Responding to [Newsweek’s Jonathan] Alter, George Mason University economist Don Boudreaux agreed that interest-group liberalism has indeed been leavened by idea-driven liberalism. Which is the problem.
“These ideas,” Boudreaux says, “are almost exclusively about how other people should live their lives. These are ideas about how one group of people (the politically successful) should engineer everyone else’s contracts, social relations, diets, habits, and even moral sentiments.” Liberalism’s ideas are “about replacing an unimaginably large multitude of diverse and competing ideas . . . with a relatively paltry set of ‘Big Ideas’ that are politically selected, centrally imposed, and enforced by government, not by the natural give, take and compromise of the everyday interactions of millions of people.”
This was the serious concern that percolated beneath the normal froth and nonsense of the elections: Is political power – are government commands and controls – superseding and suffocating the creativity of a market society’s spontaneous order? On Tuesday, a rational and alarmed American majority said “yes.”
I’m highly sympathetic to George Will’s take on the election, since I also utterly repudiate the whole Obama philosophy of big, “progressive,” activist government. But to be fair, I think the economy was the main factor in this landslide election. Most Americans (fortunately) are probably pragmatists at heart, and not nearly as ideologically inclined as the “chatter class” (including academica, journalists and political analysts) or Beltway bureaucrats.
David Handy+
As an employee of the Federal Government, I can tell you that I have consistently voted against my own economic interests by consistently voting for conservative candidates because I am trying to take a principled stand on issues like the right to life, the 2nd Amendment, capitalism vs. socialism, strong defense, fiscal restraint, etc. We Federal workers are demonized, yet every single one of my co-workers and my manager are all former military personnel and we work long hours (often not taking overtime – working “for the flag”), often in very bad weather, on hazardous equipment (high voltages with arc flash/blast potential, ionizing and non-ionizing radiation, heights with fall hazards, etc.); all the while being told how lazy and greedy we are by the plurality of the very people that we serve. I cast my votes this election cycle, as in every election cycle, based on moral principles, not my personal economic interests. I hope you might think of me when you consider “Federal Workers”. As a group, we aren’t perfect, but there are many that serve honorably and very patriotically…and often doing dangerous and thankless work.
Thanks, #2. I guess you’re sick & tired of being lumped with other federal workers who don’t share your conservative principles. Perfectly understandable. I know there are still “7,000” in federal service who haven’t bowed the knee to the idols that currently reign in Washington.
Thank you for all you do to serve Christ by serving your country in the sacrificial way you do.
David Handy+
It is our honor to serve you and all America…one nation, under God, indivisible…