Gingrich's comments at the faux-Thanksgiving forum for the religious right this weekend have gotten a fair amount of attention here and elsewhere. But what everyone seems to focus on is his standard-issue hippie bashing:
All of the Occupy movement starts with the premise that we all owe them everything. They take over a public park they didn’t pay for, to go near by to use bathrooms they didn’t pay for, to beg for food from places they they don’t want to pay for[...] Now, that is a pretty good symptom of how much the left has collapsed as a moral system in this country and why you need to reassert something as simple as saying to them, ‘Go get a job right after you take a bath.’
What I find far more interesting, though, and which has been mostly overlooked, is the way he prefaced those comments:
Captain John Smith said in 1607, in the first English speaking permanent colony, to the aristocrats who paid their way and didn’t want to work: ‘If you don’t work, you won’t eat.’
Think about that for a second and mull how radical it is. More below the fold.
My first instinct was to think that Newt was shortening the cycle down within which he contradicts himself, to about fifteen or twenty seconds. After all, in quoting Smith approvingly he lays down the premise that "aristocrats", despite the fact that they "paid their way", should not be allowed to eat unless they work like everyone else. Now what is the closest analogue to "aristocrat" in contemporary American society? Right: the 1%. So as I say, my initial reaction was to think this was a blatant contradiction in terms, since the OWS movement is fundamentally set in opposition to the 1%.
But mulling it a little more, I decided that in this case, Newt was not so contradictory after all, and is probably not (despite my headline) making a case for levelling everyone's incomes in a Marxian "from each/to each" manner. After all, a good chunk of that 1% does put in a lot of work, whether it be running a large corporation or managing a hedge fund (or, in some cases, providing entertainment to the masses). Whether it is productive work that society really benefits from is another question, but it is certainly work.
But there is another chunk of that 1%, and I don't know how big a chunk it is (if someone has access to these statistics, please use the comments to educate me), who inherited their wealth and do not work. Think "playboys" and "socialites". So maybe Newt favours a substantial increase in the inheritance tax? Nope: less than a month ago, he penned a column arguing for abolition of the so-called "death tax", bizarrely claiming it would cut the budget deficit. So that can't be it.
Still, once again fairness demands that I acknowledge that those who inherit wealth do not always live an "idle rich" lifestyle. The infamous Koch brothers, for instance, do appear to actively manage the business (Koch Industries) they inherited from their father. However, their elder brother Frederick would appear to qualify as an American aristocrat in pretty much every way (including some attributes, like his studying humanities and supporting the arts, that strike me as more benign than the activities of his younger brothers). So does Gingrich believe Frederick Koch should not eat unless and until he gets a job or starts and actively runs a business? Would love to see someone pose this question to him.
In light of the above analysis, I would submit that Gingrich here is actually lamenting what he sees as a failure on the left to maintain the classic progressive position that hard work is a moral imperative. Think Bobby Kennedy's exhortation that
we must move beyond welfare to self-sufficiency, giving less charitable doles--and substituting instead a full opportunity to contribute to the building and benefit of our society.
Viewed that way, Gingrich's critique is less easily mocked and pilloried. RFK is after all a kind of martyred hero for many of us on the left. But is this another reason for conservatives to be suspicious of Newt? He has already supported health care mandates, got cozy with Pelosi on a love seat supporting action against climate change, and inveighed against the Ryan plan as "right wing social engineering" (before taking it back and bizarrely stating that "any ad which quotes what I said on Sunday is a falsehood"). Given what purity trolls the teabaggers are, how long before they decide Gingrich is an RFK liberal, an apostate, and throw him overboard?