How "The Wizard of Oz" Refutes the Liberal Narrative

I have been pondering for several months how this classic childhood film presents a remarkable metaphor for the failure of the liberal/progressive/statist view of government. Consider the plot:

A group of humble individuals finds their lives disrupted by frightening events beyond their control. Their entire world is literally turned upside-down, and they find themselves in strange, scary new circumstances. Now, they fear they are out of control of their lives, and they are terribly anxious about their future.

One victim of the disaster seeks a return to her normal world. Another believes he hasn't the courage to meet the fearful challenges ahead. A third fears he lacks compassion and dedication. Yet another wonders whether he has the brains to survive on his own.

From a bunch of "little people," they are told about a wondrous far-off city, where a great and powerful wizard will provide them everything they seek and need -- merely by magical decree. Desperate, they embark upon a difficult pilgrimage to that city of power and favors, which is topped by a towering monument. There, acting like craven beggars, they visit and supplicate themselves before the all-powerful wizard, pleading for his aid. And he promises to fulfill their heart's desires.

But there is a catch. The supplicants are told that first they must pay a price for his help: They must agree to go out and do the wizard's bidding, undergoing a host of ordeals on his behalf. The price of his help is servility. Intimidated, they agree to do so. They perform the tasks he has ordered, suffering terribly, but mastering every challenge along the way. 

At last, they return in triumph and insist that the wizard keep his end of the bargain. But he balks and refuses, accusing them of insolence and improper deference to one of his exalted station.

Suddenly, an innocent young pup pulls back the curtain. The Great and Powerful Wizard is revealed to be nothing more than a pathetic old con man: an incompetent fake, who had achieved his power and status over the little people only through his ability to spin glowing Narratives that promised them whatever they wanted . . . and told them whatever they wanted to hear.

In the end, the adventurers come to a shocking realization. Each discovers that, all along, he or she already possessed all the brains, heart, and courage to live happy lives, to produce whatever they needed, and to accomplish great things. They learn that, all along, they could have stood self-reliantly on their own, solving their individual problems creatively and productively, without paying endless tribute to, or accepting endless abuse from, any fraudulent, conniving, self-appointed "wizards" living parasitical lives of luxury in some distant center of power . . . .

 
All right, folks: Having now revealed "The Wizard of Oz" as a highly subversive Narrative of individualism, one that brilliantly mocks and fatally skewers the "progressive" Narrative, I wonder how long it will be before the Regime tries to ban it?

A Meditation on the "Progressive" Narrative

In the wake of the Supreme Court's late-March 2012 hearing on the constitutionality of ObamaCare, many liberals responded with shock and anger to the sharp, skeptical questions that justices asked the government's lawyers.

But why? Why did so many liberal/progressive scholars and media denizens arrogantly assume that ObamaCare would be ratified by the Supreme Court in a "slam dunk"? Why were they so stunned to hear potent counter-arguments emerging from the justices? One commentator offers this:

What can explain liberals’ widespread failure to anticipate the Court’s wariness of the mandate? Research conducted by University of Virginia psychologist Jonathan Haidt suggests one possible answer: Liberals just aren’t as good as conservatives and libertarians at understanding how their opponents think. Haidt helped conduct research that asked respondents to fill out questionnaires about political narratives [emphasis added]—first responding based on their own beliefs, but then responding as if trying to mimic the beliefs of their political opponents. "The results," he writes in the May issue of Reason, "were clear and consistent." Moderates and conservatives were the most able to think like their liberal political opponents. "Liberals," he reports, "were the least accurate, especially those who describe themselves as 'very liberal.'"

The article is well worth reading in its entirety, because it shows how liberals view everything through the filter of politics--and now assume, based on their political Narrative, that the Supreme Court's opposition to the individual mandate is nothing more than "partisan politics." In fact, though, that charge is nothing more than psychological projection. Commenting on this reaction by the left, some have opined that liberals just don't seem wedded to simple logic. That is true, but it doesn't go far enough in explaining the liberal mindset.

As subjectivists, liberals do not believe in the objective reality that is the basis of logic. To subjectivists, logic (like everything else) is merely an arbitrary social convention. That same subjectivism is the root of their multiculturalism (no culture or society is better than any other), of their moral relativism (there's no objective basis for ethics, so "do your own thing"), and, in this instance, of their doctrine of "the living Constitution" (a document that is as elastic and flexible as their own whims).

But if everything is mere subjective opinion, and opinions clash, then logical persuasion is without merit as a means of resolving disputes -- and the only thing left that can decide disputes is force. Hence, the liberals' view that everything in society consists of "conflicts of interest" and "power relationships"; hence, their quest for unlimited power to dominate, rule, and control others; and hence, their efforts to transform everything that we are, have, or do into a political issue: into a matter to be decided by wielding coercive political power over others.

But why should they, the liberals, be the ones wielding that power?

That's where their "Narrative" comes in. The liberal Narrative is rooted not in the logical, but the psychological. In their morality play, they have cast themselves as "progressives" -- as the smartest, most educated, most culturally sophisticated, most sensitive, most enlightened people on the planet, in contrast with the vast, crude masses of rubes, idiots, bigots, and know-nothings (i.e., the rest of us). The liberals' motive in holding and advancing this Narrative is the indispensable role that it plays in inflating their egos and self-regard. In their self-flattering psychodrama, they cast themselves as the Ruling Class, the social elite that -- by virtue of intellectual, moral, and esthetic superiority -- is entitled to lord it over their inferiors (i.e., the rest of society).

If you want a clear glimpse of the self-congratulatory "progressive" worldview, try to dig up a copy of the old H.G. Wells film "Things to Come." Wells was a socialist, and in his dystopian, sci-fi fantasy, he imagined a benevolent technocratic elite taking over a world that had descended into tribes of savages. Now, there's a lot I like about the film on a metaphysical level: Its no-limits view of human potential reminded me of "Star Trek" ("to boldly go where no man has gone before"). But its view of society is unadulterated "progressive" arrogance: A small, educated in-group of sophisticated geniuses takes total political power, becoming a new Ruling Class to civilize the savage masses...for their own good.

That's the essence of the liberal/progressive Narrative. And philosophical subjectivism allows them to use any means they wish to achieve that total power over the rest of us "savages."

If you now take all of this and apply it to the ObamaCare debate before the Supreme Court, you'll understand at once what was going on, and why the left is so shocked and indignant over the skeptical questioning by the justices. Their legal subjectivism was being challenged, at root. The justices were asking them what "limiting principle" existed upon the power they wish to assume over private economic relationships, and they couldn't answer because they don't have one, or believe that one should exist. Their arguments were transparent sophistry, attempts to provide legalistic excuses to grant them UNlimited power over the lives of the savages. That they should be required to justify this quest clashed with their entire Narrative, and the subjectivism that rationalizes it.

And so how do they respond? Only as they can, through their Narrative filter: Since to them, everything is a "political power relationship," they could only besmirch the alleged political motives of the skeptical justices as being "partisan" and "pro-Republican." This, to the liberal, is a necessary substitute for an argument based on the merits -- on facts and logic -- because the latter don't count in their subjective universe, except as tools of political manipulation.

There are broader, pessimistic conclusions to be drawn here, for example, about the possibility of persuading people wedded to the progressive/subjective Narrative, or about how we ought to engage and fight them. I've argued in my previous essay here on "The Narratives That Guide Our Lives" that the best approach is to advance a compelling counter-narrative. But what that is, and how it might be advanced, are topics for future development and discussion.