Romanticizing the past is fear of future irrelevance

In so many ways, we are all in deadly danger due to … romanticism. Especially idealized and flat-out wrong notions about history.

Elsewhere, I talk about how the romantic side of humans… imagining and fantasizing wishes or nightmares, envisioned in vivid, luscious subjectivity… is an essential human trait! We’d be a drab, impoverished species without that rich, inexhaustible realm of delusion. Indeed, I make my living catering to it, selling imaginary trips of high vividness...

...delusions that are openly and honestly sold as delusions.  

Nevertheless, I argue here – and in Vivid Tomorrows  -- that delusion can also wreak utter hell. Across 6000 years of horrific misrule that we call “history,” our romantic figments have justified an endless parade of horrors.

And hence, running an actual civilization calls for something better. 

Let me make clear: all strains of human life, including politics, are rife with delusions! And alhough I am about to dive into the way that many of our neighbors have  gone particularly loco… I also avow that there are crazy romantics infesting and doing great harm, on my own political 'side.' I inveigh about those preening idiots, from time to time.

 But still… well… we must prioritize. One thing at a time?

Take the Mad Right’s relentless incantation-fetish about the 1950s, an era when – for sure – middle class white guys felt they were on top.  Though – um – even they, in vast majority, voted Democrat! Back then, the Greatest Generation guys remembered how FDR et. al. rescued the nation from previous, monstrous stupidities -- like an earlier effort by rich lords and inheritance brats to re-establish feudalism.  Those veterans, bolstered by New Deal policies and the GI Bill, set in motion the greatest surge in productivity and prosperity any nation ever saw.

Still, that unparalleled growth and progress was incremental and comparative! It was a build toward better days, not a culmination or lost paradise. Indeed, YOU have a duty, in case any of you ever face romantics who actually actually claim that America was a better place in the 1950s!  

If you run into that utter garbage, here is your ammo for shooting down that bald-faced lie-travesty. And yes, I mention not only FDR and Ike, but also utter the words Jonas Salk!  

== The cult memes keep flowing ==

Want another madness of the gone-loopy U.S. right? It’s one that infests all forms of conservatism. (Though sure, some portions of the left have their own bad habits.) Yes, it is rife even among conservatives who (sanely) despise Donald Trump. 

You've seen me talk about it before. But I'm going to keep hammering this as a lonely Cassandra, until I see someone out there joining me in denouncing a dangerously infectious madness.

It’s called cyclical history, and it is noxiously rampant now across the American right. See where I shred that grotesque fantasy-twaddle here.  

== Originalism Sin ==

Here's another one. Rising to a higher – though still dismal – intellectual plain, there’s a fetish among the dopey shills at AEI, Heritage and Federalist Society called originalism. It is the core rationalized excuse offered by the John Roberts majority for easily half of the jibbering-awful Supreme Court judgements they have shoved down our throats, in recent years. 

“The Founders clearly intended…”

Seriously? That is the argument? 

My friend Joseph Carroll offers three items that may rattle originalist cages. One I have seen elsewhere, but two of them not.

1. "I recently read that through most of the 19th century, there was largely no control of immigration, and immigrants were allowed to vote as soon as they arrived. 

Hence, under originalism, should we go back to both of those policies, and discard any later court decisions that justified limits on immigration and immigrant voting? 

2. "George Washington hated political parties. And I think they have no status in the Constitution. 

Hence, should an originalist want to preclude political parties from imposing any constraints on congressional procedures?

3. "Thomas Jefferson was a key original, but an anti-originalist in many ways. He wrote an essay to Madison in 1789 on the theme: "Earth belongs in usufruct to the living."  He spells out various implications, including a constitution not remaining valid once the new generation outnumbers the old who were alive when it was established. And he saw no validity for debts lasting long enough to saddle later generations with them. Using new life expectancy data, he decided that 19 years was a reasonable limit. That may be partly why he wondered about whether one needed a revolution every 20 years (as Mao tried!), and the 17 year validity of patents. (I presume that might also have to be true for copyrights.)"

To which I answer... hmmmm!

== Romanticizing the father of liberal enlightenment… as an apologist for oligarchy! ==

I know and like many libertarians - such as those who help run the Freedom Fest gathering, at which I used to speak occasionally... before the movement was entirely bought and suborned by Steve Forbes and other inheritance caste oligarchs, whose top priority is to prevent self-styled libertarian folks from ever waking up from the lord-worshipping trance.

... along with many others who cling to old loyalties, despite being nauseated by Trump, they repeat these magic words.... 

“I know that Republicans have gone insane… but … but democrats are worse!  

"THAT’S the ticket!  Despite all the proof to the contrary, democrats are even worse!” 

It's a koolaid incantation that gets repeated over and over, again and again, to excuse being complicit with the forces of restored feudalism.

Back to Adam Smith...

The ‘libertarian philosopher’ about whom I keep reminding folks - Adam Smith - pushed the one viable alternative to 6000 years of feudal lordship-stupidity. The alternative of fecund-flat-fair-open-transparent market competition by the widest range of healthy, educated, confident and unafraid competitors. 

Smith made clear that the chief enemy of such creatively competitive markets has almost never been ‘socialists!' Especially not the Rooseveltean or Scandinavian styles of limited socialism – e.g. efforts to uplift poor children, turning them into healthy, educated and confident competitors. The part that creates fecund market competition with the maxim “stop wasting talent!”

Indeed, the trait that has made today’s Mad Right -- and a majority of self-styled ‘libertarians’ – turn their backs on Smith is his savage indictments of oligarchic-aristocratic cheating by inheritance brats, the bane on both freedom and markets across 99% of the last 6000 years. 

… a malediction that now has surpassed French Revolution levels of wealth disparity and competition-suppression and cheating. 

Smith’s caustic denunciations of rentier-caste corruption – and the American Founders’ revolution against precisely that caste – plus later history’s hugely successful liberal rebellions against feudal slave-holders and then Gilded Age titans – led to today’s ironic desperation by shill orgs like Heritage and AEI and the GOP  to avoid ever mentioning that name.

Adam Smith.