Ross Douthat on the Obama campaign’s telling “Julia” slideshow:
The liberalism of “the Life of Julia” doesn’t envision government spending the way an older liberalism did — as a backstop for otherwise self-sufficient working families, providing insurance against job loss, decrepitude and catastrophic illness. It offers a more sweeping vision of government’s place in society, in which the individual depends on the state at every stage of life, and no decision — personal, educational, entrepreneurial, sexual — can be contemplated without the promise that it will be somehow subsidized by Washington.
The condescension inherent in this vision is apparent in every step of Julia’s pilgrimage toward a community-gardening retirement. But in an increasingly atomized society, where communities and families are weaker than ever before, such a vision may have more appeal — to both genders — than many of the conservatives mocking the slide show might like to believe.
Apparently someone in the White House thinks so, which makes the life of Julia the most interesting general-election foray by either campaign to date. Interesting, and clarifying: in a race that’s likely to be dominated by purely negative campaigning on both sides, her story is the clearest statement we’re likely to get of what Obama-era liberalism would take us “forward” toward.
Today’s liberalism seeks to ensure absolute autonomy from family and community, and in the process creates a massive dependence on the state that would be unhealthy even if it were sustainable. An agenda of thoroughgoing individualism collapses into nanny-statism.
May 7th, 2012 | 12:37 pm
The reality is that Obama’s vision will be defeated, one way or the other.
Either America will come to its senses and stop the Statism central to his ideology, and perhaps preserve a measure of liberty and economic prosperity, or the country will eventually collapse under the weight of the public spending. It’s inevitable, as history has taught time and time again.
The measure of choice we have is in how this ideology’s defeat will take place and what consequence its defeat will have on our lives and those of our children.
May 7th, 2012 | 3:04 pm
I’ve always found the term “nanny-state” a funny one if applied to the standard yardstick against which all American liberals measure everything: Sweden. The Swedish political economy is indeed designed to liberate the individual through the state from parents, spouses, children, employers, markets, neighbors, church — in short, everyone. By what other means but the state could such a thing be accomplished, after all?
While there may be “massive dependence” on the state in Sweden, that is the price the overwhelming majority of Swedes have agreed to pay in order to be liberated from everyone else. No one in Sweden believes Ayn Rand and other libertarian mythologies (and rightly so); after all, “you’re gonna have to serve somebody” and this is the choice Swedes have made.
It’s not my choice certainly, but pretending that Sweden is always teetering on the cusp of Stalinism or bankruptcy (or both) is intellectual laziness. As Douthat rightly observes,
May 7th, 2012 | 7:28 pm
“Julia” will be the one on the water skis, jumping over a shark that looks a lot like Obama.
(Remember: you heard it here first.)
May 7th, 2012 | 9:27 pm
I’ll believe that when there is some evidence that the Swedes believe that. Until then I will suspect it rotted the society the way all societies with welfare are being rotted.
May 8th, 2012 | 9:47 am
Darel,
If memory serves me, Sweden, like many Scandinavian countries, greatly restricts immigration. In 2008, when they had some 101k people enter the country, politicians pointed out their welfare policies couldn’t support the influx. Sweden can’t sustain itself without greatly curtailing certain freedoms.
To run the U.S. like Sweden is impossible and would shatter the nation financially. Illegal immigration already is taxing the “social safety net”. We have some 10,000 illegal immigrants enter this country PER DAY. About a third are eventually deported–at astronomical cost to taxpayers. Of the estimated 12-14 million illegal immigrants in country, they pay an average of $0.50 per person into Social Security and Medicare annually.
That’s a recipe for disaster, to say nothing of the injustices.
And that’s just one facet of the problem…
May 8th, 2012 | 7:01 pm
The Swedish political economy is indeed designed to liberate the individual through the state from parents, spouses, children, employers, markets, neighbors, church — in short, everyone. By what other means but the state could such a thing be accomplished, after all?
You mean everyone except the state.
May 8th, 2012 | 7:04 pm
It’s not my choice certainly, but pretending that Sweden is always teetering on the cusp of Stalinism or bankruptcy (or both) is intellectual laziness.
Maybe it’s because we keep hearing about how the government tells parents how to raise their kids, and telling citizens how to live their lives?
I don’t think it’s intellectually lazy at all to think that a state that routinely steps into peoples’ homes to tell parents how to handle their children and so on might be just a tad Big Brotherish.
As far as “Stalinism”, I think Sweden is only saved by virtue of not having a large enough population to support large numbers of “disappearances”. The number of dissenters remains small enough to be manageable.
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