Author Archives: Ron Lipsman

Hesitatingly, Disappointedly and Agonizingly…for Mitt

Conservatives were greatly encouraged by the results of the 2010 national elections. Furthermore, they were excited about the Republicans completing the sweep in 2012 by taking the Senate and the White House. The chance to not only defeat the current crop of ultra-liberal Democrats leading those two institutions, but to finally reverse a century-long slide into statism, socialism and amoral secularism; that worthy goal seemed within reach.

Therefore, intense interest arose among conservatives in the Republican presidential nomination process that began last summer. It was disappointing when those most qualified to lead the envisioned counter-revolution chose not to participate. Jim DeMint, Mike Pence, John Bolton and Paul Ryan were among them. But there still appeared to be highly qualified individuals who might be capable of leading a restoration of America back to its founding principles of individual liberty, free markets, limited government and American exceptionalism. Alas, today, conservatives are not so sanguine about the prospect.

Among the declared candidates, there were two that conservatives eyed with suspicion – Ron Paul and Mitt Romney. While the fiscal aspects of Paul’s libertarian philosophy are appealing, his isolationist tendencies and laissez-faire moral stances put him outside the pale. Besides, he is 75 years old with an annoying hint of anti-Israel bias in his background. As for the other non-starter, Mitt Romney, he is guiltily of serial flip-flopping on critical issues; and his promotion of Romneycare disqualified him as it would fatally compromise his ability to challenge Obamacare. While there is much to admire in his book, No Apology, it is hard to know which parts were written with conviction and which in order to kowtow to the conservative base whose votes he would need for the nomination.

Thus began a depressing winnowing of the remaining pretenders in the field. The first contender out of the gate was Tim Pawlenty. The convictions outlined in his book, Courage to Stand, seem to be genuine. But he behaved as if his primary method of convincing voters of his qualifications was to eviscerate Michelle Bachmann. He came across as petty and mean-spirited. Adios Tim.

Then it was natural to look more closely at Ms. Bachmann. But she didn’t look so good: no executive experience (we already have that with Obama), reputation as a nasty person, that strange ‘wild deer in the headlights’ glare in her eyes, singing “Barack Obama will be a one-term president” as if it was a sorority pledge chant or the mantra of a hypnotized cult member. So long Michelle.

Then Herman Cain hurtled to the head of the class. But not for long. His reply to every question was “9-9-9,” another mindless chant that represented giving the feds a new taxing authority. Bad idea! Anyway, his fiery destruction at the hands of numerous women he supposedly groped occurred before conservatives could meaningfully assess his candidacy. Ciao Herman.

Ah but here comes Rick Perry to the rescue. Now, his book, Fed Up, is fantastic – an extremely well articulated presentation of conservative values and philosophy of government, expressed with fervor and definitely conviction. But oops… Rick can’t seem to remember anything beside his name and that he is from Texas. In one breathtakingly bad performance after another, he conveys that he is not serious, is unprepared and probably didn’t write his own book. Hit the road, Rick.

Next to surge forward is Newt Gingrich. He does it solely on the basis of his debate performances. They are sterling. He excoriates the liberal moderators, runs rings around his competitors, never says “uh,” has an outstanding command of the issues and strikes a resoundingly conservative tone. Is Newt the man? His history, unfortunately, says no. Indeed he has flip-flopped as much as Romney – e.g., the commercial with Nancy Pelosi highlights his prior incorrect stance on global warming. Actually, there are a host of issues on which Newt has been all over the map: illegal immigration, the individual health mandate, government lobbying. However, the most damning feature of Newt’s persona is illustrated by his spontaneous outburst eviscerating Paul Ryan’s eminently reasonable and conservative approach to fixing the federal entitlement programs as “right-wing social engineering.” Absolutely unforgiveable! Newt is a brilliant idea man. But he is severely undisciplined, tempestuous, unpredictable, quick to anger, and perhaps borderline unstable. In the end, the thought of his finger on the nuclear trigger is more than a little unsettling. Sayonara Newt.

Of course there were the also rans like Gary Johnson and Jon Huntsman. They don’t even merit a wave goodbye.

So where does that leave us? Aside from the afore-mentioned Paul and Romney, only Rick Santorum remains. Puleez! A nice family man, good looking, basically conservative. But where is the stature: no executive experience, dramatically inferior in gravitas to a host of potential candidates who did not enter the race, and what exactly has he been doing in the five plus years since he got creamed running for reelection to his Pennsylvania Senate seat? Oh and there are also some serious black marks against his conservative credentials earned during his Senate stint. Arrivederci Rick.

And then there were none! Thus one comes hesitatingly, disappointedly and agonizingly to the conclusion that Romney is the survivor to support for the nomination. Actually, lately he has shown a toughness that we had had not seen previously and which he will need to defeat Obama. Of course most of it has been expressed in scurrilous attacks on Newt – who then quickly abrogated his own pledge to run a positive campaign and struck back. In fact, the battle between the remaining four contestants for the nomination has turned nasty, vindictive and exasperating. Many conservatives have lost interest in the debates as each of the surviving flawed candidates simply provides ammunition for Obama’s attack machine that will be aimed at the eventual nominee.

The point is: whoever is the ultimate nominee among the remaining four, even if he wins in the fall, that person will NOT lead the counter-revolution conservatives so desperately seek. But the potential damage to our country from a second Obama term is incalculable. Thus the prime goal must be to defeat Obama. Given the choices, Romney seems to have the best chance to do so. Perhaps we can tread water with Romney while a true Reagan successor emerges further down the pike. So, in furtherance of that goal, with hesitation, disappointment and agony at how the process has unfolded, this conservative will reluctantly and unenthusiastically go with Romney.
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This article also appeared in The American Thinker at:

Two Views of America’s Predicament

Those who harbor misgivings about the nation’s predicament, which is the result of leftist policies, do so from two completely different philosophical perspectives, with two radically different understandings of the fundamental causes of the predicament and two mutually exclusive recipes for redressing them. No, I am not talking about the left-right divide in America, but instead a less well understood schism found in the center-right.

National polls reveal that a substantial majority of Americans believe the country is “headed in the wrong direction.” Consumer confidence measurements persist at low levels. The electorate oscillates wildly back and forth between left and right and the public holds our national leaders in astonishingly low esteem. Movements like the TEA Party on the right and Occupy Wall Street on the left suggest that the discontent is broad as well as deep. Furthermore, it is common to hear the opinion that this current trough in American self-confidence is unlike previous instances of national disquiet in that Americans have always believed that we could overcome our problems and maintain our status as the strongest, freest and most prosperous nation on Earth – whereas this time many Americans fear that if we don’t right the ship very soon, the nation is doomed to permanently lose its strength, freedom and prosperity.

While this feeling is widespread, I will argue here that those who harbor it do so from two completely different philosophical perspectives, with two radically different understandings of the fundamental causes of our predicament and two mutually exclusive recipes for redressing them. No, I am not talking about the left-right divide in America, but instead a less well understood schism found in the center-right.

Most studies of political/cultural/social philosophy in the United States divide the population into three broad categories: (i) those on the left, aka liberals or progressives; (ii) the cohort on the right, aka conservatives (usually including libertarians, although that inclusion is somewhat problematic); and (iii) the center consisting of moderates or independents. I have argued recently (in this blog) that, since the respective visions for America in the 21st century promulgated by the left and right are so radically at odds with each other, those in the middle are straddling an untenable fence. The two visions are so irreconcilable that there is no viable middle ground between them and any attempt to maintain such a position is tantamount to a “non-Solomonic splitting of the baby.” Nevertheless, the middle exists and, if anything, seems to be growing as more and more voters identify themselves as Independents, while fewer and fewer subscribe to one of the labels Republican or Democrat.

I have also argued (in the previously referenced post, and in another, longer piece in this journal) that, for decades, the leftist vision has been conquering the nation while support for rightist ideas atrophies. Witness:

  • The federal government has grown to gargantuan proportions; the federal budget now consumes a quarter of GDP (historically, it’s rarely exceeded 18-19%); the federal deficit has ballooned to $15 trillion – roughly equal to GDP, and continues to grow at an alarming rate that foreshadows a cataclysmic debt crisis; and federal regulations, which have exploded in number, complexity and scale, are choking the life out of businesses, large and small.
  • The military is shrinking and our standing in the world is in decline. In a misguided effort to replace hard power by soft power, we coddle dictators and abuse our allies.
  • Our culture is saturated with pornography, banality and immorality; the marriage rate is down; the out-of-wedlock birthrate is skyrocketing; drug use is mushrooming; and traditional values are threatened.
  • Our leaders are obsessed with peripheral and specious issues like climate change, diversity and gay rights, but they ignore critical problems like illegal immigration, a failed educational system and anti-Christian bias.
  • Our economy is beset by permanent slow growth and chronic high unemployment.

Now amazingly, the massive discontent that we see on the left – typified by the Occupy Wall Street movement – expresses itself by asserting that we have not pursued strongly enough the leftist policies that are already subverting America. In particular, they say: we have not closed Guantanamo; same sex marriage is not universal; unions are not sufficiently powerful or ubiquitous; Roe v. Wade is under assault; the internet is not yet regulated; fossil fuels have not been banned; the pledge of allegiance still contains the phrase “under God”; 10-15 million illegal aliens have not been legalized; corporate executives make too much money; and, horror of horrors, Israel still exists. To me, these are the rants of a deranged bus driver who is guiding his vehicle straight toward the edge of a precipice over which he will plunge if he doesn’t stop, but his only concern is that the speed of his vehicle is not sufficiently high. I discount the leftist view of America’s predicament – the success of the left is precisely America’s predicament.

It is the folks in the center and on the right who have a better appreciation for how the developments of the last 80 years have placed our nation in mortal danger. But within that broad group – although there is wide agreement that the country has slipped off the tracks and is in danger of an existential calamity – those who recognize the danger manifest two fundamentally different ways of understanding the predicament.

One group, with representatives largely from the center, but many also from the right, sees the matter in purely a technical way. They believe: the government spends too much – it must spend less; there is enormous waste, fraud and mismanagement in the government – it must be run more efficiently and transparently; climate change is a diversion, if not a hoax – the government must focus on more serious problems that we face like energy shortages; peripheral issues and groups (gays, illegal aliens, Muslim minorities) receive too much attention – we must do a better job of addressing mainstream concerns; we don’t save enough, don’t drive carefully enough, take too many drugs and eat too much – we need to have our schools focus on teaching our children better habits; we shouldn’t coddle our enemies abroad – we must engage our allies more effectively in an effort to isolate our enemies more cleverly; our system of federal taxation/regulation is too onerous – we have to streamline it.

In short, this group does not see that the fundamental character of America has been altered. Instead they see too many extreme and ineffective policies – the answer to which is not to go to opposite extremes, but instead to find pragmatic solutions by careful assessment, more prudent management, and more skillful political actions by the government. With the exception of Ronald Reagan, the Republican Party – since Coolidge – has been nominating people with such an outlook as its candidate for President of the United States. Some have won, some haven’t. But which of those who won has made the slightest progress in reversing America’s slide toward socialism? And now that we are on the verge of being destroyed by our problems, the GOP is poised to nominate yet another one.

The other group, comprising mainly those on the right, but also some centrists, sees the issue not as one of poor management, but rather rooted in the political/philosophical changes that have occurred in the country. They believe that the US has strayed in a major way from the principles of its founding documents, that we are barely a constitutional republic under the rule of law, and scarcely dedicated to maximizing individual liberty, adhering to free market capitalism, pursuing the moral values that animated our forefathers. Instead we have morphed into a Euro welfare state, a soft tyranny in which a bloated government usurps our God-given rights, subverts our free market system, and imposes a secular humanist agenda on us – and especially on our children in government-run schools. The solution is not better management of the government, but a return of the country to the founding principles that accounted for our strength, freedom and prosperity. In order to do so, we need not only a president who understands our predicament in this way, but also legislators and jurists, religious leaders and media moguls, educators and generals. Only then will we restore America to its constitutional moorings and resolve our current predicament.
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This article also appeared in The Intellectual Conservative at:

Obama’s Greenness Connotes Envy, not Environmentalism

Now we know that Mitt Romney earns more than $20 million per year, out of which he “contributes” roughly equal amounts to Uncle Sam and to charity. Different folks react to that news in different ways, but I believe it is accurate to say that the percentage of the population that wouldn‘t trade their AGI for Mitt’s is mighty small.

Of course, it doesn’t go unnoticed that the word “earns” in the opening sentence is misleading. Mitt doesn’t have a job. He no longer runs a company or a State as he once did and as he is so fond of reminding us. He gets no paycheck for any services or labor rendered. No, virtually all of his income derives from capital gains – that is, from selling stocks that he acquired at an original cost that was a tiny fraction of their current worth. He acquired those equities early in his career as a private equity manager, or said otherwise, a “venture capitalist” according to his admirers, or a “vulture capitalist” according to his detractors. Either way, no one is asserting that he did anything illegal. But what our dear President does assert is that it is not “fair.”

Of course “fair” is never defined. It cannot be defined in an objective fashion. What is fair to me might not be to you, and vice versa. But that gives no pause to our leftist-minded President. In his patented arrogant style, even though he never articulates a precise concept of fairness – because it is impossible to do so, he, like Justice Stewart understands pornography, knows it when he sees it. In his mind, it does not matter that Romney amassed his fortune by playing within the legal boundaries of American free enterprise. It does not matter that the Koch brothers or the Waltons or the Mars family did likewise – the fact that they have so much money and that the average bloke in America has only a mere pittance by comparison is manifestly, blatantly, irrefutably UNFAIR. In fact, Obama is a total hypocrite as he is not bothered by the great wealth of Warren Buffett, Bill Gates, George Soros or Jeffrey Immelt – because they have the right attitude about what to do with their fortunes.

Obama believes it is the duty of the government to confiscate what he sees as excess wealth accumulated by those who have been successful – and then to deliver it to those less fortunate, but supposedly just as deserving. He is jealous and disparaging of those who succeed, especially as entrepreneurs. It offends his sense of fairness that some succeed, some fail, and too often spectacularly so. The green goo that courses through his veins has far less to do with his pathetically perverse devotion to environmentally-favored industries than it does to the envy and fury he feels toward those who succeed in our capitalistic system.

Our Founders set up a system that was designed to protect individual liberty by establishing a transparent rule of law, which gave everyone the equal opportunity to succeed and prosper. Their intention was that the government would establish and enforce the rules that allowed all to compete legally, equally and in a predictable environment. They understood that some would do better than others. But it was clear to them, if not to Obama, that the resulting inequitable outcomes were a small price to pay for ensuring that all enjoy the freedom to pursue their own destiny.

Obama and his leftist minions absolutely disagree. He sees unequal outcomes as “unfair,” and he is determined to revise the system so that government will have the power to equalize inequities. He is not the first world leader to feel this way. An entire nation, called the Soviet Union, was devoted to the concept for 70 years. We all know the outcome of that experiment. Obama has not learned the proper lesson. We are all suffering because he is such a poor student of history.
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This post also appeared in The American Thinker at:

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2012/01/obamas_greenness_connotes_envy_not_environmentalism.html

Law Schools Run Amok

A review of Schools for Misrule: Legal Academia and Overlawyered America by Walter Olson

I have argued in this blog that the progressive movement in America achieved success by following the game plan of the Italian philosopher Antonio Gramsci, who advocated: capture the culture, the politics will follow. The Left implemented Gramsci’s scheme by slowly – over several generations – gaining control of virtually all the opinion-molding organs of American society. These included: the media, academia, the K-12 educational establishment, foundations, libraries, unions, government bureaucracies, seminaries, a host of NGOs, the upper echelons of large corporations and – the one germane to this review – the elite law schools. With these institutions firmly, if not overwhelmingly, under the sway of statist thought and action, it is not surprising that America’s culture and politics have drifted inexorably left in the last half century.[1] In Schools for Misrule, Walter Olson examines the leftward march of the nation’s prestigious law schools and the attendant deleterious effects on American society.

I will discuss the content of the book momentarily. But first I wish to highlight a claim made, albeit implicitly, by Olson in the book. Namely, of all the institutions that succumbed to leftist thought during the twentieth century, it was the surrender of the elite law schools that did the most damage to society. It is my goal to assess the worthiness of that assertion, and I encourage the reader to ponder the matter as I describe the salient features of Olson’s penetrating study.

Olson’s work is comprehensive and detailed. He traces, in mostly a chronological fashion, how progressive philosophy and leftist ideology at first seeped into and eventually flooded the halls of American law schools. He begins by pointing out that law schools became well established on American campuses precisely during the so-called Progressive Era, 1890-1914. The law schools’ newfound prominence dovetailed nicely with the advent of professional licensure in America. By that I mean the process by which the heretofore free-for-all entry of individuals into numerous professions and vocations began to be subject to government (or government-sanctioned) certification. This became common a century ago in various American businesses and industries – from meat slaughtering to pharmacy, from barbering to chauffeuring, from teaching to medicine. Well, there was no reason to exempt lawyering from the process. And so the country’s law schools became the gatekeepers for the nation’s legal profession. Thus the faculty at the nation’s law schools – especially, those of the elite variety – obtained control over the training and philosophical outlook of the nation’s lawyers. Since we are a country under the rule of law, those who control the lawyers thereby control the law and thus the country to a great extent.

Having established the seminal power of the legal academy, Olson then traces the history of American law schools via two series of developments: first, various quantum leaps at the schools themselves in the nature of their curricula and structure; and second, how the former resulted in many radical legal ploys that shook the nation. Within the first of these, perhaps the most striking was in the 1950s when Yale Law School announced that it would no longer require its students to take a course in Property. Now it is widely acknowledged that when Jefferson enunciated our natural rights to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” it was well understood that happiness was to include, if not be a euphemism for “property.” The right to property is sacred in American law. Yale’s dropping it from its curriculum sent a powerful signal of the leftward drift of legal academia.

Some of the other major changes in law school curricula/structure that Olson discusses include: the almost obsessive focus on torts pioneered by William Prosser, the long-time Berkeley law dean; the compulsive emphasis on the training of law school students to be litigators rather than people steeped in a knowledge of the law who could put that knowledge to use in many different ways; the setting up of special “centers” in the schools, about the activities of which it would be difficult to distinguish from those of organized lobbying entities; and among these, law clinics – generously supported by liberal foundations – pursuing what is commonly called public interest law, thereby converting an academic enterprise into a hyper-political, “community organizing” type of operation. Naturally, Olson views all of this through the lens of a severe critic of the nation’s legal academy.

The above developments in law school curricula and structure heralded the belief – by those who ran the show – that ultimate legal authority should be vested in the hands of the judiciary, not the legislature – and that when necessary, law should be executed from the bench rather than from the White House or Governors’ mansions. This led to the birth of all manner of specious legal doctrines, causes, and actions. Olson discusses: the explosion in class action law suits; the emphasis on product liability; advocacy research by law school faculty; promotion of welfare; reparations for blacks…er, that is, African-Americans; Indian…er, that is, native American sovereignty; the rights of the poor; environmental rights; animal rights; endangered species; homeless advocacy; rule by injunction; and subservience of US law to international law. In every one of these quests, the overwhelming slant was to the left. Moreover, while pursuing these radical causes, our law schools trained legions of lawyers who went on to be trial lawyers, public defenders prosecutors, judges, Congressional aides – and of course Congressman if not presidents. These constituted a broad cadre of shock troops for the left who are thoroughly steeped in progressive ideology, who have no exposure to any other thought processes, who have no idea how programmed they are, who inflict their opinions on a cowed American public and who perpetuate their ideas and replicate themselves continually.

Olson’s style is actually quite engaging. Although he treats deadly serious issues with the earnestness that they deserve, he manages to maintain an understated, even restrained tone, which if anything makes his arguments more dramatic. Here is a typical example of his ability to gently, if sarcastically, find a silver lining behind a nasty cloud.

Are students being indoctrinated? (Sorry ‘ensured’ of having a ‘commitment to social justice’ fully ‘instilled’ in them…or encouraged to ‘struggle’ with implications of ‘lawyering within an unjust system.’) Well, the subject of indoctrination in the modern law school turns out to have generated a bit of an academic literature itself. Unfortunately, the theme of the literature is that schools are falling down on the duty to indoctrinate and need to be doing a much better job of it. The overall law school experience, complains one report, tends ‘to undermine student activism.’ For one thing, the work demands on students are so extreme that little time is left for marches and rallies. But the problems go further. You’re ‘taught to see that there are two equal sides of any issue,’ as a student complains in one widely cited volume. ‘Two equal sides’ is assuredly a misstatement; no law professor ever would or has presented both sides of all issues as truly equal. But it captures a kernel of truth about standard law training, which is that it conveys the skill of looking for ways in which the other guy – even a polluter, harasser or bigot – might have something of a case. In being forced to rationalize positions directly opposed to their own, one book laments, ‘most altruistic-oriented students are confronted with a perspective that seriously upsets their view of justice.’

Finally, why do I assert that Olson implicitly indicts the law schools as the worst malefactors in the liberal conquest of America? Primarily because of these passages in the final chapter of the book, entitled Conclusions:

“Irving Kristol famously discerned in modern American society the emergence of a new class, its standing founded more on educational achievement and cultural fluency than on older forms of wealth or social position, its specialty the manipulation of ideas and symbols rather than physical labor or the ownership of the means of production. Estranged from and suspicious of the world of property and business, the new class (Kristol argued) is instead friendly toward the continued expansion of governmental activity, in part because it is itself relatively successful in influencing the actions of government. In particular, it is skilled in argument, and it often achieves (whether in its voting patterns or in its likes and dislikes generally) a kind of class solidarity at least as cohesive and impressive as that of, say, business managers or factory workers.

According to Kristol and others who took up his analysis, the characteristic redoubts of the new class include the universities, journalism, and the media, the public sector itself, and the professions, especially law. But has ever an institution been developed that is as powerful an engine of the new class ethos as the one that sits astride all four of these sectors – the modern elite law school?”

So is he right? Was the Left’s conquest of the elite law schools the most consequential step in the liberal takeover of American culture and politics? I am not convinced. Tomes have been written about: the erosion of traditional American values by our pornographic media; the promotion of social justice – i.e., cultural Marxism – by major foundations; the constriction of our freedoms by an expansive, out-of-control federal bureaucracy; and the crony capitalism, which undermines faith in our capitalistic system, practiced by large corporate entities in cahoots with the government. Were any of these less destructive than the law schools? Actually, for my money, the greatest damage has been inflicted by the K-12 educational establishment. The brainwashing of our children, the theft of their ability to appreciate how exceptionally wonderful American history really is, and the conversion of our youth into economically illiterate, historically dense, sexually active, eco-freaks is a massive crime that steals their souls and prevents the country from snapping out of the leftist trance into which we have been hypnotized. This is not to minimize the havoc wrought by the elite law schools, nor does it diminish the clarity of Olson’s analysis. It just means that as much damage as the law schools have done, other segments of the leftist machine have done as much if not more.


[1] Ah, but what about Reagan and the Gingrich Congressional revolution? Alas, these were brief interludes in which sanity was partially restored. But under Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, both Bushes, Clinton and Obama, the trend has been unmistakably and unhesitatingly left. The crucial issue is whether the trend is also reversible.
[2] This review also appeared in The Intellectual Conservative at:

Income Equality — No; Consumption Equality — Yes

There is a remarkable article in the January 3rd Wall Street Journal by Andy Kessler, a hedge fund manager turned author. In it, he proposes a novel idea – namely, while acknowledging substantial income inequality in the US, he asserts that in fact the nation has achieved an amazing level of equality in consumption. According to Mr. Kessler:

“It used to be so cool to be wealthy—an elite education, exclusive mobile communications, a private screening room, a table at Annabel’s on London’s Berkeley Square. Now it’s hard to swing a cat without hitting yet another diatribe against income inequality. People sleep in tents to protest that others are too damn wealthy.

Yes, some people have more than others. Yet as far as millionaires and billionaires are concerned, they’re experiencing a horrifying revolution: consumption equality. For the most part, the wealthy bust their tail, work 60-80 hour weeks building some game-changing product for the mass market, but at the end of the day they can’t enjoy much that the middle class doesn’t also enjoy. Where’s the fairness? What does Google founder Larry Page have that you don’t have?

Luxury suite at the Super Bowl? Why bother? You can recline at home in your massaging lounger and flip on the ultra-thin, high-def, 55-inch LCD TV you got for $700—and not only have a better view from two dozen cameras plus Skycam and fun commercials, but you can hit the pause button to take a nature break. Or you can stream the game to your four-ounce Android phone while mixing up some chip dip. Media technology has advanced to the point that things worth watching only make economic sense when broadcast to millions, not to 80,000 or just a handful of the rich.

The greedy tycoon played by Michael Douglas had a two-pound, $3,995 Motorola phone in the original ‘Wall Street’ movie. Mobile phones for the elite—how 1987. Now 8-year-olds have cellphones to arrange play dates.”

Mr. Kessler goes on the explain how the average middle class Joe – and not one necessarily high up in that class – can consume products and services that are shockingly similar to those enjoyed by the millionaires and billionaires so prominent on President Obama’s hit list. Even the most mundane cars today sport features and gadgets not terribly different from those that adorn the highest end luxury models. Yes, the super rich can jet all over the world in their private Lear jets; but there is nary a place on the globe that is immune from Aunt Nellie and Uncle Horace’s touring club. Moreover, as Kessler says, “most places worth seeing are geared to a mass of visitors.” As for high quality medical care: the rich have always had access to it; but “Arthroscopic, endoscopic, laparoscopic, drug-eluting stents—these are all mainstream and engineered to get you up and around in days. They wouldn’t have been invented to service only the 1%.” In quality of health care, electronic gadgetry, transportation, even food and drink, the quality of the goods and services enjoyed by the masses is not that different from those savored by the super wealthy.

So, egalitarianism has come to America! It’s just not politically imposed by the government; but rather it has been acquired via the market. We have achieved leftist goals by rightist means.

Well, is all of this “stuff and nonsense,” or is Kessler on to something? I would say: yes and no. First, there is no question that income and asset disparities are becoming more pronounced in the United States. Despite the fact that the rich pay an increasingly disproportionate share of the income tax in America, and despite the fact that more and more of us derive robust incomes from government – both directly and indirectly, the gap in income and assets between the rich and the rest of America continues to grow. Why that might be is the topic of a separate article. Suffice it to say that even though Keynesian, soft socialists have been running the country (with a few exceptions) for decades, income equity – the Progressives’ dream – is no closer to being achieved than it has ever been in the nation’s history.

But have we truly achieved, as Kessler implies, a state of equity in our consumption of goods and services? It is undoubtedly true that many products and services that we traditionally think of as exclusively the province of the wealthy have become accessible to the middle class (and sometimes even to the poor), even if only in relatively modest versions. Whereas in the past, the meals, clothes, travel and vehicles of the rich were so far beyond the grasp of the common man, today that is no longer the case. Joe the Plumber may not be able to fork out thousands of dollars for a bottle of rare wine, but for $50-$100 – which he might well be willing to spend, he can get something remarkably close in quality. Lowly Louise cannot jet off to Vienna to see a production of La Boheme, but she can watch it streamed on her big screen LCD TV at a tiny fraction of the cost. Neither Joe nor Louise can afford an elaborate second home on Lake Winnipesaukee, but they can rent the place with friends at an affordable price and enjoy all the amenities.

Maybe Kessler is right. And if so, it is an amazing consequence of our (relatively) free market system in which courageous entrepreneurs, brilliant inventors, sagacious investors and visionary businessmen bring the playthings of the rich and famous down to the level of the common man.

And yet, while there is certainly truth to Kessler’s observation, he is missing an important point: all those zeroes. Whatever the budget/income/expenditures of your average middle class bloke might be, the corresponding figure for the super wealthy has multiple zeroes tacked onto the right end. Moreover, the power, accessibility, opportunity, connectivity and authority afforded by those zeroes are impossible for the bloke to experience or even understand. Yes, it might be that our amazing capitalistic economy has enabled the middle class – and sometimes the poor – to experience the flavor of the gadgets and amenities favored by the wealthy. But it is totally beyond the ability of the middle class to mimic the gargantuan sense of authority, control and influence that enormous wealth affords.

Now I do not claim that such a sense makes the wealthy any happier, better adjusted, humane or honorable than the middle class. We know of too many instances of wealthy individuals who stoop to crime, corruption, cruelty or cravenness. And often they do so because all those zeroes give them a false sense of superiority and invincibility.

“Now Lipsman,” you might interject, “how would you know? You’re not wealthy.” True. But I’ve known some very rich people. And in every instance, I’ve sensed a super self-confidence, haughty arrogance and air of entitlement that is impossible to miss. Sometimes it’s merited; sometimes not. Either way, the phenomenon of consumption equality that Kessler has identified – while interesting, and on target to some extent, does not really describe a true equality in the citizenry of the type that Progressives envision when they pine after income equality. The middle class may be able to acquire a taste of the concrete accoutrements enjoyed by the rich. But they cannot feel the power, haughtiness and grandeur of the latter. I suspect Progressives know this and resent it. Thus they will continue to strive for income equality. Let’s hope they continue to fail. My reason for saying that is also a topic for another day.