3/8/2018 - Victor Davis Hanson Townhall.com
Not long ago I waited
for a flight to board. The plane took off 45 minutes late. There were only two
attendants to accommodate 11 passengers who had requested wheelchair
assistance.
Such growing efforts to
ensure that the physically challenged can easily fly are certainly welcome. But
when our plane landed -- late and in danger of causing many passengers to miss
their connecting flights -- most of the 11 wheelchair-bound passengers left
their seats unassisted and hurried out. It was almost as if newfound concerns
about making connections had somehow improved their health during the flight.
Two passengers had
boarded with two dogs each. No doubt the airlines' policy of allowing an
occasional dog on a flight is understandable. But now planes are starting to
sound and smell like kennels.
Special blue parking
placards were initially a long-overdue effort to help the disabled. But these
days, the definition of "disabled" has so expanded that a large
percentage of the population can qualify for special parking privileges -- or
cheat in order to qualify.
In California, 26,000
disabled parking placards are currently issued to people over 100 years of age,
even though state records list only about 8,000 living centenarians.
Current crises such as
homelessness and illegal immigration did not start out as much of a public
concern.
Originally, progressive
politicians felt that cities should bend their vagrancy laws a bit to allow
some of the poor to camp on the sidewalks. Bathroom and public health issues
were considered minor, given the relatively small pool of so-called
"street people."
Few objected to illegal
immigration in the 1960s and 1970s. Foreign nationals came unlawfully across
the border in relatively small numbers -- thousands, not millions. Fifty years
ago, America was eager to assimilate even the few arrivals who arrived
illegally. Not now. The melting pot gave way to the identity politics of the
tribe that asks little integration of the newcomers.
Whether out of guilt or
out of fear of being perceived as exclusionary by harder leftists, progressives
cannot, or will not, draw realistic limits to illegal immigration or
homelessness. Yet both cost the law-abiding public billions of dollars in
social services, often at the expense of American poor.
This rapid spread of
progressivism leads to an endless race for absolute equality and an erosion of
prior rules. It also makes once-liberal positions seem passe, recasting those
positions as dangerously reactionary.
In 2008, Barack Obama
ran for president on a number of Bill Clinton's centrist Democratic policies.
Obama opposed gay marriage as contrary to his own Christian beliefs.
Obama supported increased
security along the border with Mexico. As a senator, he had voted for a 2006
measure to create 700 miles of new fencing along the Mexican border.
But by the time Obama
sought re-election in 2012, progressives were routinely labeling Obama's positions
on gay marriage and immigration as homophobic and nativist, respectively.
Twenty years ago, there
was honest debate over global warming. Ten years ago, there was still honest
debate over the effects of human-induced climate change. Five years ago, there
was still honest debate over the cost-benefit analysis of dealing with the
problem.
Not now. Anyone who
doubts that there is an existential man-caused threat to the planet --
requiring the radical and costly reconstruction of the global economy and society
-- is considered a "denier," deserving of professional ostracism or
worse.
In the eternal search
for perfect justice and equality, what starts out as liberal can quickly end up
as progressively absurd. The logic of equality of result, rather than equality
of opportunity, demands that there is always one more group, one more
grievance, one more complaint against the shrinking and overwhelmed majority.
The conservative
ancient Athenian philosopher Plato once made his megaphone Socrates lament that
in ancient Athens' nonstop search for perfect equality, soon even the horses
would have to be accorded the same privileges as humans.
Socrates' fantasy was
an exaggeration intended as a reminder about the craziness of always-creeping
mandated equality. Now it seems not far from the mainstream positions of
animal-rights groups.
If we insist that the
human experience is not tragic and cyclical, but instead must always bend on
some predetermined arc to absolute equality and fairness, then unfortunate
results must follow.
One, what is welcomed
as progressive on Monday is derided as intolerable on Tuesday. The French and
Russian revolutions went through several such cycles. After reformers had
removed absolute rulers, the reformers were soon derided as too timid. Then came
far more radical revolutionaries, who were in turn beheaded or shot as
dangerous counter-revolutionaries.
Second, when rules and
regulations are always watered down as too exclusionary, the descent to no
rules is quite short. The ultimate destination is nihilism and chaos. We see
that now in Venezuela and Cuba -- and increasingly in California as well.
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