Kelly's Heroes

Donald Trump and John Kelly

We’re all Civil War re-enactors.  As the most dramatic and consequential chapter in our tortured racial history it compels our concern and provokes our passions. But we seem unable to deal with it maturely. Instead of facing it and learning from it, we succumb to its distortions and lies. Instead of settling it, it unsettles us. We fight it every single day, and it always wins. And on October 30, White House Chief of Staff, General John Kelly recklessly threw himself into that fight, responding to a question about Civil War monuments by saying:

I would tell you that Robert E. Lee was an honorable man. He was a man that gave up his country to fight for his state, which 150 years ago was more important than country. It was always loyalty to state first back in those days. Now where it’s different today. But the lack of the ability to compromise led to the Civil War and men and women of good faith on both sides made their stand with where their consciences had them make their stand.

But this is monumentally foolish. The entire history of the American republic before the Civil War is one of endless compromises aimed at reassuring the South that slavery would not be disturbed. The precipitating cause of the war was the election of a profoundly conciliatory and compromising president who merely wished to prevent the expansion of slavery into new territories, and promised to leave it alone in the states where it already existed.  We compromised our ideals for decades, but that ultimately proved incapable of preventing war with people prepared to fight to the death to maintain such a monstrous evil. And apparently we need to be reminded that General Lee (who was a gallant soldier, but a brutal slave-master) led an army intent on destroying the United State in the service of that evil.

But why do we need to be reminded? How does an intelligent person like Kelly manage to overlook such glaring truths? The easy answer from liberals is: deliberate racism. In this view Kelly finds Confederate generals admirable because they’re the heroes of white power over black bodies. Maybe he even likes slavery!  But this is cheap and irresponsible; there is no evidence that beneath Kelly’s bland exterior there beats a cold racist heart. Indeed, there’s a better, a more subtle explanation, and it’s the reverse of the liberal accusation. It’s not that Kelly admires men like Lee because of their white supremacy; it’s that he goes easy on their white supremacy because he admires them.  And he admires them because it’s too painful not to. That is, to admit Lee’s evil is to admit American evil and that’s something a conservative can never do. Slavery and racism are central to the American story, and the inability to accept that is central to American conservatism.

And what’s true for Kelly is true for the millions more – in the South and elsewhere – who perceive the Civil War in the same way. Some of them are indeed motivated by outright racism, but most are simply unable to concede that America committed such grievous crimes. It’s probably true that most people in most countries are similarly unable to face up to their own national sins. But Americans find it particularly painful, since we invest such emotion in the view of ourselves as noble and enlightened crusaders fighting for democracy and truth. How can the shining city on the hill have a rotten foundation?  Downplaying American racial sin to preserve American idealistic self-image is older than the republic itself.

Rutherford B. Hayes, who ascended to the presidency
in 1877 by agreeing to a backroom deal that ended the
federal guarantee of the rights of African Americans

It’s because the Civil War presents a direct threat to that self-image that we continue to fight over it so bitterly. And in the period after the war, known as Reconstruction, we dug ourselves deeper. When the South lost it faced a profound moral choice: either concede the horrible wrongness of its war aims, or preserve its self-image by pretending it fought for other more respectable reasons, and by suppressing the ex-slaves as lesser creatures whose rights need not be respected.  We all know what it chose. And, crucially, it asked the rest of the country to share its mythology. Or rather, it demanded widespread acceptance of that mythology as the price for white reconciliation. In effect, southern whites presented northern whites with a choice of their own, “Side with us or with our ex-slaves; you can’t have both.” And we all know what they chose. The mythology became the consensus, and black Americans paid the price.

Kelly, and the millions who agree with him, are still making that same choice. They callously disregard and minimize the death and destruction visited upon black people under slavery, Jim Crow, and even now, all to preserve white unity and white pride. But unsurprisingly, callousness is not a constructive strategy. It’s what impels conservative denial about the continuing harsh reality of black life in America today. It pushes whites toward white identity politics, even white nationalism, even outright racism. Its suppressed guilt makes conservatives bitter, defensive, resentful, angry.  It allows them to be manipulated by malevolent hucksters like Donald Trump. Conservative denial is the very poison that is killing us.

But liberals are immune because they’ve opted out of the old consensus. That’s what makes them liberals! Starting in the 1950’s and 60’s they determined to expand the New Deal economic and social success story – which had until then been limited to whites – to include all Americans.  In effect they rejected the white southern Reconstruction-era choice as a false one and determined to side with everyone.  But southern and conservative whites refused – even at this late a stage – to honestly face their historical and current crimes, and liberals, in frustration and desperation, gave up the project of shared prosperity.  After the Civil War, northern whites reconciled with southern whites and blacks suffered.  But now white liberals side with blacks and reconciliation suffers. We’re all Reconstruction re-enactors.

But that’s partly because liberal reluctance to surrender American unity has turned into wild-eyed enthusiasm.  Liberals are happy to see themselves as the good guys, the protectors and allies of black people, and even happier to see conservatives – particularly southern white conservatives – as the embodiment of all American evil. Increasingly, liberals see America itself as so essentially compromised by racial evil that anyone would be foolish and naive to bestow upon her any hope or loyalty. But liberal racial sanctimony, like conservative racial denial, is really about unresolved guilt, about attempting to remove oneself from American sin. Conservatives childishly pretend it doesn’t exist; liberals face it but project it entirely onto the political Other. Conservatives hold onto American idealism by denying it’s less than ideal, liberals hold onto it by psychologically and politically removing themselves from America. The liberal response is more forgivable, of course, since they do face the truth, and they do hold onto their idealism. But they do so at the cost of alienation from their own country, that is, from themselves. And that detachment makes it too easy to indulge the darker aspects of that idealism and go crusading against conservatives like Puritan ministers railing against Satan. But unsurprisingly, shaming is not a constructive strategy. But it is an inevitable one when you’ve concluded that the only way to hold onto your idealism is by rebuking your own country.

And that’s how we’ve hardened into our two sad, familiar camps, defined by our respective dysfunctional reactions to the horrible contradiction between our national ideals and our national crimes. But callous denial and aloof sanctimony are not our only options.  The only hope, and it’s a slim one, is for liberals to see the damage they do when they so fundamentally deplore their fellow countrymen. Liberals, as the conscience of America, must be the more mature party here. If they can face up to American sin, can’t they face up to their own? It’s true that many conservatives are still outright racist, but most are not, and calling them all racists and labeling them as essentially evil does enormous harm to our national life. It degrades the discourse and increases mistrust and resentment, it hardens people in their resistance.  It confuses the symptom, racial resentment, with the disease, national pride, and it angers people who simply want to believe in themselves and their country. It plays into the hands of white nationalists and unscrupulous politicians. Conservatives have foolishly conflated believing in America with believing America has never really done anything wrong, and they badly need to educate themselves on the distinction. Many, out of stubbornness or animus or ignorance, never will.  But many could, and liberals need to give them the space to do so.

And as liberals, the only effective way we can educate is by example. We can do all three things at once: hold onto our ideals, squarely face our country’s sins, and honestly accept that they’re our sins, that we’re inextricably American too. Honest judgment of American history will never get a fair hearing if it’s not joined to a deep commitment to America itself, since no one will hear criticism from someone they don’t trust. And we can be a little more forgiving of those who find it so difficult to hear.  If liberals cannot transcend their own misunderstandings, if they cannot graduate to a more mature and constructive engagement with our terrible history, if they can’t accept that redeeming America means redeeming actual Americans, and if they can’t meet them as equals and as fellow Americans – if they can’t do all this they won’t be honestly addressing our deepest problems; they’ll only be perpetuating them. 

Why Do Conservatives Love Israel So Much?

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warmly greeted by Congress, March 3rd

The most striking thing about the conservative reaction to the Obama administration’s unprecedented diplomatic breach with Israel is its abject identification with the other country. To recap: Benjamin Netanyahu successfully campaigned for re-election as Prime Minister by explicitly repudiating what has been the central proposal of both Israeli and American diplomacy for a generation: the two-state solution, the creation of a sovereign Palestinian state at peace with Israel.  He also lamented that Israeli Arabs were actually exercising their political rights as citizens by voting against him in great numbers.  By retracting the only important conciliatory position Israel has taken, and by appealing to the worst instincts of his embattled base he has made progress on the Palestinian problem impossible for the foreseeable future.  Indeed, that seems to have been his intent.  But he has badly damaged Israel’s diplomatic and moral standing, and that is reflected in the new American disapproval.

But American conservatives are angry beyond reason, not at Netanyahu for sabotaging chances for mid-East peace, but at Obama for having the nerve to criticize him for it.  Of course, overwrought indignation deafens our current political discourse, but in this case the apoplectic table-pounding seems all too sincere.  What gives?  Israel, as the only genuine liberal democracy in the region, is an admirable country in many ways.  But how do we understand the intensity and extremity of conservative protectiveness?  Is it possible to imagine conservatives losing their minds over official American reproach of, say, Britain?  Or Canada?  Or any other country in the world?  Why is Israel so special in the conservative mind?  Why do they love it so much?

And it’s not just that they love it.  They seem to love it as much as they love America.  And, crucially, they love it in the same way: it’s pure and noble in essence and can do no wrong.  Of course, many American Christian fundamentalists support Israel because it plays a central role in their vision of the end of days; i.e. Armageddon and the destruction of all non-believers, especially any Jews who stubbornly remain Jewish.  Israel must be quite happy at this sort of “support”.  More to the point, such obscurantist, adolescent revenge fantasies might explain instrumental affection for Israel, but they don’t explain super-national love.

As personal love is the extension of one’s ego to include another, conservative Israel-ardor is the extension of patriotism.  Consider a country whose creation was ordained by God Himself, whose purpose is to bring righteousness to the world, whose political heart is democratic and free, and which from the moment of its inception was besieged by implacable evil.  Is that America or Israel?  Yes.  Yes, it is.  In the conservative imagination Israel is an extension of all that’s good in America, in Western civilization, in humanity.   Conservatives love Israel the way they love America because Israel is America.  It’s the only country that has a franchise on American exceptionalism.

And since, as conservatives have warned us, Obama doesn’t really love America, it makes perfect sense that he doesn’t love Israel either.  Indeed, some conservatives claim that Netanyahu loves America more than Obama does!  The farther fringes are certain that Obama actively desires the humiliation – or worse! – of both.  The crucial confusion here is mistaking an ideology for a country.  Conservative love America for its essential goodness, which in their minds flows from its strong, beating conservative heart.  Israel equals America equals conservatism equals moral purity.  To oppose any of them is to oppose them all.

But even more important than moral purity is moral strength.  From the moment of its birth Israel has beaten off its attacking neighbors, even expanding its territory and its military power.  This is what makes conservatives swoon: bad-assed righteousness.  God must be on Israel’s side.  At the very least, the conservative principles that made America so great are doing the same for Israel.

And now we can correctly perceive Israel’s enemies.  They’re evil in essence and retrograde in practice.  Non-white, non-Western, non-Judeo-Christian, they’re present-day Native Americans, indulging their strange, savage habits and hoarding land they don’t know how to properly exploit.  They can’t possibly have any legitimate grievances.  Any resistance these place-holding squatters feel toward their eviction by the rightful owners can only be motivated by simple spite.  The conservative vision of Israel as America is complete: sturdy, righteous pioneers subduing the physical and moral wilderness, armed with only a Bible and an atomic bomb.  And this is the Puritan self-image: a pillar of morality strong enough to resist the temptations, corruptions and enervations that threaten his soul.

This is the myth of American and Israeli goodness that, to varying degrees, informs conservative thinking on the subject.  The increasing polarization of American politics – i.e. the escalating ideological purification of conservatism – has increased the influence and intensity of that myth.  As with the embattled Puritan, the greater the evil outside the door, the greater the intensity of belief inside the temple.  The more conservatives feel America is threatened – by immigration, by liberalism, by terrorism – or that Israel is threatened – by Arab demographics, by Iran, by insufficient American devotion – the more they reject reasoned analysis and embrace mythology.  Obama has pushed all their Israeli buttons: by pressing it to halt settlement-building, by negotiating with its enemies, by criticizing its politics, and – most importantly – by not worshiping its moral superiority, by treating it like a normal country, like the flawed and morally complex country that it is, that every country is. 

Of course, fawning conservative admiration of Israel doesn’t negate what actually is admirable about Israel.  But American conservatives defend Israel for all the wrong reasons, for reasons having more to do with American mythology than Israeli reality.  That confusion doesn’t lend itself to the prudential, moderate diplomacy that Obama is trying so hard to practice and that Netanyahu is trying so hard to subvert.  And this is the irony of the American conservative position: they’re defending Israel’s reputation so vehemently just when its own leaders are so carelessly doing it the most damage.

The Myth and its Devotees

“Capital is only formed by self-denial.”

– William Graham Sumner, 19^th century sociologist

President Obama has recently drawn much anger from the right for expressly doubting the conservative folklore of capitalism.  That folklore holds that the rich became so entirely through their own efforts, that is, through the determined and disciplined application of talent.  This is crucially a moral story: one is rich because one is virtuous.  Capitalism is part of nature’s mechanism for enforcing morality.  State interference in the free market can only upset the just distribution of riches that is its natural effect.  This mythology is the principle moral rationale behind laissez-faire policies on economic, fiscal and monetary matters, policies such as lowering higher end tax rates, de-regulation, the privatization of Social Security and Medicare.  That is, you should be on your own, because only then will you receive the compensation your individual moral character merits.  Only then will you receive justice.  Imagine John Calvin reading Milton Friedman.

It’s baloney, of course.  It’s baloney in many ways.  First of all, capitalism is no more natural than powdered wigs.  It’s a human institution, with all the imperfection, corruption and injustice inherent in human institutions.  Secondly, not all the character traits that bring wealth are admirable ones: greed, cunning, ruthlessness.  Is manipulating consumers with advertising a virtuous enterprise?  Many of capitalism’s ablest practitioners are simply good at gaming the system.  Third, no one succeeds entirely on his or her own.  Every business owner relies upon the cultural and moral resources provided by society and the stability, physical infrastructure and educated workforce provided by government.  Fourth, luck often plays a great part in achieving success.  The third and fourth unpleasant truths are the ones that President Obama has been so indelicate as to say out loud.  Have I fairly represented and then dismantled the conservative view of capitalist success?  Or have I merely burned down an easily combustible straw man?   Maybe a look at the conservative responses to Obama’s remarks will help answer that question. 

But first, a look at Obama’s impiety:

There are a lot of wealthy, successful Americans who agree with me – because they want to give something back.  They know they didn’t – look, if you’ve been successful, you didn’t get there on your own.  You didn’t get there on your own.  I’m always struck by people who think, well, it must be because I was just so smart.  There are a lot of smart people out there.  It must be because I worked harder than everybody else.  Let me tell you something – there are a whole bunch of hardworking people out there.

If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help.  There was a great teacher somewhere in your life.  Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive.  Somebody invested in roads and bridges.  If you’ve got a business – you didn’t build that.  Somebody else made that happen.  The Internet didn’t get invented on its own.  Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet.

The point is, is that when we succeed, we succeed because of our individual initiative, but also because we do things together.

The president is clearly presenting objections 3 and 4 above.  That is, many successful people, in keeping with the conservative myth, attribute their success entirely to their own smarts and hard work.  But, Obama responds, this overlooks three other important contributions to success: simple luck, a supportive cultural and social background (“a great teacher”), and an enabling state (“roads and bridges”).  He’s even touching upon objection number 1, i.e. that society and government played a role in constructing capitalism (“this unbelievable American system”).

But it is these lines in particular that conservatives have focused upon: “If you’ve got a business – you didn’t build that.  Somebody else made that happen.”  In particular the four words, “you didn’t build that,” have become in the conservative mind a perfect distillation of all that is foreign, socialist and unholy in Obama’s thought.  Many – either from mendacity or ideological blindness – claim the “that” in “you didn’t build that” refers to the “business” that “you’ve got”.  That is, Obama is denying that business owners built their own businesses, and insisting instead that government did.  For example, Jim Treacher, in a post titled, “Stop claiming Obama said what he said, just because he said it”, renders Obama’s remarks as, “You didn’t build that because of your hard work and intelligence. You depend on the government, not the other way around.”  Republican congressman Paul Ryan (who has since been picked by Mitt Romney to be his Vice-presidential nominee) wrote, “The President recently suggested that a central government – not individuals – deserves the credit for building successful businesses.”  Romney himself, brave truth-teller that he is, threw Obama’s remarks back at him: “I do not give government credit for having built that, I give free people credit for having built that business.”  Romney again: “The idea, to say that Steve Jobs didn’t build Apple, that Henry Ford didn’t build Ford Motor, that Papa John didn’t build Papa John Pizza, that Ray Kroc didn’t build McDonald’s, that Bill Gates didn’t build Microsoft . . .”  But this is just foolish.  It’s quite clear, as for instance Joe Klein has pointed out, the “that” in question means the infrastructure (“roads and bridges”) built by government.  Besides, no socialist claims that entrepreneurs didn’t build their businesses; socialists claim that entrepreneurs shouldn’t build businesses.  Any socialist worth his commissar-rationed salt knows how capitalism works; he just doesn’t want it to do so.  So Obama is not only a socialist but an uneducated one.  Clearly, for many, the lure of scoring cheap election year points is too great a temptation to resist.

Many conservative commentators, even if they avoid the explicit dishonesty and misrepresentation of the tale that Romney so casually spins, seem quite certain we’ve all now seen Obama’s socialist smoking gun.  In a post entitled, “Obama lets the cat out of the bag,” the Washington Post’s Jennifer Rubin is stunned by Obama’s “collectivism,” his “rag on individual merit.”  She quotes at length from Obama’s September 2011 jobs speech in which he makes the case for collective effort, a speech she summarizes as “You didn’t earn anything and government is everything.”  But in that same speech – included in that part of Obama’s speech that Rubin herself quotes! – the president also says, “Yes, we are rugged individualists. Yes, we are strong and self-reliant. And it has been the drive and initiative of our workers and entrepreneurs that has made this economy the engine and the envy of the world.”  For a socialist, Obama seems remarkably bad at ragging on individual merit!  Rubin concludes: “Lo and behold he’s revealed himself to be the very caricature of the anti-business, government-is-all liberal Republicans have claimed him to be.”  Caricature, indeed.  Is Rubin simply a propagandist or a blinkered ideologue, unable to make distinctions?  Well, ideologues make the best propagandists, true-believers the best liars.

We see the most salient aspect of the conservative reaction to Obama’s remarks: unbalance, the black-and-white thinking that turns Obama’s thoughtful recognition of collective effort into a thorough renunciation of individual effort.  Lawrence Kudlow claims Obama has “trashed” and “demonized” entrepreneurs, that he “has it out for successful earners, investors and small-business owners.”  Peter Kirasow says that Obama “denigrates individual American spirit, ambition, drive, skill and industriousness.”  J.D. Tuccille laments Obama’s “repulsive, Borg-like philosophy.”  Rich Lowry's characterizes Obama’s viewpoint as, “Everything is ultimately a collective enterprise”, perfectly expressing the inability to see both sides of the equation.  Because Obama sees the value in both government and individual effort, Charles Murray thinks that he is “un-American”, that he doesn’t really get America.  Pat Buchanan sadly wonders the same thing: “Does Obama understand America?”  Stu Varney, Fox Business host, worries Obama’s remarks work “against the essence of the American Dream.”  When one questions conservative mythology one is questioning America itself!  Kimberley Strassel of the Wall Street Journal agrees.  To her, Obama’s “dismissive words toward free enterprise . . . raise the far more potent issue of national identity and feed the suspicion that Mr. Obama is actively hostile to American ideals and aspirations.”  She asks us to, “Witness the first president to demean the bedrock American beliefs in industriousness and exceptionalism.”  Rush Limbaugh flops smack down on the sloppy and smelly McCarthyite conclusion: “I think it can now be said, without equivocation – without equivocation – that this man hates this country. He is trying – Barack Obama is trying – to dismantle, brick by brick, the American dream.”  No equivocation is needed when no equivocation is felt.  Obviously, much of the conservative overreaction to Obama’s remarks is simply a cynical attempt to make Obama look as bad as possible.  But much of it seems to express a straightforward inability to see outside the strict confines of the conservative mythology.

Some conservatives seem to think that not only are Obama’s words unforgivably heretical, they actually harm the economy!  Lawrence Kudlow compares Obama’s dark analysis with Reagan’s sunny cheerleading: “When Reagan praised our capitalist system and the businesses inside it, he provided a psychological lift to accompany his fiscal program. That was leadership.”  James Pethokoukis praises and echoes Kudlow: “Maybe Obama doesn’t understand how damaging and corrosive these sorts of statements and speeches, repeated over and over, might potentially be?”  Apparently, we must treat businesses the way overly permissive parents treat their young children: They must be continuously showered with praise lest their fragile self-esteem be tragically undermined.  There was a time when the lure of wealth and power would have been sufficient spurs to success, but now entrepreneurs pout and go on strike if they don’t also receive our blind worship!  Liberal writer Jonathan Chait incisively portrays the unbearably self-pitying sensibilities of the rich and the conservative movement devotees whose jobs it is to keep that worship permanently on high volume.  Chait highlights “the extraordinary hypersensivity surrounding the egos of the rich in our current political culture” and the “genuine outrage of the right” over what is at bottom “Obama’s insensitivity toward the rich.”  If the outrage really is genuine then conservatives must be either true believers in the mythology or terribly afraid that the mythology might lose its power.

This leads us to the “banality” response, in which a conservative writer readily accepts Obama’s points as obviously true – indeed, so obvious as to be uncontroversial – but rails against Obama for using those points to advance his insidious liberal agenda.  Holman W. Jenkins, Jr. of the Wall Street Journal writes, “He only meant to say we need government as well as private initiative, and who could disagree? This argument is anodyne, dispositive of nothing that is in dispute.  Of course, it also comes as a defense of policies that all run in one direction: bigger government, higher taxes.”   So Obama’s words defend bigger government but don’t address anything in dispute?  Rich Lowry finds Obama’s argument to be little more than “a warrant for socialization of the proceeds of success.”  He concludes: “Behind its smiley we’re-all-in-it-together façade is a frank demand: You owe us.”  How dare Obama make a convincing argument for raising taxes on the rich!  Jim Geraghty quotes Obama: “If you’ve been successful, you didn’t get there on your own.” and quite reasonably concedes, “Which successful person claims that?”  But he anguishes that Obama’s thinking leads to policies that are “changing and eroding” America.  (Geraghty may be a bad example of the banality response, since his concession of Obama’s points can’t withstand his disdain for capitalism’s losers, especially those whose envy makes them forget their proper station: “And there are a lot of not-so-hard-working people out there who expect to be successful anyway.”  But that merely helps prove my point: even some of those who intellectually concede Obama’s arguments find it impossible to really believe them.)  These writers want to have it both ways: Yes, they are reasonable people who know the mythology is baloney and no, they won’t stand idly by while smarty-pants socialists call it baloney.  But if Obama’s words are so undeniably and uncontroversially true, then why is it so terrible to utter them?  Is the conservative argument that policy should not be based upon truth?  Or do they believe it’s a misleading truth?  It’s not clear.  But here is their real – and quite remarkable – concession: widespread acknowledgment of Obama’s truth would inevitably lead to more liberal economic policies.  The truth is on the side of the liberals so conservatives must fight against the truth.  The conservative folklore of capitalism is a lie, but it’s an indispensible lie.

But maybe the truth makes a better basis for policy than myth does.  Economic policy based on Puritan mythology can be just as irrational and destructive as science based upon Genesis.  The “banality” writers are quite right about one thing: popular acceptance of the conservative mythology leads to greater acceptance for laissez-faire economic policies.  If the rich righteously deserve their wealth then raising their taxes is a terrible injustice.  If capitalism rewards the good and punishes the bad then interference in the market can only thwart the workings of justice.  Of course, conservatives and libertarians don’t just make moral arguments in favor of freer markets, they present practical arguments as well.  They claim that lower tax rates, reduced regulation and fewer government services help the economy grow faster, creating more wealth for everyone.  These practical arguments, unlike the mythology, have some plausibility and liberals generally try to rebut them with practical arguments of their own.  For example, liberals concede that unfettered capitalism does indeed generate great wealth but they believe that wealth tends to become concentrated in only a few hands.  Both sides produce facts, charts, statistics, etc. to make their respective cases and the debate grinds empirically on.  But typically liberals surrender the moral ground; in effect they concede that of course the rich deserve their wealth, of course private property is sacrosanct, government merely needs a little of it for its practical humanitarian purposes.  But Obama’s remarks don’t make those concessions; they constitute a genuine moral argument against an excessively free market.  They weaken the moral argument for the inviolability of private property, and to conservatives that inviolability is the material basis for freedom itself.  What for liberals is a simple, reasonable and irrefutable point about the nature of capitalism is for conservatives a dagger aimed at the heart of the free society.  In effect, conservatives are claiming that not only is their capitalist folklore necessary for economic health but it stands as a powerful bulwark against the collectivist nightmare.  That’s some powerful lie.

Moderate conservative Josh Barro makes all this explicit.  He starts with the obligatory concession to the trivial falsehood of the conservative myth: “Obviously, every successful outcome in life – and every failed one – arises from a combination of internal and external factors.”  But he abhors the uses to which such trivial concession can be put:

People are rightly unnerved by an argument that amounts to “we can tax you because you didn’t deserve this anyway.” Faced with such an argument, defending your own contribution to your success isn’t just a point of pride – it’s an argument you must make to defend the principle that you are entitled to your own private property.

Here Barro is trying to force a liberal concession.  He is making a point that any honest liberal should admit: that once one abandons the conservative myth one must also abandon the notion that individuals have an undiluted right to their own property.  But most liberals don’t want to go that far; they just want to tame capitalism and make it better fulfill humanitarian ends.  They just want to raise taxes on the rich a little and provide working people with a slightly better safety net.  They never set out to undermine private property.  But here we are and the logic seems inescapable.  If you didn’t earn your wealth without help, then morally it is not entirely yours.  There are, of course, prudential reasons for treating private property as inviolable, but there is no sound moral basis for doing so.

But it would be wrong to conclude – as many conservatives, even Barro, seem to – that Obama believes that individuals have no moral claim at all on their own property.  The president is merely proposing a more balanced view of the subject.  His position amounts to: individuals have a right to their private property, but it is not an absolute right.  It’s a terribly important right and it should be respected as much as is practically possible, but it should also be balanced against other important considerations, such as the economic health of the nation and the fiscal health of the federal government.  There are competing legitimate claims upon that wealth and all those claims must be respected.  He’s expressing a realistic and pragmatic viewpoint, and one with a solid moral and intellectual foundation.  Is that un-American?  Or is the American dream predicated upon false folklore?  Can we both accept the conclusions of our own logic and believe in America?  But these are not questions in a vacuum.  As Obama himself said in the speech Jennifer Rubin references (my italics): “But there’s always been another thread running throughout our history — a belief that we’re all connected, and that there are some things we can only do together, as a nation.”  That is, the notion of collective responsibility has been there from the beginning, as important as the notion of individual responsibility.  Obama acknowledges and honors both notions.  Above, I referred to the conservative mythology of wealth accumulation as baloney.  That was unfair: it’s not entirely baloney, though it does contain obvious falsehoods in the ways I described above.  There is much truth to the notion that in a free economy those who work hard tend to do better than those who don’t and those with brains and talent tend to do better than those without, etc.  But that’s the point: the myth contains much truth and many lies and if we hope to address our profound national problems in a realistic way then we must let ourselves see both.  That’s what we’ve done through most of our history.  That’s what Obama’s speech asks us to do.  And that’s what conservatives refuse to do.