The Government War

In these columns I try to give voice to a philosophy you might call progressive conservatism. It starts with the wisdom of Edmund Burke — the belief that the world is more complex than we can know and we should be skeptical of handing too much pow...

David Brooks stacks lie on lie with predictable results. Deconstruction is not worth the effort. His war never ended. PTSD?

The Government War

David, your perception is erroneous. All the Democrats did via the stimulus bill is extend funding to existing state programs that would otherwise have been cut, thus deepening the recession, and potentially bringing on a depression. And the Tea Party crowd, egged on by its media and lobbyist enablers, began to scream from that moment on. Smaller government in 2009 would have meant many more unemployed - and likely a second Great Depression. Now, you can argue that the emphasis on health care was mistaken, especially given that the Democrats clearly lacked the votes to do what was truly necessary to curtain the rise of runaway health care spending as a percent of GDP, and perhaps you'd be right. But given the President's emphasis, coupled to the almost(?) complete lack of GOP cooperation, adoption of a plan that favored established interests rather than the authentic national interest became inevitable. David, the real problem with the right is that they still believe in free lunches and unicorns - and that the GOP remains extraordinarily skilled in selling their utterly ludicrous message to an alternately narcissistic or grossly uninformed American people. We have tried conservatives' preferred principles of economy twice in the last thirty years. They failed both times. Any meaningful national conversation must begin with a frank acknowledgment of that fact.