Kamala Harris has talked a lot about ‘equality,’ and she doesn’t mean equality before the law, nor equality of opportunity but equality of outcomes, ie, equity in the current terminology of the Left. (video) Many other “progressive” politicians have adopted similar positions, though rarely expressed in quite so explicit and extreme a manner. But I would argue that very few among those politicians and other prominent or influential people who argue for ‘equity’ or ‘equality’ really want any such thing.
Consider, for example: Many people in ‘progressive’ leadership positions are graduates of the Harvard Law School. Do you think these people want to see a society in which the career, status, and income prospects for an HLS grad are no better than those for a graduate of a lesser-known, lower-status (but still very good) law school? C’mon.
Quite a few ‘progressive’ leaders are members of prominent families. Do you think Teddy Kennedy would have liked to see an environment in which he and certain other members of his family would have had to answer for their actions in the criminal courts in the same way that ordinary individuals would, without benefit from connections, media influence, and expensive lawyers?
The prevalence of ‘progressivism’ among tenured professors is quite high. How many of these professors would be eager to agree to employment conditions in which their job security and employee benefits were no better than those enjoyed by average Americans? How many of them would take a salary cut in order to provide higher incomes for the poorly-paid adjunct professors at their universities? How many would like to see PhD requirements eliminated so that a wider pool of talented and knowledgeable individuals can participate in university teaching?
There are a lot of ‘progressives’ among the graduates of Ivy League universities. How many of them would be in favor of legally eliminating alumni preferences and the influence of contributions and have their children considered for admission–or not–on the same basis as everyone else’s kids? Yet an alumni preference is an intergenerational asset in the same way that a small businessman’s store or factory is such an asset.
Do you think that Hillary Clinton would be happy living as an ordinary individual, without power, status, national and global recognition, and, yes, the money she and her husband have been able to accumulate in their lifetime of ‘public service’? (I remember she once chose to wear a $12K Armani jacket while delivering a speech lamenting Inequality) Is Kamala herself not seeking a rather extreme form of inequality by seeking the highest office in the land? Is not regular access to Air Force One a form of inequality at least as potent as a billionaire’s access to the business or personal jet that he owns?
The reality is that ‘progressivism’ is not in any way about equality, it is rather about shifting the distribution of power and wealth in a way that benefits those with certain kinds of educational credentials and certain kinds of connections, and, especially those who are holders of important political offices. And remember, power is always and everywhere transmutable into wealth. Sometimes that wealth is directly in monetary form, as with the millions of dollars that former presidents such as Clinton and Obama have made from speaking fees, or the money made by a former government official who leverages his contacts into an executive job with a an energy company even though he may have minimal knowledge of either energy or business. And sometimes the wealth takes the form of in-kind benefits, like a governor’s mansion or access to government aircraft. (Those who lived in the old Soviet Union and Eastern Europe can tell you all about in-kind benefits for nominally low-paid officials.) Plus, power itself provides a kind of ‘psychic income’, which can be as valuable to the beneficiary as is monetary income.
And, almost always, today’s ‘progressivism; is about the transfer of power from individuals to credentialed ‘experts’ who will coerce or ‘nudge’ people to do what those experts have decided would be best.
To a very substantial extent, the talk about ‘equity’ and ‘equality’ is a smokescreen, conscious or unconscious, behind which ‘progressives’ pursue their own economic, status, and ego agendas. It is a about a kind of class warfare, conducted on a horizontal rather than a vertical basis. If your career is based on academic credentials from an ‘elite’ university, or on political connections, or on being in a politically-favored industry, you would come out ahead under the Harris-Walz view of how things should work. But if your career is based on hard work, measurable accomplishment, and creativity, not so much. Especially if you are not willing to eagerly express agreement with whatever the elements of the ‘progressive’ worldview might be at any particular time.
Writing in 1969, Peter Drucker, who was born in Austria and lived in several European countries before coming to the US, wrote about what he saw as a key American economic advantage: the much less-dominant role played by ‘elite’ educational institutions in this country:
One thing it (modern society) cannot afford in education is the elite institution which has a monopoly on social standing, on prestige, and on the command positions in society and economy. Oxford and Cambridge are important reasons for the English brain drain. A main reason for the technology gap is the Grande Ecole such as the Ecole Polytechnique or the Ecole Normale. These elite institutions may do a magnificent job of education, but only their graduates normally get into the command positions. Only their faculties ‘matter.’This restricts and impoverishes the whole society. The Harvard Law School might like to be a Grande Ecole and to claim for its graduates a preferential position. But American society has never been willing to accept this claim…
That unwillingness of American society to accept the claim of elite education as the primary gateway to power and wealth has been considerably undercut since Drucker wrote. And the ‘progressives’ have been among the main under-cutters and the leading advocates for further movement in that direction. The rise of ‘progressivism’ in the modern sense of the word, and the rise of degree-based elitist credentialism, have gone hand in hand. The eagerness of the Biden administration to ‘forgive’ student loans and thereby keep the higher-ed machine running at full blast indicates just how tightly coupled the Democrats view their fortune as being coupled to that of the education industry (which, increasingly, has come to mean the credentialing industry.
Remember, Bernie Sanders was asked to leave the socialist commune of which he was at one point a member, apparently because he didn”t want to take on his fair share of the work…that is, he insisted on being unequal. Do you think Kamala Harris would have been any more likely to be just an ordinary commune member, working in the fields and washing dishes without any special privileges or status?
The political strategy of the Left, which dominates today’s Democratic Party, is based on the ceaseless stoking of Envy. And, as Michael Gibson put it neatly: Greed may not be good, but Envy is evil.
Here’s Benjamin Franklin:
There are two passions which have a powerful influence in the affairs of men. These are ambition and avarice, the love of power and the love of money. Separately, each of these has great force in prompting men to action; but, when united in view of the same object, they have, in many minds, the most violent effects.
And Irving Kristol:
Now, the pursuit of power is a zero sum game: you acquire power only by taking it away from someone else. The pursuit of money, however, is not a zero-sum game, which is why it is a much more innocent human activity. It is possible to make a lot of money without inflicting economic injury on anyone. Making money may be more sordid than appropriating power;at least it has traditionally been thought to be so, but, as Adam Smith and others pointed out, it is also a far more civil activity.
As I’ve noted before, tightly coupling the pursuit of money to the pursuit of political influence and power is very harmful to the spirit of America as well as to its economy. And while such coupling is endemic across the political spectrum, it is practically the raison d’être of today’s Democratic Party. The Harris-Walz candidacy, though, would bring that coupling to a new and particularly virulent level.
*cough*
https://www.wmbriggs.com/post/52728/
;)
Nate…re the link…it appears that the Democrats are now trying to portray of more-positive view of America and the majority of its people than they’ve done in the past few elections. I think that’s a major factor behind the selection of Walz as VP candidate.
I’ve been saying for a while now that the elite in our country co-opted ‘affirmative action’ long ago, and the ‘equity’ push is just the latest iteration in the use of privilege and preferences to make sure the proles stay in their lane.
By limiting the number of slots open to whites (still by far the majority of the elite in this country) on merit, affirmative action effectively limited the number of qualified candidates moving up from non-elite backgrounds, and at the same time filled slots with demonstrably inferior candidates so the privileged scions faced less real competition, primarily in academics but also in the workplace. “Equity” as a replacement for merit evaluation pushes this even further, providing a framework where selection is entirely based on satisfying the prejudices and biases of examiners which amazingly track pretty well with the biases and prejudices of the elite.
Walz’s financial disclosure form indicates that he doesn’t own any stocks or bonds. Some consider this a sign of virtue, but Jeff Carter isn’t buying it:
https://jeffreycarter.substack.com/p/the-mothers-milk-of-the-state
Speaking of DEI, J. D. Vance and his Indian-American wife are like a thumb in the eye of the leftist elites.
I remember reading a media profile of Biden back in the day, which said that his house was his only significant asset and that he had a modest net worth as compared to other prominent pols.
Walz’s financial disclosure suggests that he is some combo of financially ignorant, disassociated from the American aspirational mainstream, a cynic, a socialist, a grifter. His finances are a caution rather than a signifier of virtue as Democratic partisans are trying to spin it.
“Equity” is the Democrat/Left word for black favoritism. Willie Brown, when he was Speaker of the CA Assembly, tried to get a bill passed that the UC system had to graduate every black student. That failed because in those days the UC was above politics. I suspect such a bill would pass these days.
Related: Glenn Ellmers on Inequality as a Left-Wing Principle:
https://tomklingenstein.com/inequality-as-a-left-wing-principle/
A while back I was in a discussion when one of the other people (a Leftist) said that the problem with conservatives was that they didn’t believe in “multiracial democracy.” I thought that was a head scratcher, I didn’t know anybody in 21st Century conservative thought or politics who wanted to turn the clock back to Jim Crow let alone institute a South African-style apartheid regime.
Upon some questioning I learned that what he meant by “democracy” was quite different than what is commonly held; basically a system of reparations and set-asides for the “oppressed.” The “multiracial” part? That’s because this person (and many of the Left) saw the current system of “democracy” as simply a system to benefit white people. To them it was anything but voting.
This is part of a larger project by the Left, to take words that have a certain salience in our culture and history, hollow them out, and as Burge would say wear them as a skin suit for their own political purposes. Once you see this phenomena you see it everywhere in their world: “racism”, “equality, “justice” The post-modern Left sees by nature that society, culture, and language is simply a construct designed for one group to oppress another (power) so if you catch them on this they just say something to the effect of “don’t hate the player, that’s just the game” or better yet “that’s the way world really works”
To David”s larger point about the hypocrisy of people like Hillary using “equality.” Well I think most of the Leftists in the political system are too stupid to really be hypocrites, it’s just another angle of corruption and grift. Most of them have little idea what “equity” means, in fact to my earlier point it’s a great term because it allows the post-moderns to market the term as being “equality”
So yeah… how do you take the language back? I’m part of a larger project trying to define what “punitive expedition” would look in a political sense.
he’s refinanced his house some 35 times, since he first bought it, the digs have become larger over time,
it’s a made up word, that covers the immiseration of the greater part of the population, through spike in prices of staples energy, the collapse of most infrastructure,
I have found it amusing that Ivy Leaguers are big proponents of “equity” and “equality.” I very much doubt that those Ivy Leaguers would trade places with someone at Bunker Hill Community College, or its equivalent, in the interest of advancing “equity” and “equality.”
It’s almost like you didn’t read Orwell. The funny thing about equality is that there’s always someone more equal than others.
And once there are two or three categories, why those more equal would not make one more exception, and another?..
From another angle, any theocracy inevitably slides toward faithlessness, even if it did not start this way. It’s a matter of simple selection pressure: power overwhelms all other factors in faction dynamics, thus incrementally corrupts any institution into something optimized purely for power. It does not matter how much the immediate participants delude themselves about this.
In this case, no doubt there were many sincere abolitionists, and even sincere dry law proponents… but by now, one would have to take some serious drugs to be sincere about all the tumblr grade nonsense at once, and otherwise it’s at most doublethink.
“It is an about a kind of class warfare, conducted on a horizontal rather than a vertical basis.”
This isn’t really true. I think the people you’re talking about are a different class from the traditional bourgeoisie. The class in question is the managerial technocracy. Where the bourgeoisie’s power was the result of the ownership of the means of production, that of the managerial technocracy is a function of their effective control of those means of production.
Their drive for “equality” is not just envy, but more importantly a drive to further undermine the relative power and status of ownership in favor of the relative power and status of managerial technocratic control.
Probably being an optimist. The demonrats are fielding their second ticket in a row produced from blatant corruption and manipulation with no meaningful input from the rank and file. In the real world, this never ends well for whatever enterprise goes down this path. Maybe those outside of the 30% that will vote for anything with a D after their name will start to take notice, there has to be some limit to credulity.
There are a lot of ‘progressives’ among the graduates of Ivy League universities.
Hoo boy. The power of understatement.