Victor Davis Hanson: The New Reactionaries

NRO contributor Victor Davis Hanson is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and the author, most recently, of The End of Sparta, a novel about ancient freedom.

Starting in the 1930s and continuing after the war, the Democrats offered a liberal critique of, or perhaps enhancement to, the Republican vision of rugged individualism. A modern American state now had the capital and the moral ambition to smooth the rougher edges of capitalism by insisting on unemployment and disability insurance, a 40-hour week, overtime pay, and what we now associate with the social safety net. Such entitlements, along with a rapidly growing economy, redefined poverty — so much so that whereas in 1930 malnourishment was endemic among the poor, by 2000 obesity was far more injurious to the nation’s collective health.

Michelle Obama, for example, is admirably warning the nation’s underclass that Twinkies and Big Macs are far more dangerous to their well-being than undernourishment brought on by the financial inability to purchase bulk rice, beans, and cheese. Today an impoverished teen is in more danger of being robbed or shot while in line waiting to purchase a new pair of $300 signature sneakers than of being infected with hookworm through being forced to walk barefoot.

What had once been a daring liberal agenda gradually ossified into a reactionary dogma that the poor are always to be defined in relative terms to those better off, never by absolute standards of global wealth and poverty, and thus are always in need of yet more government help. The goal became collective equality rather than a safety net to mitigate the effects of misfortune, accident, and illness....