A Prairie Home Conundrum

I've just returned from a few days in the heart of the Great Plains. The folks I met there (or already knew) are friendly, hard-working, healthy, beefy in that rural Midwestern way, more educated than they would have to be for doing what they do and living where they live, and… totally enthused about Barack Obama. Now granted, Obama himself is from the Midwest, but he is from a part of it that is atypical as a liquor store would be in Saudi Arabia. And yet, the interest in his candidacy among the denizens of the Upper Midwest (i.e., the part above the Bible Belt) does call to mind the recurrent theme of what is known as “Prairie Populism”. Now, I’ve never known much about this phenomenon (I’ll call it that rather than “movement”, since I’m not sure it was ever an organized movement), but I do know that it has yielded up numerous prominent politicians – the most recent, I believe, being George McGovern – and that it has some historical ties with the broader populist phenomenon that arose in the early 1900s, with such figures as William Jennings Bryan (who was a prairie man but attained national prominence, to put it mildly).

In one sense, populism is a form of socialism, its premise being that if we all worked together rather than fighting each other, and if social and economic structures did not form such rigid hierarchies, and if governments at all levels would construct some sort of safety net, we would see an increase in prosperity and contentment and would not be so subject to the whims of the marketplace, and to the vagaries of Wall Street. In this sense it bears some resemblance to the concept of “distributism”, which is a key element of Catholic social teaching. Populism in this sense resonated with agriculture and with rural life in general, although it could be expected to appeal to urban labor and regular white-collar types as well – you know, the ones who live in “bungalows” rather than high-rises. But in any case, it differed from the more radical socialism of the East Coast (and later also West Coast) liberals whose vision was much more informed by Marxism and, yes, the seemingly-inevitable conflict between capital and labor (vs. the “can’t we all just get along?” attitude of the populists). So, as far as it went up to that point, populism seemed like a perfectly fine idea and one that really could be implemented by governments at all levels, to the benefit of all (except perhaps a few isolated Scrooges who owned small-town banks or factories). And in fact, it almost seems that if the idea had been confined to the locales of its origin, it all would have worked out, since those locales were, and still are, overwhelmingly populated by those friendly, hard-working, healthy, beefy, etc. people I mentioned above. Enacting populist policies in places like that would not immediately generate an entire sub-class of dependents, self-styled victims, and parasites. People would still be willing and able to work – to heft their share of the load, and more if need be. It would be, in other words, like present-day Scandinavia, where socialism still reigns, albeit with the occasional tweak now and then (like adjusting tax rates to below 100% of income – little things like that). In fact, one might even question whether socialism, as originally conceived, was not premised on the notion that most people will continue to work, regardless of incentives or the lack thereof. It is doubtful that any of the classic socialist thinkers actually envisioned a “morphing” of the socioeconomic status quo whereby, over time, fewer people would work (productively, that is -- vs. at make-work "jobs" and in government) and more would be on the take. And yet if one understands even the rudiments of human nature (which the socialists never did, and still don’t) one sees that this is a predictable, if not inevitable, outcome.

So “prairie populism” came about, at least to some extent, as a result of a kind of naivete regarding human nature and its manifestations in society and economics. If you told a husky dairy farmer in Wisconsin that if his town, county, or state instituted various socialistic schemes it would be inundated with freeloaders, he would have scoffed in derision. And yet that is exactly what has happened, time and time again, on both the local and national level, and the problem is particularly acute today with regard to illegal immigration. There is an old Bulgarian saying: “The government is like a cow; only a fool wouldn’t milk it.” And yes, if you reward people more for not working than for working, the facet of human nature that wants to sit on its ass in front of the TV will tend to prevail.

Another reason for the persistence of prairie populism – at least in the prairie – is that the people there have not seen, with their own eyes, the results of socialist and collectivist schemes as they are played out in other parts of the country and in large cities. They have heard rumors, of course, and may have seen some footage on TV. But that doesn't quite make it real. If they could only spend one day in, say, Detroit, or Washington, D.C., or Philadelphia, they might return home shaken, but also chastened. And that chastening might be reflected in their subsequent voting habits and political enthusiasms. And yet this is unlikely to ever occur – those dots are never going to be connected. So they continue to cling to the semi-utopian beliefs of their forebears, far beyond the sky glow of the big cities and their trash-strewn “ghettos”.

Still another factor – and this is highly speculative, I admit – is that the people who settled the Upper Midwest were, by and large, not of British origin but tended more to be German or Scandinavian, with a smattering of Eastern Europe thrown in. As such, they did not have the same, or as strong, democratic, representative-government traditions in their history and collective memory as did the residents of the original Thirteen Colonies. For them, government was more remote, more arbitrary, and less principled, and whoever was in charge could do pretty much as he wished. In other words, it was less about constitutions, principles, and rules than about who gets dibs on what. So the natural thing when confronted with an opportunity to actually have a voice in government was to look to leveling the playing field, and redistributing things downward (or, in the case of the Midwest, preventing things from flowing upward too rapidly, AKA "concentrated wealth"). The notion of “making the rough places plain” economically, but in a benign (i.e. non-Marxist/Leninist/Stalinist) way had an appeal that would have been met with more skepticism, perhaps, by people who did not already live on a prosperous, green, and basically endless plain.

So what, after all, do we get out of all of this? We get people who Stalin would have called “kulaks”, and who would have been the first to be dispossessed and then liquidated under his regime, falling completely for Obama’s line and for his charisma. Somehow a man who comes out of an, at times, intensely racist (but in reverse) urban background is now seen as a spokesman for the brawny, sunburnt Nebraska farmer, and his mouthings about accelerating the redistribution of income and resources are not seen as a threat. This, in my opinion, is gullibility of the highest order, and I sincerely hope, for their sakes, that the people involved don’t have to suffer the consequences which could very well come to pass. (How about, for example, having to sell their farms to pay “reparations” for slavery? Impossible, you say? I suspect it’s already on the drawing board at the DNC.)

Now, I don’t expect people to always vote for the candidate who will do the most to aid, abet, and perpetuate their lifestyle – for one thing, that’s hardly possible the way the political system is set up today. Those who are tax payers (vs. tax receivers) will always be in a position of minimizing the damages, and choosing the least of many evils. Besides, some people may really and truly feel that they have been privileged, and that their lifestyle is not necessarily the best (or even possible) for everyone, and therefore prefer to vote for “increased opportunity for all” even if it costs them something. I don’t rule out that degree of altruism in the body politic – and I am not, of course, referring to “limousine liberals” who want to keep all their own “stuff” but redistribute everyone else’s. But! Voting for someone for whom your lifestyle, and your very existence, is anathema – that is pure madness. And yet, I suspect many of our friends in the prairie have succumbed. Time will tell whether they will live to regret, or even question, their decision.