The folly of worshipping success
Jul. 19th, 2012 07:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
fpbA long passage (I could not bear to quote more) from Guy Benson, political editor of Townhall.com:
The president's astonishing and revealing comments in Virginia last weekend have trickled up from the conservative blogosphere to center stage in the 2012 presidential campaign. A reinvigorated Mitt Romney has seized on the remarks, parlaying the president's candid expression of his government-centric worldview into a focused and effective line of attack. The Obama campaign, meanwhile, is mired in negative attacks and petty controversies. The bottom hasn't fallen out of their polling yet, but things aren't looking robust either. Desperate to beat back Romney's surge in confidence and clarity, the Left has taken to claiming that conservatives are taking Obama's words "out of context." One of the Washington Post's in-house liberal bloggers, Greg Sargent, is one of many advancing that case. But the Examiner's Phil Klein is having none of it, pointing out that the full context of Obama's comment actually reinforces the thesis over which Romney is battering Obama:
Obama’s defenders argue the “that” in “you didn’t build that” refers to “roads and bridges.” I’m not so sure we can make that assumption, given that “business” is the noun that directly precedes the pronoun “that.” But I don’t necessarily disagree with the general interpretation offered by liberals that Obama’s intention was to argue that government helps create the environment which allows people to build businesses. Even if we were to give Obama the benefit of the doubt in this paragraph, however, it doesn’t get him of the hook. The real damaging passage is the one that comes directly before the one cited above, in which Obama said:
“There are a lot of wealthy, successful Americans who agree with me — because they want to give something back. They know they didn’t — look, if you’ve been successful, you didn’t get there on your own. You didn’t get there on your own. I’m always struck by people who think, well, it must be because I was just so smart. There are a lot of smart people out there. It must be because I worked harder than everybody else. Let me tell you something — there are a whole bunch of hardworking people out there.”
In this section, Obama isn’t arguing against Mitt Romney or the Republican Party. His argument is directed at business owners who attribute their success to their smarts and hard work. Business owners are clearly the “you” in this part of the speech, and Obama is scolding them, like a preacher, for taking too much credit for their accomplishments. Obama may not literally be claiming that government has built every business in the U.S. But he is clearly trying to urge people to allocate more credit to government and less to small business owners than they otherwise might. Aside from being unnecessarily insulting, his argument makes little sense. Everybody has access to roads and bridges, but not everybody builds successful businesses.
Notice that this supposed conservative, who is supposed to appeal to Christians, reproaches Obama not for his law-breaking, not for his abortionism, not for his secrecy about his past life, but because "he scolds... like a preacher". In other words, what makes Benson mad is that Obama speaks like a Christian minister. And he is perfectly right. That there is nothing admirable about wealth, that success is at best a delusion, that everything you have - beginning with your very self - is something that you were given and for which you cannot be proud but should be humble and grateful, is central and basic Christian doctrine. Anyone familiar with the New Testament will know that I have practically quoted throughout this paragraph, and will know where from.
This is what the Republicans have chosen to attack about Obama's platform: not his illegality, not his assault on religious freedom, not his extreme and underhanded support for abortion, not the secrecy that surrounds the man - but the fact that, for once, he repeated what twenty centuries of Christian teaching and twenty-five centuries of pagan and Christian philosophy had to say about wealth. IN the same way, they did not pick a candidate with principles to oppose Obama's false but real principles; they picked the unprincipled, two-faced, but undeniably rich Mitt Romney. It's all part of the same picture.
To Guy Benson, success it its own justification and demands, requires, respect and admiration. This is the Berlusconi view of the world: I built a bunch of big corporations, why doesn't everybody love me? And let us bear in mind that Berlusconi is far more successful than someone like Romney; his personal fortune dwarfs Romney's, and, unlike the latter, he has actually built companies and even towns that will outlast his life. (Berlusconi was a property developer before he went into sports and media, and built the handsome Milano2 development.) His claim to respect, and to political leadership, should by that standard be better based. And my point is not just that the man has ruined the country and been an utter disaster as a political leader; this should just tell us that the skills of a property developper and media tycoon are not necessarily transferable to political leadership. The fact is that, personally, Berlusconi is a clown. On Republican grounds, he ought to be a role model. A wiser man, who would no doubt be blasted by the average Republican as a practitioner of the "politics of envy", said that "God shows what He thinks of money by the kind of men He gives it to." Is it your impression that we are likelier to meet better moral characters, wiser people, and indeed better company and more fun persons, among the "successful" than in any other layer of society?
The Republican Party seems bent on making itself the bootlicker of the rich, whether or not they even want this despicable service (and some of the richest and most successful men in America have made it perfectly clear that they don't want it). Benson's article shows that they had not even failed to understand Obama's points: they had understood them and rejected them - evidently wealth is its own justification. As Aristotle is said to have said, if water itself sticks in a man's throat, what will you give him to wash it down with? I loathe Obama for his contempt for the law and his fanatical abortionism, but what do his opponents have to offer that would make worth anyone's while to get out of bed on polling day?
The president's astonishing and revealing comments in Virginia last weekend have trickled up from the conservative blogosphere to center stage in the 2012 presidential campaign. A reinvigorated Mitt Romney has seized on the remarks, parlaying the president's candid expression of his government-centric worldview into a focused and effective line of attack. The Obama campaign, meanwhile, is mired in negative attacks and petty controversies. The bottom hasn't fallen out of their polling yet, but things aren't looking robust either. Desperate to beat back Romney's surge in confidence and clarity, the Left has taken to claiming that conservatives are taking Obama's words "out of context." One of the Washington Post's in-house liberal bloggers, Greg Sargent, is one of many advancing that case. But the Examiner's Phil Klein is having none of it, pointing out that the full context of Obama's comment actually reinforces the thesis over which Romney is battering Obama:
Obama’s defenders argue the “that” in “you didn’t build that” refers to “roads and bridges.” I’m not so sure we can make that assumption, given that “business” is the noun that directly precedes the pronoun “that.” But I don’t necessarily disagree with the general interpretation offered by liberals that Obama’s intention was to argue that government helps create the environment which allows people to build businesses. Even if we were to give Obama the benefit of the doubt in this paragraph, however, it doesn’t get him of the hook. The real damaging passage is the one that comes directly before the one cited above, in which Obama said:
“There are a lot of wealthy, successful Americans who agree with me — because they want to give something back. They know they didn’t — look, if you’ve been successful, you didn’t get there on your own. You didn’t get there on your own. I’m always struck by people who think, well, it must be because I was just so smart. There are a lot of smart people out there. It must be because I worked harder than everybody else. Let me tell you something — there are a whole bunch of hardworking people out there.”
In this section, Obama isn’t arguing against Mitt Romney or the Republican Party. His argument is directed at business owners who attribute their success to their smarts and hard work. Business owners are clearly the “you” in this part of the speech, and Obama is scolding them, like a preacher, for taking too much credit for their accomplishments. Obama may not literally be claiming that government has built every business in the U.S. But he is clearly trying to urge people to allocate more credit to government and less to small business owners than they otherwise might. Aside from being unnecessarily insulting, his argument makes little sense. Everybody has access to roads and bridges, but not everybody builds successful businesses.
Notice that this supposed conservative, who is supposed to appeal to Christians, reproaches Obama not for his law-breaking, not for his abortionism, not for his secrecy about his past life, but because "he scolds... like a preacher". In other words, what makes Benson mad is that Obama speaks like a Christian minister. And he is perfectly right. That there is nothing admirable about wealth, that success is at best a delusion, that everything you have - beginning with your very self - is something that you were given and for which you cannot be proud but should be humble and grateful, is central and basic Christian doctrine. Anyone familiar with the New Testament will know that I have practically quoted throughout this paragraph, and will know where from.
This is what the Republicans have chosen to attack about Obama's platform: not his illegality, not his assault on religious freedom, not his extreme and underhanded support for abortion, not the secrecy that surrounds the man - but the fact that, for once, he repeated what twenty centuries of Christian teaching and twenty-five centuries of pagan and Christian philosophy had to say about wealth. IN the same way, they did not pick a candidate with principles to oppose Obama's false but real principles; they picked the unprincipled, two-faced, but undeniably rich Mitt Romney. It's all part of the same picture.
To Guy Benson, success it its own justification and demands, requires, respect and admiration. This is the Berlusconi view of the world: I built a bunch of big corporations, why doesn't everybody love me? And let us bear in mind that Berlusconi is far more successful than someone like Romney; his personal fortune dwarfs Romney's, and, unlike the latter, he has actually built companies and even towns that will outlast his life. (Berlusconi was a property developer before he went into sports and media, and built the handsome Milano2 development.) His claim to respect, and to political leadership, should by that standard be better based. And my point is not just that the man has ruined the country and been an utter disaster as a political leader; this should just tell us that the skills of a property developper and media tycoon are not necessarily transferable to political leadership. The fact is that, personally, Berlusconi is a clown. On Republican grounds, he ought to be a role model. A wiser man, who would no doubt be blasted by the average Republican as a practitioner of the "politics of envy", said that "God shows what He thinks of money by the kind of men He gives it to." Is it your impression that we are likelier to meet better moral characters, wiser people, and indeed better company and more fun persons, among the "successful" than in any other layer of society?
The Republican Party seems bent on making itself the bootlicker of the rich, whether or not they even want this despicable service (and some of the richest and most successful men in America have made it perfectly clear that they don't want it). Benson's article shows that they had not even failed to understand Obama's points: they had understood them and rejected them - evidently wealth is its own justification. As Aristotle is said to have said, if water itself sticks in a man's throat, what will you give him to wash it down with? I loathe Obama for his contempt for the law and his fanatical abortionism, but what do his opponents have to offer that would make worth anyone's while to get out of bed on polling day?
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no subject
Date: 2012-07-20 12:40 pm (UTC)