The left and the 'better over there' syndrome

Jonah Goldberg:

I have been over into the future, and it works.”

Lincoln Steffens, the muckraking journalist, offered that review of the Soviet Union on his return from a fact-finding mission there. For decades, conservatives invoked that line as proof that a generation of progressives were Soviet fellow-travelers. Conservatives were far from entirely wrong, but the focus on Communism obscured a more enduring dynamic: The Left loves to press its nose against the window on the world and talk about how things are better “over there.”

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The problem with all such efforts is that they look abroad solely for what they wish to see at home. For instance, in an effort to push its green agenda, the Obama administration likes to tout the farsighted vision of Spain, which has invested heavily in windmills and other renewable technology. Never mind that today, Spain’s economic crisis is just slightly less dire than Greece’s and politicized bets on green technology contributed to its problems.

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Tom Friedman has gone so far as to wish America could be “China for a day” and to suggest that its “enlightened” regime is preferable to our own. It’s not that Friedman wants to abolish democracy, jail dissidents, or force abortions. He’s more like a drunk looking for his car keys where the light is good. He sees a nation doing things he thinks America should be doing, but doesn’t look for what he doesn’t want to see: the pollution, the cruelty, the lies and basic evil that are just as central to China’s methods as its “enlightened” investments in this or that.

What unites all of these people is a form of power worship. These foreign governments and their experts have control over citizens and economies — sometimes through democratic consent, sometimes not — that the state doesn’t have in America. Thus proving American backwardness.

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A general fear of markets is one of their problems. They prefer the control freak approach even though historically it does not hold up. The dynamics of freedom in a free market will occasionally make mistakes, especially when the government distorts the market place. That is what happened with the housing market that caused the recent downturn. It is why health care costs or so high. And, the answer is not more control and regulation, but more freedom to innovate and compete.