Competence Vs Manliness - Road to the Middle Class

SO NOW THE Democrats’ theme is “dangerous incompetence.” This is the soaring vision they offer the American people, as the nation records the 53rd month of growth since the end of the last recession in November 2001, as the S&P 500 is up 60 percent to 1300 from 800 at the start of 2003, as home ownership is reaching new highs, as reports come in that venture capitalists are throwing money at Silicon Valley startups again, and as President Bush’s riverboat gamble in the Middle East still hasn’t collapsed as predicted.

Yes, things are pretty bad, all things considered, and it is inconceivable that the American people can put up with the incompetence of President Bush and his Halliburton lackeys much longer.

It is intolerable that after Hurricane Katrina President Bush failed to paper over the normal sluggish response of government bureaucracies at city, state, and federal level with the Clintonesque PR wizardry that we have come to expect from the nation’s president. It is monstrous that he failed to curb the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States when it determined that the global best practice port management corporation was qualified to run six of the nation’s ports, a reckless act that could easily cause distress to the Teamsters Union. And a mistake by a Bush Administration lawyer means that Zacarias Moussaoui won’t be executed, an outcome that shocks the New York Times even though “this page opposes the death penalty.”

The carelessness with which Republicans perform the sacred rituals of nurture-by-government seems to Democrats like sacrilege, the profanation of holy relics. Well educated, born to think well of themselves, and full of faith in their mission to correct the rich and raise up the poor with their government programs, they are scandalized by the indifference of the Republican “other” to the bells and smells of the Liberal High Mass.

But last week was also the week of Manliness from Professor Harvey Mansfield of Harvard. The reviewers in the New York Times Book Review and in the Washington Post were not amused by his celebration of humans with “confidence in the face of risks.” They clearly felt that the world of the Precautionary Principle and non-traditional gender roles had clearly moved on from such primitivism.

Rather than making everyone feel confident about “a government that cares about you” President Bush has acted like the leader of the Daddy Party and assumed that everyone would get on with their jobs without getting a regular hug. He also seems to think it is more important to visit the wounded in Walter Reed Army Hospital than to make sure that he can out-demagogue Senator Schumer on protecting our ports from efficient foreigners.

Even though the president will not be on the ballot, in November the American people will get to decide again: Do they want an adventurous father boldly protecting them from head-chopping Islamists? Or do they want an efficient mother keeping the kitchen clean and competently covering their cuts and bruises with Band-Aids? Probably they want both.

But will the Democrats actually deliver on competence?

This is a party that does not show the least interest in improving the competence of the many government programs they have promoted and expanded over the years. In fact Democrats oppose all reform of the social programs we support with our tax dollars. They are opposed to reform of the nation’s schools by breaking up the government monopoly. They are opposed to the reform of Social Security to transform it into a genuine savings program. They are opposed to reform of health insurance with Health Savings Accounts. And they are holding up further reforms of welfare that build on the stunning success of the welfare reform of 1996.

The truth is that Democrats do not care about competence. They only care about their power. They cannot consent to reform of the vast government that they have built up over the years. It is the basis of their power. So they are reduced to talking about competence.

Competence is the tactics of the status quo, of making the trains run on time, of making incremental improvements in efficiency. It is important.

But manliness, the confidence in taking risks, is the essence of the human adventure. Each human family begins with a calculated risk. The United States was founded on a calculated risk. And we know that President Bush is willing to take the big risk, to play big ball rather than “small ball.” His tax cuts were a risk. His Social Security reform is a risk. The Iraq adventure is a risk.

Democrats have lost the spirit of adventure that they possessed in another time when President Roosevelt called America to bold persistent experimentation. They would rather talk about competence.

Christopher Chantrill blogs at americanmanifestobook.blogspot.com.

Buy his Road to the Middle Class.

print view

To comment on this article at American Thinker click here.

To email the author, click here.

TAGS

Responsibility

Seeckt: "to make of each individual member of the army a soldier who, in character, capability, and knowledge, is self-reliant, self-confident, dedicated, and joyful in taking responsibility [verantwortungsfreudig] as a man and a soldier."
MacGregor Knox et. al., The dynamics of military revolution, 1300-2050

Living the Virtues

When recurrently the tradition of the virtues is regenerated, it is always in everyday life, it is always through the engagement by plain persons in a variety of practices, including those of making and sustaining families and households, schools, clinics, and local forms of political community.
Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue

Moral Imperatives of Modern Culture

These emerge out of long-standing moral notions of freedom, benevolence, and the affirmation of ordinary life... I have been sketching a schematic map... [of] the moral sources [of these notions]... the original theistic grounding for these standards... a naturalism of disengaged reason, which in our day takes scientistic forms, and a third family of views which finds its sources in Romantic expressivism, or in one of the modernist successor visions.
Charles Taylor, Sources of the Self

US Life in 1842

Families helped each other putting up homes and barns. Together, they built churches, schools, and common civic buildings. They collaborated to build roads and bridges. They took pride in being free persons, independent, and self-reliant; but the texture of their lives was cooperative and fraternal.
Michael Novak, The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism

Society and State

For [the left] there is only the state and the individual, nothing in between. No family to rely on, no friend to depend on, no community to call on. No neighbourhood to grow in, no faith to share in, no charities to work in. No-one but the Minister, nowhere but Whitehall, no such thing as society - just them, and their laws, and their rules, and their arrogance.
David Cameron, Conference Speech 2008

Faith and Politics

As far as the Catholic Church is concerned, the principal focus of her interventions in the public arena is the protection and promotion of the dignity of the person, and she is thereby consciously drawing particular attention to principles which are not negotiable... [1.] protection of life in all its stages, from the first moment of conception until natural death; [2.] recognition and promotion of the natural structure of the family... [3.] the protection of the right of parents to educate their children.
Pope Benedict XVI, Speech to European Peoples Party, 2006

Never Trust Experts

No lesson seems to be so deeply inculcated by the experience of life as that you should never trust experts. If you believe doctors, nothing is wholesome: if you believe the theologians, nothing is innocent: if you believe the soldiers, nothing is safe. They all require their strong wine diluted by a very large admixture of insipid common sense.
Lord Salisbury, “Letter to Lord Lytton”

Conservatism's Holy Grail

What distinguishes true Conservatism from the rest, and from the Blair project, is the belief in more personal freedom and more market freedom, along with less state intervention... The true Third Way is the Holy Grail of Tory politics today - compassion and community without compulsion.
Minette Marrin, The Daily Telegraph

Class War

In England there were always two sharply opposed middle classes, the academic middle class and the commercial middle class. In the nineteenth century, the academic middle class won the battle for power and status... Then came the triumph of Margaret Thatcher... The academics lost their power and prestige and... have been gloomy ever since.
Freeman Dyson, “The Scientist as Rebel”

Government Expenditure

The Union publishes an exact return of the amount of its taxes; I can get copies of the budgets of the four and twenty component states; but who can tell me what the citizens spend in the administration of county and township?
Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America

Conservatism

Conservatism is the philosophy of society. Its ethic is fraternity and its characteristic is authority — the non-coercive social persuasion which operates in a family or a community. It says ‘we should...’.
Danny Kruger, On Fraternity

Postmodernism

A writer who says that there are no truths, or that all truth is ’merely relative’, is asking you not to believe him. So don’t.
Roger Scruton, Modern Philosophy

Home

American Manifesto

Chapters

Chappies

roadtothemiddleclass

presented by Christopher Chantrill

Follow @chrischantrill • Contact