Modern Sophists

I've often wondered how leftist ideas can be wrong all the time. Even a broken clock is right twice a day, but leftists never seem to find solutions that can fix today's problems. Not even once.

Let's take an obvious case in point - federal spending. It's painfully obvious that the national debt, the national deficit, and the government's raging love affair with adding social program after social program rather than cutting back, that all of these hurt the stability of our country. While England, France, Germany, Greece, and other European countries stand at the brink, they watch the US run headlong in its race to fling itself off the cliff. While China swindles the US out of billions in loans, the US continues to pull out its credit card, telling the social program store clerk to charge it. While Americans struggle to pay for gas, the government allows OPEC to play us for idiots. While Americans tried to buy houses, the government papered our walls with trillions in unsecured real estate debt and brought the economy to its knees.

In all this, what is President Obama's solution to the problem of reckless government spending? Tax the rich.

The question, then, is why do leftists continue to support such spending? Of course, some pay lip service to reducing the deficit. Some provide alternative tax schemes to "pay" for the government program diarrhea. Some give in to greed in order to promote their latest corporate or union sponsor. And many allow the bureaucratic dictatorship they've created to run unchecked - like Frankenstein's monster, rampaging through the country.

What is the appeal of such reckless policies? Is Congress collectively that stupid? (That's my first pick, though admitting that doesn't explain why Congress as a whole is so stupid.) Are we as a people so blind that we actually believe government can kiss our economic booboos and make them all better? Is the socialist promise of taking care of the poor so seductive that we impoverish ourselves merely so "others" can take care of us? Do we actually believe that a single economist, John Maynard Keynes understood the complexity of economics so well that we are willing to follow his overpromoted plan and overspend until the government collapses?

The answer to these questions stems from the philosophical base that we Americans, as a whole, have bought into. Generally, we have bought into a philosophy more akin to the Greek sophists than into the great thinkers who came after them. It is the sophists, for example, who gave the world relativism - the idea that different individuals act according to individual morals.

Within a relativist view, there is no absolute good or evil, and, taken to an extreme, there is no such thing as correct action. Correct action is whatever the individual thinks it is. In essence, relativism is selfish. It denies that there is any moral authority apart from the individual or a group of individuals who believe the same thing. Yet, we allow relativist philosophy to dominate our schools and our government.

The biggest problem with relativism is its double standard. For example, President Obama can condemn rich people and demand more and more money from them to pay for out-of-control government spending, without condemning himself as a rich man and without considering cutting even a single social program from government. In this vein, a member of Congress can demand a huge earmark for his state without admitting that he's only trying to win reelection and that he is further hurting the economy. A "socially conscious" senator can condemn Wall Street greed while taking millions of dollars from workers unions. Groups of well-funded people can cry "oppression" while doing violence to the Constitution. The relativist double standard can raise up and demand one group's rights with no regard for the rights of other groups.

This brings us to the question: Can we find the solution to end political sophistry, moral relativism, and the politics of greed before we fall into anarchy and despotism? I'm not such an optimist on this one. What do you think?