The Care Bear Stare

Megan McArdle picks up on something that annoys the fire out of me: the bizarre notion held by a frustratingly large number of people that anybody who makes an argument for why a proposed policy or action won't work is somehow a) obliged to propose a solution (failure to do so obviates the critique), and/or b) speaking in bad faith (e.g., are cynical, unpatriotic, uncaring, etc.) Julian Sanchez brilliantly dubs this illogical emotional phenomenon "The Care Bear Stare":

For those of you who didn't grow up (or have small children) in the 80s, the reference at the close of the previous post is to the cartoon Care Bears. The Care Bear Stare was a sort of deus ex machina the magical furballs could employ when faced with some insuperable obstacle: They'd line up together and emit a glowing manifestation of their boundless caring, which seemed capable of solving just about any problem.

In politics, Matt Yglesias has identified the neocon's version of the Care Bear Stare, which he's dubbed the Green Lantern Theory of Geopolitics. It holds that, like a Green Lantern's power ring, the American military can produce just about any effect imaginable if only the Will of the American People is strong enough. When any foreign intervention fails, this is proof that our will was insufficient, presumably due to the malign influence of fifth columnists in the media.

The left, of course, has its own version, which can be seen in claims that we know perfectly well how to solve problem X, if only we cared enough or had the political will to address it. A common variant holds that some vital function can't be left to the market, since only government can guarantee the right result, presumably by putting the word "guarantee" somewhere in the relevant legislation.

Examples of The Care Bear Stare, anybody? I'll give you a recurrent one from my line of work. On our editorial board, we are often meditating on the woebegone condition of the local, state and national public schools. It falls to Your Curmudgeonly Working Boy to point out that what ails the schools chiefly are problems not fixable by the spending of more money or the devising of new schemes, programs or initiatives. Nobody wants to hear this, and I don't really blame them. Who wants to be told over and over again, "That won't work"? And it's true that I don't have a clear idea of what would work, at least not within the law (e.g., if teens are troublemakers and don't want to be at school, why should the good kids and their teachers be held hostage by the bad kids? Kick them out, I say. But you can't do that legally. See what I mean?). Anyway, this is unacceptable because it entails the dispiriting idea that some problems can't be fixed, at least not without a radical change. So we go forward putting our hope in this new tax, or new administrator, or new program that won't leave any children behind, confident that if we only apply sufficient caring to the problem of failing public schools, we can turn them around. The failure of this strategy is taken by many as evidence that society didn't care enough.

Admittedly, it's hard to find a sensible middle ground between Care Bear-ism and Cynicism. It's the space between the kind of optimism that refuses to deal with reality of limits, and the kind of pessimism that refuses to deal with the reality of possibility -- that is, the fact that positive change can happen, that nothing is fated. Between Care Bear-ism and Cynicism lies Realism. I think American culture and politics are far more subject to rampant Care Bear-ism than Cynicism. It's what happens when idealism is not tempered by a tragic sensibility.

So: please, give us your examples of The Care Bear Stare in action.