historical figure as he thinks he is. Despite being the beneficiary of all that is best in our culture - freedom, equality, and the abundant resources that can only be produced by a free society - he is trapped in a mind-set that can only reason from the first principles he learned in academia: that Western society is racist, oppressive, and war-like.  Facts do not matter; real people and communities do not matter; even the real-world results of his own policies do not matter.  He lives in a larger world of grand abstractions, which are always true no matter what.  More to the point: the fact that his vision for America requires centralizing power and control in Washington in violation of the tenets of the Constitution and the will of the people is of no concern, because he knows what America really needs.  However, since centralizing power is one of the most common yearnings in the human breast, an honest person might revisit his premises before embarking on such an undemocratic assault on America.  It's one thing to be kicking around these ideas in the faculty lounge or at the student quad, and another to take the reins of government and force your ideas on an unwilling populace. Not for our President such humility.  He learned what he learned, and believes what he believes, and if the centralization of power in Washington does satisfy some deep-felt personal desire of he and his kind, well, it is all just a happy coincidence. However, it is no coincidence.  Power desires power, and an intellectual tradition shorn of its moral demand for honesty, especially self-honesty, ceases to be intellectual at all, but only another instrumentality of power.  By all accounts, our President is a good man to his family and friends, an honest man who has worked hard to become what he is today, a gifted man who has devoted his gifts to what he perceives as the best in his life.  Nevertheless, he is the almost perfect embodiment of the downward spiral of centuries of the Enlightenment into a rationality shorn of its moral roots, and therefore shorn of its pretensions to rationality at all.