Fisking George F. Will's "Case for Conservatism"
Before plunging into George F. Will’s “confident explanation of why America has two parties and why the conservative one is preferable,” let me point out three noteworthy features of his argument: 1) he doesn’t mention a single conservative individual who has actually governed, 2) the only concrete fact or figure he marshals is that health care constitutes 16 percent of the economy and rising, and 3) he is reciting exactly the same rigmarole that he and other conservatives have repeated since before Reagan was president, as though the failures of conservatives to deliver on their promises while in power during most of the interim somehow isn’t germane to the discussion.
Over to George:
Conservatism's recovery of its intellectual equilibrium requires a confident explanation of why America has two parties and why the conservative one is preferable. Today's political argument involves perennial themes that give it more seriousness than many participants understand. The argument, like Western political philosophy generally, is about the meaning of, and the proper adjustment of the tension between, two important political goals -- freedom and equality.
The notion that freedom and equality are inherently at odds is bogus. Under George W. Bush, both freedom and equality have deteriorated in the United States – in no small measure because of his pursuit of conservative ideology. Bypassing the rule of law and our system of checks and balances under the “intellectual” cover provided by Federalist Society wunderkind John Yoo, the administration pursued policies that have greatly weakened the protections of American citizens against surveillance by the state and unreasonable searches and seizures. At the same time, the right’s foremost domestic priority of imposing tax cuts for the rich has exacerbated the effects of rapidly widening economic inequality.
In contrast, past liberal policies have promoted both freedom and equal opportunity. That’s exactly why we like Social Security, whose virtues including helping to reduce financial burdens on all generations in sustaining decent living standards for retirees, the disabled, and survivor’s of deceased workers. Similarly, universal health care would promote both freedom and opportunity by, for example, enabling workers to more freely move from job to job without fear of losing coverage. Civil rights and anti-discrimination laws demonstrably enhanced both freedom and equality for large segments of Americans.
Today conservatives tend to favor freedom, and consequently are inclined to be somewhat sanguine about inequalities of outcomes. Liberals are more concerned with equality, understood, they insist, primarily as equality of opportunity, not of outcome.
If conservatives favor freedom, why were they cheering Tom Tancredo’s homage to Jack Bauer during the Republicans' last presidential debate, and why did conservatives lead the charge, fighting against liberals like Russ Feingold, to omit oversight and checks and balances in both the original Patriot Act and its sequel?
Yes, liberals are deeply concerned about enormous disparities of economic opportunity when three-quarters of students at top colleges come from the top socioeconomic quartile, with only one-tenth from the poorer half and 3 percent from the bottom quartile.
Liberals tend, however, to infer unequal opportunities from the fact of unequal outcomes. Hence liberalism's goal of achieving greater equality of condition leads to a larger scope for interventionist government to circumscribe the market's role in allocating wealth and opportunity. Liberalism increasingly seeks to deliver equality in the form of equal dependence of more and more people for more and more things on government.
Under conservatives, it has been elites, corporate donors, and federal contractors who have reaped riches from “interventionist government.” The K Street project was the very embodiment of dysfunctional dependency relationships. Liberal agenda items like getting rid of all the conservative detritus, reforming the tax code to make it more simple and fair, universal health care, and modernized unemployment insurance are about leveling the playing field and protecting the inevitable losers in the rough-and-tumble of the marketplace.
Hence liberals' hostility to school choice programs that challenge public education's semi-monopoly. Hence hostility to private accounts funded by a portion of each individual's Social Security taxes. Hence their fear of health savings accounts (individuals who buy high-deductible health insurance become eligible for tax-preferred savings accounts from which they pay their routine medical expenses -- just as car owners do not buy insurance to cover oil changes). Hence liberals' advocacy of government responsibility for -- and, inevitably, rationing of -- health care, which is 16 percent of the economy and rising.
Actually, we don’t like those ideas because they are inherently designed to do little more than weaken government without addressing the real-world problems that advocates claim they will alleviate. In each case, they have failed either here or in other countries. School voucher programs are failing in Milwaukee and Cleveland because moving low-income kids from predominantly poor public schools to predominantly poor private ones accomplishes little. (Public school choice programs that enable low-income students to enroll in middle-class schools, on the other hand, are effective and desirable – so the issue isn’t choice per se). Social Security privatization is a fraudulent idea that would weaken the retirement security of Americans while massively increasing the federal debt.
Health savings accounts are a counterproductive solution to an imaginary problem, since rising medical costs have nothing to do with individuals independently consuming too much health care. Liberals want to fix our broken health care system by making it like the much more effective and efficient universal systems of other capitalist countries; conservatives keep trying to stave off that eventuality with diversions like HSAs that only exacerbate existing problems.
Steadily enlarging dependence on government accords with liberalism's ethic of common provision, and with the liberal party's interest in pleasing its most powerful faction -- public employees and their unions. Conservatism's rejoinder should be that the argument about whether there ought to be a welfare state is over. Today's proper debate is about the modalities by which entitlements are delivered. Modalities matter, because some encourage and others discourage attributes and attitudes -- a future orientation, self-reliance, individual responsibility for healthy living -- that are essential for dignified living in an economically vibrant society that a welfare state, ravenous for revenue in an aging society, requires.
Social Security and Medicare, by reducing poverty among the elderly from more than 35 percent before 1960 to around 10 percent today, genuinely enhanced “dignified living in an economically vibrant society.” We can do even better by building on those successful examples of social insurance, which is one thing governments have proven to be extremely effective at.
As for public employees and their unions, the right’s obsession with denigrating and bypassing them while in power is precisely what has produced one unnecessary government failure after another – most vividly in the case of FEMA, but really in virtually every other federal agency as well.
This reasoning is congruent with conservatism's argument that excessively benevolent government is not a benefactor, and that capitalism does not merely make people better off, it makes them better. Liberalism once argued that large corporate entities of industrial capitalism degraded individuals by breeding dependence, passivity and servility. Conservatism challenges liberalism's blindness about the comparable dangers from the biggest social entity, government.
Welfare reform was successful to that extent that it discarded a wasteful, outmoded, and ineffective program. It did not, however, lead as promised by the right to reductions in poverty or rising median incomes due to the curtailment of the purported source of “dependence, passivity, and servility.” And honestly, how exactly would universal health insurance breed passivity and servility?
Conservatism argues, as did the Founders, that self-interestedness s universal among individuals, but the dignity of individuals is bound up with the exercise of self-reliance and personal responsibility in pursuing one's interests. Liberalism argues that equal dependence on government minimizes social conflicts. Conservatism's rejoinder is that the entitlement culture subverts social peace by the proliferation of rival dependencies.
The entitlement mentality encouraged by the welfare state exacerbates social conflicts -- between generations (the welfare state transfers wealth to the elderly), between racial and ethnic groups (through group preferences) and between all organized interests (from farmers to labor unions to recipients of corporate welfare) as government, not impersonal market forces, distributes scarce resources. This, conservatism insists, explains why as government has grown, so has cynicism about it.
The claim that cynicism toward government has grown as government has grown, and therefore voters should prefer conservatives, is mind-bogglingly disconnected from reality. It was the conservative President Bush and the conservative Republican Congress that presided over the growth of government after Bill Clinton streamlined it. Perhaps the heightened cynicism toward government has more to do with things like the right’s relentless campaign against it, the actions of Newt Gingrich and his impeachment mob in the 1990s, the Iraq War, the K Street project, the politicization and de-professionalization of government, the failure to address genuine challenges facing and country, and other conservative movement projects.
Racial preferences are the distilled essence of liberalism, for two reasons. First, preferences involve identifying groups supposedly disabled by society -- victims who, because of their diminished competence, must be treated as wards of government. Second, preferences vividly demonstrate liberalism's core conviction that government's duty is not to allow social change but to drive change in the direction the government chooses. Conservatism argues that the essence of constitutional government involves constraining the state in order to allow society ample scope to spontaneously take unplanned paths.
African-Americans weren’t “supposedly disabled by society.” Slavery, Jim Crow, lynchings, and widespread discrimination were all very real. Civil rights laws were essential in helping to enable the formation of a black middle class, as James Heckman and John Donohue found, and affirmative action policies also played a crucial role. Increasingly, the focus of liberals is shifting away from race-based policies toward approaches that would give a leg up to low-income students regardless of their race. What has become more and more evident under conservative rule is that indifference to the problems of poverty and racial isolation isn’t making them go away.
Conservatism embraces President Kennedy's exhortation to "Ask not what your country can do for you -- ask what you can do for your country," and adds: You serve your country by embracing a spacious and expanding sphere of life for which your country is not responsible.
Americans were inspired by JFK’s words, but I, for one, have no idea what GFW is trying to say here.
Here is the core of a conservative appeal, without dwelling on "social issues" that should be, as much as possible, left to "moral federalism" -- debates within the states. On foreign policy, conservatism begins, and very nearly ends, by eschewing abroad the fatal conceit that has been liberalism's undoing domestically -- hubris about controlling what cannot, and should not, be controlled.
Though Will in the past has expressed disdain for the Wolfowitz-Kristol-Kagan neoconservative approach to foreign policy that has proved to be so disastrous, he was complicit with them in deriding the UN and its inspections process as he endorsed the Iraq War – a war that conservatives launched and that would never have happened under Democratic leadership. Believing that they will not be held accountable for that disaster may prove to be the right’s "fatal conceit."
Conservatism is realism, about human nature and government's competence. Is conservatism politically realistic, meaning persuasive? That is the kind of question presidential campaigns answer.
Actually, as Will’s column demonstrates, conservatism has become a fantasy in which the movement's ideas bear no responsibility for the multitude of failures obvious to everyone else. FEMA under Clinton and James Lee Witt, transformed from an ineffective turkey farm for political cronies into an agency that was hailed by both Democrats and Republicans in Congress for its “remarkable turnaround.” Under Bush, Joe Allbaugh followed the conservative game plan of privatizing, devolving, and cutting, and it reverted back to a turkey farm. Governance by adherents to an ideology that deplores government keeps failing. With luck, that’s what the presidential campaign will be about.
Wow Greg, excellent work.
I especially love George Will's point that "liberals infer unequal opportunity from unequal outcomes."
He's right in that unequal outcomes don't mean that opportunities weren't equal (or near-enough equal that they could be called "fair") but where does that leave conservatives who see unequal outcomes and infer that opportunity was equal? Seems like that's a much larger intellectual error.
thosethingswesay.blogspot.com
June 1, 2007 1:11 PM | Reply | Permalink
I think we need to have a clear definition for the term "conservative" before we can have a meaningful discussion about it. Some people actually think that GW Bush is a conservative, when he is nothing of the sort. Neither is Scalia, or Cheney, or any of that gang. Classical American conservatives are so rare as to be an endangered species, and they have been far too reluctant to raise their voices in opposition to the faux conservatives who have commandeered our government.
Is it 2008 yet?
June 1, 2007 1:16 PM | Reply | Permalink
Very nice, and how scary to have those old arguments repeated. While I'm not fully convinced by Isaiah Berlin's classic separation of liberty and equality, where he's not buying a "positive" liberty associated with more opportunities to exercise creativity and choice, Berlin still separated them in order to put them forth as values, not as a dismal choice.
I'd even argue that the conservative notion of liberty entails government constraints on liberty in order to maintain market-based inequality. It's predicated on government as stern parent and the individual as driven by not just greed but strong values of self-reliance. That's why it's so easy for the party of the rich to enlist the values crowd against its economic interests (a problem for Thomas Frank).
But that's also another limitation on the creed. One often accuses free-market ideology of social Darwinism. In assuming that success turns so much on self-reliance, it amounts even more to a kind of social Lamarckism. It's too discomforting to claim that markets attain efficiency by weeding out failure. It's so much more cheerful to say that birds grow wings because they want to, and these traits survive. Thus, as in Will's own pitiful example quoted above, ending social security would make older Americans richer, since, well, they'd darn well have to become richer, or else.
John
http://www.haberarts.com/
June 1, 2007 1:26 PM | Reply | Permalink
Its always been my view that the difference between Liberals and Conservatives can be boiled down to the twin observations that:
-Conservatives are never wrong, and thus they never learn anything new.
-Liberals are never right, and thus we're always learning new things.
-Dave Adams-
June 1, 2007 1:27 PM | Reply | Permalink
Wonderful piece, Greg - thanks! Reminds me of the following nugget from yesteryear:
"The modern conservative is engaged in one of mankind's oldest exercises in moral philosophy, that is the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness. It is an exercise that always involves a certain number of internal contradictions and even a few absurdities. The conspicuously wealthy turn up urging the character-building value of privation for the poor." - JK Galbraith
I always think of this observation anytime George Will bloviates about conservatism.
June 1, 2007 1:32 PM | Reply | Permalink
Quoting Will:
Actually the truth is that we tend to credit Einstein's view that the definition of insanity is to do the same thing over and over again and expect a different result each time.
-Dave Adams-
June 1, 2007 1:33 PM | Reply | Permalink
Maybe, after 69 years, I'm missing something. But who should give a damn about what George Will thinks? Or what he writes?
When all is said and done, George Will is just a guy with an access that most of us do not have - to have his opinions printed whether they're worth a damn or not. And they're mostly NOT.
George Will is nothing like a real journalist. He's mostly an entertainer, especially for the right and the far right. To read him is a waste of time.
Read his articles if you must, enjoy a good laugh as he tries to skew public opinion to his conservative views, and then be on your on way, living your own life.
You don't have to be a blind conservative not to see it, just an ignorant one to deny it.
June 1, 2007 1:55 PM | Reply | Permalink
but where does that leave conservatives who see unequal outcomes and infer that opportunity was equal?
one word: conundrum and it seems like a nature vs. nuture debate.
Seems like that's a much larger intellectual error.
I rencently read somewhere that nature created man without a conscious mind, since evolution doesn't have intellect.
So, obviously, George Will is personifying his argument for reader appeal.
To boldly go...
June 1, 2007 2:02 PM | Reply | Permalink
The conservatives are interested in one and only one freedom and that is the freedom to form monopolies and take as much as they can from us without having to pay taxes. The word freedom is code.
June 1, 2007 2:08 PM | Reply | Permalink
I thought Will was too bright to forward an absurd statement like that. I suppose he's just desperate to say something to make Conservatism attractive when it has clearly botched the job of running the country; that, of course, means saying something negative about liberalism. He should talk more about baseball.
June 1, 2007 2:12 PM | Reply | Permalink
This is a great post, thank you so much for it.
Will's comment on the following just jumped out at me:
I'm flabbergasted that he would make this statement, and then proceed to discuss healthcare.
Healthcare? Really? The ability to live a healthy life, in effect to wake up, breathe easily...that's an "interventionist" move to allocating "wealth and opportunity?"
His plea for conservatism as the true party sounds more like a plea for the logic of social darwinism to me.
June 1, 2007 2:15 PM | Reply | Permalink
I'd like to bring your attention back to this line by George Will:
"Racial preferences are the distilled essence of liberalism, for two reasons. First, preferences involve identifying groups supposedly disabled by society -- victims who, because of their diminished competence, must be treated as wards of government."
These are essentially false statements. Liberalism, as far as I'm aware, does not endorse racial preferences but fair justice and equal treatment for all. George uses a standard Eugenics line that the people who are being helped are of "diminished competence" rather than the truth which is the people helped have been generally mistreated as a group--e.g., deprived of voting rights, educational opportunities, etc. The entire purpose of helping is to get people onto a fair playing field.
June 1, 2007 2:15 PM | Reply | Permalink
I'd have to defend Will on this one.
Sometimes, it's better to play off your strengths rather than coveting someone else's.
He's simply making money by turning wisdom into ideology.
To boldly go...
June 1, 2007 2:35 PM | Reply | Permalink
Re: but then the doctors and nurses become slaves and, essentially, they are the means of somebody else's freedom.
I fail to see how this is true. In fact it's quite a bizarre statement. Doing one's job according to the parameters that define the job, and the remuneration that is tendered, is not tantamount to slavery. Slaves are not paid for their work, and are not free to seek alternate emplopyment when dissastified.
Re: the doctors and nurses will only participate in the system as long as they're rewarded for it
No one has ever suggested that medical personnel should work for free. Good grief.
June 1, 2007 2:35 PM | Reply | Permalink
he's a sensational muckraker.
To boldly go...
June 1, 2007 2:38 PM | Reply | Permalink
That’s exactly why we like Social Security, whose virtues including helping to reduce financial burdens on all generations in sustaining decent living standards for retirees, the disabled, and survivor’s of deceased workers.
money is simply a piece of paper. the living standards of the retired probably depend on what the retirees did before they retired.
People say that capitolism won versus socialism because capitolism made it possible to deliver on promises. Of course, capitolism-- as practiced, is very corrupt.
Similarly, universal health care would promote both freedom and opportunity by, for example, enabling workers to more freely move from job to job without fear of losing coverage.
but then the doctors and nurses become slaves and, essentially, they become the means of somebody else's freedom.
i.e. Nietzsche noted that noble men surpress their appetites for the higher good, like saving money for the future, but they don't give up their rights and expect their wealth back in the future.
so the doctors and nurses will only participate in the system as long as they're rewarded for it and, thus, "economic equality" is hard to maintain since "economic inequality" comes about as the result of "buying freedom" and-- in the marketplace, some people can be bought for less than others.
To boldly go...
June 1, 2007 2:40 PM | Reply | Permalink
Not to be flippant, but the fact that conservatism not only produced George Bush, but continues to embrace him after seven years of some of the worst governing we've ever seen -- governing that has always had the full support of the conservative movement and apparatus --ought to be quite enough to convince anyone that there's something wrong with it. It's pretty much that simple.
Crooked cops, crooked lawyers, crooked judges, crooked politicians, crooked doctors, crooked scientists, crooked clergymen -- but no crooked journalists. An amazing record for an amazing class of people.
June 1, 2007 2:40 PM | Reply | Permalink
Shorter George Will:
"Conservatives are wrong for the right reasons."
or,
"Who are you going to believe, me, in all my erudition and inflated social position, or your own prevaricating eyes?"
June 1, 2007 2:45 PM | Reply | Permalink
It is quite a bit like comparison of "real Communism" with "true Communism", when the latter, lamentably, was never tried.
American Conservatives were quite happy hanging immigrant riff-raff, engaging in Red Scare of McCarthyism etc. Liberty was for gentlemen.
More precisely, according to the likes of Will the freedom is in buying goods by yourself (or not affording them), and the lack of freedom means "universal provision". Such boring topics like the right to free trial, or freedom of speech, or freedom to travel, do not enter the discourse.
June 1, 2007 3:02 PM | Reply | Permalink
i don't think that will is saying anything new. i'm a liberal, and i think the deck is stacked against working people. i tend to infer unequal opportunities from the fact of unequal outcomes. big deal.
as far as the tension democracy and individual liberty, again, the oldest of news. if 51% rule is not checked, you've got mob rule
will is smarter than most conservatives, but this sounds like a textbook. he's just feeling vulnerable cause once you get rid of the fundamentalists and the neoclowns, you're a very small movement, such as you might find under the expensive chair of george will.
June 1, 2007 3:12 PM | Reply | Permalink
I read this yesterday in our local paper and wanted to vomit....
In essence conservatives are the ones who seek inequality, they seek special privaleges, social status, exceptions, et centera. They psychologically identify with authority so they can gain favor and advantage from authority and then seek to institutionalize the authority from change. They fear change for it could lead to radicalism and then chaos as the social structures are torn apart.
In my personal life I have come to realize that conservatives look to the world and find anecdotes that enforce their worldviews...let us say Latin immigrants don't want to learn English. Ironically when my mother a card carrying member of the White-English-Male-Society brought this up as an example I laughed and reminded her that her husband's second generation immigrant parents spoke both Serbo-Croatian and English and went to Slovenian Mass over English....hmmmm
Anecdotes come in all examples like the one I heard from my former college roommate that stated a noted heart surgeon in Chicago a family friend decided to work less because he was being taxed too much and that instead these exemplanary professionals should be rewarded...I laughed and said, you think that will be the trend? Of course.
Conservatives espouse freedom and loathe it because it actually does lead to equality.
George Will is finding an emotional ledge to hang his hat as he sees his conservative world crumble under the weight of failure. Conservatives by their nature are incompetent except at critisizing. What the fail to understand is that the Universe and all human existance is in a constant state of change, knowledge changes everything over time, and responding to change is a progressive thing.
Glad you took him to task....the empty intellectual
June 1, 2007 3:15 PM | Reply | Permalink
Then you know a different set of Liberals than I do, for I know almost none that would infer unequal opportunity from unequal outcomes. Equal opportunity only gives one just that…opportunity. What one gets from said opportunity depends on what one brings to that opportunity and the work one is willing to devote…to name only two factors that can influence outcome. As I said the statement is absurd, I see no wisdom in it.
Equality of opportunity is a pillar of the house of liberalism while equality of condition or outcome is a Marxist pipe dream and not a part of Liberalism IMO. If Fascism and Communism represent the right and left extremes of the political system then Liberalism is the moderate center between those polls and opposed to both.
June 1, 2007 3:37 PM | Reply | Permalink
It's interesting that Will and other conservatives see liberalism leading to "a larger scope for interventionist government to circumscribe the market's role in allocating wealth and opportunity," and to "dependence of more and more people for more and more things on government."
All of the conservative programs he is shilling -- school choice, health savings accounts, private investment accounts in lieu of social security -- these are all seeking to weaken long-standing liberal programs. I see liberals' work in recent years as rear-guard actions to defend good programs against attacks from the right; not to *increase* their scope so much as to keep them from dying.
Does Will really feel that conservatism is embattled?
June 1, 2007 3:38 PM | Reply | Permalink
It's interesting to see today's so-called conservatives harken back to lessons of their past when their current beliefs and goals are in almost total opposition to those of the founders of their movement (ie Barry Goldwater).
I don't really find any consistent belief structure in what passes today for a conservative movement other than a overriding preoccupation with self-interest.
June 1, 2007 3:48 PM | Reply | Permalink
You're painting all conservatives with the same broad smearbrush that the right wingnuts paint us liberals as "giving comfort to the enemy". Bad move -- he with the loudest voice (or control of the media) will always win with those rules of engagement.
I was brought up to believe that liberals judged people and ideas by their merits, not by predefined stereotypes. The facts are on the side of us liberals, so let's use them -- as have many of the posters above.
June 1, 2007 3:52 PM | Reply | Permalink
Great essay. I come by here occasionally, and this time, a keeper.
June 1, 2007 3:53 PM | Reply | Permalink
Stop using the bullshit wingnuttese pseudo-verb 'to fisk'.
Just stop it. It's stupid.
June 1, 2007 3:54 PM | Reply | Permalink
I think you are quite mistaken. Freedom from taxes is the underlying motivation of the Republican party at this time. I allow that the monopoly language is an exaggeration, although not a great one.
June 1, 2007 4:00 PM | Reply | Permalink
Take No Prisoners :
Very excellent points, piotr.http://travelerdiogenes.blogspot.com/
I was thinking the same thing about "real communism" myself. Bolshevism is to communism as neoconservatism is to conservatism. Both of the "as applied" philosophies disguised themselves as the real deal, but were both totalitarianism in action and at the core.
And it is important to note that Will - as too many on the right - is incorrect in his ignoring of the principles of the Consitution in deference to utopian fantasies about wild-west-ism, shoot-'em-up carnivorous capitalistism and the rough-and-tumbleism of Darwinian dog-eat-dogism, that they bought into from going straight from Wild Bill Hickock to Ayn Rand as 15-year-olds and have never grown out of the anal stage of development she introduced them to.
Dweebs all (no offense to sane dweebs), they never got to the point of asking that cute chick to the Friday dance. And they've been trying to compensate ever since by using big words in big sentences (to them, anyway)- as if the chicks of today will eat it up, whereas the ones from the 50s and 60s - who had real education - would sooner date a leper (sorry, sane lepers) or someone in leather.
Maybe that is it: The right, for whom Will speaks so impotently, is so crippled by their inability to get laid (sans money on the nightstand), and their inability to impress dear old Dad with their manly prowess in competition where there are rules and boundaries that they have decided that beating up on the rest of us with unstable verbal attacks will get Dad to roll over in his grave and give them that long dreamed of "attaboy!" and somehow make that 10-second sexual encounter with their hookers of choice into deep relationships. Repression, repression, repression, thy name is conservatism...
Assuming superior postures does not a man make. Will is so wrapped up in his dream of superiority - adored by his emotionally and societally repressed followers numbering at least in the scores, while ignored by anyone who has ever given an orgasm - and hiding behind his vacuous bleatings, that he has no clue that life is all around him, for the taking, if he will but give in to his closet Liberalism.
June 1, 2007 4:06 PM | Reply | Permalink
their undoing is that rural/small town America is not particularly fond of these ideas. For example, people in smaller communities LIKE their local schools and the DO NOT want people to have easy time to be paid for opting out.
This issue can appeal in suburbs, and for the urban conservatives. Actually, I am not sure about the suburbs: half of the rationale of suburbs seems to be that you pick your community to pick the public school, hence why the heck you should make it harder to finance those schools? So we are down to urban conservatives. Way to go!
Health accounts? who is clamoring for health accounts? I think that this plank has one goal only: to create a false impression that Republicans "care about the healthcare costs".
Social Security proposals are almost hilarious. After some calculations one can figure that they would hit very painfully the somewhat upper middle class.
If you do not add some goodies to Will's program, say, farm subsidies, bashing of the faggots and the promise of concentration camps for terrorists and child molesters, it can go absolutely nowhere. Will is of course an urban conservative, and so are his friends, so it does not need to be obvious to him how unpopular his ideas are.
June 1, 2007 4:09 PM | Reply | Permalink
This is the moral guy who stole Carter's campaign breifing book, while a putatively neutral "NY Times" columnist, and got fired for it.
Stealing. There's a conservative value. Can't call him a hypocrite on that point.
The guy who gave the speech at a recent Boston U. graduation, as special guest of radical elitist/right wing Texan/anti-union oligarch/professors' terrorist nightmare/Boston U. President John Silber. (We'll deal with Silber another time -- if we must.)
A speech comparing baseball (yawn) to all the best in Amurr'ca, and exemplar of all the best of Amurr-can values. In which stealing bases is legal.
Uh-huh. He's a guy to listen about ethical and legal standards. And an prominent individual from whom to learn pseudointellectuality.
Now, what was that rumor I heard about him abandoning his wife because she gave him a retarded child . . . ?
June 1, 2007 4:14 PM | Reply | Permalink
Take No Prisoners :
http://travelerdiogenes.blogspot.com/
I don't know who Isaiah Berlin is, nor Thomas Frank, or even what Lamarckian means.
But looking around our society, it is clear that so many who are "haves" did not earn it (like Bush), or were simply lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time. The difference between outrageous wealth and middle class for many was only an eyelash, and those who "won" are not able to explain their success other than that they were smarter than the average bear, while knowing themselves to have been just shit lucky.
...Social Darwinism is merely the lack of a conscience with which to make a social contract, used by any scoundrel to justify his unconscionable grabbing nature by endowing that nature with pseudo-scientific mumbo-jumbo and with which to stave off facing himself in the mirror and recognizing the bankruptcy that fills his soul. The right has been the taking to heart of Ayn Rand's "The Virtue of Selfishness" and turning it into a sociopathic curse upon the rest of us. It is real though false, dead though very much active, psychotic though well-connected. It is as close to evil as exists in the world, and it runs the world, God help us... Hitler would love 'em.
June 1, 2007 4:25 PM | Reply | Permalink
"Governance by adherents to an ideology that deplores government keeps failing. With luck, that’s what the presidential campaign will be about." Thank you for yet another terrific piece on this; I almost want to thank George Will for giving you such a perfect target. He's speaking for all the terrified conservatives who are realizing that it was much easier to sell their approach to "governing" before the country saw it in action, and before they spent years belligerently defending it as it proved increasingly disastrous. They finally got complete control of the government, and going by their own words and actions, this has been conservatism put into practice; they can't disown it now. And they can't pretend (except perhaps to themselves) that their definition of "freedom" is anything but the freedom to make and spend money and to work the system so you can make more, which bears little resemblance to most people's idea of freedom. Whatever combination of delusion and deception informs Will's argument, it's clearly at odds with reality, and that's becoming increasingly apparent to increasing numbers of us.
I've long harped, in my teensy corner of the world, on the point that the incompetence and corruption of this Administration are the inevitable outcome of putting government in the hands of people who have contempt for the institution, and that Democrats must make that point clearly: if you want good government, vote for people who believe in governing. I've been thrilled to see that theme picked up more broadly this year, most notably by you. Thanks again for doing it so consistently, and so well.
June 1, 2007 4:29 PM | Reply | Permalink
Take No Prisoners :
http://travelerdiogenes.blogspot.com/
Ha ha! I just got done saying that, essentially, in response to jhaber. I hear you, loud and clear.
June 1, 2007 4:29 PM | Reply | Permalink
Take No Prisoners :
http://travelerdiogenes.blogspot.com/
So true. I caught that, too. So, how much of a stretch is it to suggest that conservatism is latter-day eugenics theory, relabeled?
Is it out of the question to see Karl Rove's "sky is falling" johnny-one-note-ism jingoism about voter fraud as really eugenics rehashed and repackaged? "We don't want them with 'diminished capacity' electing our leaders, do we?"
Living in a historically Conservative area after a lifetime of living in Liberal areas, the things people say here - and saying them so sedately - would make you puke. I have heard quite a few variations on, "I don't want inbreeders or immigrants (or you name it) electing my leaders," - all the mutations of racism and self-superiority you can imagine. In other words, many people think that anyone dumber than them (and as judged by them) should be denied a vote. And this in spite of the clear language of something called the Constitution - as if Jefferson and Washington and Franklin didn't really mean it. And then they call themselves strict constructionists!. . .
I always thought smart people's votes could actually counter stupid people's votes - but the elections of 2000 and 2004 got me wondering... And that doesn't even bring in that other issue, of REAL vote fraud, as in stealing votes, etc.
If I were going to deny anyone a vote, it would be conservatives. Stealing elections has to have some repercussions, after all. Someone would have to really be of "diminished to capacity" to want to do that to their own country or state.
June 1, 2007 4:51 PM | Reply | Permalink
Take No Prisoners :
http://travelerdiogenes.blogspot.com/
Agreed. Good points. Very good.
As if being somewhat government workers makes doctors or nurses slaves - what does that say about his attitude about civil service employees? How about road construction crews - they are healing our roads, so aren't they slaves, too?
It is all about getting a knee-jerk reaction - logic and facts be damned! Hitler went for the knee-jerk, so why shouldn't other jerks go for the knee, too?
June 1, 2007 4:56 PM | Reply | Permalink
Which is, of course, inferring unequal outcomes from unequal opportunities. I'm a logical kind of person, so it helps me to phrase this in more mathematical notation:
"If A and B have unequal opportunities, then A and B will have unequal outcomes" is a more truthful statement than "If A and B had unequal outcomes, then A and B had unequal opportunities".
And the statement that matters is the former, not the latter.
June 1, 2007 4:57 PM | Reply | Permalink
As the writers at American Conservative Magazine have noted, today, conservatism means two things: unswerving support for George W. Bush, and being for the occupation of Iraq. They ran an article a while back discussing the conservative Republicans who had been called "liberal" for deviating in any way. McCain, whose war stance is that W did not send enough troops, has been called liberal for criticizing Bush. Hagel has a consistently conservative voting record on every issue, but he opposes W's Iraq policy and his global democracy crusade; liberal.
When conservatives assert that freedom and equality are in tension, they refer to only one kind of freedom: economic, and more specifically the freedom to invest and get rich. Thus, pointing to all the ways in which the so-called conservatives have robbed us of our freedom is beside the point. All those freedoms are for the plebes and thus not relevant. The tension comes down nothing else but the threat that government will use its power to bring about equality by redistributing wealth (which is tantamount to restricting "freedom" in the very special sense the Wills of the world use the term).
June 1, 2007 4:58 PM | Reply | Permalink
Really? Is it that simple?
It seems to me that Conservatives want to keep things the way they are, thus the name "conservative." That includes leaving their bank accounts alone. They want government to have limited powers; only those that are truly necessary to keep the nation afloat, and leaving people alone to do things as they wish.
Conservatives provided a balance between themselves and "Liberals," who Conservatives believed wanted to tax everyone into oblivion and give free food, housing, clothing, etc to those who were not willing to work.
Big Problem For The Conservatives: They got highjacked by the christian fundamentalists, who ignored everything Conservative except for wedge issues like abortion and gay rights. They pulled a 180 and put the governement into everyone's bedroom. They stood on this, and were in denial about other conservative issues, like fiscal restraint. The Republican Party took advantage of this, and had their way with these people who formerly would have rebelled at deficit spending, but had nowhere else to go because of abortion.
Liberals: (I count myself as one, by the way) screwed ourselves by not being practical enough, and also by apologizing for our beliefs. I hope you're right about our ability to learn new things. I hope we manage to learn how to get elected and get a Supreme Court that will not send us back a century as the current one seems hell-bent on doing.
Jan
June 1, 2007 5:21 PM | Reply | Permalink
So Universal Health Care would do this, according to you:
...but then the doctors and nurses become slaves and, essentially, they become the means of somebody else's freedom.
What would you say about teachers from elementary to high-school, since anyone could make an argument that our education system (supported by taxes and available to all) is certainly socialistic.
Are teachers slaves: the means to somebody else's freedom? I would argue that teachers are the means to the common good. So is universal health care. I am a nurse, and I would not feel "enslaved" if everyone had health coverage.
I suggest you do a little reading. Very few people are suggesting free health care for everyone. The idea is that if the pool actually included everyone, young and old, sick and well; coverage would be affordable and UNCOMPLICATED: as long as health care is for-profit it will be a bad system. Since we are the only developed country in the world with such a bad system, (rated just under 3rd world countries for success) we have no room to talk.
If you think the insurance companies are doing us a favor, you simply need to read more.
Jan
June 1, 2007 5:40 PM | Reply | Permalink
Ask a doctor about the health 'insurance' industry (or 'racket'-see SICKO) and who is making money for whom (for profit health insurance CEO's have been paid over 100 million/year). A universal plan would cut overhead and provide a basic level of compensation for the provider, it works in every other industrialized country on the planet.
June 1, 2007 5:43 PM | Reply | Permalink
And I have yet to meet a conservative who can truly grasp the idea that unequal opportunity always results in unequal outcomes.
June 1, 2007 5:46 PM | Reply | Permalink
My experience with the way Conservatives think (and I have a family FULL of them) is more complicated thant this:
And I have yet to meet a conservative who can truly grasp the idea that unequal opportunity always results in unequal outcomes.
They seem to believe that their (the Conservatives) good fortune is due to their good behavior and superior beliefs. Therefore, those who DON'T have good fortune and therefore a good life --> deserve what they get because they are unworthy. It is an unending, and unforgiving, and self-congratulating circle.
Jan
June 1, 2007 5:57 PM | Reply | Permalink
Actually, assume it's true. And conservatives simply assume equal opportunity, so that unequal outcomes are the result of either brain damage (oops, that was last year's conservative model, The Bell Curve) or laziness. Now you tell me which is more extremist and less resistant to evidence.
John
http://www.haberarts.com/
June 1, 2007 6:29 PM | Reply | Permalink
As Piotr mentioned, Will and ilk blithely elide the basis of community, that vaunted moral good. This is the act of sharing the job of running things, those simple but necessary tasks such as education, sewage, policing, controlling pests.
Community is not so much shared values as shared work. And those jobs are best performed by shared effort, some of us feel. We are called liberals these days. Today's conservatives think they can simply buy community.
June 1, 2007 7:17 PM | Reply | Permalink
Big Problem For The Conservatives: They got highjacked by the christian fundamentalists, who ignored everything Conservative except for wedge issues like abortion and gay rights.
Unless your definition of a "conservative issue" is limited to "fiscal restraint" (and hasn't it been an eternity since that was a conservative issue?), this is not accurate. Persian Gulf II, tax cuts for the wealthy, and privatization (a.k.a. elimination) of Social Security are but three of the issues on which the Christian right has for several years taken the conservative, Republican point of view. One exception: Gary Bauer, when he ran for the GOP nomination for President in 2000, was cool to privatization of Social Security. The media always has called them the "Christian right" but they really are the "Christian Republican right."
mainstreetliberal.blogspot.com
June 1, 2007 7:33 PM | Reply | Permalink
SeeDee
A 5 for maxgowan...And it also is apparent these days that the 'conspicuously wealthy' turn up expecting the 'poor' to furnish the flesh and blood sacrifices for the 'conservative' ventures in militaristic 'empire building'.
June 1, 2007 8:16 PM | Reply | Permalink
SeeDee
Providing a 'fair playing field' is, of course, an admirable (and liberal) objective...
But providing some hope, some perhaps un-deserved benefits to those who are still dis-advantaged even in societies with 'fair playing fields' is not such an 'evil' thing, is it?
Most conservatives would not answer such a question.
June 1, 2007 8:25 PM | Reply | Permalink
On this type of general attack op-ed, I've always thought that George Will's style of argument is disingenuous. He habitually raises his own straw men, imposes his own interpretation of position on (usually) liberals, and then says what a clever boy he is for knocking "their" position apart.
About twelve years ago I heard him expose his complete ignorance of science in general and climate change in particular, but it didn't stop him from pontificating as if he had something valid and important to say.
Oh for someone to wack some humility into these pundits. For my own sanity I avoid him.
Anyway, at present, along with associated Bush-Cheney imperialism, I believe that unfettered capitalism is assumed to be the same as conservatism. I don't think it is. This was an experiment already tried in the USA and it didn't end well then, either.
June 1, 2007 8:27 PM | Reply | Permalink
SeeDee
Thought-provoking opinions, Jan...
However, I am concerned that 'Universal Health Care' could be allowed to devolve to the conditions that we now know exist(ed) in many VA hospitals and med centers.
I do not deny the urgent need for some system other than the one we now have, though.
June 1, 2007 8:31 PM | Reply | Permalink
Add God and his approval to that mix and you've got what was once upon a time called the Yankee Protestant ethic.
June 1, 2007 8:36 PM | Reply | Permalink
Will fails to point out these great characters formed by conservatism. George Bush has failed at everything. Cheney tells lie after lie. Tom Delay is corrupt. Newt Gingrich cheated on the wife. Maybe Will could have mentioned Edmund Burke here. The Republican Party is the party of low character and morals. Will is all about shaping the lives of people. Will is the Gary Becker of pundits. Will is for chains that are invisible. Will is for less freedom. Yes, there is no equality. I think there is no way George Bush or Bill Kristol is the equal of TSH. But, of course, there best be equality before the law. Proving inequalities is impossible leaving equality before the law the only option. No judgement is made about intrinsic equalites by liberalism. Equality before the law is the solution to an epistemological difficulty. The world is clearly a better place for those advantaged when the advantaged assist the disadvantged. Assisting the disvantaged is other than an altruistic act. Liberalism is for those liberal.
June 1, 2007 9:24 PM | Reply | Permalink
Re: "but then the doctors and nurses become slaves and, essentially, they become the means of somebody else's freedom".
This reasoning is nothing short of ludicrous. Are police officers, firemen, and EMT's "slaves" because they serve all members of society equally (at least in principle), without regard for the ability of those they help to pay for their services? Why can't we see the role of medical service providers in the same terms that we understand the roles of these "first responders?"
June 1, 2007 9:28 PM | Reply | Permalink
From Digby:
'Conservative' is a magic word that applies to those who are in other conservatives' good graces. Until they aren't. At which point they are liberals."
I just happened to pass by a TV and on Tucker Carlson's show the chyron read "Just how liberal is President Bush?"
June 1, 2007 9:29 PM | Reply | Permalink
Great comment.
I must admit some real affection for Burke. Also some affection even for William F. Buckley, Steve Forbes (during his first election attempt) and for all of the libertarian types who we now associate with the Repubblican party.
I might disagree with all of them on a whole lot of issues (check that, I DO disagree with them on a whole lot of issues) but they all really stood for the belief that human freedom is a good thing and that human's will tend to use their freedoms well, if they're given the chance.
But they're all either fringe or throwbacks right now. The current crop of Republicans, especially as defined by the Gingrich-Dubya era don't embody any sort of optimism about the nature of people and they really don't believe in individual freedoms, not matter what rhetoric they employ.
Modern Republicans love to claims the mantle of Burke and Lincoln, but both of those people would be appalled at how modern Republicans have acted and governed.
The best thing that classical conservatism had going for it was support of modern democratic liberalism in government and autonomy in terms of personal lives. Modern Republicans, who claim to be conservative, have given up both.
thosethingswesay.blogspot.com
June 1, 2007 9:47 PM | Reply | Permalink
I will venture out on a limb here. I believe I understand the contorted language of GFW's truely bizarre adaptation to JFK's arguably most famous statement.
It translates roughly as "Go for the gusto" or "Every man for himself" (women need not apply) or "F**k you, I've got mine". In a more coherent version of GFW language it might translate to "You serve your country through unfettered individualism and capitalism; hang on to your money and use it to make more".
Well that certainly clarifies for me why conservatism is the preferred party. Sign me up. Yeah baby! Now I understand Iraq, the politicization of the Justice Department and Halliburton. Since I wasn't born with money, I'll just have to embrace an expanding sphere for my life and perhaps a contracting sphere for others...Your dead to me Dick Cheney.
I can just imagine the GFW adaptation of Lincoln's Gettysburg address "Government by Republicans, for Republicans shall dominate the world". I'm sure that's what Lincoln had in mind.
June 1, 2007 9:54 PM | Reply | Permalink
The Republican party is not conservative at all, it is radical, revolutionary and fascist.
I am a conservative. I balance my checkbook and believe that the Constitution including the Bill of Rights is - for lack of a better term - a holy document.
This government was formed by a coup d'etat led by the "strict constructionist" supreme court and has violated every principle of conservatism. It has spent like a flock of drunken sailors while shoving cash at the rich and the corporations while also systematically undermining democracy at every turn and treating the Bill of Rights as if it were a quaint and irrelevant relic.
This government treats legislation, passed by both houses of congress and signed into law as merely advisory.
And what pompous gasbag has been there cheerleading from day one? George Will, of course. I think we can safely disregard anything he has to say on the subject.
June 1, 2007 10:01 PM | Reply | Permalink
It is just a cover. What they really believe is "I got mine."
June 1, 2007 10:02 PM | Reply | Permalink
IMO both dndobson and CVille Dem are correct.
I'm 65 and I have to say that throughout my life I've met all too many people who (in the immortal words of Jim Hightower) were born on third base and thought THEY hit a triple.
Especially in the last couple of decades, when I hear these people speak I want to vomit.
dndobson describes the willful stupidity all too common in our society.
and CVille Dem's
"unforgiving, and self-congratulating circle."
Indeed.
June 1, 2007 10:02 PM | Reply | Permalink
The concept of 'small government' (whatever that actually means)in a complex highly interdependent society is a laughable fantasy.
Will's total crap that "Conservatism is realism" is the biggest delusion of all.
Modern Conservatism is based on fantasy and wishful thinking, inherently dishonest and corrupt.
June 1, 2007 10:11 PM | Reply | Permalink
But whose freedom are the 'libertarians' talking about?
I'll answer.
They're talking about the freedom of the very rich to absolve themselves of all social responsibility and the freedom of the very rich to accumulate without limit and crush everyone else.
Remember Barry Goldwater '... a tree should be allowed to grow as tall ...'
And, of course, obscure the sunlight from all the seedlings; preventing the growth of a mighty forest.
June 1, 2007 10:20 PM | Reply | Permalink
This will probably be taken as a pointless insult, but it's not meant that way at all.
Both George Will's article, and Greg's take-down of it, are both totally irrelevant to almost all the important issues of the day, and yet I know there are a lot of people here that may not even realize that. I don't say this to attack intellectualism. There was a time when all of this was much, much more meaningful. The distinctions between liberalism and conservatism were important could be defined in terms like these.
None of this matters right now. Please, continue to discuss it, but just realize for a moment how much the world around us has deteriorated to the point that a discussion like this is quaint. George Will can rattle on all he wants about what he wishes conservatism meant, and what he thinks are its finely-crafted underpinnings. But we live today in a world that the conservatives were able to control and change to their liking in the past few years. The terrible results we now see had nothing to do with this.
Zbigniew Brzezinski was on Bill Maher, a couple of months ago, and he said something really important: "We are just now emerging from a state of national psychosis."
George Will's article is just a part of that psychosis, not a cause of it. Spinning imaginary yarn in the air, he reverts to a discussion that might have been much more interesting years ago. I really think it deserves psychoanalysis more than a point by point fisking.
June 2, 2007 1:20 AM | Reply | Permalink
"Public school choice programs that enable low-income students to enroll in middle-class schools, on the other hand, are effective and desirable – so the issue isn’t choice per se" --
And note that conservatives consistently fight *against* public-school choice, because it might actually do what they claim private-school choice does.
June 2, 2007 2:46 AM | Reply | Permalink
This reasoning is nothing short of ludicrous.
you're response counters mine by describing your own utopia. if you haven't seen the movie "Dr. Zhivago," I'd highly recommend it because it shows the interplay between "loyalty to self" and "loyalty to society."
Why can't we see the role of medical service providers in the same terms...
Because people like George Will believe that society socializes us into believing that being a servant has value.
As an example, there is a clear shift away from the belief in public service in the UK where their "National Health Service" is struggling to keep doctors working:
The National Health Service (NHS) UK has warned that new limits on junior doctors' hours, which come into force this month, will cause serious staff shortage in specialist areas. (source)
i.e. the NHS decided to shorten "work hours" in order to attract more people into the health care business.
without regard for the ability of those they help to pay
if you've been following the NHS saga, then you know that their politicians are looking for ways to ration health care.
even in America, union organizer Walter Reuther couldn't stop the auto workers from going on strike-- even after he got them the best labor contract in the history of the UAW-- because they wanted more freedom-- control over their time, not money.
the next generation of doctors in the UK want a different work/life balance and they're exerting their freedom to get it.
June 2, 2007 7:12 AM | Reply | Permalink
No one has ever suggested that medical personnel should work for free.
and this becomes the central problem because people don't necessarily want to pay taxes either. i.e. not everyone wants to be enslaved or bound to a social contract.
To boldly go...
June 2, 2007 7:55 AM | Reply | Permalink
George is really working that fiddle hard despite the fact that Rome burned to a cinder 24 years ago, was washed away by rain, and has since grown into a barren wasteland.
Reason not the need!
/c
June 2, 2007 8:32 AM | Reply | Permalink
For example, people in smaller communities LIKE their local schools and the DO NOT want people to have easy time to be paid for opting out.
You may remember that Howard Dean, for example, was roundly criticized because Vermont's voucher program was "too popular."
i.e. small towns in Vermont aren't forced to support a school without an economy of scale.
i.e. In Michael Moore's "Bowling For Columbine," he noted that Canada flew their residents to medical facilities in the US when there wasn't enough demand to justify building Canadian facilities.
Thus, it's not clear that small towns benefit from building underutilized facilities.
half of the rationale of suburbs seems to be that you pick your community to pick the public school, hence why the heck you should make it harder to finance those schools?
because suburbs require state subsidizes to work since sprawl is expensive. as they say in minnesota: "wealth always flows outward."
for tpmcafe bloggers like Good 4 America, who care about the living standards of the poor, sending wealth into the suburbs means that the inner city is left poor and, ultimately, a target for gentrification.
to me, "school choice" means that families prioritize their own spending: they can either live in a densely populated area, and benefit from economy of scale, or live in the middle of nowhere and shoulder the additional costs.
i.e. when I see people wasting my tax dollars on their lifestyles, I lose enthusiasm about paying them because I want to do the most good for the highest number of people!
To boldly go...
June 2, 2007 8:50 AM | Reply | Permalink
I generally appreciate what Zbig has to say. But here he is wrong. We are not emerging. In a sane society, greed and powerlust would earn a person a ticket to padded room. In today's world, they are a ticket to the White House. I don't see this changing.
June 2, 2007 9:03 AM | Reply | Permalink
Andd I have yet to meet a conservative who can truly grasp the idea that unequal opportunity always results in unequal outcomes.
at a recent teaching conference, we were told that "when people have unequal needs, they need unequal opportunities."
perhaps that's why magnet schools are popular. of course, they are only practical when the economy of scale works out.
i.e. art students want to be around artists, math students want to be around mathematicians, etc...
in general, i'd say that your analsys is too cliche.
To boldly go...
June 2, 2007 9:18 AM | Reply | Permalink
Greg
Your analysis of conservatives actually governing was excellent. However, you are mistaken that freedom and equality aren't in conflict with each other. This conflict is heighten we one is defines freedom as freedom to do as opposed to freedom from restrain and equality is defined as freedom of outcome as opposed to freedom of opportunity. Nothing distinguishs liberals more from the far left as supporting freedom of opportunity as freedom of results. The latter tends to get combined by the far left as freedom of results not so much for individuals but for defined collectives.
Part of what George Will does not grasp is that Americans do not object to government ensuring equal opportunity and being a conduit for social insurance benefits. Will ignores this presumably because the only way libertarian conservatives have gottten to govern has been aligning with those who either favor social conservatism and governmental power restricting freedom, or the likes of neo-Connservatives who are conservative in name only.
Daniel A. Greenbaum
June 2, 2007 10:38 AM | Reply | Permalink
Jan:
If you substituted the word "Scientist" for "Liberal" you have practically the same sentiment. BTW, the idea that accepted scientific theory is subject to change (i.e. its not immutable) and thus can't possibly be true is one of the main canards employed by the modern-day Right against science.
I think Liberals by nature are more practical than Conservatives. We're more willing to try out new ideas, and one of them doesn't work, we discard it. If it weren't for Liberals, we'd all be Conservatives fighting over the best spot to sleep in our caves.
I think its no accident that the major centers of technology and innovation in our country are also reliably Liberal. This was brought home to me recently by a comment made by a Conservative Republican Engineer that I worked with. I needed him to finish a design he was working on, and I pointed out that in a start-up environment, sometimes it was more important to try something in the face of insufficient information rather than wait, even if we might have to scrap what he designed and redo it later. He replied that he could tell that I was a Liberal from that comment (and we had never discussed politics at that point). In his opinion, the willingness to take risks was a major difference between Liberals and Conservatives. Conservatives, in his view, "didn't want to make mistakes". He explained that the Conservative view is that its better to do nothing than to do the wrong thing.
You can't innovate without making mistakes.
-Dave Adams-
June 2, 2007 11:00 AM | Reply | Permalink
It strikes me that Mr. Will, instead of talking about what makes a Conservative a typical Conservative, spends a lot of his time puffing up a neurotic and unreal picture of liberals.
The truth is that his Conservative manifesto is self evidently wind and bullshit.
But in order to dress it up, if he demonizes liberals and tries to make them look incoherent, then he can sell his book.
Tedious.
June 2, 2007 11:09 AM | Reply | Permalink
SeeDee, what you say gets a lot of attention. Those against universal health care often derisively point to "government" as the worst example of management.
I don't think the health care system has to change to being government managed. If the money now raked in by insurance companies (which do NOT provide any real service*) could be used toward delivering care, more people would get taken care of. As I explained above, when all (young & old, sick & well) are included in one population the risks are spread out, making premiums FAR more affordable. The time (both in a medical office and also by the patient), paper-work, and complicated effort it takes to jump through all the hoops each insurance company demands in order to deny anything it possibly can, are a drain on the system, and a collossal waste. With a single payor system -- not tied to employment, a person's employer could still subsidize health insurance (but for far less), every worker could take it to the next job, or pay for it themselves if no longer employed. No one could be denied coverage or forced to pay unreasonable premiums because everyone would be in the same risk group. Those who can't afford it would get subsidized as they do now with Medicaid.
The hospitals would not be run by the government; that would be unnecessary and a huge mistake.
SeeDee, we have an opportunity to look at all the systems that are already in place: Say Canada, England, and France. We can figure out which elements are good and which ones would work within the structure we already have in place. We truly can cherry-pick for the best of reasons. Those other countries have already done the leg-work.
*Re: Insurance companies not providing a service: They are in the business of figuring out creative ways to deny coverage, or reduce it; raising premiums for those who have the gall to get sick; making pre-authorizations onerous and tricky; in- and out-of-network charges. It is all for profit. Take that away and pass those savings on to the public.
Jan
June 2, 2007 11:32 AM | Reply | Permalink
...And taking away the profit from insurance companies and passing it onto patients would create the havoc you are describing...why?
Oh! I get it! If more people have health coverage, more people will get treatment, and doctors will be so busy they'll get all tired and want to quit or at least have fewer hours.
Right?
So, the solution is to keep people uninsured so they won't bother doctors, who really don't like to work that hard anyway.
Brilliant as usual, mcs
Jan
June 2, 2007 11:40 AM | Reply | Permalink
mcs, What in the heck does this:
No one has ever suggested that medical personnel should work for free.
Have to do with this?
and this becomes the central problem because people don't necessarily want to pay taxes either. i.e. not everyone wants to be enslaved or bound to a social contract.
Being "enslaved," (which I don't think you've made a case for in any of your tortured posts) is a far cry from being bound by "social contracts," of which the institution of marriage is but one that I can think of at a second's notice.
What are you talking about? What CENTRAL PROBLEM is exposeed by the silly idea of medical professionals working for free?
Jan
June 2, 2007 11:47 AM | Reply | Permalink
I saw one that said:
"Can you like Michael Moore and still love our country?
Yep! Tucker says he's a libertarian. That is enough to make me run screaming from any libertarian I might meet.
But seriously, don't you think the one you quoted is the beginning of a joke?
Question: "Just how liberal is President Bush?"
Answer: "President Bush is as liberal as..."
Any ideas out there? I'll start:
1. ...Fidel Castro is with shaving lotion!
2. ...Dick Cheney is with rifle sites!
3. ...
Jan
June 2, 2007 12:01 PM | Reply | Permalink
The conservative spin may be that it is the infinitesimal liberal portion of Bush's character that has caused all the failures of his otherwise glorious reign as War President! That maintains the consistency of their delusional view of the world.
June 2, 2007 12:36 PM | Reply | Permalink
Classic conservatism, the one that's been around for centuries, holds that humankind consists of those who should rule and those who should be ruled.
A class-structured society is the best example of how that definition plays out.
In a supposedly class-less society like the US, the definition of conservatism is merely the opposite of the definition of liberalism. (It's more than noticeable that when a conservative spouts his stuff, without faulting liberalism he has no stuff to spout.)
June 2, 2007 1:25 PM | Reply | Permalink
Re: not everyone wants to be enslaved or bound to a social contract.
Then they should drop out of society and become solitary hermits. Being a member of a society imposes a set of obligations on you in return for which you gain benefits hat you could not gain in a solitary state. Anyone who finds this unacceptable is free to isolate themselves from the rest of us. What people are not free to do is to reap the benefits while shunning the obligations.
June 2, 2007 1:36 PM | Reply | Permalink
you don't have to infer the outcomes. i think will's point is we see an outcome, say, economic inequality, and a liberal like myself might say, "the tax code is rigged for rich people and poor people don't have good enough schools"
i guess will's use of the word "infer" implies that liberals don't do research and they just assume these things. that's pretty insulting, but par for the course. agh, i've spent entirely too much time thinking about george will.
June 2, 2007 2:55 PM | Reply | Permalink
Could you expand on that? What liberal tendencies are the far-right attributing to Bush, and how have they impacted his many failures.
PS - I know you are just explaining, but you didn't say enough. I don't get how Bush's failures could be attributed to anything other than ignorance, greed, and ignorance. Oh! And stupidity!
Jan
June 2, 2007 4:19 PM | Reply | Permalink
Good comments all and no surprises from George Will who firmly believes that by writing the same tedious lies over and over again that somehow they will be accepted as relevent truths. Stick around. I am quite sure he will soon expouse on the same BS again.I'll bet he's hoping that the folks here at TPM won't notice.
William Hazen
"Every one has a plan...Until you hit them in the mouth." Mike Tyson
June 2, 2007 7:35 PM | Reply | Permalink
SeeDee
Yes, I agree with virtually every point you present...and, the ultimate test is to consider the 'government' run national health-care systems now extant in Europe (and elsewhere) and realize that they must be working satisfactorily...or the people involved would demand elimination of them.
Most countries with 'universal health care' ARE, after all, democracies.
June 2, 2007 8:02 PM | Reply | Permalink
Well, remember that the next generation of americans is expected to have shorter lifespans because of weight and diabetes.
And, two years ago, I was going to go into the peace corps but then I met a doctor who quit because he was taking care of peace corps volunters who caught AIDS from too much promiscuity.
If Americans don't get serious about taking care of themselves by eating well and exercising, I really don't blaim the doctors who "drop out of society" because they shouldn't be expected to get up in the middle of the night and work excruciating hours because of bad decisions.
While some people on this blog think I'm kidding about the "enslaving doctors bit," believe me, I'm not!
i.e. I fully believe that preventive medicine begins with how you eat, how you relax and how you exercise.
You can check out my past posts where I wrote about losing 70lbs over the last year and a half, eating better and, because of all that, my blood pressure dropped, from 140 over 90 to 90 over 67-- that was after exercising tonight-- and I'm in my thirties!
Of course, as you know, the most expensive health care is "end of life care" and that's why I support euthanasia.
To boldly go...
June 2, 2007 8:22 PM | Reply | Permalink
Bush restrains the military need to unleash them, not fighting like we did in WW2, not enough bombing, GITMO is like a ClubMed for terrorists-(Limbaugh), get serious with the evildoers, forget rebuilding the place turn it into a parking lot etc.
June 2, 2007 9:40 PM | Reply | Permalink
Freedom and equality are in conflict?
It depends on context. Probably the most zealous implementers of equality were Khmer Rogue, but this is not what we are talking about. But this is not what we deal with in American politics.
Will conveniently ignores the danger of personal freedoms being rigged so they are meaningless* for people with smaller incomes, starting from our legal system, political system based on "money primaries" etc.
I think Zola wrote of majestic equality under the law. Adapted to American circumstances, hedge fund managers and bums both can be arrested for trespassing when they sleep under bridges. Do they have unequal opportunities in this context, or merely unequal outcomes?
----------
Perhaps: less meaningful than they should be.
June 2, 2007 9:42 PM | Reply | Permalink
Are you implying that you are a brain surgeon Jan? The world needs good doctors!
To boldly go...
June 2, 2007 11:56 PM | Reply | Permalink
The notion that it is inappropriate or not useful to measure outcomes is by far the stupidest argument that can possibly be made about human endeavor. Intimately connected with outcomes are the opportunities or circumstances from which are derived the outcomes. You can't disassociate the two from one another.
In simple terms this means careful examination of things perceived as a problem and an equally careful, analytical and systematic examination of possible solutions. Bureaucratically or philosophically driven solutions are the norm in Washington and bear no real relationship to the aformentioned more suitable process described.
Like so much else in Washington these days this is fundamenatlly about honesty. I am quite sure if you somehow plug that attribute into the problem solving equation we would see revealed a dysfunctional process at work.
June 3, 2007 6:27 AM | Reply | Permalink
Good point. Consider that the final arbiter in commerce is exactly the outcome, the famous "bottom line". No one cares how you started, only how you finished.
How many businesses bring suit because their opportunities were not equal, due to restraint of trade, patent infringement, etc.? And don't they often prove their case by showing an unexpectedly reduced oucome? For example, music companies show reduced sales and blame it on illegal file sharing. It can't be their fault; circumstances are against them.
So financial analyses and court cases can use measures that we are not to apply to individuals and families?
June 3, 2007 6:51 AM | Reply | Permalink
You noticed that, too? I think people ought to point that out a LOT more often, and do so in disapproving tones.
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June 3, 2007 2:10 PM | Reply | Permalink
Um, am I implying that I am a brain surgeon? Does the world need good doctors? You base these questions on the post I just made?
Does the word, "nonsequitur" mean anything to you?
Jan
June 3, 2007 4:58 PM | Reply | Permalink
Translated: "Why not become a doctor and be the change you seek?"
To boldly go...
June 3, 2007 7:01 PM | Reply | Permalink
George Will lives in the past! If Regan is the best he can recite, then everything else is fantasy!
George Will does not have the Will to face the issues
George Will, if he Will..understand we Will move on
George Will have some Will to understand you are preaching to a small percent of American people
George Will, Regan is first an actor..and actors are great illusionist.
George Will understand you live in a world that is no more! Your words, your party has destroyed what is great, but its comes down to what the American Peoples WILL that WILL prevail!
June 3, 2007 8:08 PM | Reply | Permalink
By juxtaposition with today’s Neo-Conservatives who are an unnatural combination of the id, and super ego of the Bush Inc. machine even Thomas Hobbes appears to be liberal and Edmund Burke positively a flaming Liberal. George Will’s fulminations in support of what is not extant are naught but “a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”
June 4, 2007 12:48 AM | Reply | Permalink
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June 4, 2007 12:50 AM | Reply | Permalink
I've said this before, but it bears repeating: putting anti-government Conservatives in charge of the Government makes as much sense as putting Marxists in charge of a major corporation.
-Dave Adams-
June 4, 2007 12:43 PM | Reply | Permalink
Now that's a talking point.
June 4, 2007 3:29 PM | Reply | Permalink
OK, I give up. Does anyone out there undersand what mcs is talking about in terms of me being a brain surgeon and now charging me to "become a doctor and be the change (I) seek?"
Maybe, mcs, you should just decide to have a nice big piece of pie. Chew it up and swallow, and the fact that nothing that you say makes any sense won't matter.
Jan
June 4, 2007 6:33 PM | Reply | Permalink
most of this blog doesn't really make sense to me any more either,... time to go find inspiration someplace else.
To boldly go...
June 5, 2007 12:06 PM | Reply | Permalink
...or as hiring an atheist as the minister.
June 6, 2007 1:33 AM | Reply | Permalink
That's the best one I've heard yet, A.D. I've been using sending someone who hates the sight of blood to medical school. But hiring an atheist to be a minister really captures the idea better. I hope you don't mind if I steal it.--Greg
June 6, 2007 6:23 AM | Reply | Permalink
Greg (and any others who wish to do likewise): By all means, feel free...
And if any of you have access to someone who ends up advising the eventual Dem nominee's prep for the first general election presidential debate, feel free to share with that person as well.
I have a fantasy--one which perhaps only the Dem blogosphere might understand--that, if uttered at the right time and in the right way on such an occasion it could do more to keep our side from being impaled, yet again, on the religion issue than all of the well-honed speeches, op-eds, and staged campaign appearances on this issue put together.
Hey, a Dem can dream, can't he? :
June 6, 2007 7:27 AM | Reply | Permalink
But that is so common.
June 6, 2007 7:36 AM | Reply | Permalink
Do you have a better analogy?
June 6, 2007 8:32 AM | Reply | Permalink
What I meant was that there are, in fact, a lot of atheists in the business of "spreading the word of God." Special emphasis on the word "business," both cynically (televangelism) and the upshot of theological training (that it undermines one's religious beliefs while simultaneously disabling one from any other profession).
June 6, 2007 9:05 AM | Reply | Permalink
Ah, I thought you meant the metaphor itself was tired or overused. Even recognizing your well-taken point, I think AmericanDreamer's analogy is useful.
June 6, 2007 9:53 AM | Reply | Permalink
I realized that you misunderstood me and that it was my fault. That's why I extended the longer explanation.
June 6, 2007 10:26 AM | Reply | Permalink
I have a rhetorical question:
Does anyone (who is actually morally honest) believe that George Bush and Dick Cheney believe in the concept of hell?
How could they behave the way they have if they honestly believe that they will have to account for it? Surely they believe that amassing vast amounts of power and money are all that matters. And for those who consider them "men of faith" becaue that is how they describe themselves, how can anyone who personally prefesses faith in a god who is just and all-knowing consider these selfish, dismissive sociopaths to be "men of god?"
Are fake words their only currency? Should horrible acts (such as lying about the reasons to go to war) and their destructive consequenses not count because of their "proclaimed" imaginary friend? Are people so fearful that they excuse behavior as long as someone claims to be one of the chosen? Is the proclaimation that Jesus is your friend be a "Get out of jail free" card for someone who does illegal and horrible things? Doesn't make much of a case for the christian "morality," does it?
Jan
June 6, 2007 4:43 PM | Reply | Permalink
(Not sure about that. But even if so...)
...as is Republican "government" in recent times.
June 8, 2007 4:58 AM | Reply | Permalink
Just to be clear...I don't recall whether I picked up the "hiring an atheist as your minister" line somewhere else or not. If I heard it somewhere else, I don't know where. It sounds like something Carville or Begala might come up with, and I've read several of their books.
I am interested in seeing Democrats get and keep the Republicans on the defensive. One-liners that are catchy and clearly communicate core beliefs and distinctions can play an important role in doing that.
June 20, 2007 3:32 AM | Reply | Permalink
religious sect may degenerate into a political faction,' wrote James Madison, but the new American nation would nevertheless be protected against the ungovernable combination of religious fervor and political power as long as the Constitution prohibited the federal government from establishing any particular creed as preeminent.
Egitim | chat odalari
March 7, 2011 6:41 PM | Reply | Permalink