Kevin Drum goes back to 2016 to discuss a Michael Anton essay that warned against Hillary Clinton’s election to the Presidency:
… oh hell, let’s just give you a taste:
2016 is the Flight 93 election: charge the cockpit or you die. You may die anyway. You—or the leader of your party—may make it into the cockpit and not know how to fly or land the plane. There are no guarantees. Except one: if you don’t try, death is certain. To compound the metaphor: a Hillary Clinton presidency is Russian Roulette with a semi-auto. With Trump, at least you can spin the cylinder and take your chances. [Anton]
Anton’s essay had a huge impact when it was written, and in a way it describes the id of the Trumpist movement. In a nutshell, Anton argued that the nation was declining and close to collapse, which meant that voting for Donald Trump was our only choice. Like the passengers on Flight 93, who could charge the cockpit and probably die or do nothing and definitely die, conservatives needed to vote for Donald Trump whether they liked it or not. Sure, he might be a disaster. But Hillary Clinton would definitely be a disaster.
Rich Lowry, editor of National Review, reminded me of “The Flight 93 Election” a few days ago, and it produced two thoughts when I reread it. The first is something I’ve mentioned before: the reason conservatives fight so hard is that they really, truly believe that liberals are bringing about the collapse of the country. The second is that they’re completely wrong. Consider the “litany of ills,” that Anton enumerates at the beginning of his essay. I’m reproducing them here word-for-word, adding only numbers to make them easier to reference: …
It’s a good rebuttal to the fear-mongering of the Anton essay, complete with charts, although honestly I think the far-right fringers are simply afraid of having their entire broken philosophy extinguished.
But I think Drum missed it on this one:
9. And, at the higher levels, saddles students with six figure debts for the privilege. …
9. Student debt
No argument here. Student debt is indeed out of control.
But Drum fails to address the question of the why of higher tuition debt. It’s not a matter that the left forces the price of education up so much as the right’s philosophy that the student should pay more of the costs of education, and in so doing forgetting that society as a whole benefits from every advanced degree earned, and by not paying for them, an untoward burden is thrust upon the student.
I’ve discussed this before, and reader feedback made clear that certain costs associated with the higher education systems were also responsible for the sky-high tuitions. That cannot be easily disregarded.
But in the end, the philosophy that society gets no benefit from advanced degrees is a fallacious, and therefore bankrupt, philosophy. While I’m not in favor of canceling all tuition debt or making tuition free for all – a little skin in the game is generally a good idea – I think Drum’s chart proves the point that, by not subsidizing education, a generation of Americans are being saddled with ridiculous levels of debt, meaning they’re ruining their lives in order to provide useful, even critical services to society.
And that’s neither right, nor good for the economic health of society.
