I've spent a little time tweaking a few things and adding a few things to my Research Notebooks. In the Guide to Cobb - Concepts & Terms, I want to add this one which I've probably not given adequate respect. I think it is particularly instructive at this moment in American history.
As I briefly mentioned in what I think to be the sole point of disagreement between myself and the Grey Conservative, I agree that America is the world's policeman. I said it this way:
I think the final point bears emphasis - it is exactly why this is a war on terror, not a war on nations. We are making that difference quite clear.
But I want to talk about the reasonable way to deal with the fact that we have become these things, and note that in my earlier political incarnation as a Progressive, I had a much more cynical take on the boom of the 80s. I used to call them the Go-Go Eighties and the Roaring Eighties, because I presumed them to be an era of excess which would inevitably result in a crash. The crash took 20 years to come and it had nothing to do with what I believed. I was at once fascinated and repelled by great wealth, while defensive of meritocracy, I was contemptuous of the middle class, while adopting a sort of global cosmopolitan attitude, I was nonetheless convinced that most affluent people were phony and really unaware of the reasons they valued the things they did. Much of that latter attitude was established by the influence of Marshall Blonsky.
At any rate, my growing understanding of Conservatism changed all that because I found in Conservatives the willingness and the desire to defend meritocracy and yet respect the middle class, to make peace with elites through the continuum of history and to maintain a humility and respect all at once. In the principle defense of Liberty and of the Commons through the emphasis of common denominators of human respect via Natural Law it all comes together. But there remains the American exceptionalism. What to do with the common man, and what of the deprived?
If the weak have anything in life to fear, it is the strong. The defense of rights are, after all, the gift of the strong. And what the modern conservative understands is that freedom from tyranny comes through the sacred honor of protecting the property of the individual from usurpations. It is that fundamental covenant which best protects the individual of talent from being robbed on the regular, and it is toward the end of the establishment of the Constitutional Republic which embodies the power necessary to keep that covenant that our Founders were dedicated. Whether or not they have done an unimprovable job is the future's to judge but the fundamental fact remains, there has to be some way to keep the strong from being predators. For that purpose we are a nation of laws and not a nation of men.
Teleologically speaking that is what we have achieved in America, and it is what we have reasonably come to expect. We agree that no man should be above the law, by any right, divine or otherwise. And in so doing we have created an arena for competition whose rules bind us all. By these rules, we can get rich, and 95% of millionaires in America earn their riches, they don't *inherit* their riches. An old friend at Columbia B School used to remind me that in America, everybody wants to be rich whereas in Europe everybody wants to shoot the rich. We like the rich in America because they don't prey on us. It is very easy for Americans to admire Bill Gates and admonish Bernie Ebbers. It is very American for us to create a series of communities and competitive arenas that generate a Tiger Woods. And we know we have nothing to fear from such a multi-multi-millionaire, despite the fact that he's an elephant.
Speaking modestly, the most scary thing outside of war is a fight between elephants. I don't mean the African beasts, but those who are wealthy. This conflict occurs on a constant basis, and I didn't quite realize that in my old incarnation. When I went to work for Xerox Corporation in the 80s, it was one of the top 50 companies in Corporate America. And to my young view, Corporate America was 'the powers that be', implying a sort of static establishment that simply emanated power. The very idea that a giant American corporation might be vulnerable was almost unthinkable to me. And yet these institutions are very dynamic and fluid. General Motors was once the colossus, and today it has been practically bankrupted by unions. My industry has undergone tremendous change. Data General is gone. Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) is gone. Amdahl is gone. These were giants, and yet they have fallen - collapsed and been reabsorbed into that deep tumultuous sea that is American business.
What keeps Tiger Woods American? What keeps Warren Buffett American? Moreover, why would they stay American in the same country that has millionaires who are rogues? The core of my thesis is that America remains the sanctuary for elephants. It is an elephant playground, and an elephant graveyard. And we could easily, any day get stomped. But it is much more likely to be our fate that we are mugged, or our housed robbed, or raped or murdered than to have our entire lives and property confiscated by some elephant. We need to be concerned more with rats and jackals than elephants. Elephants tend to fight elephants. In the land of the free and the home of the brave, it is our ability to maintain a very large playing field that keeps us from getting crowded out by the massive players. We are, no matter what our station in life, fortunate that the covenant our Republic keeps is satisfactory to the strong and inspirational to the weak. Because it is in defense of that covenant that keeps us all of our strong men from enslaving our weak men.
Growing up in America always implies asking oneself in youth, what am I going to be when I grow up. We imagine ourselves, most of us, with some modicum of success. And we expect that we should be able to achieve that through excellence and by following the rules. The ambitions of all of us have constraints of course. But for the overwhelming majority, we look up. For myself, especially in rejecting some of the more exploitative entertainments, I have looked to a genre of teaching I can best describe as 'lessons for kings'. I am under the impression, though it has been a while since I checked that the American affluent class is the biggest and most ethnically and religiously diverse in the history of the planet. I have always been one of those who worried - what do you do with a billion literate people?
I cannot be 100% certain that we have arrived at the final answer. Things might get better, then again things could get out of hand and we might lose the combinations that led us to this massive prosperity and freedom. But of one thing I am certain - the elephants will dance where they feel most comfortable, and they will stomp, buck and rear if they get cramped, woe be to those are in the way.
The greatness of America or any nation is found in its ability to create and maintain a society in which the powerful and great coexist peacefully with the weak and meek. Despite all the noise and agitation of those Boomers whose minds were cauterized in the fires of 1968's Us vs Them, America is not fundamentally at war with itself. It is part of our basic social nature here to not be a nation of laws for the sake of following laws, but that doing so will reward our achievements and protect them from thievery. That covenant is still in place.
The American Dream. Why do you think that still has meaning? Because you still want to be an elephant.
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