Posted by
KsReaganite on Friday, April 24, 2009 6:26:04 PM
I am more and more convinced that even the most educated liberals, those with professional degrees and doctorates, have a very difficult time squaring their self image of suave cosmopolites with the desire to bash ‘big corporations’. The internal tension is further compounded by an abject refusal to face the realities of contemporary economic and social life whose more unsavory aspects have been a direct result of liberal policies.
Take outsourcing as an example of the liberal disconnect.
On one hand, as supposed broad minded people, liberals are not comfortable being outraged by the fact that outsourcing has resulted in millions of people in India, Vietnam, and China finding good jobs. But that broadminded humanism is often eclipsed by the rage over big businesses making profits because of outsourcing. Lost in the equation is the fact that it is only thanks to outsourcing and freer trade that lower income Americans today can afford the basics of middle class life that were, just a generation ago, restricted to the upper echelons of society (think of consumer electronics made in Malaysia and Taiwan selling for fifty bucks and compare that to what an earlier generation paid for televisions, VCRs, washing machines etc). Evidently, the educated liberal’s love of all humanity is severely limited by his hatred of big business.
Even beyond the disconnect of love and hate, there is sheer liberal stupidity that is very evident in this outsourcing saga. For fifty years liberals have pushed for higher minimum wages, heavier regulations, higher taxes and monopolistic no-standards K-12 education. The latter is all the more galling because, unlike the regulations and taxes, the results of a bad education policy cannot be reversed for decades to come. Public school graduates enter colleges today woefully unfamiliar with basic mathematics and science, convinced that spending hours on the internet in the modern ‘wired’ schools is a substitute for solid learning. Meaningful reforms as basic mathematics, longer school year, rigorous testing are all dismissed with useless epithets like ‘rote memorization’ and ‘some people just don’t do well on tests’ (no kidding..those who don’t learn from teachers who don’t teach generally do rather poorly on tests). Come college time, the lack of real mathematics, testing, and poor science finds kids fearful of engineering, applied sciences, and computer programming, and making a beeline for the arts and humanities. Why are we surprised then that Xerox, Dell, and IBM go to India which is rich in highly trained and rigorously qualified engineers, computer scientists, and programmers who are eager to work hard at lower rates of pay?
Barrier free trade in commodities, services, and intellectual property is a good thing, a principled thing, and the right thing. So is preparing for such competition. Sadly, liberals have it wrong on both counts: they want to continue us being unprepared while trying to condemn the liberty of global commerce. One has to wonder if the liberals are actually the most illiberal species of all.