House of Eratosthenes

The first thing I notice, is how similar is the media’s reaction to a radical hardcore left-wing liberal getting caught saying what he truly feels, compared to a natural disaster like Hurricane Katrina. No protagonist; it’s nobody’s fault; both events are things that just “happened.” Well, in the natural weather phenomenon it’s the incumbent Republican President who somehow made it happen, but give the Jesse Jackson thing time. That’ll be George Bush’s fault too. You know if we don’t obey our instructions to forget about it, toot-sweet, someone in some strategy room somewhere will be brainstorming on a way to hold the current President responsible for Jesse Jackson’s latest embarrassment.

And that brings me to the second thing. Like Officer Barbrady said, “move along, there’s nothing to see here.” What a wonderful thing it must be to be Jesse Jackson! You get to express your profound regret that you got caught saying something, and this massive public-relations tsunami goes out…everyone should pretend it never happened. This is why democrats tend not to stand for anything. There are, in fact, deeply held principles in their camp; all these principles do not agree with all other principles; this causes deep divides and schisms that are well worth discussing.

But it would hurt both sides within the democrat camp to permit any discussion of them. So they remain undiscussed.

Here, the divide is over — and this brings me to the third thing — what is it we’re talking about when we use the word “responsibility?” Truth be told, this nation is chock full of reasonable, moderate-to-conservative people who call themselves “democrats” and look at the R-word the way any conservative Republican does: Responsibility is something inextricably intertwined with the decisions you want to make. Authority, autonomy, control, it’s-my-turn-at-bat…having sex with a good-lookin’ woman…driving a car. These all carry responsibility.

Well the truth of the matter is, Rev. Jesse Jackson represents millions of people — of all skin color — who don’t feel that way. To them, “responsibility” is a burden that bears down upon undesirables. Those who are seen as oppressors within history’s backdrop, people who run corporations, rich people, straight people, white people, males, white-straight-males, oilmen. We/they have the “responsibility” to provide…and there, there’s this huge exploding list. Jobs. Food. Daycare. Minimum wage. Education. Healthcare.

Obama just said “black people” — clearly, in Jackson’s mindset as well as in Sen. Obama’s, the useful meaning of this phrase is something that could be best worded as “our primary beneficiaries” — have responsibility. And Jackson was none to fond of this. On Planet Jackson, there’s the folks who’ve gotten away with stuff and are about to get their come-uppins, and there’s the folks who’ve been trampled and now get to live in utopia. And the latter of those two should not have to worry about any responsibilities, because you saw how he reacted when someone suggested something different.

My suggestion? Let’s go ahead and disagree about what responsibilities are. Let’s go ahead and disagree about whether Obama would be a decent President, or whether Jesse Jackson is good for America. Disagree about all that — but let’s agree the Officer Barbrady approach doesn’t fit in here. No need at all to “move along” from what apparently divides the Obama and Jackson camps within the democrat party.

This is a debate well worth having. What is responsibility? Are you burdened by it by the things you do, or by who you are? Is it a way for people to earn the privileges and the stature they want in life, to change what they want to change and achieve what they want to achieve — or is it punishment to be meted out to dirty rotten creepy jerks (DRCJs) who are somehow associated with historical skulduggery and need a good whallopin’ of some kind?

Because I don’t think this is a “black” thing at all. I think there’s millions of people who feel, when they see themselves or any of their peers or perceived constituents saddled with any kind of “responsibility,” for any reason at all, their first instinct is to cut somebody’s nuts out (or off). They seem to be angry people who have something to say. I’d like to know more about what they’ve got to say. I’d like everybody to hear it — right before it’s time to go into a voting booth and punch a ballot. Then we could show what we think of it. I think that would be a good thing.

Update: As a general rule, when a topic can be easily distilled down into a single intangible noun — Bill Whittle has an essay about it, and if that is the case it is an essay well worth reading. However, next month it’ll have five years of dust on it. Five years old, and solid gold:

Political Correctness, Deconstructionism, Trans-National Progressivism, Liability mania, Crime and Punishment, Terrorism, Welfare, Gun Control, Media Bias, Affirmative Action, Abortion, Education Reform, Social Engineering — all of it — will divide people according to their idea of Responsibility. [emphasis Whittle’s]

This helps to (partially) explain something I’ve often noticed about abortion, environmentalism and secularism. We have people who think humans have a “responsibility” to be stewards of the earth; we have other people who insist there is no such thing as God. There are people who believe when a woman becomes pregnant, it is the responsibility of both parents to carry the child to term.

Now, imagine yourself as an alien who is skilled in the concepts of human behavior, but wholly unfamiliar with our customs. You could be Mork from Ork, you could be My Favorite Martian, you could be Jeannie coming out of her magic lamp after two thousand years. All things dealing with contemporary events and prevailing notions, you need to have explained to you.

I think Whittle’s essay falls short here. You would have to logically predict, would you not, that the people who believe in God are the ones who insist we have a responsibility to act as watchful stewards over the planet. You would become confused even further once you were informed that our religious people are the ones (quite rightly and sensibly) who insist pregnancies are initiated by a Higher Power and it is a transgression into the glorious jurisdiction for any mortal man to abort a woman’s pregnancy. In fact, if one of your earlier introductions to this was through the Book of Genesis, you would become even more confused:

^1:28And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.

Once your “Master” or your earthly host got done explaining to you — no, actually, it’s our secularist types who insist we have this responsibility — you’d be mixed up about it for, I expect, an entire year or more. Yes space-alien-man, the abortion/pregnancy thing works exactly the way you inferred; secularist types insist there is no deity to be offended and it’s all about “choice.” But on the environment and “global warming” the whole thing takes on a hundred and eighty degree twist.

So this is where I part company with Whittle: The left does have a concept of responsibility. And they believe in free will.

What decides these issues for them is that they believe free will is only practiced by collectivist groups. In fact, it is a consistent trope of leftist thinking that free will does change the outcome of important things, and should. That they must bring it about.

But then they go on to believe, quite consistently, and often against the historical evidence, that this can only be done through “coming together.” An individual can’t “go it alone.”

I commented earlier this week that if global warming, for an example, was settled science as we are consistently told it is — we would handle it much the same way we handle science that really is settled, such as with regard to Mad Cow Disease. Grabbing hold of everyone we know, everyone within earshot and line-of-sight, and bullying them around until they thought of the subject matter the way we do… that wouldn’t have anything to do with what had to be done. Instead, we’d delegate responsibility for the outcome of the incident, to those who are best qualified to affect that outcome. And then we’d go about our lives hoping for the best. Nothing grassroots about it.

True leftists like Rev. Jackson, simply put, don’t believe individuals can have responsibility — except, as I wrote above, as punishment for historical wrongs. The more noble variant of free will, the kind that has to be embraced in order to enact positive change…that is reserved for groups.

Whittle goes on with an observation about an old speech made by Abraham Lincoln, that deals with the toxicity of the mindset disclaiming the virtue of noble, individual, free will:

Many years before his election as the nation’s 16th President, this man, Abraham Lincoln, spoke at the Young Men’s Lyceum of Springfield, Illinois on January 27, 1838. It is worth our time to whisper these words aloud, to ourselves, to be sure that we understand what he is saying across a gulf of a century-and-a-half of differences in rhetoric and speech.

He said:

We, the American People, find ourselves in the peaceful possession of the fairest portion of the earth, as regards extent of territory, fertility of soil, and salubrity of climate. We find ourselves under the government of a system of political institutions, conducing more essentially to the ends of civil and religious liberty, than any of which the history of former times tells us. We toiled not in the acquirement or establishment of them — they are a legacy bequeathed us, by a once hardy, brave, and patriotic, but now lamented and departed race of ancestors. Theirs was the task (and nobly they performed it) to possess themselves, and through themselves, us, of this goodly land; and to uprear upon its hills and its valleys, a political edifice of liberty and equal rights; ’tis ours only to transmit these, the former, unprofaned by the foot of an invader — to the latest generation that fate shall permit the world to know. This gratitude to our fathers, justice to ourselves, duty to posterity, and love for our species in general, all imperatively require us faithfully to perform.

How then shall we perform it? — At what point shall we expect the approach of danger? By what means shall we fortify against it? — Shall we expect some transatlantic military giant to step the Ocean, and crush us at a blow? Never! — All the armies of Europe, Asia and Africa combined, with all the treasure of the earth (our own excepted) in their military chest; with a Bonaparte for a commander, could not by force, take a drink from the Ohio, or make a track on the Blue Ridge, in a trial of a thousand years. At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.

The idea of individualism, of personal responsibility, is the centerpiece, the granite foundation, of the very idea of a free people. For that reason, it is under direct attack on many fronts from people, who, through motives well-intentioned or ill, find such an idea intolerable because a nation of individuals is immune to repression, coercion, social engineering and control by the elite. The threat, as Lincoln so eloquently foresaw, comes from within and it is here, now, well-established and growing.

We have to fight back. We have to fight back hard.

We have to fight back now.

So you see how responsibility for personal defense ties in with this. And this speaks to why, when responsibility and free will become intertwined with accountability, for someone to take on the heavy burden of overseeing the outcome…this is a responsibility, along with many others, that cannot be delegated to a group. For groups are notoriously lacking in this accountability. That’s why the environment and other endeavors are wholeheartedly embraced as “responsibilities” by the left that in so many other areas, rejects the concept of free will. When responsibility has to do with finger-waggling, the left likes responsibility just fine. Unplug your toaster! Change your light bulbs! Drive a smaller car!

And it’s quite reasonable for you to pick up an undertone in selectivity about the finger-waglees. The left spends a lot of time and a lot of hot air talking about how, in these efforts, “we all” need to “come together.” Well, as always seems to be the case, “all” doesn’t mean “all.” We see that when environmentally-conscious politicians drive to their speaking events in SUVs that get six miles a gallon or less; we see it in the celebrities who believe in “responsible gun safety,” whose bodyguards carry concealed weapons.

That, right there, is why Jesse Jackson wants to cut off Sen. Obama’s nuts. Noble responsibility, the kind you intertwine with an outcome-changing effort that is truly great, is a group thing; it is to be invested in a group, so that when a bad plan turns to crap it’s nobody’s fault. The pejorative cousin, the “You Hafta Worry About This Because You’re A DRCJ” (dirty rotten creepy jerk) is an individual thing, but it isn’t there to achieve anything. It’s there to weigh people down, to punish them.

Whittle’s right. This mindset that individuals are incapable of embracing glorious and productive free will, the kind of free will that is necessarily involved in accomplishing great things, is treacherous, toxic, and will eventually kill us if we let it. We have to oppose it at every turn.

As usual Morgan, you’ve gone beyond the BS and have capture what the real issue is.

For someone like Rev. Jackson to have such a reaction, threatening to emasculate, for such differences, perceived or real, in an election of someone he supposedly backs truly exposes the huge differences in how these two view blacks in America.

Also, once again Jackson has shown himself to be the hypocrite. He expects people to vote for Barack because he’s the best candidate, the character of the man, while he only is voting for him because of the color of his skin. Exactly the thing he has supposedly been working against all these years, though at least what you wants everyone to believe anyways.

This is not the talk of someone who disagrees slightly on one particular subject, but of a very deep division on many subjects. One can only imagine what he says out loud, in private and amongst friends. Castration probably is mild compared to those conversations.
- tim | 07/10/2008 @ 12:18
Sorry, I’m more inclined to agree with Bastiat on this point. I understand you Randians are particularly keen on the whole individual v collective mentality, But Bastiat (and Sowell, but Bastiat first) thought that the problem was the Machiavellian idea some people are superior, and their superiority grants them the right to force others to adopt their ideas. That’s why liberals despise democracy. They can’t just allow the rabble to make their own decisions; they’re inferior! That’s why liberals want judges making policy; judges are better than us. That’s also why liberals promote special interests; give someone everything they want on one issue, and take just a little from every other issue. They won’t pay as much attention to all the small costs, but they really see the one big benefit.

But there’s nothing wrong with being a member of a collective, as long as that membership is freely chosen. And that’s where liberals are at their worst. They want to force people into certain categories and groups regardless of their individual choice. It’s free will that liberals seek to do away with. Liberals don’t want anyone to be able to choose not to be a member of their collective.

Sigh. I’ve never been much of a writer, darn it. Bastiat says it so much better than I do.
- JohnJ | 07/10/2008 @ 22:46
You’ve always been a rather amusing irony, John. You say there’s nothing wrong with being a collective, but as a “conservative Yang” you end up in a class by yourself.
- mkfreeberg | 07/11/2008 @ 00:15

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Jesse Jackson’s Hot MicThursday, July 10th, 2008

Jesse Jackson’s Hot Mic
Thursday, July 10th, 2008