Open Letter to Don Rogers

[This piece was published in the 11may22 Union op-ed pages here.]

Your weekly column – ‘The gritty middle way’ - in the 6may22 Union (here) was a thoughtful, well-written piece that I and many of your readers enjoyed reading.  By now, most of the newspaper’s readers know that, counter to your protestations, you have become markedly left-of-center in your politics.  We have all witnessed the transition over the last few years.

The essay’s great opening – “Humans live in tension between the collective and the individual, neither ant drones nor lonely snow leopards.” – sets the stage for a good discussion of that gritty tension.  As you might expect, your words will sound very different to right and left readers who don’t necessarily inhabit the extremes of their respective polar regions.

The discerning reader is jarred a mite when he runs into “the farther right and farther left have uncannily similar root worldviews in common. Just understand that America’s actual risk of living under the thumb of fascist overlords or critical-theorist Marxist mobs amounts to the same fever dream born of indigestion from bogieman stories repeated mostly on blue screens.”

This observation and a couple of others can qualify as a litmus test for an intellectual leftist – they do not see the asymmetries in the ideological foundations of individualism and collectivism.  For them, “our yearnings in politics would have us believe that the end of the rainbow, the prize, lies at one pole or the other, sweet relief to be found there.”  However, that is not true.  Were we to believe polls and voting patterns, we would know the overwhelming share of liberal voters embrace large government collectivism, seeing no natural limits to taxation, regulation, and centralized control – reaching for the undefined but uniformly applied ‘common good’ dominates all political thought.  This is the foundation of the ‘fair share’ dictum - from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs – enforced equity über alles.

On the right the conservative, most certainly the conservetarian, sees no desired end in fascist governance.  For after all, fascism is the other dominant form of collectivism that also requires a very large autocratic government to implement its principles of social order and economics.  This is anathema to the overwhelming share of those on the Right.  Perhaps unrealistically, but the mainstream rightwinger’s desiderata are based on a smaller government minimally regulating open markets, staying out of people’s lives, and subsisting on minimum tax revenues.  The real political bookends for us are quite different than those apprehended and preached by the Left.  An easy proof of this is in the readings of your cited Levin, who describes a leftist society accepted by the Left, and Lakoff, who demonstrates repeatedly that he has no idea what the Right believes and seeks.

What the left-leaner also misses is that his desired social order requires the practice of wholesale altruism to make it work, and populated by perfected Marxists who have always been beyond the pale of human action (see Hardin’s ‘The Tragedy of the Commons’).  Historically, all leftwing nostrums to achieve such a glorified state of affairs require an initial phase of large-scale authoritarian social conditioning, wherein some eggs have to be cracked to make the sought for omelet.  This road, de rigueur to the intellectual Marxist, is kept hidden from the hoi polloi lest they up and embrace the ever-present siren song of the capitalists.

So, in sum Don, your commentary invites the reader to an admittedly difficult, yet reasonable, and reasoned middle path, avoiding both sides bounded by indistinguishable brambles and thorns.  Sadly, as attested by more than two hundred years of history, along with today’s petabytes of data, that is not the real world – it never was.  May the conversation continue.

Always with respect and best wishes,

George Rebane

Comments

[Gregory]

Once again, Don Rogers has been less than even handed... slapping me down as being "true to type" that he didn't identify, and telling all I was on the cusp of being banned ... for the crime of referring to "Alfred" the sock puppet with the name I think he is... Jeff Pelline.

Well, that quashes my evil plans for tying Natalie Adona to the sock puppet, "Feministic", that popped up the day of the great kerfuffle in Adona's orifice, disappearing the next day.

Jeff was and is making up charges for the Jan 6 folk, like equating sedition with seditious conspiracy, the latter being a made up charge that can be as little as delaying a federal action. Sloppy journalism by a sloppy ex-journalist.

[Scott O]

Love the comment by Frank Pray - "But the bottom line of a republic is that it is a system of laws, and a democracy, that it is a subjugation to the will of the majority,..."
Cool.
So if the majority want to have African descent folks as slaves, that would be okie-dokie with Frank.
Sorry Bozo - our govt is subject to the law.
That would be the Constitution. No matter what the rabble cook up in a voting booth, it needs to go by the law first. Too bad you slept through civics.
Really - the comments are priceless. One clown even tried to paint Hillary as a 'centrist'.
You really have to wonder about Rogers as an editor of a newspaper calling the Natl Review an extreme right wing outlet.
And refusing to name a single acceptable news or opinion source.

[Bill Tozer]

Might go here, might fit under Dems Poetry or Scattershots or Sandbox.

‘When Disagreement Becomes Trauma’
How does one deal with those who claim that debate itself represents an agony beyond human endurance?

https://quillette.com/2022/05/08/when-did-disagreement-become-trauma/

[Bill Tozer]

VDH

‘The Exasperated American’

Will the voters channel their furor at this regime of lies into an unprecedented turnout at the polls in November?

https://amgreatness.com/2022/05/08/the-exasperated-american/

[fish]

Posted by: Scott O | 07 May 2022 at 07:00 PM

You really have to wonder about Rogers as an editor of a newspaper calling the Natl Review an extreme right wing outlet.

"Eventually every Jewish boy wants to settle down and please his mother"

Howard Stern decided to become a member of polite society, so did John Stewart. Now I'm going to make a huge leap here and assume that Rogers isn't Jewish but the impulse is the same. Eventually all these seekers, these "rebels", these speakers of truth to power want to get right with "god" so they can go to the right parties and be seen chatting with the right people about the right things.

Don got into journalism to save the world. Look how that's turned out.....Pennysaver of the Pines.

That anybody is surprised that Rogers thinks that NR....that most flaccid and establishment "rightwing" outlet is seen as extreme is hysterical.

[Scott O]

fish 1:09 - You've got him all wrong, fish! He's a g'damn Spartacus or he-man ready to do that intellectual rumble!

"No, here’s where heads butt and ideas collide along a line of scrimmage where courage is required, all our notions tested and often enough bruised or broken."

The dude wants to butt heads! He'll take us all on and thrash us with his Magic Middle Of the Road Warrior Power!

[scenes]

"Middle Of the Road Warrior Power"

lol. I like that.

It's a shame that 'Middle of the Road Warrior' doesn't fit on a spandex suit with a cape.

I guess it's like noticing that the universe is expanded equally all around us. WE MUST BE AT THE CENTER OF THE UNIVERSE!

[Gregory]

I just checked the viafoura/The Union comment pages and they've settled down nicely. No angry voices at all.

In fact, virtually no dissenting voices. Very Progressive-friendly now. Just in time for election Month.

Bravo, Don.

[Gregory]

Jeff Pelline has come out and posted under his real name. So has Frisch. It's a new day at the new The Union.