At least the bombs are real.
New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof has pulled out the hoariest of boomer liberal tropes, asking what the money spent on war could buy if redirected to welfare programs. Examples include “For less than three weeks of war, or $35 billion, we could run a nationwide pre-K program for 3- and 4-year-olds,” and “For $75 million, about an hour’s worth of war, we could provide three books free to every child in America who is living under the poverty line.” Ah yes, we could fund so many Minneapolis daycares and “Quality Learing” centers.
I don’t know how our campaign against the mullahs will turn out, but it has real bombs being dropped on real targets with people really dying. In contrast, the sorts of programs Kristof promotes as better recipients of taxpayer money tend to be more ephemeral in their results — and that’s assuming that the recipients even exist. To cite a few examples that even a New York Times columnist ought to have heard of, there is the Somali daycare piracy, the California wildlife bridge to nowhere, the California high-speed rail debacle, and the embarrassing spectacle of cities spending endlessly to end homelessness while not even reducing it.
Kristof and his ilk never seem outraged at these wasted and stolen billions. They might mildly tsk-tsk, but there is no visceral rage toward those who plunder billions that were supposedly for helping children. Yet if lefties really believe that government programs are the key to a wonderfully better society and world, shouldn’t they be furious at those running them into the ground or robbing them?
Undermining the Left’s Assumptions
Instead of raging over being betrayed, liberals tend to circle the wagons around mismanagement and fraud. Partisanship? Sure — no one wants to be seen running down their own side or giving aid and comfort to political opponents. And because the Democratic political and cultural ecosystem is hugely subsidized by government money, liberals are more likely to benefit personally and politically from government inefficiency and fraud.
But there is something deeper here, which is that confronting the realities of waste and fraud would undermine the comforting liberal assumption that well-funded technocratic management is the key to solving the problems of the world. The premise of Kristof’s list is that spending money will solve the problem. It often won’t, but pretending that it will is a lot easier than facing hard questions of human nature and culture. What ails humanity is much more than a lack of intelligently deployed cash.
As Kristof ought to know, even competent building and giving are not enough to fix the world’s ills. Give apartments to the homeless and many of them will quickly be destroyed. Dig a well for an impoverished village and some Islamic militia may soon come along and poison it by tossing in a dead goat. Spend huge sums of money on education and even what makes it to the classroom — after some is siphoned away to hire endless administrators and pad union coffers — may well be wasted through terrible curriculum choices, worthless ed tech, and a student population whose families and subculture are at best indifferent to learning.
Confronting Evil
The world is filled with people and forces antithetical to human well-being. And so it is essential to contain and confront evils such as, well, the Islamic Republic, which has been a blight on the world for decades. In this fallen world, just war is necessary for genuine flourishing. But more is needed than just bombing bad guys, especially because the bad guys aren’t all over there somewhere. There is corruption, criminality, and dangerous insanity on the home front — and in our homes and our hearts.
The root of the problem is that the human heart is dark and needs to be remade by the light of God. Those who would resist evil in the world must first have their hearts renewed and their character formed to resist it in themselves. We need men who will not only defeat enemies when needed, but pursue justice and be gentle with the weak. We need teachers, builders, and leaders who understand not only that evil is real, but that it must first be confronted in one’s own heart.
This is the key to genuine compassion, which loves while being utterly realistic about the pervasiveness of evil. Liberalism has failed to provide the human flourishing it promised because it ignores the virtue that is flourishing’s precondition and it undermines the habits and cultural norms that sustain it.
Encouraging Destruction
Liberals such as Kristof encourage much of what destroys virtue and social health. Consider how they cheer for the sexual revolution despite the evil and chaos it inflicts. Kristof’s commitment to sexual liberation ensures that he rarely goes beyond nibbling at the edge of cultural problems, and it is the root of why he rejects Christianity. But the Christian view of sex protects the vulnerable far better than Kristof’s boomer liberalism — just look at his eager support for the lethal violence of abortion; he is the sort of man who claims to deplore violence, unless it is in the name of sexual indulgence.
It is impossible to sustain a just and flourishing society without virtue and without understanding the truth about human nature. How our conflict with Iran will turn out is uncertain, but it should be clear that redirecting money from it is grossly insufficient to build a society of genuine well-being.
