'I'm Not Listening!!'

Peggy Noonan's recent column, published in last Friday's Wall Street Journal, offered this observation:

Progressive politicians have been around long enough running cities that some distinguishing characteristics can be noted. One is they don’t listen to anybody. To stop them you have to fire them. They’re not like normal politicians who have some give, who tack this way and that. Progressive politicians have no doubt, no self-correcting mechanism.

Truer words and all that.

The proof is everywhere, including at the top of our political food chain. Our President and his handlers won't budge an inch off their policies and goals, no matter the harm done to the people they serve, and no matter the exhortations from the voters. Gas prices and inflation are hammering most of the nation, with only the wealthiest going about their lives as if nothing's changed, yet Biden won't change his disastrous anti-carbon-energy policies one whit while continuing to insist that spending even more money we don't have is the remedy to the sudden burst of inflation created by spending too much money we don't have (and all the while yelling at oil companies to solve the problem for him). Ditto for the criminal justice "reforms" that have made crime ever easier and more lucrative in our big cities. As one Facebook acquaintance put it, "social justice" and "criminal justice" are conflicting goals.

This affirms Noonan's next observation:

They are more loyal to theory than to people.

Clearly, they don't give a flying rat's patootie about the benighted masses suffering under high gas prices. After all, global warming will end us all in... about 20 years ago, so making the masses suffer for the sin of wanting comfortable lives is good and proper, because it'll force them to cut back on the things that make them happy, to buy electric cars or forego personal vehicles altogether, to tolerate heat and cold rather than run their A/Cs and furnaces, and so on. Driving is bad for the environment, dontchaknow, so it's better they take trains and buses, no matter the crime, or the masks, or the discomfort, or the lost time. The criminal justice system is systemically racist, dontchaknow, so it’s better not to prosecute criminals, no matter that minorities suffer most from rising crime.

This is not representative government.

This is, however, the government we deserve.

Freedom confers responsibility upon the individual. If your life isn't being micromanaged by another, you have to run it yourself, so outcomes - good and bad - are on you.

Some people don't like this idea. They want others, i.e. experts, the smart people, the Best-and-Brightest, i.e. 'someone else,' to run their lives for them.

The thing they don't realize is that the outcomes still land on them, both good and bad. Shifting responsibility onto those Best-and-Brightest w the consequences will still land (as it inevitably and inescapably will) on their backs, is an invitation for trouble.

David Mamet observed that socialism is the abdication of responsibility. The notions of self-reliance and accountability have been programmed out of our nation's culture across the decades, and now people vote for whoever will give them stuff and promise to take away the need to manage their own lives. This is amplified by the perpetual message that nothing bad is your fault, and that the remedy to the bad stuff that befalls you lies in giving government power.

Those with the power have very little incentive to actually listen to the people they're managing. Their only risk is in election loss, and even then, many of them are either entrenched in the halls of power or living in academic cloisters that wall off any blowback from the masses.

All government is coercion. A nation's people cede a degree of coercive power, subject to rules and boundaries, to the people they elect to serve them. Freer nations cede less, and impose more strictures on public servants, while more collectivist nations cede more and restrict less. When we abdicate responsibility to government, we are not only granting them greater coercive power, we actually invite more coercion. Concurrently, we invite more disinterest in what we actually want. When we give up our say in how our lives are run, they've no reason to listen to us.

The more power we cede, the less incentive they have to listen to us. Those whose political beliefs rely on having more power over us have less reason, in their minds, to listen to us. After all, they know better, so why should our unwashed opinions have any sway over their decisions?

Making things even worse are those who understand and exploit the psychology of these know-it-alls in their own pursuit of power.

The true divide in politics isn't Blue Team vs Red Team, or any other version of left-right power-seeking. It's between those who wish to run their own lives and those who want others to run them on their behalf. Societies based on the former have prospered. Societies based on the latter have suffered.

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