Herein, the glass half-full

Here is a rosy portrait of American life a third through '09, and I want to agree with it. Yet, while agreeing with it, I tend to be bearish on the author's sentiments. From what I see not only in the national media, but in the local media and the unscientific petri dishes like my Facebook feed, I think Capitalism as it can and should be is becoming a lost cause. 

My first concern was how many intelligent, college-educated, high-earners I know who were so enthusiastic about The Dear Leader's campaign, his innauguration, and currently, his regi- er, Administration. If we can't rely on private sector earners to watch out for their own self-interest, then I'd say we're fuct. I know several Obamacons who now regret their brush with dystopic idealism, but that cat's already shat the bed, to mix a few metas and run them round the old oak tree. 

I'm pessimistic about the outlook of the author. I think if people who earn their coin in the free-market find anything - and I mean absoultely anything - appealing about a Statist like Obama, then the wall's already been written upon. My politics are on the margins, this I freely admit. Yet I make no apologies for Capitalism or free-market Conservatism, and to see so many people who make their living from it abandon it for notions of Hope is not only distressing, it is epistemologically catastrophic. Put another way, the narrowing majority of us who actually pay Federal Income Taxes have reaped what we've sown. We've elected a Sexiest Man Alive when a Pragmatically Acceptable Living Person would have sufficed. 

Before getting to the blood, I will admit this: Arthur C. Brooks is dead-on when it comes to defining the "battle" regarding what it is and what it ain't - it's not abortion or gay marriage or immigration, it's about money and what we who've earned it can and cannot do with it; in short, the culture war was, is and remains about the fate of Capitalism. It will perish not with a bang, but with the thousand whimpers of those who thought there was a better way. The bed is made, now we can rot in it. 

Enough of the negativity. Here's what the author had to say in the WSJ:

Still, the tea parties are not based on the cold wonkery of budget data. They are based on an "ethical populism." The protesters are homeowners who didn't walk away from their mortgages, small business owners who don't want corporate welfare and bankers who kept their heads during the frenzy and don't need bailouts. They were the people who were doing the important things right -- and who are now watching elected politicians reward those who did the important things wrong.