VDH on the Therapeutic Culture of America ca. 2011

Victor Davis Hanson is another of my favorite writers.  A classicist by training (and a farmer by background), Hanson has a philosophical and common sense view of the limitations of human nature based on both his deep reading in the Greeks and his own long practical experience.   Here he is, critiquing contemporary liberalism, which he finds imbued with what he calls the "therapeutic" world-view, and applying his critique to the public employee benefits dispute in Wisconsin:

There are several tenets of the modern therapeutic view. In such a utopian mindset, compensation is and should be based on what the employee considers necessary for the good life. The public employees in Wisconsin reject the three classical requisites for perpetually improved compensation: The employer has plentiful capital; the employee’s productivity creates new wealth or improves the efficiency of services; and the employee has market value and will go elsewhere should the employer be foolish enough to lose him.

Again, in the therapeutic mindset, perceived need is what matters, and all else must adjust accordingly. Teachers in Wisconsin rarely argue that their students’ test scores have increased or graduation rates have improved, or that their school districts are flush with cash, or that they themselves can always move to a parochial school or private academy if their talents are not better appreciated. Instead, in almost every contemporary discussion of budgetary discipline, from pensions and benefits to compensation, the argument is based on what one needs, in the teenage fashion of reminding a now unemployed parent that he once promised to buy the graduating senior a car.