The End Of The World. Again.

Conservative people always predict the end of the world as we know it when confronted by reform. They are right. That’s the point of reform. In the last two to three hundred years, during the great progress we have made towards our modern freedoms, every single step has engendered an “end of the world” reaction. from those who have privileges under the old regime.

In the fifty years or so between the late 1700’s and the early 1800’s the world ended countless times. The great specter of the “mob” getting hold of political power so panicked conservatives with its dire world-ending consequences that they resisted any effort to extend voting rights, reform representation, or alter the constitutional privilege accorded property. Those with land – on both sides of the Atlantic – thought themselves the only suitable source of responsible government. After all, they had “skin in the game” because of their land, estates, and rental incomes. American independence did less to alter this establishment – indeed it sought to continue it – than the French revolution that sent shock waves of fear through aristocracies everywhere. And that nasty evolution, conservatives endlessly reminded themselves, led to Napoleon. Enough said. It took Waterloo to put an end to that nonsense, after which there was a determination to resist change with ever greater zeal.

All was for naught however as we know. Change was, and remains, inexorable. The rising middle class wanted representation. Then, so too, did workers. And women. And ex-slaves. And so on.

The dreaded curse of democracy engulfed the landed gentry, diverted legislation towards ameliorating injustices that those newly enfranchised people experienced, and otherwise upset the comfortable apple cart that conservatives treasured so much.

I am thinking about this for two reasons: one is that I just read Antonia Fraser’s book “Perilous Question” about the two tumultuous years ending with the passage of the Great Reform Act of 1832 in Britain. The second is the constant echo of the conservative lament we hear today in modern America.

In both cases the heart of the matter is that the conservatives benefit from the current set-up and thus imagine a zero-sum style game is being played out. If they concede to reform, they imagine they “lose” something. That loss may be simply power, it may be comfort, it may be having to admit that they had an unearned privilege, it may be any number of things. But they imagine a loss. And that loss will end the world. The world as they know it.

Between 1830 and 1832 the conservatives were led by people like the Duke of Wellington and Sir Robert Peel who were horrified at the prospect of sharing power with the under educated and certainly ungenteel regular folk clamoring for representation. The Parliamentary system was notably corrupt, deeply unrepresentative, and woefully in ned of updating. The new industrial cities had no representatives, whereas a few totally empty tracts of land were well represented. Great landowners appointed representatives for districts that they “owned”. Industrialization and rising levels of education had created a class of people for whom this antiquated system was nonsense. European disturbances added to the growing fever in favor of reform. Landowners took to hiring armed guards. Talk was of a choice between reform and revolution.

Ultimately reform passed and the world did end for the aristocrats. They persist to this day, but are nothing compared with what they were. And their leaders were correct: the Great Reform Act was not an end point, but a step along the way to greater democracy. Interestingly the very word democracy was so inflammatory that no reformer dared utter it for fear of bolstering the opposition. Earl Grey, the leader of the reformers, took care to refer to the “people” in order to draw a distinction with the ghastly “mob”. Even the reformers feared the mob. Less so the people.

Nowadays the mob appears as the 47% of Mitt Romney fame. They are the “moochers” who drain the vitality from our economy and harass the “job creators”. Giving the mob more will inevitably destroy our nation’s competitive strength – so the story goes – because it will undermine the toughness and entrepreneurial spirit that has served us so well in the past. Conservatives always conflate their well being with that of the nation. So any loss to them – higher taxes for instance – is, somehow, a loss to the nation. Things will go wrong for all, they argue, if the mob is allowed to get goodies for itself without “earning” those goodies. Usually through self-denial and hard work. Just like the conservatives, plutocrats, and aristocrats “earned” their wealth. Inheritance rarely gets mentioned. I wonder why.

Conservatives never see the right to be free of economic worry, through higher wages or social safety nets for instance, as a right. In contrast the rights of property are sacrosanct in their minds. Privilege will always define its state as somehow naturally ordained, and the desires of the mob as unnatural and even crass.

If only those people would work hard. Like I did.

Those people are poor because they are lazy.

Those people milk the social programs. They cheat. They are a burden on us. They ought to earn a decent living. Like I did.

And so on.

It is a tradition on the right, and amongst conservatives generally, to demean the motives of the poor. So the recent attack in Congress on food stamps by extremist Republicans is justified, by one religious leader, as being morally healthy. Starvation will bolster the moral fortitude of the starving. Poverty will induce hard work. The loss of social support will be offset by an upwelling of individualism. That’s all it takes.

It isn’t surprising to read such comments from conservatives. They are convinced that they, and their privileges, are a result of their own hard work. Luck, especially luck of being born in the right place and at the right time, never enters their minds.

So it was in 1832. So it is now. Plutocrats are plutocrats no matter what era they infest.

The paradox is that the world never actually ends. Despite the constant encroachment by the mob. Despite democracy, our economy has done quite well. Entrepreneurs still flourish. Indeed they still make fortunes. America still innovates quite a bit. It manages somehow. The mob’s rise to power hasn’t undermined everything. All those repeated dire warnings never actually match anything manifest. They are just vapor. They are the angry resentment of a few who are facing changes they don’t like.

On October 1st this year Obamacare kicks into gear. It goes live. After that, every day it survives a few more of the mob will get better, cheaper health care. Eventually enough of the mob will realize that they need to keep Obamacare alive. It’s good for them. Heck, they might even want to reform and improve it. Then what can the conservatives do? Take health care away? raise its cost back up? Defy the mob?

I don’t think so.

No wonder they’re hyperventilating over health care reform. It’s inevitable. Irreversible. And great for the mob.

No wonder they’re predicting the end of the world. Again.