Utopia for Realists

Everyone who reckons themselves progressive should be a beacon of not just energy but ideas, not only indignation but hope, and equal parts ethics and hard sell

The greatest sin of the academic left is that it has become fundamentally aristocratic, writing in bizarre jargon that makes simple matters dizzyingly complex. If you can’t explain your ideal to a fairly intelligent twelve-year-old, after all, it’s probably your own fault. What we need is a narrative that speaks to millions of ordinary people

But Solomon Asch made another discovery. A single opposing voice can make all the difference. When just one other person in the group stuck to the truth, the test subjects were more likely to trust the evidence of their own senses. Let this be an encouragement to all those who feel like a lone voice crying out in the wilderness: Keep on building those castles in the sky. Your time will come

“Discontent,” said Oscar Wilde, “is the first step in the progress of a man or a nation.”

Not only that, we need a good dose of irritation, frustration, and discontent to propel us forward. If the Land of Plenty is a place where everybody is happy, then it’s also a place steeped in apathy. Had women never protested, they would never have gained the vote; had African Americans never rebelled, Jim Crow might still be the law of the land

Not that the present is bad; on the contrary. However, it is bleak, if we have no hope of anything better. “Man needs, for his happiness, not only the enjoyment of this or that, but hope and enterprise and change

We see it in academia, where everybody is too busy writing to read, too busy publishing to debate. In fact, the twenty-first-century university resembles nothing so much as a factory, as do our hospitals, schools, and TV networks. What counts is achieving targets. Whether it’s the growth of the economy, audience shares, publications – slowly but surely, quality is being replaced by quantity

Man needs, for his happiness, not only the enjoyment of this or that, but hope and enterprise and change,”35 the British philosopher Bertrand Russell once wrote. Elsewhere he continued, “It is not a finished Utopia that we ought to desire, but a world where imagination and hope are alive and active.”36

Greg Duncan, a professor at the University of California, calculated that lifting an American family out of poverty takes an average of about $4,500 annually – less than the Cherokee casino payouts. In the end, the return on this investment, per child, would be:

•12.5% more hours worked

•$3,000 annual savings on welfare

•$50,000–$100,000 additional lifetime earnings

•$10,000–$20,000 additional state tax revenues

According to his conservative estimates, eliminating poverty actually generated more money than the total of all casino payments through reductions in crime, use of care facilities, and repetition of school grades.11