Ever closer:
Data support the proposition that Americans like generous government programs and don’t want to lose them. So while 70% of Americans told pollsters at the Pew Research Center in 2009 they agreed that “people are better off in a free market economy, even though there may be severe ups and downs from time to time,” large majorities favor keeping our social insurance programs intact. This leads conventional thinkers to claim that a welfare state is what we truly want, regardless of whether or not we mouth platitudes about “freedom” and “entrepreneurship.”
But these claims miss the point. What we must choose is our aspiration, not whether we want to zero out the state. Nobody wants to privatize the Army or take away Grandma’s Social Security check. Even Friedrich Hayek in his famous book, “The Road to Serfdom,” reminded us that the state has legitimate—and critical—functions, from rectifying market failures to securing some minimum standard of living.
However, finding the right level of government for Americans is simply impossible unless we decide which ideal we prefer: a free enterprise society with a solid but limited safety net, or a cradle-to-grave, redistributive welfare state. Most Americans believe in assisting those temporarily down on their luck and those who cannot help themselves, as well as a public-private system of pensions for a secure retirement. But a clear majority believes that income redistribution and government care should be the exception and not the rule.
This is made abundantly clear in surveys such as the one conducted by the Ayers-McHenry polling firm in 2009, which asked a large group of Americans, “Overall, would you prefer larger government with more services and higher taxes, or smaller government with fewer services and lower taxes?” To this question, 21% favored the former, while 69% preferred the latter.
Unfortunately, many political leaders from both parties in recent years have purposively obscured the fundamental choice we must make by focusing on individual spending issues and programs while ignoring the big picture of America’s free enterprise culture. In this way, redistribution and statism always win out over limited government and private markets.
Why not lift the safety net a few rungs higher up the income ladder? Go ahead, slap a little tariff on some Chinese goods in the name of protecting a favored industry. More generous pensions for teachers? Hey, it’s only a few million tax dollars—and think of the kids, after all.
Individually, these things might sound fine. Multiply them and add them all up, though, and you have a system that most Americans manifestly oppose—one that creates a crushing burden of debt and teaches our children and grandchildren that government is the solution to all our problems. Seventy percent of us want stronger free enterprise, but the other 30% keep moving us closer toward an unacceptably statist America—one acceptable government program at a time.
This is precisely why we can’t have liberal GOP members who, if elected, most certainly won’t vote to repeal, eg., Obamacare — but rather would seek to “find the good parts” and work with them.
Such incremental changes — from the New Deal through the Great Society and now the governmental excesses of ObamaNation — add up over time, leaving us with a country that at each pivotal step in its ideological history, with a few brief interruptions, has moved away from classical liberal ideals and toward statism and bigger government.
For the children or not, such steps need to be walked back and not merely trod upon lightly. Our “realists” or “pragmatists” in the GOP booster camp seem mostly concerned with team wins and regaining power. But as I’ve been arguing for years, what good is having power if, in order to have it, you’re reduced to moving ever further left? It makes no sense to lose more slowly.
We are at an ideological crossroads today. The choices couldn’t be more clear. And we need to advocate for what we truly believe in — not simply pretend to strategize for the GOP.
Obama told us that elections matter. Let’s make that so, and make it so that he has to walk around the rest of his miserable time at the helm with the irony stuck to his shoe like a scrap of toilet paper trailing from one of his prom loafers.
It’s not cruel to point and laugh if the guy really is a dick.
(h/t TerryH)
Tyranny has no good parts.
And the Tyrant will tell us so himself.
Now this is actual tyranny …
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/politics/Gangster-government-stifles-criticism-of-Obamacare-811664-102642044.html
Such incremental changes…add up over time, leaving us with a country that…has moved away from classical liberal ideals and toward statism and bigger government.
First, I’d like to thank Pelosi, Reid and Obama for turning up the heat so high that everybody outside the Reality-Based Community™ realizes that they’re being cooked. Who knows how far the statists might have gotten if they’d continued their incremental Progress™ for another generation?
Second, I’d like to thank former governor Arne Carlson for endorsing Independence Party candidate Tim Horner this morning. Given the horrible candidates offered by the GOP and DFL, it pleased me more than I would have guessed to hear such good news this morning.
Last, my thanks to Herbert Stein, for coining the phrase “Trends that cannot continue, won’t.” Regardless of the outcomes of our current political fights, the end of big government is fast approaching, simply because they’ve wrung all the revenue out of us that they can get. From here on in, each new tax increase is just going to bog down the machine more, reducing revenue for the looters at the same time as it screws up commerce and industry for the productive. The era of Peak Tax is here, and it’s gonna hurt the political creatures a lot more than Peak Oil will hurt the rest of us.
When you find your new house has one wall apparently built by Salvador Dali, with studs sideways, angled and even perpendicular to the plane, you don’t try and “fix” it.
You rip the whole goddamn mess out and start over.
Don’t worry, Jeff. The edifice is sufficiently riddled with termites that it will collapse in upon itself before they can do much more mischief. Steyn reminds us that only in the U.S. do the protesters come out to demand that the gubmint get off our backs: our Eurotrash counterparts keep demanding more and more stuff.
That’s a good thing. We’re more likely to break up into little self-governing regions than to give in to the totalitarian temptation. The Europeans? Not so much.
squid,
Maybe you see things differently, but as I remember it, Arne was one of those squishy progressive, not quite-as-big big government Republicans that the Peoples’ Republic of Minnesota seems to specialize in. (Granted he was a huge improvement over Perpich…). How is his endorsement of a third party candidate a good thing?
I agree with you that Emmer was the wrong choice, but I’m biased as far as that goes.
Ersnt, Minnesota is full of commies, so the only Republicans we can elect are squishes. I guess Bachmann is an outlier, or perhaps she doesn’t live up to her hype.
If we could exclude the Twin Cities from the vote, this would be a red state.
Or Ernst. Whichever.
you’d have to get rid of the Iron Range before MN would be a solid red state cranky
For the record, I’m a Minnesotan living in self-imposed exile.
How is his endorsement of a third party candidate a good thing?
His endorsement is a good thing in that it brings a big shot of exposure to a candidate who is sorely lacking in resources, and increases the candidate’s chances to win the election.
As to the candidate’s platform: I couldn’t care less what it is. The important thing is that an independent governor has the ability to thwart the ambitions of all the chuckleheads on both sides of the aisle, making it likely that the state will run on autopilot for the duration of the administration. And if there’s one thing I’ve learned from observing the last 20 years of politics, it’s that society functions best when the legislature is stuck chasing its tail.
It’s way past time that both major parties got a wake-up call and returned to their traditional roles. This could be one more step along that path.
To cranky-d: We shouldn’t forget the Range. They’re fiscally conservative, socially conservative voters who’ll remain loyal Democrats ’til the day they die. As a group, they’re farther to the right than most of the GOP candidates who run in this state, but don’t you dare tell them as much — they might kick you off their curling squad.
I see Ernst beat me to it.
Right, did you folks learn nothing from the Jesse Ventura experience
The important thing is that an independent governor has the ability to thwart the ambitions of all the chuckleheads on both sides of the aisle, making it likely that the state will run on autopilot for the duration of the administration. And if there’s one thing I’ve learned from observing the last 20 years of politics, it’s that society functions best when the legislature is stuck chasing its tail.
I guess “the body” was good for something afterall, then.
I don’t know how much weight it actually carrried, but I wish Palin hadn’t endorsed Emmer. That was a mistake, I think.
Well, I can now pull off wearing a feather boa after Labor Day, if that’s what you’re asking.
Here’s my take away from Jesse Ventura:
1) same day registration is bad bad bad bad
2) California ought to sue Minnesota –theres’ got to be some kind of liability for giving Ahnuld ideas.
To borrow from bh for here, you guys are speaking in code? Is the Iron Range where one goes to pound mashies and niblicks to one’s heart’s content, but is barred from taking the driver out of the bag?
Virginia, Hibbing, Chisholm, taconite and the Edmund Fitzgerald
If you want to codebook, you have to ask for it … in Norwegian
the codebook I mean *sigh*
Norway is a remarkably tiny country I think, pop. about some 4.6 million circa 2005 is all.
Minnesota.
Too many Jerry Lundegarrds maybe.
Not enough Wade Wade Gustafsons.
Plus, I hear there are a bunch of these running around up there.
Also, Brett Favre.
In Wranglers jeans.
That’s because they all immigrated to places like Wisconsin, Minnesota, North & South Dakota, sdferr.
Sorry to go all Godwin, but I figured it wasn’t that they died in huge numbers fighting the Nazis.
I didn’t think you did, sderr. I just didn’t want you to think that maybe it was ’cause of all the buttsex arising out of crade to grave social welfare ennui.
cranky-d,
If we could exclude LA and SF, California would be a red state.
o__o
If we could exclude LA and SF, California would be a red state.
So what you’re saying is: The San Andreas Fault is our friend?
“Iron Range”
Perhaps Lake Superior has some malignant progressive effect. Our UP sends in their {D} too.
I don’t even know what the Iron Range is. I’m incredibly incurious about the state that has been my home for over 15 years.
Well, I can now pull off wearing a feather boa after Labor Day, if that’s what you’re asking.
I walk into the department after lunch today and some guy is eyeing my footwear, which is kind of a light taupe.
Perhaps the after Labor Day bit was what occasioned the sneer?
Right, did you folks learn nothing from the Jesse Ventura experience?
I learned that when a governor has no allies in the Legislature, it’s very hard for him to get any of his pet projects done*. I also learned that when the Legislature has no friends in the Governor’s office, it’s very hard for them to get any of their pet projects done.
If electing a professional wrestler/action hero is what it takes to stall the State tax-and-regulate machine for 48 months, then I say we do it again. Similarly, if we could get Obama to stick a cigar someplace where he shouldn’t, and tie up Congress in do-nothing show trials for two years, I’d start sending easy interns to the Oval Office right now.
* In Ventura’s case, this turned him into a petulant child, but at least he didn’t go full-Moonbeam ’til after his term was over.
#28
Around Hibbing. Bob Dylan came from there. Also much iron ore.
Think of the Iron Range as West Pittsburgh, and you’ll pretty much have the gist of it.
Perhaps Lake Superior has some malignant progressive effect. Our UP sends in their {D} too.
Boom Copper!
Lessee, you’ve got similiar economies, formerly based on the extraction of natural resources (mining & timber), now dependent on a combination of tourism and government largesse. I’d say the problem isn’t Lake Superior, it’s the fact that both regions never quite made it out of the Depression Era mentality.
Gorgeous country though.
Sorry to go all Godwin, but I figured it wasn’t that they died in huge numbers fighting the Nazis.
Scandinavia was always a mystery to me, until I realized that all the men with a measurable level of testosterone got the hell out of there — whether in the days of the Vikings/Normans or the later mass emigration to North America.
It wasn’t until I was reading a history of the Crusades a couple of years ago that I learned that they actually took over Sicily at one point. That’s some serious bad-assery. The Normans carving off a chunk of France, okay, fine, but Sicily…
Didn’t the Rus come from the Scandis too SBP? Seems to me like I heard a story to that effect somewhere or other.
I think you’re right, sdferr. Same basic MO, just river piracy rather than ocean-going.
Wikipedia concurs.
Those boys did get around, didn’t they?
Ya, you betcha. Today there are more Norskes in Wisconsin, Minnesota, and the Dakotas than in Norway. See, back during the potato famine all the Norskes were moving down to Ireland and eating them out of house and home — takes a lot of potatoes to make lefse — until the Irish appealed to St. Patrick to do something like he did with the snakes. So St. Pat called all the Norskes together and told them to go to hell. Which, if you’ve ever spent a winter in Wisconsin, Minnesota, or the Dakotas….
– Aw common, it’s not that bad. You just confine yourself to indoor activities for 8 FUCKING MONTHS. Piece of cake.
Swen, considering that the Norse Hel was usually described as cold…….
Now that’s an exaggeration BBH! You’re only housebond for AT MOST 7 1/2 months.
Michigan, we got all the Finlanders.
Well, there are more Norwegians in Wisconsin, Minnesota and the Dakotas, IYKWIMAITYD.
Paging Mr. Luthor…paging Mr. Lex Luthor…