Reactionary Cavemen
link Thomas Frank: The Rise of the Reactionary Right – WSJ.com.
Again, a simplistic summary of conservative, free market positions. You would think by now, arguments against free markets would have some validity, some new revelation about why this economic model doesn’t work. Instead we get the same old chestnut we’ve heard for years, which is, ” conservative policies have brought us to the brink of economic disaster”.
This argument is specious and your basic ideological drivel. Whatever the shortcomings of economies, free market philosophies are not to blame. In fact, it is exactly the opposite that’s true. Whereas free market principles engender confidence among it’s citizens to go forth and be productive, the grafting of non free market policies on top of them is what makes things go horribly wrong.
With very few exceptions, when governments are charged with the oversight of any part of the economy, that sector is doomed for incompetence, waste and a one way descent into byzantine mazes of bureaucracy with departments often working at cross purposes to one another. An apt analogy would be chewing gum in your hair. It is such a mess that the only way to be rid of it is to cut off some hair. Many government programs start off in the same way that chewing gum gets on to the hair of kids; someone thought it was a good idea at the time.
Conservative policies are not about every man for himself, this is the imagery that’s offered to convince people that progressivism and collectivism are more civilized philosophies. The recent resurgence of conservative voices are about pushing back against cultures of entitlement and waste entrenched in governments and propagated by them. At its core, conservatism is about not ceding to government control what you can do for yourself. It is about being dependable and responsible rather than dependant and responsive.
I would invite anyone to point out any part of the economy that governments have control over which can be considered to be a success. It’s amusing and maddening that politicians continue to propose large scale agendas which are for “the good of everyone” when there is no historical data for any efficacy of policies in the past. When you purchase a mutual fund, there is printed in large letters on the prospectus, “Past performance are not an indicator of future returns”. In the case of governments, there actually IS no history of past performance, certainly not for the good! One more thing is worth mentioning from this article, an technique used which is common to all progressive pundits. They obliquely compare conservatives to cavemen. The GEICO guys are going to be annoyed.