A reader responds:

I don’t think you’re wrong that socialists like Bernie Sanders supporters may have materialistic motives, but I wouldn’t be so quick to forget the genuine idealism of youth.  They would like to get things for free, but they think everybody else should too!

Reply:

Thank you for that wonderful line!  And I agree that non-materialistic motives may also be involved.  But just what non-materialistic motives are we thinking of?

I’m not keen on the term “idealism.”  It sounds like a virtue, but it isn’t one.  What I think we are really dealing with is what used to be called “enthusiasm.”  It meant a tendency to enthuse -- a high-minded, high-spirited emotionalism -- which is a most equivocal quality.

Yes, enthusiasm can be transformed by charity into a virtue.  Medieval Europe was transformed when thousands of young people followed Dominic and Francis and took vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience.  Even today, many young people feel the call to give up everything for God, and struggle with all their might to understand it.  It isn’t like voting for free tuition!

But enthusiasm can also decay into something ugly.  Political messianism is “idealistic,” but more blood has been shed for power and utopia than has ever been shed for power alone.  Besides, without the divine gift of humility, pursuing a cause larger than self is compatible with the most extreme selfishness – just because one is sure one is good.

“[Irony] is the hardest addiction of all.  Forget heroin.  Just try giving up irony, that deep-down need to mean two things at once, or be in two places at once, not to be there for the catastrophe of a fixed meaning.”

-- The main character, Patrick, in Edward S. Aubyn’s novel, At Last

Up until now, we have been shielded in our country from many of the usual misfortunes.  Now we have begun to experience what hitherto we have only read of in books, like the Cult of the Leader.  In the advent of the current president we saw it in its God-Emperor mode; in the advent of another unmentionable person we are seeing it in its Swaggering Thug mode.

I should have said, what some of us have read of in books.  Too bad we think reading is outdated.  Too bad we think history is bunk.

Question:

I think your point that socialists can be just as materialistic as capitalists is well-taken. However, I’m not so sure the main appeal of Bernie to the young is free tuition (at least not free tuition for them). Most of the young non-religious people I know -- mostly artists of some kind -- support Bernie, and most of them are already out of college.

They are already leftists, they are already ignorant of economics, and they support Bernie rather than Hilary because they sense authenticity in him -- he actually believes what he is saying, unlike anyone else in the race.

Reply:

You’re trying to understand why confirmed young leftists might support Senator Sanders over Senator Clinton, and I’m sure your reasoning is correct.  But I’m trying trying to understand why unformed young people might be attracted to his leftism in the first place.

They do want someone “authentic.”  But although it is difficult to believe in the authenticity of someone as indictable as Senator Clinton, I don’t think it true that nobody else in either party believes what he is saying.

On the other hand, it is easy to believe in the authenticity of someone who enthusiastically promotes one’s own self-interest.  And to feel good about it too.

Coming Monday:  Is it all materialism, or is there something else too?

Around the same time as the incident I told about in yesterday’s post, the contraceptive mandate came up in another class.  I mentioned how strange it seemed to me personally to call artificial contraception, sterilization, and the provision of abortion-inducing drugs “health care,” because pregnancy is not a disease.

A young man responded that pregnancy is a disease.

“Do you mean that pregnancy itself is pathological,” I asked, “or do you mean only that although pregnancy is a natural condition, complications may arise during the course of it?”

He vigorously denied that the distinction was valid.  Pregnancy is associated with certain health risks, therefore it is a disease.  Although some of the other students were shocked, others agreed with him.  Still others seemed troubled and confused.

Since I had encountered this view in the writings of abortionists, I shouldn’t have been surprised, but I hadn’t fully realized how common it had become.  It was as though a plague vector had escaped from a containment facility and was spreading through the population.