Machan's Musings: Lapham's Real Blooper
by Tibor R. Machan
Most folks who have learned about this have been rather restrained, although as far as journalistic ethics are concerned it comes close to matching the recent malpractices at The New Republic and The New York Times. I am talking about the fact that in the current (September) issue of the venerable Harper’s Magazine the editor, Lewis Lapham, has penned a piece reporting about the Republican Convention as if he had been there and it had already happened several days before the event even got under way.
Now, that is a serious "error," if you can call something so obviously off base a mere error — more like a ruse that was simply uncovered because some readers would not allow the editor to get away with it. But there is something else in that piece, and it is actually a far more substantive journalistic malfeasance.
Lapham writes as follows in this piece:
"The speeches in Madison Square Garden affirmed the great truths now routinely preached from the pulpits of Fox News and the Wall Street Journal - government the problem, not the solution; the social contract a dead letter; the free market the answer to every maiden's prayer - and while listening to the hollow rattle of the rhetorical brass and tin, I remembered the question that [Richard] Hofstadter didn't stay to answer. How did a set of ideas both archaic and bizarre make its way into the center ring of the American political circus?"
None of this is being "routinely preached from the pulpits" by Republicans today, none. They have no fondness, as a party, for the free market — it is certainly not their "answer to every maiden’s prayer." Very far from it, what with their advocacy of farm subsidies, price support, and innumerable protectionist measures, not to mention their belief that government ought to get into the prescription drug and related businesses. You name it, and the Republicans have completely embraced the welfare state, as part of their compassionate conservatism.
Nor do Republicans maintain that "government is the problem, not the solution." Both parties now peddle the myth that the king can do no wrong. The set of ideas Lapham calls "archaic and bizarre" are, in fact, no longer embraced by most Republicans — the few exceptions, such as Representative Ron Paul, are completely marginalized by the mainstreamers. And these ideas are actually radical and novel, considering that throughout human history the answer given to social problems has tended to be that government is the solution, never the problem. Just think what the American Founders left behind in Europe. Just think how really "archaic and bizarre" have been the essentially mercantilist ideas guiding the Soviet Union to its and its puppet regimes' ruin!
Fact is, pace Lapham — who aside from being a journalistic charlatan is also an ignoramus about the history of political economy — free markets and the general principles of a bona fide free society are the radical ideas in comparison to the statism that Lapham is promulgating. The notion that individuals have unalienable rights to their lives, liberty, and pursuit of happiness is shockingly radical and novel, considering what views have reigned throughout the globe and from time immemorial — namely, that it is kings, pharaohs, tsars, chieftains, mullahs, and such who ought to be in charge of everyone else. That is what is "archaic and bizarre," while the view that individuals are sovereign and no one is good enough to govern them without their consent is what is brand new ... so new, in fact, that not even Americans have learned to live with it.
The viewpoint that Lapham and his ilk peddle to readers of Harper’s is what’s archaic, in point of fact: people must be ruled by the elite; their problems cannot be entrusted to be solved by them but require an over-class — a bunch of heavy- handed bureaucrats.
Well, at least we know that among those who believe this claptrap there are some who find nothing wrong with practicing the "big lie" theory of leadership, be they politicians or editors of prominent cultural icons such as Harper’s magazine.
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