Let's Change the World!

Why Not Utopia?

Bill O'Reilly, Culture Warrior

I've taken to listening to Bill O'Reilly's no spin zone on the radio if I'm in the car when he's on. He has no use for secular progressives (SPs). SPs lack religious faith; they criticize the United States government; and they want to limit United States' sovereignty by subordinating our government to the United Nations. He believes in the free market. He has no use for a government that taxes the wealthy to improve the lot of the poor. As a utopian, I'm an SP squared.

Mr. O'Reilly won't discuss the Iraq war's legality. He says Iraq violated the United Nations first cease fire (Desert Storm), which justifies the present U.S. invasion. Consistency is not his strong point. On one hand, he says we should not subordinate our government to the United Nations. On the other we should enforce U.N. resolutions when we choose. It is disingenuous to rely on United Nations resolutions to justify the Iraq invasion when the United Nations tried to disuade us. I see the Iraq war as illegal from its inception, weapons of mass destruction or not. He sees pre-emptive strikes to protect the United States as a legitimate uses of American power. I see a pre-emptive strikes as acts of a bully.

Nowhere are the contradictions more apparent than when he professes to protect our founding father's traditions. Our founding fathers were the SPs of their day. Representative democracy departed from centuries of monarchy. Most founding fathers were less religious than the average citizen. Mr. O'Reilly concedes we are all sinners which follows from his Catholic upbringing. He also says we are good which makes us good sinners, an oxymoron if there ever was one.

I do not know Mr. O'Reilly's demographics. I believe his followers come from what we call middle America, God-fearing people whose distinction from humanity comes from being United States citizens. They respond to anyone who wraps himself in the flag because the flag symbolizes their nationhood. They believe "my country right or wrong". I believe wrong is wrong, to be condemned even if the wrongdoer is my country. Because their thinking is optimistic in the extreme, they prefer a long shot economic system, to a classless society. George McGovern learned the importance of their fantasy when he suggested a nearly confiscatory estate tax, something like one hundred percent over fifteen million dollars. He believed the suggestion would appeal to perhaps ninety ninety nine percent of the electorate whose chance of accumulating fifteen million dollars in their lifetimes is slim to none. He carried Massachussets and lost in a landslide.

Some of Mr. O'Reilly's ideas appeal to an SP like myself. He thinks child molesters should do serious prison time. He doesn't believe in redemption or seeing criminal behavior as psychologically motivated. I see no point in jailing people who will not commit a crime again, but there's the rub. How do we know? Can treatment do the trick? Is treatment a better bet against recidivism then prison? Are there guarantees? I don't think so. I believe equality will calm us, promote cooperation, and eliminate most crime. Why steal if you get whatever you're stealing at the local dispensary? On the other hand, perhaps deep in our bones we love war.

Mr. O'Reilly is pessimistic. He is disinclined to take chances for peace, prosperity or anything else. He embraces the past, not the future. But how does one embrace the future, except through faith in humanity? Looking around today, faith in humanity is hard to come by. Mr. O'Reilly may be right. I hope he is wrong. Time, as always, will tell.

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