LIBERAL FREEDOM, CONSERVATIVE FREEDOM

From the American Prospect, an interview with Berkeley linguist George Lakoff:

It is recognized by both sides that wealth and property contributes to freedom. That’s the part that is assumed in both cases. The question is, what is the role of government in all of this? And what is being hidden by the right-wing economic myth? Many things. First, there is what I call the commonwealth principle. From the beginning of America, we called our states commonwealths, because there was a principle that we put together our common wealth for the common good, to build an infrastructure that benefits everybody, benefits each person’s goals. So you built railroads, schools, and libraries, and so on. Nowadays, that has grown enormously. For example, if you want to start a business, you need to get a bank loan. What secures the banks? The common wealth. Taxpayer money. If you want to sell stock in a business, you need to have a stock market, which has to be run honestly and sufficiently according to the Securities and Exchange Commission, which is funded by taxpayer money. It’s run by the government. In the courts, nine-tenths of the publicly supported costs go for business law. If you want to ship goods, you need highways. That’s supported by taxpayer money. If you want to communicate with people, you need the Internet, the satellite system, and other parts of the communications system -- which were put together and maintained by taxpayer money.

The more money you make, the more you’re using that infrastructure. But what’s happened is that the right wing takes the infrastructure for granted, doesn’t know that it’s there. But no one makes it on their own. No one becomes rich by themselves. There is no such thing as a self-made man. If you’ve made a lot of money, you’ve used the common wealth, and you have a duty to replenish it. You have a duty to keep it there so that other people can use it. And that is one of the things not said in the economic liberty myth.

Click here for the rest.

And the wealthy elite, and by that I mean the fabulously wealthy elite, are well aware of this. Bullshit notions about how the government interferes with wealth creation are for politicians, economists, and the non-fabulously rich--on the other hand, these last three groups' embrace of free market mythology is clearly useful in that their relentless propaganda attacks against the welfare state and government regulation make it that much easier for the super-class to do its dirty work. No, the fabulously wealthy elite understand all too well that the goverment serves as their proverbial money tree, a reverse Robin Hood who takes tax money from the poor and relatively poor and lavishes it on the rich. Indeed, former Nixon staffer Kevin Phillips' book Wealth and Democracy convincingly illustrates that, almost without exception, the wealthiest American familes throughout our entire history owe everything to close contacts with the federal government.

Real freedom means taking away all of that ill gotten booty and using it to improve the lives of ordinary Americans. That is, real freedom is liberal freedom, not conservative freedom, which is something of an oxymoron when you get right down to it.

The Lakoff interview is all over the place and, overall, pretty much as interesting and compelling as the excerpt above. Go check it out--I'm starting to think this guy's the next Noam Chomsky.

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