We are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.
Wilsonian progressives believe that History is a proper noun, an autonomous thing. It, rather than nature, defines government's ever-evolving and unlimited purposes. Government exists to dispense an ever-expanding menu of rights -- entitlements that serve an open-ended understanding of material and even spiritual well-being.
Yes, Lyndon Johnson himself said he wanted government to supply spiritual well-being to every American. A god in every pot?
Governments do not generate wealth; they can merely distribute it. The challenge for both liberals and conservatives is simply to define how much distribution is "enough." What would an acceptable safety net look like? Who should be taken care of by taxpayers and for how long? Paul Ryan offered an answer to that question, and liberals scoffed because they reject the question. There's no such thing as enough. That's what the Greeks thought.
That's what the Greeks thought until Mr. Reality in the form of the Bond Market appeared to them.
There is no such thing as "enough" as long as there is one more vote to be bought.
Conservatives claim that government is incompetent, inefficient, and intrinsically corrupt (eg vote buying), and therefore can be trusted to do very little.
Libs and Lefties seem to believe that government is smarter and possessed of superior motives to those of the private sector.
When governments fail to demonstrate effectiveness (as in the IRS' failure to make money on a Nevada whorehouse, or the oil spill, or managing money, or border control, or Fannie and Freddie, or...), many Conservatives complain that government isn't doing its job with all our dough. Libs and Lefties complain that the failure will damage the notion of big government's omni-competence and virtue and thus their claim to our hard-earned dollars and pennies.
Readers know my view: Much of government is a legal racket, a special interest in itself devoted to its own interests of power and money and ego. Government has limited power against reality, and disproportionately more power over people's lives. Obama can no more control the oil spill than he can legislate the weather or the economy.
I am entirely in agreement with Steyn who we quoted this morning, "Almost every problem we face today arises from the vanity of Big Government."
I do not blame Obama for the oil (or the weather). I never rush to blame anybody for anything. Shit happens. However, government worshippers like Obama cannot say so because it would undermine the vision, which they market, of governmental godlike omnicompetence and virtue leading towards Progress and Worry-Free Life and General Wonderfulness. The Achilles' Heel of taking that position is that you must accept blame for almost anything that goes wrong.
Reality is relentless. Even if you control the media, reality wins in the end.
To the mainstream media -- to that liberal elite generally -- the question has not been whether we should have vast intrusive bureaucracies, but rather, what their policies should be, and how to pay for them. That is their playing field, on which they locate some "middle ground" or scrimmage line -- itself shifting constantly to the left, toward some vague, Utopian endzone. It comes as an inconceivable shock to them to discover millions of people who are not merely pushing back against this "progress" -- which they could understand -- but want no part of the game.
Their lives are centred on family and church and productive labour, not on politics. They are often poorly informed about things they care little about; poorly researched on current rights and entitlements; real boobs when they stray into debates about such things; and thus, hicks to the politically sophisticated. The latter, in turn, know little enough about family and church and productive labour.
When I heard the story and saw the pics, it was clear to me that our Editor happily does the "jobs Americans won't do." Such as outdoor labor. Supposedly only illegal Mexicans will do that hard work.
Two months ago I posted a sign at the High School jobs bulletin board. It said "Yard, Garden, and Farm Work, through the season. $10/hr," and I gave my phone number. Unbelievably, given how hard it for kids to find jobs right now, I only received two replies, a guy and a gal. They have been doing chores for me on weekends, and will begin working 5 or 6 days/week until everything on my list is done. It will take at least into August. They are wonderful, do not mind heavy lifting or getting dirty, and tell me this job will get them buff and tan for their summer nights.
My list for them includes painting the shed and the barn and a garden fence, splitting wood for the fall (I won't let them do chain-sawing), weekly lawn mowing, clearing out some downed trees in the pasture, mucking the barn, putting up hay when it comes in, weeding the gardens, trimming hedges, edging borders, putting down mulch, re-setting a long slate walkway in stone dust, replacing some horse fence, cleaning the barn windows, rebuilding my garden compost bins, replacing or repairing a couple of gates and garden fences, etc. The Mrs. will give them lunch, and promises me that she will be demanding of them and will treat them formally, as employees and not like kids (which they do not seem to require thus far). It's much more work than I have time to do on weekends.
If they stick with it, it's worth $3-4,000 for each of them. A costly summer for me, but many of these jobs have been accumulating and need to get done now. Furthermore, it will give me more time for riding with the Mrs., which she very much appreciates even though I am no great fan of horses. Golf too.
Remind me to let you know how it works out, but so far, so good.
Liberalism's most acute critics such as University of Virginia political scientist James Ceaser emphasize the centrality of crises, real or manufactured, in expanding the size and reach of the liberal state (as in the recent case of the supposedly imminent global warming catastrophe). In Never Enough, Voegeli, a visiting scholar at Claremont McKenna College's Henry Salvatori Center and a contributing editor of this journal, points to a complementary concept: liberalism, he argues, "lacks a limiting principle." This boundlessness, as it might be described, is familiar to Americans across the country who have watched, for instance, secondary school costs and college tuitions grow at roughly twice the rate of inflation for a quarter-century now. This boundlessness generates some of the apprehension that animates the Tea Parties. As a friend asked me rhetorically—referring to the fact that the failing schools in Washington, D.C., spend $28,000 a year per pupil while Harvard tuition costs $34,000 a year—"When will enough be enough?"
In my view, never. It's a vote-buying game built on the childish wish-fulfillment fantasies of voters. Long ago, when Mario Cuomo had a short-lived radio talk show, I called in and asked him what the end point was of Progressivism. The gabby Cuomo became instantly tongue-tied when I asked him about government auto insurance.
Another quote from this excellent review:
"Democracy," said liberalism's pre-eminent founding father Herbert Croly, "must stand or fall on a platform of possible human perfectibility." These were the words of a radical, not a reformer—a man who, like Karl Marx and Auguste Comte, saw himself as leading humanity to a higher and more refined stage of civilization. Croly wanted the collective power of society put "at the service of its ablest members," who would be given the lead roles in the social drama of Progress. Boundlessness is built into the DNA of American liberalism.
Liberalism was to be a new covenant in which the priests of Progress led the people into the promised land of a full blown European-style welfare state. But in the intervening century, two of the key building blocks of liberalism—namely the concept of Progress and the popular appeal of government—have become problematic, the first for liberals themselves and the second for much of the populace.
Well said. Funny how many folks do not wish to be perfected by their betters, and prefer to be left alone. I guess most Americans aren't Euroweenies at heart, and prefer to be citizens, not subjects.
“Vote yourself a home!” has been our national motto for the last fifty years and today Americans are as addicted to the home mortgage deduction (and the even less justifiable deductions for second mortgages and home equity loans) as Greeks are to early retirement and government employment. Political popularity makes the policies harder to change — but no less damaging and destructive.
Every murderous totalitarian government of the 20th century began with some insulated group of faux-intellectuals congratulating each other on how smart they are, and fantasizing about how, if they could just install a dictatorship-for-a-day, they could right all the wrongs in the world.
The guy makes the case that they have become centers of mediocrity, but I think the better question is whether they serve any purpose any more, or produce any better officers than the 80% that come via ROTC.
Freedom gets in the way of Progress. We need enlightened dictators, Plato's Philosopher-Kings.
Perfectly fine with me as long as I get to be the Philosopher-King and not you. I am an elite and would make a fine, plump Mandarin - except that I don't like to hold power. Plus I don't believe in the notion of Progress either (except in the most trivial sense), but that's another topic.
...this year the U.S. government declined to lay out any plan to balance its budget ever again.
and
The feds assume a relationship between the economy and tax revenue that is divorced from reality. Six decades of history have established one far-reaching fact that needs to be built into fiscal calculations: Increases in federal tax rates, particularly if targeted at the higher brackets, produce no additional revenue. For politicians this is truly an inconvenient truth.
