This industry is heavily dominated by left leaning statists who were taught at their liberal arts colleges that there are certain groups of disadvantaged people who deserve special rights over others. They believe that the government is the only force righteous enough to manage the balance of the scales of fairness. Marcusean logic.
Our book is antithesis of this school of thought. We explain that government's only job should be to defend our individual liberties, not to actively fight for fairness. Almost 100 years of 'social justice' and we still have 10% unemployment, a huge population on welfare, and poverty, despite all of the wealth redistribution mandated by the almighty federal government.
So back to the question: Do You Need a Conservative Literary Agent For Conservative Books? Check out one of our rejections last week.
Thank you for thinking of me with your query. While this sounds like a strong project, I'm afraid it doesn't strike me as a likely fit with me and my particular editorial contacts. I wish you well in finding the right agent for your work.
I doubt our book will be a fit for 99.9% of the editorial contacts in the literary industry, because of our disapproval with statism.
At least she could appreciate the strength of our project, though even the potential for profit won't motivate a liberal to entertain conservative thought from an 'average' person.
Still, we'll keep on fighting
"government's only job should be to defend our individual liberties, not to actively fight for fairness."
ReplyDeleteInteresting statement. I think I know what you mean, but I can't agree with the way you put it. One thing that made this country great was the idea that anyone who works hard enough can succeed, and anyone with the right ideas can succeed brilliantly. I think the government should fight for fair access to that dream, and that means providing as much equity in education as possible by not allowing higher education to be completely dominated by a modern American aristocracy, and by not allowing corporatism to stifle innovation. But we should not indefinitely prop up those who have no ambition to be productive.
David, I meant it in the same sense as when Frederic Bastiat claimed that "law is a negative concept." Meaning, that the purpose of the law is to prevent injustice from reigning. Justice is only achieved when injustice is absent. That is the government's job; to maintain justice.
ReplyDeleteThe opposite of this would be to impose regulations, through the will of a legislator to create his version of justice. This is a 'positive' effort to create justice and, of course, is in violation of the true definition of justice above.
Sorry if I didn't make that clear, but I think you get what I mean.
As for higher education, we wrote a whole chapter on it. I'm sure you'll agree with what I had to say.
David, I reread your comment and are you saying that government needs to maintain fairness in post secondary education, say by lowering price barriers for some groups to ensure equal levels of enrollment of rich and poor?
ReplyDeleteIf that is what you're saying, I couldn't disagree with you more. Government doesn't need to be involved with college tuition control, in fact, I wrote an entire chapter in our book arguing that it shouldn't. The federal government has been actively trying to reduce college tuition for over 40 years and what do we have today? Record high annual tuition inflation. In fact, its the government's direct involvement with the student loan program that is to blame for this phenomenon.
Whatever the government has tried certainly hasn't worked; it has only made tuition rise while making the student more dependent upon easy to borrow loans. Perhaps we should just give removing 'government from our education entirely' a try.
by the way, that's in our book.
ReplyDeleteThen we agree to disagree on that point. I think government grant programs and student loans, as well as state admission requirements (the Texas 10% rule is one example) have been fairly successful at opening up higher education to anyone who wants it. And I do mean anyone, not just "some groups". As far as I know, public universities do not take profits, in fact they mostly depend on some level of subsidies. So rising tuition may have more to do with rising costs of staying competitive. I think if not for these programs, then only the upper-middle class and above would have access, and you end up with a permanent upper and lower class like most of those countries that once looked up to us.
ReplyDeleteI am definitely sympathetic to the libertarian movement. I've voted for a few of them and would like to see a few in congress to at least add to debate. But I think there is still more to government than just security. I like that my meat is inspected for contaminants, I like that I can have a reasonable expectation to survive a crash in my vehicle, I like that my sewage doesn't just run out into the ocean, and I think its pretty cool that we went to the moon. The line between forcing justice and preventing injustice is a very fuzzy one, as I'm sure you explore in the book. I'll definitely check it out if you guys manage to get it printed.