Profiles in Yesteryear

Some of the carefully crafted language reads like vintage Sorensen – and could be reasonably effective if properly delivered by a skillful speaker. “In this campaign,” the speech declares, “I will make no promises I cannot fulfill, pledge no spending we cannot afford, offer no posts to cronies you cannot trust, and propose no foreign commitment we should not keep. I will not shrink from opposing any party faction, any special interest group, or any major donor whose demands are contrary to the national interest.” At this point, however, Sorensen delivers a definition of unabashed liberalism, which, if echoed by the actual Democratic nominee, could guarantee victory for the GOP: “Nor will I shrink from calling myself a liberal in the same sense that Franklin and Theodore Roosevelt, John and Robert Kennedy, and Harry Truman were liberals – liberals who proved that government is not a necessary evil, but rather the best means of creating a healthier, more educated, more prosperous America.” Conservatives should rejoice at the prospect of fighting out an election campaign on precisely this question: is government indeed the “best means of creating” a better America—or is it an intrusive, annoying, arbitrary, largely destructive force that consumes too much of out time, energy and money. I remain confident that the majority of our fellow citizens will warm much more readily to the Ronald Reagan formulation that “government isn’t the solution; government is the problem,” or the Jeffersonian declaration that “the government that governs best, governs least.”

Unfortunately for militant extremist Big Management Party neocomrades, and for all all their Party's nitwit victimized wombscholars and all its sad and selfish downdumbees, the next election in sight ain't likely to be about precisely THAT question. "Intrusive, annoying, arbitrary, largely destructive" worries about exactly what curious sort of neo-happiness Boy and Party have created for their invasionized neo-subjects out in Peaceful Freedumbia are only too likely to supervene. An alliance and solidarity of Planet Dilbert and Miss Rand of Petrograd and Mr. Nozick of Harvard with the resistance / insurgency / guerrilla / terrorism of Peaceful Freedumbia -- everybody in sight, palefaces and swarthies both alike shouting "Get ALL the [exp. del.] BigManagers off EVERYBODY's back!" -- would undoubtedly be very picturesque and edifying, but I fear it's not really very likely to happen.

Former Non-President Sorensen, the perpetrator of Profiles in Courage, has much to answer for, and I shan't forgive him myself this side of the Weltgericht, but meanwhile, we still live diesseits in the corrupt sewer of Sorensen and Cheney, not in the Republic of Plato nor anywhere on any Atlas according to John Galt or Ayn Rand. So then, "[T]he best means of creating a healthier, more educated, more prosperous America" remains a serious question, or three serious questions, and there appears to be only the same old answer as ever: obviously Big Management must take care of all that, and it advances or retards the analysis not a step to passionately identify, or stubbornly decline to identify, Big Management with "Big Government." We're all hooked on Bigness nowadays, addicted to Bigness, under the aegis of Uncle Sam, the very biggest of all Biggies ever, the Alone Sole Remainin' Hyperpower!, and to propose tiny local solutions about medicine or education or "prosperity" or anything else that seriously matters nowadays is only to spit against the wind and but bespatter ourselves with our own idle spittle.

Call our plight "globalism," if you happen to enjoy mechanical windup-toy verbal claptrap! The precise name you prefer to call the Bigness Thing by matters not at all to the Bigness Thing itself. I rather personify the Bigness Thing snickerin' to Itself as each new pilgrim approaches to adore and revere and circumambulate, is it to be globally adored/revered/circumambulated as "management" this time, or as "government"?

If the Bigness Thing privately draws certain negative conclusions about the Human Race from all this a/r/c stuff, It is not alone. Many human moralists have anticipated Juggernaut's conclusions.

But God knows best. KECEKE!