Dear Reader (and the millionth monkey that independently stumbled on this column, banging on his typewriter),
So the other day in my column, I said that if Beck wasn’t a libertarian, I’d find his populism worrisome (in the LA Times version of the column, I’d said “terrifying” but changed it upon reflection — and about a quart of scotch, but that’s neither here nor there).
This launched another round of “what’s wrong with populism?” e-mails. Populism is merely siding with the people over the elites, say my insistent readers. Aren’t you for the people and against the elite, they ask, while poking me with a proverbial finger in the chest. Aren’t you? Huh, aren’t you?
Well, I respond, backing away to establish a greater zone of personal space, it’s complicated.
And then, since we’re having an entirely fictional conversation anyway, I pull out a really huge and intimidating chainsaw.
And I say: See this chainsaw (and I give it a nice rev: rrnnnn ninn nnn). This chainsaw can be used for good, like saving an adorable puppy from a car crash. Or (rrnn ninn nnn!) it can be used to dismember readers who poke me in the chest. Saving puppies, or grisly murders (or grizzly murders, if you want to kill some bears).
The point is, chainsaws are very powerful and dangerous tools and they can be used for good or for ill.
The same goes for populism. The French Revolution was populist. So was Nazism. So was Communism, at least when it was seizing power. Mobs are populist.
Populism can also be good. The American Revolution was populist, and our constitution reflects our populist origins with that boffo “We the People” opening (or, for fans of a certain TV show, “E Plebnista”). The civil-rights movement was populist, as were the tax revolts of the 1970s. And, as we all know, what has two thumbs and likes the Constitution, civil rights, and tax revolts? This guy.
Whoops. Dropped my chainsaw.
In short, populism is good when A) the people are right in what they are being populist about and B) they understand that populism has its limits.
Chainsaws are good for rescuing puppies. They’re not so good for things like puppy grooming or training.
Similarly, people power is good for clearing out bad government. It’s less good at governing. The Founders understood that, which is why they put in all of those populist circuit breakers. Remember all that stuff about the tyranny of the majority in the Federalist Papers? Remember why we ended up having a Bill of Rights? That was the Founders’ way of curbing the dangerous excesses that come with populism. It’s why we have a republican form of government, or at least why we’re supposed to.
I am pro-tea party but still generally anti-populist (for people sick of my juvenilia, you can read Henry Olsen’s excellent piece on “Populism, American Style“). I just think this is a moment when we need to take a chainsaw to government and replace it with the original software (“Goldberg doesn’t just mix metaphors, he emulsifies them!” – The Couch). And any populist movement that is dedicated to limiting the role of government is, quite obviously, different than a movement dedicated to socialism, free silver, lebensraum, whatever. As readers of my book know, this is a distinction often lost on liberals who seem to think that radical libertarianism is a variant of fascism.
Philosophical Anti-Populism. But there’s also a philosophical point that conservatives should understand. Populism qua populism simply holds that the people are right because they are the people. No conservative should accept this uncritically. As we all know, pure democracy is an awful system whereby 51 percent of the people get to pee in the cornflakes of 49 percent of the people. Populism is even worse because, technically, it doesn’t require anything so formal as a clear majority. Populism at its purest is the politics of the mob.
The logic of the mob should be familiar, since it is such a staple of identity politics: We’re for X, therefore X is not only good, but if you’re against X you’re against us.
For the typical populist demagogue, the demands and desires of “the people” (often self-servingly defined) trump everything: rules, tradition, and reason. “The people of Nebraska are for free silver, and I am for free silver,” insisted William Jennings Bryan. “I will look up the arguments later.” Or as Willie Stark, the Huey Long-inspired character from Robert Penn Warren’s All the Kings Men, says, “Your will is my strength. Your need is my justice. That is all.”
Such naked faux-majoritarianism doesn’t rank high in the conservative hierarchy. One with the law on his side is a majority, as Calvin Coolidge put it.
Moreover, who is to say that the people alive today are so smart or deserving? Our ancestors fought and died to give us a certain kind of country. Who are we to piss on their graves? Chesterton understood this: “Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors,” he writes in Orthodoxy. “It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking about.”
The logic works forwards as well as backwards. Who says that we deserve what we want more than our children or grandchildren deserve what they will need? Populists who want to blow up the system for their own betterment leave me cold. Populists who want to restore the system for their posterity’s betterment get two thumbs up from me.
Damn, dropped the chainsaw again.
Various and Sundry
So we’re having work done on our house, and that means the Goldbergs will be without a kitchen until at least Halloween, maybe Thanksgiving. We’ve moved the fridge into the living room – a lifelong dream of mine – but it’s proven anticlimactic. Meanwhile, the loss of oven and stove cooking has hit the Goldbergs hard. If readers have suggestions for family dinners that involve either no cooking or only microwaves, let me know. (Yes, we can grill, but for logistical reasons that’ll be hard until the work is done.)
Meanwhile, in case you missed it, here’s the latest flapdoodle about Liberal Fascism.
Bonus! Goldbergians.
Video Potpourri
Behold the Keynes-Hayek rap. It’s a little old, but really awesome. If I were taking a college econ course, I’d simply memorize the whole thing.
This is newer and really brilliant, but full of profanity. It’s a parody of those smarmy New York Times commercials done for the New York Post.
Debby’s Odd Links For reasons that must have to do with Helen Rittelmeyer’s obsession with the Twilight books, this never made it into the Corner last week. So you can have it now:
The Government’s New Right to Track Your Every Move With GPS. Related: Big Brother is Searching You and Cleveland’s “Big Brother” high-tech trash cans tell the government if you aren’t recycling enough!
Germans, the other other white meat.
Top 10 accidental inventions.
Everything you wanted to know about projectile pooping in the animal kingdom is here and here.
How to increase the money you get from eBay auctions.
The stories behind 8 back-to-school essentials.
Mug shot (and related story) of the week. Somewhat related distracted driving story.
Video: Hay baling fun.
Inside a celestial super-volcano.
Returning next week: Vocab!