Wendell Berry with Bill Moyers

I am watching this interview right now, but I wanted to stop and make a point.  Berry is a hero of mine for various reasons, but I've noticed that when he gets asked a political question, he is unable to answer;

Moyers (paraphrased):  The concentration of wealth into a few hands, a plutocracy has reached fulfillment.  How can that be reversed?

Berry:  I don't know.

It's a good quality to say I don't know, when one doesn't.  But someone needs to be able to supply the political answers, if this movement is going to succeed, and not work against its own success.

The answer to the political side of the question is decentralization of political power.  The plutocracy came into permanent existence when political power was centralized in Washington, starting in the progressive era (read among other sources Kolko's Triumph of Conservatism).  So it can only be reversed by transferring that power back to the states.  Which is the goal of genuine political conservatives (not Republicans, I must hasten to add!)

And of course it is sad that Moyer and liberals in general don't understand that their politics of centralizing all power in Washington is itself the cause of the problem they wish to solve.  Notice that Moyers at the outset demonizes the only people in Washington that are actually trying to limit the power of the federal government ("the people who refuse to let democracy work"!!!).  Note to Moyers:  democracy = having input into the laws we live under ... which can only really happen when politics are local, and is non-existent when all politics are nationalized, especially when that power is increasingly transferred from the legislature to the  executive and judicial branches.

Plus:  if what Berry means by capitalism is the economic system characterized by the unlimited creation of currency, created and lent out by bankers and received back with interest, then he is right to describe it negatively.  But what is the right word to describe a system in which the right to acquire and possess property is regarded as a sacred right that must not be violated by governments or other people, but without the unlimited creation of currency loaned out at interest? The problem is that people use the word capitalism to describe that as well.  Does Berry and his audience recognize the distinction, or do they lump them both into the same object of condemnation?I would guess that Berry wants to be able to keep what he earns, the fruit of his labor, rather than have it confiscated by the government; and wants to be able to hold onto his farm, rather than have it be confiscated by government ... as they do in any country in which an elite few want to establish unlimited government.

And:  Moyer and Berry talk about land policy as being responsible for the unsettling of the country of farmers leaving the land.  I'm just hoping that they don't believe that the settling of the America will be the result of a different land policy, as opposed to no land policy.  By which I mean that making land a matter of public policy, as opposed to being a government free zone (except to protect it) was historically (the New Deal and its aftermath, for example) and is now itself the cause of the problems Moyers and Berry wish to solve.  And instead of proposing a new Farm Bill, how about keeping the federal government out of agriculture altogether (and limited to its I.8 powers).