Posted on 03/09/2015 8:42:41 AM PDT by jazusamo
If you think you haven’t heard of “reformicons” or “reform conservatives,” don’t sell yourself short. You are already familiar with this latest movement within the Republican Party, albeit under different branding.
This piece, entitled “The Good Right” (as compared with … ?), sums up the Reformicon agenda this way:
Yuval Levin, one of reform conservatism’s brightest thinkers, told Sam Tanenhaus that “a shrinking or scaling-back of government” was not his aim. He sought “an entire reimagining of it.” He argues that “a true Burkean conservatism would recast the federal government as the facilitator and supporter of local institutions who are a function of, and a contributor to, a “civil society.”
Sound familiar? It should, because we’ve seen a parade of politicians going back as far as Woodrow Wilson pushing the idea that government can work if just the right people were in charge.
There is so much wrong with this, it is hard to know where to begin.
We could begin at the beginning — 1776, that is — to wreck the philosophical foundations of the reformicons, or we could wreck their pragmatic claims using the writings and speeches of Ronald Reagan, or the “compassionate conservatism” of the 2000s.
So-called “reform conservatism” invariably leads to bigger deficits, bigger government, and failure.
Here’s a wager. Since most of the folks pushing “reform conservatism” are either academics or pundits, I wonder how many of them have ever actually worked inside a government. Has a single “reformicon” ever served as a government employee and witnessed the hopeless level of waste and inefficiency from the inside? I am not referring to service as some “Special Adviser to the Undersecretary of Compassionate Programs.” I’m talking about being down in the bowels of state, local, or federal government.
Anyone? Raise your hand. Hello? Anyone?
I’ve done my stints in the bowels of both state and federal government. Here’s the bad news for “reform icons”: there is nothing about the nature of government on the inside that can be “fundamentally reformed.” It is what it is. And it isn’t a vehicle for transforming lives for the positive in the long run, or any of the high-minded aims “reformicons” think government can accomplish if just the right people were in power.
Reformicons push progressive policies with GOP branding. They invariably want to grow the size of government and increase spending, and they have never accomplished anything in the long run when given a chance. No Child Left Behind was a classic reformicon program, and outside of the people who wrote it, you are hard-pressed to find anyone who still supports it.
So here is my challenge: find me a reformicon that worked as a career employee inside government. Find me one who has seen the reality of government who believes government can be used to transform people’s lives or implement positive change. Law clerks, interns, undersecretaries, and special assistants don’t count.
Those of us who have been inside the bowels of government have seen government for what it is: a necessary evil. It gets by doing a few things fairly well: policing the streets, winning wars, filing UCC filings, resolving court disputes, issuing trademarks, and so forth.
Once it drifts outside a narrow band of relative competence, government fails.
The reformicon agenda is all about power. Usually, those advocating reform conservatism have a particular “transformative” policy they would like to see implemented. You’ll never guess who is on deck to implement those policies on the top end of the GS scale.
The reformicon agenda is all about power, not principles. The problem with government isn’t that the wrong people are in power. The problem with government is government.
The soaring federal debt of the last 15 years — yes, 15 — reminds us that those who seek to change the world though government programs usually never do, and they leave taxpayers and the children of taxpayers to clean up the mess.
Just the fact that he used the word facilitator scares the crap out of me.
The whole DC staffing industry needs a serious look. These are the completely unaccountable people who actually write the legislation that our congressmen don’t read and often don’t understand if they do read it. Most staffers are little more than in house lobbyists from various industries and advocacy groups.
When Hillary clinton was a senator she had more than 70 staffers with Huma Abdin leading the pack. Just take a look at former Clinton staffers and their employment histories. She’s just one example.
http://www.opensecrets.org/revolving/search_result.php?mem=Clinton%2C+Hillary
And scary it is, government control to cradle to grave.
Sums it up, apparently. They aren't interested in reforming "RINOs", they are fine with them.
They are interested in reforming real conservatives.
Only checked a few so far and it’s quite an eye opener.
It’s something we know deep down but really amazing to see it written down.
Exactly, the RINOs are already on board.
“an entire reimagining of it.” I’ll go for that; I imagine several departments disappearing. I imagine multiple alphabet agencies also wiped out. Buildings sold; unemployed layers; lobbyists banned. Term limits; stringent ethics; no pensions for Congress.
Then, on the second day of my Presidency, I’d .......
Staffers are the rot behind the walls of DC and things don’t look much better on the GOP side of the aisle.
People get angry at the people we elect but honestly they are little more than figureheads and nothing will change until we rip out the sheetrock and take a real look at the problem and deal with it.
Liberaltarians are bad enough but these clowns are commiecons.
” Exactly, the RINOs are already on board.”
Conservatives should be called the New Rinos, as the Establishment are now the norm.
“Conservatives should be called the New Rinos, as the Establishment are now the norm.”
Good point and so true. A sad day when RATS come forward and say they’ll save any move on the Establishment Speaker. Pathetic!
Anyone remember when “National Review Online” started using the term “Crunchy Con” several years before that?
A “Crunchy” was supposed to be a “Conservative” who respected environmental concerns, and, who ate granola. In other words, they believe in man-made global warming.
How about George W. Bush, the “Compassionate Conservative?”
Those three political roads are all traveling in the same direction: To the Left, To the Left, To the Left.
Why can't RINOs leave the English language alone?
“Conservative” already has a clear political definition.
Go find your own word.
100% correct.
And drove millions of freehold farmers off the land with railroad tariffs (ever hear of The Octopus? That was the Central Pacific aka Southern Pacific, which my great-grandfather worked for as conductor and stationmaster for over 30 years [12-hour days, 7 days/wk] until they retired him with a gold watch [sister has it now]), rigged markets (ever hear of the Yellow Sheets?), oligopsony, and bank loans tied to the Gold Standard, which gave lenders a couple of points' bump against silver over the life of the loan.
The word "plutocracy" applies here. As in, Pinkerton and union-busting, Chicago bulls and busted heads, Homestead and Presser vs. Illinois and the beginning of gun control. Time clocks and tyrannical management practices and fifteen cents an hour. The Federal Reserve and currency manipulation, "repression" and recycling people's savings out from under them.
And don't forget drowning for some people, and immunity from liability for the centimillionaire owners of the Johnstown Flood, the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire, and the RMS Titanic.
And the Civil War that enabled it all, the war to secure title to America's future, people, and resources to the moguls of the Atlantic Seaboard cities and their exarchates in the Old Northwest.
Yeah, it's been a real party. For some people.
Could you pass the creme brulee? Muffy and Buffy have invited me along for a splendid afternoon on the water with Chip and Skip and Poppy, and I'll need to keep my energy up for tennis later on.
Yes, they have been authors in what they thought was a good cause of a program too easily overreached and hijacked by Communists acting behind masks, and by Fabian dissemblers.
The old Jacksonians were the Jeffersonians on steroids, and their concern was the People. Jackson and Taney fought the banks and their octopoidal reach (we seem to be dealing with octopi today), and they fought the tendency of the Whigs to pour out public "improvement" capital in the backyards of the banks. Items: The Erie Canal, the Chesapeake Canal, the Transcontinental Railroad (Lincoln's 1862 legislation was a classic: it benefited nobody south of St. Louis), and the Federal Turnpike (US 40).
The writer has other problems, too. Full time government employees are likely to be Democrats out of self-interest. Also, by law they're not supposed to play politics while they're in government employ. It's against the law, isn't it? Government employees tend to stay in government for the pension, so they aren't likely ever to be making much of a noise on the political or intellectual scene.
Also, I'm not sure that his "reformicons" are really that enthusiastic about using government to change human nature or behavior. It's more that government isn't going to go away. Only very rarely do countries vote to cut back government programs or services. Sorry, but it doesn't happen that often. No more than private citizens voluntarily slashing their own incomes or expenditures.
Given that government isn't going away or shrinking down to the minimal state anytime soon, it can do more or less harm. It can be largely destructive or at least a little bit constructive, and I suspect that's what the reformicons are after, though they may deceive themselves with "compassionate conservative" rhetoric.
Yuval Levin's hope that government can strengthen society or the community seems misplaced, but I'd really be surprised if Levin and the others were out to "nudge" American society in the way Cass Sunstein and other progressives urge. I suspect it's more a matter of getting the government (that we aren't going to get rid of any time soon) to do less harm, and perhaps even a little good, if only indirectly or accidentally.
I guess you would have voted Bryan back 1896, while I would have cast mine for McKinley. But the fascinating thing is we both consider ourselves men of the Right today. Today’s GOP is truly a big tent, Hamiltonians, Madisonians, Jacksonians, Whigs, Bryanites, etc. All of the great political traditions of the pre-Wilson period have ended up under the GOP. The Democrats in the meantime have become a collection of Socialists, Fascists, and just your common coat holder Hacks.
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