THE ANCHORESS ON TOM FRIEDMAN: “Every murderous totalitarian government of the 20th century began with some insulated group of faux-intellectuals congratulating each other on how smart they are, and fantasizing about how, if they could just install a dictatorship-for-a-day, they could right all the wrongs in the world. It is the ultimate fantasy of the narcissist. And we’ve got whole generations of them, in control of our media and our government, all intent on ‘remaking America.’”
by Glenn Reynolds http://pajamasmedia.com/instapundit/99987/
Read the rest: http://www.firstthings.com/blogs/theanchoress/2010/05/24/the-privileged-call-for-limited-dictatorships/
(Here's the rest of The Anchoress' post):
The Privileged Call for Limited Dictatorships
Elizabeth Scalia
When I read last week that Woody Allen likes the idea of letting President Obama be a dictator for a “few years” I was repelled; but then I’ve found Allen to be a repellent individual for decades–since Manhattan, at least–so I just shrugged it off as the foghorn bleat of an over-privileged mediocrity looking for some attention.
But then the equally mediocre Tom born-wealthy-high-carbon-footprint-lover-of-Chinese-Communist-Capitalism-I’ve-got-mine-you-should-not-have-yours Friedman let fly with this on Meet the Press:
I have fantasized–don’t get me wrong–but that what if we could just be China for a day? I mean, just, just, just one day. You know, I mean, where we could actually, you know, authorize the right solutions, and I do think there is a sense of that, on, on everything from the economy to environment. I don’t want to be China for a second, OK, I want my democracy to work with the same authority, focus and stick-to-itiveness. But right now we have a system that can only produce suboptimal solutions.
To which Andrea even-more-privileged-than-you-Tom Mitchell chimed in:
“And, in fact, Tom, you’re absolutely right . . .”
The leftist party that these people support is currently in control of both houses of congress and the White House (and they are well-represented within the federal judiciary) and yet, it is not enough. The power is not pure enough, it is not invincible enough; their power is diluted because, dammit, those little people crowing about the constitution all over the internets are mucking things up!
Although, to be fair to Friedman, his China Fantasy is not new; he talked about “being China for a day” with Tom Brokaw in 2008. He’s been hoping for a dictatorship ala China, for a while, now as Jonah Goldberg notes.
Friedman and Mitchell, and even that self-absorbed twerp Woody Allen are all wringing their hands over something they cannot (yet) control; alternative media and how it has contributed to the difficulties of getting things done in Washington.
When the press had a monopoly on information, it was much easier for them to influence opinion; that in turn made the legislator’s jobs easier, too. Now, yes, things are more difficult for the politicians, but that’s mostly because they insist upon working as they always have (the incestuous commingling of pols and media freaks on the left, and pols and business freaks on the right, with back-room-deals-aplenty, back-scratching galore and pork, pork, pork for everyone) while the electorate has decided it wants something different.
So, Allen and Friedman–and others who have kept their faces before us for 40 years by coasting on the work of their youth, because they’ve done nothing memorable, lately–are feeling the shifting sand beneath their feet, and they’re wondering why America can’t simply submit to a fantasy of Limited Dictatorship. It’s so inconvenient for these elites to have to deal with the noise of the bourgeoisie – commoners who presume to opine on anything and who dare to object to the incessant lecturing from their betters.
So, let’s be China “for a little while…” (just long enough to get everything we want accomplished).
Because what they want must, of course, darling, be the very thing that needs doing.
Let’s allow Obama to be dictator “for a couple of years,” because that preening narcissist will certainly give up his dictatorship once the nowhere-utopia of which the left dreams is achieved. Right? Of course.
Ann Althouse writes:
A love of autocracy often lurks beneath the liberal veneer. There’s this idea that the right answers are known and the people are just too deluded and distorted to see what they are and to vote for them.
They propose dictatorship because they are no longer able to get away with their former arguments, which boiled down to: “shut up. You’re stupid. We’re cool.”
They propose dictatorship because they know their lives would be completely unaffected by such a thing. They will still have access to their Park Avenue doctors; they will be exempt from the rationing of medical treatment that the Obama administration now admits will take place. They will continue to be the privileged useful-idiot voices of the politburo. They will still have their limos and their lunches, where they will sit together and bloviate about what must be done for the commoners who cannot be trusted with their own lives.
“And in fact, you are absolutely right…” they will say to each other, and in their insulated little Pauline-Kaelesque worlds, they will not be able to imagine that anyone with any sense would possibly disagree.
Every murderous totalitarian government of the 20th century began with some insulated group of faux-intellectuals congratulating each other on how smart they are, and fantasizing about how, if they could just install a dictatorship-for-a-day, they could right all the wrongs in the world.
It is the ultimate fantasy of the narcissist. And we’ve got whole generations of them, in control of our media and our government, all intent on “remaking America.”
Speaking of the wonderfulness that is China…
Is it wrong of me to laugh at them? Why are they still in our faces, week after week? Why must we even entertain their lunacies?
http://www.firstthings.com/blogs/theanchoress/2010/05/24/the-privileged-call-for-limited-dictatorships/
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