Why is a modified whig view of the world is worthwhile? There is an old quote: “The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible times — the pessimist fears that this is so…”
I believe that attitude informs our view of the world in such a way that we inflate or discount small differences that lead to massive changes. The truth of the matter is that the great pessimists (people like Thomas Malthus and some others from the school of the “dismal science”) have been categorically wrong in the Anti-Corn Law League was successful in opening England’s markets to foreign grain. Indeed, the European emphasis on mercantilism (or economic warfare for nationalistic gain) has given way over time to a coherent system that allows for a variety of different degrees of free trade — far freer than at any time in history previously. Note that the achievement of the European Union was achieved at the cost of a huge number of lives — I would guess that the true cost of the pacification of Europe might be over 100 million in the last five centuries — certainly the cost of Worlds Wars I and II would count as 75 million worldwide in just 30 years — and one does not have to be a cliometrician to think about the cost to the world (not just Europe) of the deaths of 20 million of Europe’s most healthy and able young men in the four years of World War I.
Yet in spite of all of the negatives of Europe’s development to the present point, the life of the average person in Europe is infinitely better than it was two centuries ago, and even than one century ago. All quibbling aside, the average European enjoys an average lifespan that would have been unheard of one hundred years ago, and has access to public wealth comparable to that enjoyed only by monarchs and nobles two centuries ago. Whether or not this is a good thing is not germane — it is a simple truth. From that perspective, the Whig view that history is an unfolding of the improvement of the lot of the common man in Europe (as opposed to just England) is indisputable. The other suggestion of the Whig view of history, that a parliamentary monarchy is the ultimate development of all systems of government, that is an idea with which I take issue. Here, I think Winston Churchill had it right when he said, “Democracy is the worst form of government, excepting all of the others.” A constitutional monarchy has some advantages over other democratic systems, at least in terms of peaceful transitions of power, but the whole concept of votes of no confidence should rightfully send people shrieking for the door –although the US system shows many flaws as well — especially a lack of accountability for fiscal and other forms of irresponsibility, at least we can’t have 10 different governments in a ten year period (as can be the case in Italy). I still feel that the US system makes greater allowance for the perfectibility of a form of government than any of the other democratic systems extant today.
The deepest flaw in the US system is that it requires a willingness to make good compromises and reasonably good decisions. Once you allow ideology to overtake pragmatism, the wheels of government grind to a halt. Suddenly, every decision is not about getting something done, it is about making certain that some litmus test of acidity or alkalinity has been achieved. In this atmosphere, the person who suggests that maybe personal beliefs should remain personal is viewed as being at best immoral, at worst amoral, lacking any firm belief system at all. The problem is that almost all problems in this world are neither black nor white, instead being many shades of gray. This is not some form of moral relativism — it is instead a recognition that there are very few decisions that can be made in this world that do not have the potential for both positive and negative repercussions.
Take Adam Smith’s selfish individual, making economic decisions based on what is best for him and her — put in to the recipe a belief in the perfectibility and natural goodness of people — and something very interesting begins to happen. Over the past two hundred and thirty one years since Adam Smith’s book On The Wealth of Nations was first published, Capitalism has allowed for the creation and accumulation of more wealth than anyone in the late eighteenth century would have believed possible. To circle back to my original point about the Malthusians and other economists, a want of imagination on the part of Malthus and his cohorts led to doomsday prophecies concerning the food supply that never came to pass. Consistently (yet not incrementally) new forms of energy and new technologies have allowed people to avoid catastrophe. This is not to say that Science is an unmitigated good — we face many unintended consequences of progress –also a product of a lack of imagination about potential consequences. It might be nice if people thought more about what might happen as a result of some new technology instead of blindly embracing it… but there exists no form of oversight that I can think of that I would trust to control the stream of innovation that fuels our world — the ones that come to mind, whether the realtively mild dirigism of governments like France, or the extremes of Communism under Mao (The Great Leap Forward) or Pol Pot, or even Stalin somewhat less extreme Gosplan suggest that trying to put some sort of control over human creativity can cost a society any kind of longevity, not to mention the price to the individual in such a society. We know how to foster creativity, or at least how to fuel innovation — whether it is the MITI model that Japan followed, or ARPA/DARPA here in the US, or Silicon Valley under the Venture Capitalists.
Posted by rwolds 
Posted by rwolds 
Posted by rwolds 