And if you have to throw some red meat to voters out there whose views you just think are ridiculous, then you do it. In a way, a most striking case is the environment. If you took a poll among CEOs of the major corporations that fund the Chamber of Commerce and so on, I suspect they would be just like faculty members at the university. Maybe they donate to the Sierra Club in their private lives, but not in their public roles. In their public roles, not only do they fund propaganda campaigns to undermine support for global warming, but they also support the political party which is mobilizing those efforts.[75] Quite an interesting split between an institutional role and what are probably private beliefs. In their institutional role they have a function: they must maximize short-term profit and market share. Their jobs and salaries depend upon it. And that institutional role is driving them toward what I suspect is a fairly conscious commitment to longer-term destruction.
Do you think those aligned with the Republican Party are mostly funding doubt—doubt that climate scientists can be trusted?[76]
Or anyone. In fact, if you look at polls now it’s incredible. Last time I looked at a poll on this, I think approval of Congress was in single digits; the presidency, all corrupt, and Obama is probably anti-Christ anyway; the scientists, we can’t trust them, pointy-headed liberals; banks, we don’t like them, too big, but we’re not going to do anything about it except fund them; and so on across the board. Trust in institutions is extremely low, and, unfortunately, that has some resonances rather similar to late Weimar Germany—plenty of differences, but there are some similarities that are worth concern.
And they can appeal to something quite objective. Take a look at post–Second World War history. The first two decades, the ’50s and ’60s, were periods of very substantial growth. In fact, the highest growth in the country’s history—and egalitarian growth. People were gaining things, they were getting somewhere, and they had hope for the future and expectations, etc. The ’70s was a transition period. Since the ’80s, for the majority of the population, life has just gotten relatively worse: real wages and incomes have stagnated or declined; benefits, which were never very much, have declined; people have been getting by on working more hours per family, unsustainable debt, and asset inflation bubbles, but they crash.
So meanwhile, there’s plenty of wealth around. If everything were impoverished, it wouldn’t be so striking. You can read the front page of the New York Times and see it. A couple of weeks ago, they had an article on growing poverty in America, which is enormous, and another column on how luxury-good stores are marking up their prices because they can’t sell them fast enough, might as well mark them up anyway. That’s what the country’s coming to look like, so people are angry—and rightly angry. And nothing is being done about it except to make it worse.
So it’s a natural basis for preying on disillusionment and saying all institutions are rotten, get rid of all of them. The subtext being, you get rid of all of them, and we’ll take control. Unfortunately that’s the actual content of the libertarian conception, whatever the people may believe; they’re effectively calling for corporate tyranny.
In The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, Max Weber wrote: “Absolute and conscious ruthlessness in acquisition has often stood in the closest connection with the strictest conformity to tradition.”[77] Are there any parallels between Weber’s observations in 1904 and present conditions?
Depends what tradition one is thinking of. In the early days of the American Industrial Revolution, working people bitterly condemned the industrial system into which they were being driven as an assault on their fundamental values. They particularly condemned what they called “The New Spirit of the Age, Gain Wealth forgetting all but Self,” that is, the doctrine of “absolute and conscious ruthlessness in acquisition.”[78] The same was true of the people of England who resisted the enclosure movement and tried to preserve the “commons,” which were to be the common property and source of sustenance for all, and to be cared for by all—also one of the core features of Magna Carta, long forgotten.[79] There are innumerable other examples illustrating the radical attack on tradition by the doctrines of ruthlessness in acquisition. I think Weber would have agreed.
Rick Santorum accused Obama of practicing “phony theology” related to radical environmentalists who have a worldview that elevates the “Earth above man.” Santorum described his theology as “the belief that man should be in charge of the Earth and should have dominion over it and should be good stewards of it.”[80] There seems to be a discrepancy in worldview as to what constitutes good stewardship.
Without speculating on what Santorum is talking about, let’s take the lines you quote. A case can be made that the way to be a “good steward” of the earth is to abandon any thought of “dominion over it” and to recognize, with proper humility, that we must find a place within the natural world that will help sustain it not just for ourselves but for other creatures as well, and for future generations, recognizing values that are often upheld most firmly and convincingly within indigenous cultures.
Richard Land, host of the nationally syndicated radio show For Faith & Family, said the Christian electorate “would love to see a false smarty pants decapitated by a real intellectual … He [Newt Gingrich] would tear Obama’s head off.”[81] He seems to be saying one type of intellectualism is acceptable and the right kind, but the other is not.
When we look over the record of famous debates, we find that they are not “won” on the basis of serious argument, significant evidence, or intellectual values generally. Rather, the outcome turns on Nixon’s five o’clock shadow, Reagan’s sappy smile, lines like “have you no shame” or “you’re no Jack Kennedy,” etc. That’s not surprising. Debates are among the most irrational constructions that humans have developed. Their rules are designed to undermine rational interchange. A debater is not allowed to say, “That was a good point, I’ll have to rethink my views.” Rather, they must adhere blindly to their positions even when they recognize that they are wrong. And what are called “skilled debaters” know that they should use trickery and deceit rather than rational argument to “win.” I don’t know who Richard Land is, and if he regards Gingrich as a “real intellectual,” I don’t see much reason to explore further.
The term “intellectual” is typically used to refer to those who have sufficient privilege to be able to gain some kind of audience when they speak on public issues. The world’s greatest physicists are not called “intellectuals” if they devote themselves, laser-like, to the search for the Higgs boson. A carpenter with little formal schooling who happens to have very deep insight into international affairs and the factors that drive the economy and explains these matters to his family and friends is not called an “intellectual.” There is evidence that the more educated tend to be more indoctrinated and conformist—but nevertheless, or maybe therefore, they tend to provide the recognized “intellectual class.” We could devise a different concept that relates more closely to insight, understanding, creative intelligence, and similar qualities. But it would be a different concept.
75
See profiles of Chesapeake Energy’s Aubrey McClendon and Texas billionaire Harold Simmons. Jeff Goodell, “The Big Fracking Bubble: The Scam behind Aubrey McClendon’s Gas Boom,”
76
During the 2008 presidential campaign John McCain promised to address climate change. By 2011, the majority of Republican presidential candidates denied its existence. Tim Phillips, president of the Koch-funded Americans for Prosperity, chalks it up to the Tea Party and other groups: “If you look at where the situation was three years ago and where it is today, there’s been a dramatic turnaround…. If you [Republican candidates] … buy into green energy or you play footsie on this issue, you do so at your political peril. The vast majority of people who are involved in the nominating process—the conventions and the primaries—are suspect of the science. And that’s our influence. Groups like Americans for Prosperity have done it.” Coral Davenport, “Heads in the Sand,”
77
Max Weber,
78
In 1834 workers at the Lowell Mills factory, referred to as “factory girls,” went on strike upon learning wages would be reduced by 15 percent. According to the
79
See Britain’s “Mass Trespass” on Kinder Scout Mountain in 1932. The Mass Trespass, led by workers who sought unimpeded foot travel, eventually led to the establishment of Britain’s national parks and the 2004 Right to Roam Act. On the history of “rambling” and current campaigns to protect walkers’ rights, see Ramblers.org.uk.
80
Mitchell Landsberg, “Rick Santorum Denies Questioning Obama’s Faith,”
81
Richard Land is president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission and author of