Weekly Standard: Surrender to Big Government

Weekly Standard Online ^ | 11/8/05 | Ross Douthat & Reihan Salam

[Jacksonville Patriot]

I post this to demonstrate contemporary Establishment thinking. We know what Reagan and Thatcher would say to this. Let's communicate, explain, lead, and fight!

[edcoil]

Anyone with this much free time to write this much is not worth listening to.

K.I.S.S.

[jadedm1]

Speaking of Big Government....

http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewPrint.asp?Page=\Nation\archive\200511\NAT20051104b.html

[Jack Black]

Thanks. It's long. Need to print and read later.

[Russ]

"smog of semi-corruption"

I never heard of semi-corruption. Either something or someone is corrupt or not.

[EagleUSA]

I never heard of semi-corruption. Either something or someone is corrupt or not.
----
Kind of like being PARTIALLY PREGNANT!!! :-)

[in hoc signo vinces]

WTF? Someone is definitely overthinking their agenda or does side work for CNN, which loves running their daily stroy about the GOP being in disarray.

[Mr. Jeeves]

It would mean recognizing that you can't have an "ownership society" in a nation where too many Americans owe far more than they own.

Americans have demonstrated over the last decade that they don't want an "ownership society" - by and large, they are much more comfortable being owned.

[TChris]

Synopsis: Fiscal conservatism is dead. Embrace it.

[rellimpank]

-b-

[Sam the Sham]

Don't be smug.

Most people AREN'T entrepreneurs and have no wish to be. And that is just plain reality. Most people are security driven and saw Bush's Social Security proposals as adding to the insecurity of their lives. Particularly that well over half of the American workforce that has seen its socioeconomic security eroded by globalization.

[wildbill]

Wasn't Bill Kristol, the editor of the Weekly Standard, the original proponent of Big Active Government Conservatism?

[Sam the Sham]

Synopsis: Fiscal conservatism is dead. Embrace it.

Good synopsis.

You see, the emergence of the GOP as the majority party came with the Christian Right. The defection of blue collar voters over cultural issues from a Democratic Party dominated by activists and cultural leftists. Well, these new Republicans never stopped being New Deal Democrats on economic issues. They were never the heirs of "The Business of America is Business" Old Guard Republicans. They are the heirs of Williams Jennings Bryan, of his mix of economic and cultural populism.

On economic issues, the Bush second term agenda is contemptuous of the needs and interests of blue collar Americans. This article very intelligently sees that.

[Sam the Sham]

The current Republican majority isn't likely to be defeated, or disappear, in the next few election cycles--though serious setbacks are always possible. But the party feels increasingly tired and corrupted by power, obsessed with fighting yesterday's battles and unwilling to adapt to the changing political landscape--a landscape that has changed, in many cases, precisely because of the party's past successes. Because of the GOP, most Americans no longer feel overtaxed; because of the GOP, rising crime rates no longer threaten the fabric of daily life; because of the GOP, the free market no longer buckles under the weight of government regulation. But in these very successes lie the seeds of potential defeat.

That is the point. The days of easy Reagan era landslides is over because the red button issues of the 80's (crime, taxes, commies) are worked to death. Bush damn near lost. He would have lost if the Democratic candidate hadn't been Thurston Howell III. The vital GOP state of Ohio was iffy because Bush has no economic message for the socioeconomic insecurity of non-college educated American workers in the era of globalization. Indeed, he plans to make their lives more miserable with a cheap labor agenda of illegals and job exporting free trade agreements.

[Alberta's Child]

The Weekly Standard has long had a reputation as a repository for "big government" advocates in my mind, and this article reinforces that view of mine.

The author's infatuation with "baby bonus" legislation is particularly telling. Any so-called "conservative" who tries to support his point by citing a key piece of legislation in what is arguably the most radically Marxist jurisdiction in all of North America (the Canadian province of Quebec) needs to have his head examined. What's next -- a call for gasoline subsidies and free matches for rioters in Parisian suburbs?

[TBP]

I'm surprised that they didn't pick up on a welfare policy that South Carolina has. In SC, when a woman comes in for AFDC, she has to identify the father and his wages are garnished. What if this were coupled with a provision that you could get out of the garnishment by marryig the mother and staying married to her?

Some of these proposals are pretty good. But what this article mainly shows is that we have to fight even harder against the encroachment of Big Government. We have to make our case more effectively that Big Government programs hurt everyone economically, socially, and in other ways, and form an agenda that helps us move from Big Government to limited government.

[Alberta's Child]

Most people AREN'T entrepreneurs and have no wish to be. And that is just plain reality. Most people are security driven and saw Bush's Social Security proposals as adding to the insecurity of their lives. Particularly that well over half of the American workforce that has seen its socioeconomic security eroded by globalization.

There's nothing wrong with that kind of outlook, but it does represent an inherent danger to this country. In the early history of the United States it was generally accepted that only those who owned property were permitted to take part in the process of electing leaders. This was done precisely to avoid having the political process corrupted by people who are "security-driven" by nature, because these were typically the people in the Thirteen Colonies who were most likely to accept the idea of living under British rule.

[Alberta's Child]

Mitt Romney has proposed in Massachusetts that health insurance be made universal by making it mandatory.

The fact that an initiative as intrusive and totalitarian in nature as this one has been promoted by a Republican governor and lauded by a so-called "conservative" publication is irrefutable proof that the conservative movement has completely unraveled in this country.

[Sam the Sham]

You assumed that "security driven" is weak and submissive. It is nothing of the sort. To be a parent is to be "security driven" because your responsibility for the security of your children comes before "actualization" or "self-expression" or "what's right for me".

It is the very "security driven" nature of America that is its strength. A "security driven" culture will be suspicious of elitist intellectuals with a vision of the perfect world. That is why revolutionary utopianism never caught on here.

[Alberta's Child]

You assumed that "security driven" is weak and submissive.

"Security-driven" is weak and submissive in the context of a relationship between citizen and government -- particularly on those issues discussed in the article above.

To be a parent is to be "security driven" because your responsibility for the security of your children comes before "actualization" or "self-expression" or "what's right for me."

And yet most parents today who consider themselves "responsible" and "security-driven" when it comes to their children have absolutely no qualms about sending their children off to a government institution for 6-8 hours every day where the parents: 1) have no control over the learning environment of their kids; 2) have no control over the safety of their kids; and 3) have no control over what types of people (children and adults) their kids will encounter during the course of the day.

I hate to sound elitist an cynical, but most people are absolutely NOT "security-driven" at all. If anything, most people are inherently prone to lethargy and laziness and are likely to seek the path of least resistance in all facets of life -- economic, social, political, etc.