I loved this post by Ross Douthat, the Atlantic blogger (and future New York Times token conservative columnist!) and wanted to highlight it. In it, he discusses the creeping Europeanization of the United States, and the degree to which it is or is not happening, but moves on to something a little bit more fundamental. And this is that the real political choices we have to make are not ones that will be settled by rigorous application of empirical data. Rather, they have to do with fundamental choices over what sort of society one wishes to have. Both the European and American models have been quite successful, and it’s not as though they are both approximate stabs at a perfect state, but are the results of choices over whether or not a strong social safety net is more desirable than faster economic growth.
Now, I don’t agree with Douthat’s framing. He contrasts “ease of life” with “voluntarism, entrepreneurship, and…lives oriented around service to one’s family, and to God”. I don’t think that’s fair, and would argue that there’s no reason why volunteering and religion are incompatible with a more humanely organized society. As any liberal would, I would point out that the flipside of encouraging entrepreneurship with a smaller state is acceptance of poor children living in conditions resembling the Third World.
I recently finished Reinholt Niebuhr’s “Moral Man and Immoral Society” recently, and he makes the point that individuals are perfectly capable of acting morally, but groups will always act selfishly. And an important corollary of that is that individuals will choose a viewpoint that absolves them of responsibility. He happened to be a socialist as well as theologian, and his objection to Douthat’s argument is not that Douthat is indifferent to the plight of poor children, but that Douthat’s economic class is, and so Ross has adopted a political approach that Douthat does truly believe is best for the nation, but happens to not call for sacrificing any of their political and economic power to better care for the poor. If there’s one thing everyone should read and take from this book, it is this:
One should always regard with suspicion any of their beliefs that excuses the suffering of others.