Thread by @docMJP

Much of the complaints against post-WWII liberalism present as a complaint against "capitalism" or "business" themselves, and so are readily dismissed by the supposed "adults in the room", but this is not the true complaint of most of the young and clear-sighted on the right:

The true complaint is against the idea that business/markets are "value-neutral", or that they can be considered abstractly outside of political or moral or cultural concerns. This is a ridiculous fantasy. But this false notion haunted the right for decades.

The Left understood that business and markets were embedded in culture and politics from the start. So they eventually took 'em over with higher explicit cultural and political purposes in mind. They won, effectively, b/c they understood this obvious truth.

The Right's response over the course of decades was to treat this as unnecessary political and cultural manipulation, arguing instead that everything from the entertainment biz to finance should be and was "neutral" and ran best merely in response to the market, etc.

There is a kernel of truth in this view: at a certain point political/cultural ends can and will destroy a business, and markets have a natural and salutary anchoring place in human life needs defending from centralizing overreach, which at a certain point becomes destructive.

But the idea that, say, even strictly financial policy - never mind, say, the entertainment biz - isn't inseparable from cultural and political concerns and purposes is asinine. And if one truly believes this one either becomes a pawn of or loses to those who realize reality.

What technocratic liberalism did is obscure the way in which the proper functions of various sectors contribute or ought to contribute to larger political and cultural ends. This allowed bad actors to run wild. And it eviscerated, say, the old notion of vocational professions.

The reason professors, lawyers, and doctors were respected back in the day is because these greater goods they provided to the citizenry were sharply defined and understood. There was a higher order they served. Same applies to working class jobs.

The idea is not that business/markets are bad - lol - they are, in fact, essential to human flourishing. But when dignity and honor is accorded to work in accordance w/higher purposes they serve...people find meaning & purpose in it, and appropriate limits to self-interest emerge

When one pretends these things are all just neutral in terms of politics & culture one opens the door to individual rapacity and those who seek to influence society unseen, or via camouflage. You don't achieve public goods by pretending they don't exist, you just hide battle.

The battle is no longer hidden now that the woke religion has hijacked business/markets (b/c the left understood they were always embedded within & influenced politics/culture. And there is no way to fight back w/o acknowledging the civic/communal import of tech/media/finance etc

In other words, @TuckerCarlson is right. And this was the view of the founders and the old Republic as well as the old Republican Party, including Abraham Lincoln himself.

americanmind.org/features/the-e…

"1 of the central reasons for the passage of the Constitution of had to do w/the relationship between morality & economics.The Constitution was meant to rectify the unjust financial practices of the early American states, which the Federalists vehemently decried in moral terms."

E.g. guys like "Noah Webster said that 'Few people seem to attend to the connexion between money and morals; but...frequent and obvious changes of value, are more fruitful sources of corruption of morals than any events that take place in a community.”

americanmind.org/features/the-e…