A telling, and for me somewhat demoralizing, post by Lenore Ealy, summarizes a response by Bill Schambra to NCRP's Rick Cohen and his report, "The Axis of Ideology." Lenore and Bill are right that a few of us on the left (only a few, sadly enough) would like to imitate the success of conservative philanthropy in moving public policy.
Bill suggests that this will be difficult because the left and its vision is so fractured into competing causes and identity groups. He also suggests that much contemporary leftist theory is out of whack with the Enlightenment views of the framers of the Constitution. Sadly, I agree. Critical theory drawing on Hegel, Marx, French Freud, Nietzsche, Foucault, Derrida, de Man, does depart from the tradition of say, Hobbes, Hume, Locke, Milton, Mill, Rawls, and Isaiah Berlin. I rue the day that the universities took that turn. We gave up, I think, what matters most, the language of human rights, of human dignity, or morals rooted in spirituality, and a just society founded on a social compact or contract. For those of us who feel that the right has done its bit in subverting Constitutional Liberties, with the Patriot Act, with the merger of business and government (Cheney/Halliburton), the capture of regulatory agencies, the selling off of the commons, the funding of ideological organs (think tanks), and the concentration of media, providing news as entertainment to boost ratings and advance media business goals, and with a President who commissions memos stating that when it comes to torture he is above the Geneva Conventions - in the name of what do we resist, having deconstructed all that is holy, and fractured ourselves into a gaggle of often warring identity groups, fighting for goals that are, in comparison to democracy, partisan and trivial?
The impotence and complacency of elite liberal philanthropy is a tragedy. Where Lenore, Schambra, I, the Dean supporters, and bloggers like Jon Husband, Marty Kearns, and Gerry Gleason are actually in agreement is in working for democracy - our respective visions of that - from the bottom up, through voluntary action, as well as giving, and through self-organizing groups and systems. For the machiavels of the right, I fear, this populist self-help would be a good harmless diversion of ordinary folks from the destiny being worked out over their heads by the think tanks, politicos, and wealthy funders. It would be a stop gap against ruin, as government funding of social programs is slashed and the cash returned to where it is needed most - the wealthy tax payer. For those of us who are more progressive or liberal, what is happening from the grassroots up is a revival of democracy that threatens, and will eventually overturn the whole rickety structure of power driven by wealth - oligarchy or plutocracy paying hired intellectuals to prate of freedom.
The business proposition around right wing or Libertarian philanthropy is pretty clear. If you fund conservative politicians, and whip up an anti-regulatory populist sentiment, and hire those who can justify rollbacks of the capital gains tax, and the estate tax, then you as a super-wealthy funder can make thousands of dollars, cash on cash, for every dollar invested in the think thank hooha that drives the process or greases the skids. Now that the Conservative Think Tanks have delivered, and the money is rolling back in a tidal wave to the richest funders, I envy the fundraisers. What an easy sale it should be to go back to the curmudgeons, and get the money needed to fund final repeal of estate tax - saving some of the funding families not millions, but hundreds of millions or even billions. A cash on cash return that a Liberal whose goal is to protect the commons and to create a peer to peer democracy cannot match. Our strength is in numbers. Our greatest asset is not big money, nor nickel and dime fundrasing, but justice and the outrage that unites the many in defense of democracy.
My job is money-based, but my hope is in art. We need our Havel, or our Brodsky. We need a Martin Luther King. We need a voice, not bought by think tank money, but welling up from our native traditions, and speaking truth so clearly that the hirelings recoil in shame. The money needed is small: Enough to buy yeast.
