Having recently penned a three-part post on the progressive attack on “meritocracy” (Part I, Part II, Part III), I was interested to see Peter Berkowitz’s lengthy review of pop-professor Michael J. Sandel’s The Tyranny of Merit: Can We Find the Common Good?. Part I of my series took note of Charles Murray’s review of the same book. The Berkowitz and Murray reviews concentrate on different themes: Murray on the how “Today’s elites have a remarkable obliviousness about the lives and contributions of ordinary people that bespeaks an unseemly indifference – not to mention disdain – for those people”, a point on which he and Professor Sandel agree; Berkowitz on the book’s thesis, which he summarizes as “the greatest threat to equality, community, the common good, and justice in America is freedom in America”.
[T]he distinguished Harvard professor argues that the antagonism in America between equality, community, the common good, and justice, on the one side, and freedom on the other has reached catastrophic proportions. Amid the bitter divide in the United States between progressive elites and conservative-leaning middle-class and working-class voters, Sandel elaborates the sensational claim that it is meritocracy – the view, central to the modern tradition of freedom, that a “just society” provides all individuals “an equal chance to rise as far as their talent and hard work will take them” – that is tearing the United States apart. It turns out, however, that Sandel is not opposed to the rule of every form of merit. The thrust of his argument indicates that he wishes to replace the allegedly despotic rule of technocrats, economists, and financiers with the ostensibly refined and compassionate rule of experts in moral reasoning capable of leading national conversations about a common good in America that, in his telling, has been and remains elusive.
That is a good summary of a central political issue of our contentious era. Progressives see individuals’ “equal chance to rise as far as their talent and hard work will take them” as a threat to “equality, community, the common good, and justice”, as defined by progressives like Professor Sandel, of course. Their solution is to impose inequalities. One is reminded of an anecdote recounted by Herodotus, describing what happened when Periander, the tyrant of Corinth –
sent a herald to Thrasybulus [an older, more experienced tyrant] and inquired in what way he would best and most safely govern his city. Thrasybulus led the man who had come from Periander outside the town, and entered into a sown field. As he walked through the corn, continually asking why the messenger had come to him from Corinth, he kept cutting off all the tallest ears of wheat which he could see, and throwing them away, until he had destroyed the best and richest part of the crop. Then, after passing through the place and speaking no word of counsel, he sent the herald away. When the herald returned to Corinth, Periander desired to hear what counsel he brought, but the man said that Thrasybulus had given him none. The herald added that it was a strange man to whom he had been sent, a madman and a destroyer of his own possessions, telling Periander what he had seen Thrasybulus do.
But Periander understood his fellow tyrant’s advice. Progressives do, too, and seek to make their hegemony secure in the same way.
Comments