A LEFTOVER LEFTY

Karl Marx and/or Lenin said that “Capitalism contained the seeds of its own destruction.”
But on the other hand historians agree that Roosevelt saved Free Enterprise.
And Tommy Douglas referred to Free Enterprise as neither free nor enterprising.
Such are the memories of an aging lefty, out of touch with today’s political realities, seduced perhaps by a portfolio of capitalist securities that guarantee a decent descent into the near-oblivion of getting older.
When I lived in a decent house in Forest Hill Village, owned a spacious 48 foot sailing yacht, and yet struggled to pay our bills, friends referred to me as an affluent Socialist.
I was neither affluent nor was I a hard-line socialist calling for everything from class warfare to bank nationalization to an end to marketplace orthodoxy.
I bore you with all this only to precede the obvious statement: the world, as we all know it, has turned upside down.
The “me-first” generation, the Y generation, and the baby-boomers have all come after all those experiences of my own path through life and a career and a degree of satisfaction.
But now – lo and behold, Hank Paulson, Bush’s Secretary of the Treasury holding his nose and nationalizing the banks. Rather sheepishly I thought, he announced that most Americans hated the idea, but it was necessary,
Does “the end justifies the means” seem to ring out in its dialectic smugness?
Now I observe. I not longer contribute editorially. I pay my taxes and keep my mouth shut.
It is several years since I abandoned my long association with the political left, who have ensnared themselves in a ideological web that permits nothing but “principles” and fails to deal with reality – preferring instead to continue their relentless class warfare,
I am what Layton is not, but perhaps what Treasury Secretary Paulson is: a pragmatist.
The delicious irony that the most free market orthodoxy has had to put government to work; has been obliged, in spite of the nonsense of their less-government ideology, been forced to do what government must do: become the last resort and guardian of all we hold dear.
I was a little stunned to discover that the arch-ideologue and believer in monetary control – Alan Greenspan was once an Ayn Rand follower! Horrid. Everything that smacks of a kind of vicious determinism or what we used to call Darwinian economics happened on his watch.
The dust may settle soon, but the ineluctable truth is that the forces of monetary and fiscal conservatism have folded their cards and succumbed to reality.
Whether or not it work remains to be seen.
My ancient lefty bones feel warmer.