Excerpts From A Conversation with Mr. Right

1. "Domination"

Mr. Peepers believes that it's not a good thing for the Republicans to have a lively season of debates and a highly competitive primary campaign. It was a good thing for him as a loyal Democrat, however. As he was explaining to Mr. Right, the current dissension only showed that the Republicans were split among many factions, while the narrowing Democratic contest showed that that party was closer to unity. He was listing someof the GOP factions, and got to Neocons when Mr. Right asked, "Do you even know what a neocon is?"

Kibitzing until then, I offered that I had never read two matching definitions of who neocons are or what they stand for, except that they support the Iraq War.

"They want to dominate the world," Mr. Peepers clarified.

"Well, who do you think should dominate the world?" Mr. Right challenged. Mr. Peepers didn't seem to have an answer, so Mr. R. pressed his point: "I'd rather have the U.S. dominate the world."

"The correct answer would be Nobody," I suggested, but Mr. Right feels that someone has to dominate the world, so it may as well be the U.S. He claims that our country can be trusted with dominance because of its superior moral record. This moral superiority is quantitative in nature. Conceding slavery and the oppression of American Indians, he insists that the U.S. has done more than any other country to feed hungry people around the world and free oppressed ones. Today, however, he was concerned that we misunderstood what he meant by dominance.

"I'm writing a story right now about the home team's last game," he said, "I have it in writing right here that they dominated their opponents during the first period. What do you think I meant by that?"

He clearly didn't mean that the home team ruled the other team. "So by dominate you mean you want the U.S. to be powerful enough to beat any opponent, and that's all?"

If that was so, then score one debating point for Mr. Right.


2. Envy

Like many conservatives, Mr. Right is fond of attributing any criticism of corporate wealth to "envy." He has a notion that many Americans who are not registered Republicans agree with conservative Republicans on moral issues and the war on terror, but refuse to join the GOP due to force of habit and "envy." We were discussing a political article he'd recently written when the subject came up again. It's one I particularly resent.

"What would you say," I queried, "If I attributed conservative beliefs to greed, or selfishness, or bigotry?"

"You'd be wrong," was his immediate response, to which I replied, "Well, I'd imagine you'd want to challenge me to prove it, so you should give me some evidence to back up your claim about envy."

To be fair, that would be hard to prove empirically even if it was true, so I adopted another line of attack: the Socratic method.

"What is envy, anyway?" I asked, to which he answered by example. "It's the mentality that says, why should the guy down the block make $300,000 a year when I only make $30,000?"

"That's envy? . . . Well, you're a sportswriter. Have you ever criticized a professional athlete's salary?"

He had. So was that envy? He was honest about his feelings. "When I hear about another big free agent contract, I do feel envious of the natural talent that those athletes have."

"But do you envy the money they make?"

"No."

"But you do think the money they make is excessive?"

"In a lot of cases, yes."

"And that's how a lot of people feel about corporate CEO salaries. Does that mean those people envy the CEOs?"

Mr. Right has worked for our company longer than I have. He well knows that our controlling corporation is a poor role model for capitalism. He conceded readily that the bonuses our corporate overloads gave themselves were both excessive and unmerited, and added his own observation that a competitive market for the recruitment of top CEOs was driving salaries up even further.

"And the same thing applies in sports due to the free agent market, right?"

He admitted that one of his favorite teams was guilty of inflating the market in their hunger for free agents.

"So you'd agree that, in some cases, the marketplace inflates salaries beyond a point that can be justified by merit."

He did. "Is that envy?" I asked. He could not say that it was. Score one for me.


3. Conservatism Defined.

The conversation turned to the subprime mortgage crisis. He didn't downplay it, but he thought it reflected a certain media bias that everyone talked about the people who were losing their homes but no one wanted to talk about the people who were losing their jobs as subprime lenders went under. Their stories needed to be told, he urged, because, as he understood it, they had been compelled by the government to offer subprime mortgages to people who had been denied standard mortgages due to low income or other factors.

"What do you think is the moral of the story?" I asked.

"The moral is that you can't legislate fairness and equality," Mr. Right answered, "If you try, you only make things worse for everybody."

Earlier in our chat, he had tried to convince me that opposition to taxes was a sine qua non of conservatism. I had countered that there was no automatic hostility to taxation in philosophical conservatism, and that free-market capitalism itself would not have been considered conservative 200 years ago. His answer to that was to say that now it was conservative because conservatives themselves had discovered that individual liberty matters more than anything else, except maybe for traditional morality. But now, as I had to get ready to catch a bus for home, Mr. Right had tapped into authentic conservative philosophy: you can't legislate fairness. Whether that's a pretty sight or not is up to each of you.