Conor wrestles with Bastiat Beasts.
Conservatives and libertarians sometimes face a disadvantage in policy
arguments. We're attuned to the indirect effects and unintended
consequences of certain policies, whereas our liberal interlocutors
concern themselves primarily with direct effects. Why is this a
disadvantage? Because the liberal can say, "Look at David from Detroit,
who is going to lose his job, and his home, if GM goes bankrupt."
Whereas the best conservatives and libertarians can do is to say,
"Somewhere in America there is an unknown person who will lose their
job, and their home, if the automakers are bailed out, due to the
inevitable effect of egregious economic inefficiencies that will course
through the financial system."....
The person who is hurt in the
liberal narrative and the one hurt in the conservative narrative are
both real human beings. But the fact that the former is identifiable is
often used by liberals as an emotional bludgeon.
Freddie responds.
I'm still struggling with whether I think the tyranny of the specific hard case makes conservatives systematically worse off in argument; I think it does, but I'm not ready to commit on that yet. Surely on taxes, for example, it works the other way around.
While I'm maundering, I offer you the poem all this wrangling made me think of: The God Who Loves You, by Carl Dennis.
It must be troubling for the god who loves you
To ponder how much happier you'd be today
Had you been able to glimpse your many futures.
It must be painful for him to watch you on Friday evenings
Driving home from the office, content with your week--
Three fine houses sold to deserving families--
Knowing as he does exactly what would have happened
Had you gone to your second choice for college,
Knowing the roommate you'd have been allotted
Whose ardent opinions on painting and music
Would have kindled in you a lifelong passion.
A life thirty points above the life you're living
On any scale of satisfaction. And every point
A thorn in the side of the god who loves you.
You don't want that, a large-souled man like you
Who tries to withhold from your wife the day's disappointments
So she can save her empathy for the children.
And would you want this god to compare your wife
With the woman you were destined to meet on the other campus?
It hurts you to think of him ranking the conversation
You'd have enjoyed over there higher in insight
Than the conversation you're used to.
And think how this loving god would feel
Knowing that the man next in line for your wife
Would have pleased her more than you ever will
Even on your best days, when you really try.
Can you sleep at night believing a god like that
Is pacing his cloudy bedroom, harassed by alternatives
You're spared by ignorance? The difference between what is
And what could have been will remain alive for him
Even after you cease existing, after you catch a chill
Running out in the snow for the morning paper,
Losing eleven years that the god who loves you
Will feel compelled to imagine scene by scene
Unless you come to the rescue by imagining him
No wiser than you are, no god at all, only a friend
No closer than the actual friend you made at college,
The one you haven't written in months. Sit down tonight
And write him about the life you can talk about
With a claim to authority, the life you've witnessed,
Which for all you know is the life you've chosen.
This article available online at:
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2008/11/monday-morning-eye-opener-of-finance-poetry-and-the-unseen/4362/
