The Forgotten Man
Date: April 27th, 2010
Category: Ideology of Freedom
By Robert Ringer
Why have the combined mudslinging voices of the media (so called), Congressional Democrats, and the thin-skinned boy wonder who occupies the Oval Office not been able to turn the tide against the tea partiers? If you look at the poll numbers, the answer is obvious: Most Americans are tea partiers.
However, most of them are not yet in enough pain to skip a day at the ball park and stand in a crowd of thousands (sometimes tens of thousands) and listen to tea-party speakers. That’s a shame, but it doesn’t change the fact that they identify with the tea-party movement.
So, what is the common bond with which they identify? Taxes? Healthcare? Financial regulation? I thought about this question as I was rereading Amity Shlaes’ landmark book, The Forgotten Man. In it, she quotes Yale philosopher William Graham Sumner, who, clear back in 1883, explained the crux of the moral problem with progressivism as follows:
”As soon as A observes something which seems to him to be wrong, from which X is suffering, A talks it over with B, and A and B then propose to get a law passed to remedy the evil and help X. Their law always proposes to determine … what A, B, and C shall do for X.”
Shlaes goes on to add: “But what about C? There was nothing wrong with A and B helping X. What was wrong was the law, and the indenturing of C to the cause. C was the forgotten man, the man who paid, ‘the man who never is thought of.”’
In other words, C is the guy who isn’t bothering anyone, but is forced to supply the funds to help the X’s of the world, those whom power holders unilaterally decide have been treated unfairly and must be compensated.
FDR, however, did a switcheroo on Sumner’s point by removing the moniker of “the forgotten man” from C and giving it to X – “the poor man, the old man, labor, or any other recipient of government help.” Very clever … very Obamanistic. As I recall, FDR originally used the phrase the forgotten man to refer to the victims of the dust bowl in the 1930s. Zap! Just like that, Sumner’s forgotten man was transformed into the opposite of what he was meant to be.
Today, I believe it is the tea-party people who represent Sumner’s Forgotten Man. They are taxed and told what they must do and what they must give up in the way of freedom and personal wealth every time a new law is passed. I believe it is this reality that bonds the tea-party people together.
Put another way, it is not healthcare or any other single issue the tea-party people are most angry about. It is all of the issues combined that have to do with impinging on their individual liberty. Above all, they are outraged by the fact that immoral politicians and bureaucrats not only violate their God-given right to live their lives as they please, they dismiss them as “extremists.” Collectively, the tea-party people are today’s Forgotten Man.
In his essay (http://mises.org/books/forgottenman.pdf), Sumner went on to say:
”All history is only one long story to this effect: men have struggled for power over their fellow-men in order that they might win the joys of earth at the expense of others and might shift the burdens of life from their own shoulders upon those of others. It is true that, until this time, the proletariat, the mass of mankind, have rarely had the power and they have not made such a record as kings and nobles and priests have made of the abuses they would perpetrate against their fellow-men when they could and dared.
”But what folly it is to think that vice and passion are limited by classes, that liberty consists only in taking power away from nobles and priests and giving it to artisans and peasants and that these latter will never abuse it! They will abuse it just as all others have done unless they are put under checks and guarantees, and there can be no civil liberty anywhere unless rights are guaranteed against all abuses, as well from proletarians as from generals, aristocrats, and ecclesiastics.”
Sumner was a man of great insight. He saw the absurdity of assuming that the poor man is morally superior to the rich man. This is where I believe that sincere revolutionaries go wrong. While their initial intentions (to help “the poor”) may, at least in their own minds, be well-meant, they begin with a false premise (that the misfortunes of those at the bottom of the economic ladder are a result of the evil actions of those who are more successful) and, from there, leap from one false conclusion to another.
Which is why politicians who pose as conservatives to get elected so often take the Mush McCain-Lindsey Graham-Charlie Crist route and continually rush to the aid of their progressive Democratic pals. I believe that these philosophically lost souls do the bidding of the intimidating left because they have never given any serious thought to the possibility that the very premise of progressivism is morally wrong.
As a result, they have no feeling for the (perceived) rich man. In plotting their do-gooder schemes, he is easy to forget. They see nothing whatsoever wrong with society’s sacrificing his liberty for the “public good.” Bring out the guillotine! As Montaigne said, “Men are most apt to believe what they least understand.”
What gave birth to the tea parties is that the Forgotten Man syndrome is like a metastasizing disease. As politicians long ago realized, there aren’t enough rich people to support all of the X’s. As the number of X’s (i.e., those who live off the surpluses of others) increases, a lot of A’s and B’s must, by necessity, be reclassified as C’s. And that is when they become candidates for joining the tea-party movement.
Put simply: When A’s and B’s are transformed into C’s, they mysteriously lose their enthusiasm for new laws to help out X. Put even more simply, they suddenly realize that they are now the Forgotten Man. And that realization is what automatically qualifies them as tea-party people. No recruitment necessary, thank you.
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April 27th, 2010 at 11:44 am
Many people will be offended that I even dare to express a thought that recently passed through my mind in thinking about the current state of affairs, but if we really wish to solve any problem, we cannot shut our eyes to anything which might bear on our understanding what is involved.
The question which went through my mind was this: “What if the Founding Fathers were either wrong, or were deceiving those who they led?”
This question raises other, such as: Are the premises on which the nation was founded as rock-solid as Americans would like to think?
I’m not trying to create doubt, but rather to remove it. I believe we must think for ourselves and that includes examining even our most fundamental beliefs to think them through and arrive at our own conclusion based on our own analysis.
I don’t think most people will ever do this and this is why most revolutionary events are likely to be explosive reactions to unbearable conditions which pass a critical point.
April 27th, 2010 at 12:23 pm
Robert, I think that the one defining characteristic of people who would wish to be in this now coalescing Tea Party is that many people understand and realize that neither the Democrat nor the Republican parties are no longer representing the majority of average hard working Americans.
As a result, what those people want in essence is to vote, instead of forfeiting by not voting, but still have the ability and right to vote “NONE OF THE ABOVE!” when presented with the two unacceptable choices again and again and again every election.
The stranglehold that these two corrupted political parties have on our voting options is deplorable.
If people truly want the gridlock broken in Washington where the current oligarchy solutions being offered just create more loss of liberty,personal autonomy, and increasing impoverishment of the real working class, we must have viable voting options come this next election and start democratically removing the entrenched poor leadership structure from our governing positions.
April 27th, 2010 at 1:19 pm
I fondly remember how Milton Friedman used the very same analogy(persons A,B,C and X) to make similar points regarding human nature, government, and the economy. I can only add that that along with persons A,B,C, and X that there is also a person called F.
Person F is a power and/or money loving sociopath who often cloaks himself as a do gooder/community organizer/leader. Person F loves being at the top of the food chain and feeding off of persons A,B, C, and X.
In an all too common scenario, person A and B get together for the purpose of doing good to person X. This is where person F enters the picture. Person F is more than happy to be the facilitator of A&B’s wishes, if A and B help F get elected. Person F fully understands the road to wealth and power and how the game is played and the final outcome. Once elected, person F’s main goal in life becomes personal gain.
Put differently: Dr. Friedman succinctly described how the game is played and replayed: “Person A decides what person B shall give to person C, and person A collects a commission.”
April 27th, 2010 at 4:25 pm
Simply count in the media in the last two weeks how many times Mr Obama himself has used the words “FAT CATS” to describe the haves of the world, who must be put to task with new Laws – Banking and financial reform. And the calls by the major news media and Demogogic Party illiterati for BiPartisanship. I can see it now. They do not want opposition. They want a bipartisan hanging Demogogs and Republicrats together ridding the world of unscrupulous Fat Cat Bankers.
I put that together with the Union Protest last week in front of our local Mall. The Union contractor lost a construction bid to a non union contractor. They placed a 12 foot high Blow Up Balloon of a Fat Cat – with a huge dimond ring and suspenders – in protest of the Mall management who awarded the bid to the lowest bidder. It is competition labor-brothers.
If that is the attitude – and childish belief – of the proletariat, we are all dooomed.
April 27th, 2010 at 5:16 pm
[...] an article of clear perception, Robert Ringer explains the role of ill-fated The Forgotten Man. Fortunately, a new political movement quite possibly portends a reawakening for our “Forgotten [...]
April 27th, 2010 at 6:35 pm
Not sure that is is the A and B’s that are moving into the Tea Party because their quantity is relatively small. I believe it is the masses of us C’s that are also being taxed and yet refuse to be the X’s living on the entitlements.
April 29th, 2010 at 8:41 am
Brilliant analysis! This mechanism can be observed in any East European communist satellite country.
The only difference is that we (I came from there) did not have the FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION and MEANS OF COMMUNICATION as we here still do.
As V.I. LENIN said : “Communism is equal of electrification of the country and CONTROL OF THE MASS MEDIA”
We have the first one.They still need work on the second one.