Comments on: I was a WSJ wage slave!

By: Stan

Stan — Wed, 28 Jun 2006 17:26:14 +0000

A curious tangent indeed. I’m wondering if anyone viewing these lines recalls the furor, a decade or two back, when a senior writer at WSJ left for a job in academe and sent out a brief advisory to friends and colleagues (‘free at last’ etc.). He also came
out of the closet as a socialist or some other variety of infidel (as Bartley would view it); and the howls of WSJ management that a staffer had done superb work for years without their suspecting his personal political deviationism. The reaction was revelatory of their psychology. Ran across this in Monthly Review, believe the reporter’s name was Kent McDougal [sp?].

By: Barry

Barry — Wed, 28 Jun 2006 12:49:00 +0000

What I find interesting is that Bartley was one of the prominent people in the right-wing movement in the USA, during the last quarter of the 20th century. Using his platform of the WSJ, he was able to inject the fraud of ‘supply-side economics’ into the national consciousness. We’re still paying for the last binge, during the Reagan era; our children and us will be paying for the Bush fraud until the day that we die. He helped cut taxes on the rich, and spending on the poor; he enabled mass murder done by the USA.

In short, the world is the worse for him having lived, and the better for him having died.

But nobody mentions that – this thread went off on an odd tangent.

By: Brendan

Brendan — Wed, 28 Jun 2006 08:14:18 +0000

‘Brenden,
I beg you not to.’

Sorry mate, one vote ain’t cutting it. I was confidentally expecting hundreds of anguished emails begging me not to write it (or anything else for that matter). And I won’t stop until I get them, I tell you.

By: JR

JR — Wed, 28 Jun 2006 01:20:28 +0000

The crusading abolitionist and advocate of women’s suffrage, Henry Ward Beecher, may have said that, but he also said:

“A man’s ledger does not tell what he is, or what he is worth. Count what is in man, not what is on him, if you would know what he is worth—whether rich or poor.”

“You cannot sift out the poor from the community. The poor are indispensable to the rich.”

“That is true culture which helps us to work for the social betterment of all.”

By: derrida derider

derrida derider — Wed, 28 Jun 2006 00:40:38 +0000

With many Americans it’s a little more complex than just Protestantism. It’s about Calvinism – some are predestined to be damned and some predestined to be the elect, but because the universe is just each group must have deserved damnation or election. Prosperity is a sign, though not a cause, of election. A bit different from the Lutheran and Episcopalian strain of Protestantism (with its emphasis on free will because we deserve our goods through our actions) that Max Weber wrote about. Both types, though, tend to a strong work ethic – “labore est orare”.

It’s quite amazing how the foundation of a nation affects its ethos – we in Australia have the convict’s simultaneous contempt for and subservience to authority, while the Yanks are bloody puritans.

By: tom bach

tom bach — Tue, 27 Jun 2006 22:56:14 +0000

Brenden,
I beg you not to.

By: james

james — Tue, 27 Jun 2006 22:46:40 +0000

Is it perhaps that the writer was comparing Poor in the US to the world has a whole? The fact that a very poor person in the US can occasionaly eat chicken or beef versus starving to death kind of makes world comparisons strange. Or it could be that the guy was a jerk.

By: minerva

minerva — Tue, 27 Jun 2006 22:42:53 +0000

Maybe Adam was referring to the way Job’s friends came around and said: “Oh, c’mon Job. COME ON. You must have done SOMETHING. All wealth wiped out? Whole family dead? Covered in boils? That just doesn’t happen for no reason at all.”

I don’t think God just said “shut the fuck up Job.” I think he said something more like: “I am super powerful. Are you? Well, are you? Didn’t think so.”

By: Adam Kotsko

Adam Kotsko — Tue, 27 Jun 2006 22:32:46 +0000

yamb, I believe that in Internet parlance I “pwned” you.

By: yamb

yamb — Tue, 27 Jun 2006 19:23:26 +0000

Adam—the point of the book of Job is that you can do everything right and STILL lose it all/be punished/be unlucky. It’s clear that Job did not “deserve” the misfortune visited on him.

By: Adam Kotsko

Adam Kotsko — Tue, 27 Jun 2006 19:22:13 +0000

Matt, I meant to say that that is the opinion held by Job’s friends (i.e., “people get what they deserve, so Job must have sinned”), not that it is the message of the book.

By: Don McArthur

Don McArthur — Tue, 27 Jun 2006 18:47:37 +0000

Thanks for the reminder. I once worked with a very affluent psychiatrist who came from a background of New England privilege, and had been educated at Yale and Dartmouth. I was discussing a woman who was severely depressed for a variety of reasons, one of which was that she had no money. The Doc looked me in the eye and in an Old Testament voice said, “You can’t have NO money.”

By: Matt

Matt — Tue, 27 Jun 2006 17:58:50 +0000

Who got what they deserved in Job? It’s been a long time since I’ve read it (10 years, maybe) but it seemed like the moral of that story was that God could and would do whatever he wanted for no good reason at all, and if you asked why it happend to you even though you were a good and faithful servent the answer was “shut the fuck up, Job.” I’d always taken the moral to be that what you get has nothing to do with what you deserve. How do you read it differently, Adam? (I’m not saying it can’t be read that way, just that it seems funny to me.)

By: Brendan

Brendan — Tue, 27 Jun 2006 16:46:24 +0000

‘The idea that people generally get what they deserve has existed for far longer than any kind of Protestantism—for instance, it can be found in the book of Job, which predates Luther and Calvin by millenia.’

Yet again, the point of Henry’s post was not that Bartley believed that ‘people get what they deserve’. On the contrary, as the post makes clear, Bartley believed that there WERE no poor people in the US. Instead the point of Henry’s post was that Bartley’s worldview was an overarching and coherent one that linked his belief in cutting taxes, stronger ‘defence’ spending, and dislike of ‘sexual deviance’ (e.g. Robert Mapplethorpe) and that this worldview is closest to that stated by Henry Ward Beecher. I don’t mind you disagreeing with me, but at least read the original post with which I was agreeing. Straw man argumentation etc. The reason why the US (more than say, Britain) should be prone to this kind of thinking should be self-evident: think of who were amongst the first settlers. You might also want to look up the phrase ‘shining city on the hill’, see by whom it was first used, to what it referred, and who has used the phrase since, and in what contexts. You might also find this article interesting.

By: Brendan

Brendan — Tue, 27 Jun 2006 16:35:39 +0000

’ Walter Rauschenbusch was a “radical Protestant.” So was Martin Luther King.’

I’m well aware of that. But the fact that in the ‘sixties the ‘radical right’ (i.e. Ku Klux Klan etc.) and at least some elements of the ‘left’ (Martin Luther King) were BOTH radical Protestants merely emphasises the importance of radical Protestantism to understanding the American political landscape. Obviously, like any religion, there are ‘left wing’ and ‘right wing’ elements which might be drawn out by different people at different times.

Your point about Bartley may or may not be right, but it clearly was not the point of Henry’s post which was that Bartley’s social views and his economic views had a ‘root cause’ which was his view of ‘human beings (being) in a sinful state of filth and degradation’ (emphasis added) which is not a secular viewpoint. He also wanted to point out the similarity between Bartley’s views and the preacher Henry Ward Beecher.