It calls to mind a sorry truth about economic policy debates: the people who are entrusted to make the decisions almost never feel their real world consequences. Fidel Castro has lived a life of lavish personal indulgence for nearly five decades, even as his people ration soap and mattresses. Kim Jong-il, North Korea's Marxist emperor-god, lives in what Time Magazine called a "seven story pleasure palace," complete with a wave-pool and motorized boogie boards and every instance of Western materialism you can nail to the walls or spread out over a wet bar.
Of course, extravagance of this sort is not just the province of the Marxist aristocracy. The old world nobility was pretty good at this too. Take a look at any pre-19th century prince, earl or even lowly baronet, and you'll see the rich oil colors of Rubens and Ramsay bathing the young princes in silk and silver.
Any economic system, in other words, can keep a few people in clover. The great irony is that socialism, and its evil sister Communism actually claim to be working on behalf of the masses--and their record is far worse than any monarchy you can imagine. Far from establishing an equal distribution of goods and services, Marxists concentrate wealth among the ruling elite and that ruling class can only remain in power through the kind of brutal suppression that would make a Russian Czar wince. Stalin made Adolph Hitler and the Spanish Inquisitors look like school yard bullies--killing or starving something like fifty million of his own people. Conversely, good old free market capitalism is far better at getting, and establishing a sturdy middle class--and this is really, really, really old news. When, François, Marquis de Barbé-Marbois traveled through American in 1777, he marveled at not being able to find any poor. With a low and easy tax burden, the people were free to feed themselves. It's elementary, Watson.
The tiring truth is that the American people have already learned this lesson, several times. (Sometimes I feel like a teacher with some very slow students.) Back in the sixties and seventies, there was a crypto-romance with socialism and I can remember the day when even the New Yorker admitted, in 1989, that communism was dead. The trophy socialist-states of Sweden and Norway were beginning to grind to a halt and Ronald Reagan had initiated a sustained recovery that turned into a boom, merely by giving the people their money back.
I remember this all clearly because for many years academic, media and union types branded you backward for questioning the great class-free dream of the socialist state. I can remember Ben Stein asking the simple question, towards the end of Jimmy Carter national malaise, why did Hollywood nearly always portray the businessman--the one who employs your kids--as the villain? Why was capitalism always the enemy, when, clearly it provided a better standard of living for more people than any other system yet known to man? The national flirtation with socialism is the macro-equivalent of a despondent man binging on comfort food or drugs. I can remember how sick America once was on this front. I can remember Nixon's wage and price controls. I can remember Jane Fonda sitting her skinny, ugly carcass down on a North Vietnamese anti-aircraft gun. I can remember my junior high history teacher, lovingly talking up the Soviet model.
I remember how sick America really was.
So when the New Yorker admitted defeat, it was like a re-birth of the republic. Fresh air. Victory lap. Morning in America again. Every man tending his own vine in the new world. Freedom at last.
..So I hate the current turn of events, the fat, mental laziness of Michael Moore and Garrison Keillor and Rahm Immanuel. It's like explaining something for the ten millionth time to a rebellious child. It's like cleaning the back patio plate glass, only to find it all smudged up again. It's like a flu you've been through and can't shake.
Not this again.
I like history, but I hate repeating it.
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