I was amused by Steven Grossman’s posturing as one of the Tea Partiers. There is a natural affection between people with no ideas and those with poorly conceived ones. They tend to converge in rejecting “Liberal” values of study, reflection, and moderation, along with the recognition of the fact that we’re all stuck together in a construct known as a society. If people like Mr. Grossman had their way, we’d be worshiping at the altar of 80’s style greed like Gordon Gecko or Ayn Rand.
But, ideology aside, Mr. Grossman should be taken to task for some of his bad logic and absent fact.
According to Grossman, Liberal intellectuals have (1) not solved any problems (2) because they contemplate, (3) deliberate, (4) worship complexity – all of which leads to (5) dithering and paralysis. After reading this, I found myself wondering how someone could pack so much nonsense into a single argument.
Let’s take a few examples to see why this is all nonsense. The world economy is fairly complex. Modeling something as mundane as weather requires supercomputers and complex algorithms. Avoiding war requires finesse, deliberation, and compromise. The “dithering” that Mr. Grossman ascribes to a particular Liberal (I assume he meant Neville Chamberlain) in dealing with Hitler was certainly not common to that other Liberal, Franklin Roosevelt, who brought the U.S. into the war. And while we’re on the subject of Roosevelt, he and other Liberals solved a rather big problem called the Great Depression. And, as most people in the financial world (such as another letter in the same issue of the paper) attest, the recent financial bailout was an equally serious situation. Both the Bush and Obama administrations pursued similar solutions to the problem, using the same econometric models and the same Keynesian economic theory. The difference is that Liberals are now attempting to push through changes to protect the economy from questionable banking, insurance, and securities practices. Mr. Grossman may not like it, but that’s hardly “dithering.”
And what the heck is Grossman frothing about when he complains that Liberals are joining conservatives in turning their backs on the Enlightenment or “real” intellectualism? He seems to equate liberalism with New Age mysticism, Marxism, Beatniks and Hippies. Of course, none of these groups (some of which are defunct) ever saw eye-to-eye. But why let facts get in the way of an impassioned argument?
Mr. Grossman does have one thing in common with the Tea Partiers – despite his implied claim to speak for “true intellectuals,” he seems incapable of constructing a reasoned argument based on anything resembling fact.
This was published in the Standard Times on May 6, 2010
http://www.southcoasttoday.com/article/20100506/opinion/5060366
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