The Class System

This article by Frederick Turner in TechCentral Station does something that's almost guaranteed to get an article onto my bookmark list; it amplifies and expands on a point I"ve been making myself for quite a while

Longtime readers of this blog know that I've been a supporter of concealed carry reform since...well, before it was an actual legislative initiative; I remember discussing it on my old KSTP talk show in 1987, when Florida's passage of a shall-issue law opened the floodgates on these reforms nationwide.

I remember making one of my few memorable observations in the whole history of that show; that while DFLers claimed affinity for the working class in their endless struggle against patricians, and while many were enthusiastic class warriors, when the subject of guns came up the roles were precisely reversed. Gun control was the ideological province of the urban elites (or would-be elites), while the typical (or stereotypical) NRA member and gun owner was blue collar, frequently rural. I giggled at the irony; gun control was the class war that the far left had been nagging us about, only they were the patricians enforcing a paternalistic system, and their opposition was the proletariat.

The observation has expanded over my years of living in Minnesota; the place is chock full of paternalistic institutions which, like gun control (I'm going to stretch this metaphor beyond its test limits) are imposed by a social elite on the rest of society, for society's own good.

Which is why the left in Minnesota is so threatened by things like concealed carry reform and "No New Taxes" pledges; it's not just an attack on criminals or taxes, or even gun control and the nannystate; it's an attack on them.

Go ahead - mention either issue to your DFLer friends. Watch their nose hair curl in rage (OK, most of them. Be quiet, Flash).

Turner's article explores this same idea to a logical conclusion.

It starts slowly:

I was at a party in the Northeast recently with the nicest people you could imagine. The conversation got on to Bush and Iraq, and at first it looked and sounded as if it was unanimously liberal. Bush was "scary," Texas was a dark and terrible place, the Iraq war was a catastrophe, it was all about oil, it boded the most terrible consequences for world peace. I started innocently asking awkward questions and citing awkward fact. At first people just tried to put me right, as if I hadn't understood. Then it looked as if the subject would be dropped; I had no desire to pursue it, preferring literary or scientific or philosophical questions anyway. I really didn't want to spoil the mood of the party, and people were beginning to look uneasy.

But then something odd happened. Somebody else started doing the same thing as I had, asking awkward questions, reminding people gently of facts they had forgotten; and then it turned out that this man's wife, who'd been silent, was quite fiercely in favor of the war and of free markets and democratic government. This couple had earlier struck me immediately as the most confident and intelligent guests present, though they were very quiet; and they were not yahoos at all, indeed they looked impressively Ivy League. The unease grew in the room. People shifted in their chairs and looked anxiously at the door.

Then another woman, who had been "going along" in order to be polite, turned out to have doubts of her own about the liberal agenda. The lovely mood of unanimity and solidarity was over. A couple of liberals slunk out into another room in order not to be contaminated. But then there was a real discussion, with fair expression of different arguable views on all sides - just as the Constitution intended.

I remember the day at KSTP back in 1986 that word came out I'd be doing a conservative talk show. One of the reporters - a fabulously attractive, intelligent and funny woman who oozed liberalism like some people ooze BO, with whom I'd had to that point a fun rappoire - looked at me and asked "You don't really believe that stuff, do you? It's all just an act, right?" She couldn't believe someone she actually knew would do such a thing.

Turner continues:

I had two reactions. One was a sudden recognition that more and more people had been "coming out of the closet" in the way that the three people had, who had been so bold as to support George Bush. Michael Kinsey had done it in Slate. Dennis Miller had done it on Comedy Central. But their recognizable courage implies a prior risk. Why the fear in the first place? I had noticed it before, but the question needed answering. After all, these liberals at the party were people with the equivalent of tenure, living in a free country with all sorts of protection of speech - not like the communist party or totalitarian racist South Africa in the old days. What were they afraid of?

I remember going on a date with a woman a while ago. She was smart, funny, attractive, a DFLer - but halfway through our first conversation she mentioned, furtively, that she liked to shoot. "I've been hunting with my father since I was a little kid", she said, sotto voce. "But", she hurried to add, "I'm not an NRA member or anything". She didn't want to think I'd think she was one of those people.

Turner's point is, roughly, that liberals fear conservatives because they feel that we want to deprive them of victims:

The class rationale for this odd paradox is complex. Karl Marx was right when he identified the phenomenon of a class having policies even when none of its members would necessarily recognize them - and the people I am talking about here are eminently nice, even good people, who would be horrified by the class motives they serve. But here it is: their class privileges are preserved by means of the continued existence and allegiance of a peon caste who will vote for the upper crust's leaders at home, and confuse and frustrate the great class enemy, the U.S. military, abroad. (If you want to "shock and awe" one of these folks, just mention that your son is in the Army. The look of horror is instantaneous, though it vanishes quickly.)

True liberators, as we can now see, would deprive the world of victims, and thus dry up the supply of peons that constitute the new class's constituency. This is why, even though the new class disliked Saddam Hussein, they hate Bush infinitely more. Just as Palestinian refugee camps justify the failures and secure the tenure of Arab despots, so the poor and downtrodden of the world justify the ascendancy of the new upper crust. At home, school vouchers are opposed in the teeth of the urban poor that want them, because decent education might help put an end to the urban poor who vote for upper crust leaders. The same goes for the inclusion of privatization in the Social Security portfolio, and any form of tax relief that might result in turning the majority of Americans into owners, and into people too proud to consider themselves victims. And without victims, where would Lady Bountiful be then?

As usual, you need to read the whole thing.

Then think - how does this pertain to your life in Minnesota? (Or wherever you are?)

Posted by Mitch at June 4, 2003 06:27 AM