We are told, for example, that conservatives are against big government and high spending. Yet even as Republican governors and state legislatures block the expansion of Medicaid, the G.O.P. angrily denounces modest cost-saving measures for Medicare...Krugman is right. Most conservatives, just like lefties, aren't against government handouts, it's only about who gets them.
Or we’re told that conservatives, the Tea Party in particular, oppose handouts because they believe in personal responsibility, in a society in which people must bear the consequences of their actions. Yet it’s hard to find angry Tea Party denunciations of huge Wall Street bailouts, of huge bonuses paid to executives who were saved from disaster by government backing and guarantees. Instead, all the movement’s passion, starting with Rick Santelli’s famous rant on CNBC, has been directed against any hint of financial relief for low-income borrowers
Tuesday, March 18, 2014
Paul Krugman on Conservatives
Paul Krugman is out with one of his typical rants at NYT about the poor, entirely ignoring government's role in creating most of them and further ignoring that the private sector sans-government would take care of the legitimately needy. He's all for a bigger role for government and he is very good at spotting government intervention, even by those who pretend they are against it. He correctly notices that conservatives are pretty much on his interventionist side. He writes:
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This is actually a Krugman hit on the tea party by an association fallacy. Even the teocon-branch of the tea party denounces Wall Street bailouts, so it's trivially easy to find tea-partiers denouncing that.
ReplyDeleteThat is simply not true....at least not in ideology.
ReplyDeleteHistorically, conservatives have been for limited government whereas lefties are the party of government.
It's only because the lefties penetrated the conservative movement (neo-cons) that the conservatives turned left-like.
Conservatives are not for limited govt. According to Walter Block, the conservative position on abortion is a "throwback to slavery."
DeleteJW: Troll.
DeleteThe troll is actually right.
DeleteConservatives aren't for limited government and have never been for limited government. Conservatives, historically, have been pro-monarchy and pro-traditions and institutions, which at the time of course were not about liberty at all. Especially when it came to the Church and the kings.
They have also been economic protectionists and pro-empire. It is much more accurate to state that conservatives were the ones that wanted to stay under British rule. Because they don't like radicalism and they like monarchy.
There is no conservative "ideology". Conservatism is an attitude that says "whoa, not so fast. Let society evolve and change organically, if it is to change at all." Which is why they are "not so fast" in reducing actual spending but rather in not increasing spending as quickly as modern liberals. Which also explains that rather than fight for past liberties, they are merely trying to serve as a brake on the speeding liberals, which means the country will turn more and more leftward and statist, but at a slower pace than it would have under modern liberal domination. Eventually, most conservatives accept all the gains made by statists as a fact of reality. See medicare, medicaid, social security, wars, etc. Because these things have become the status quo. And you don't want to change society too radically if you're conservative.
The founding fathers were radical liberals, not conservatives, at the time of the revolution. They rejected the status quo and the monarchy. On the issue of slavery, it must be said, they were indeed conservative, because they wanted to retain that tradition. For radicalism in slavery you have to look at Garrison, Godwin and Spooner.
Whether you look at conservative icons like Edmund Burke, Winston Churchill, Otto Von Bismarck, Benjamin Disraeli, William F. Buckley or Ronald Reagan; none of them have been in favor of small government past any vapid rhetoric, even if that.
Conservatism in politics is just rhetoric when it comes to small government ideals and constitutionalism. Reality has proven that time and again.
Furthermore, voting habits have proven that conservatives don't like small government. How else to explain the massive growth of the state despite many so-called conservatives in the white house? Even today they continue to vote for guys like George W. Bush and Mitt Romney. Some small government conservatives, huh?
I don't know what twisted logic it takes to compare infanticide to slavery, but Block's logic would make Ron Paul an advocate for slavery.
DeleteWhen external forces want to force a woman to use her body as an incubator against her will for 9 months, she is rendered a slave, because that's what it means if you don't own your own body.
DeleteWhether the fetus was invited or not, the woman's body is her property and the fetus is on her premises. It has no rights as long as it is there unwanted. Of course it would be much PREFERABLE if a woman allowed it to stay there until it could be either born naturally or extracted safely, but in terms of libertarian individual rights the woman's body belongs to the woman and the fetus has no rights if they go against that of the host mother. There is no "right to life" or (lethal) self defense would be impossible. Self defense means property rights (including one's own body) are supreme. That's how violence is legitimately repelled.
One might say what about the baby's right to its body?
But since the woman can survive without the baby, but the baby CANNOT survive without the host mother, the baby cannot have a right to its body since its body is by definition linked to that of the host mother, and can only function by rendering the host mother a slave to its needs, which is unacceptable.
It is in a sense no different than socialism, where forcible redistribution becomes a "duty" in order to keep starving people alive. Starving people have no "right to life" at the expense of other people and their property. It is certainly horrible if starving people would die, but it still does not give them a right at the expense of others.
To put it short, there is no "infanticide" because there is no murder. There is eviction from the premises. One might call it a defense of property. Unfortunately, considering the biological facts this tends to mean abortion.
However, making decisions concerning a woman's body against her will is very much so slavery. Her body after all belongs to HER and not anybody else, including the unborn.
Abortion is horrible and we should all hope it is avoided. But in my mind there is no doubting the libertarian fact that the woman has a right to it.
The constant calling of JW a troll is unhelpful. He left a thoughtful comment. If you disagree, make an argument and drop the ad hominem.
DeleteI'm no expert on the TP (nor a fan - mostly due to their silence on U.S. imperialism), however, I would not take Krugman's statement about the TP and bank bailouts at face value: from the federalist.com....
ReplyDeleteHe might have pulled up the 2012 CBS poll that took a deep dive into the inclinations of the average Tea Partier, and found out that 74 percent of them opposed bank bailouts. Some argue, and with reason, that the Tea Party was spurred by Bush and Obama bank bailouts.
Is anyone else tired of the tea party origins being attributed to Rick Santelli? To me, that's the equivalent of attributing a sporting victory to one of the commentators. CNBC has 8 viewers.
ReplyDeleteRon Paul is the reason that the tea party existed. Too bad the whole thing was co-opted almost as quickly as it started!
Ron Paul? The Tea Party was started by the Koch Bros back in 2000. Ron Paul's connection is that he was employed by the Koch Bros in 1984. The Tea Party grew out of the Citizens for a Sound Economy which Ron Paul was head of in 1984.
DeleteCitizens for a Sound Economy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_for_a_Sound_Economy
Ok, I appreciate your scholarship.
DeleteHow about this: the only reason that the movement gained any steam is because of Ron Paul.
The WallStreet bailout was the REASON that the TeaParty blew a gasket.
ReplyDelete.
Krugman is telling a blatant lie.
Nothing unusual.
It's NOT hard to find angry Tea Party denunciations of huge Wall Street bailouts. The energy behind the Tea Party is the Christian right. Most of them see money going to Wall Street as bailing out the Jews and they do not like Jews (except to the extent that they need to be a friend of Israel when Zombie Jesus returns).
ReplyDeleteNope. The Idiot Left continually lies. They always have and always will.
DeleteWhat? The Christian Right doesn't like Jews? That's about as intelligent as when Charlie Rangel claimed that tax cuts are racist. I suppose you could still find a few anti-Semitic groups in this country, and you could find that some of them also espouse fundamentalist Christian views, but where is there any evidence whatsoever that the major evangelical Christian groups in this country support anti-Semitism.
DeleteThis is even worse the unfounded neo-con claims that Ron Paul was a racist.
I'm really not convinced that one needs to be a racist in order to dislike bailouts to extremely wealthy people. Why is it that when Dennis Kucinich is against bailouts, he's doing it for pure reasons, but if a Tea Party member is against bailouts that he has to be racist against someone?
DeleteIt's the same reasoning that somehow makes an anti-war individual out to be a racist because he opposes Obama's continuation of the same silly foreign policy George W Bush had going.
"The growth of the Internet will slow drastically, as the flaw in 'Metcalfe's law'–which states that the number of potential connections in a network is proportional to the square of the number of participants–becomes apparent: most people have nothing to say to each other! By 2005 or so, it will become clear that the Internet's impact on the economy has been no greater than the fax machine's."
DeleteThis is the guy that DC and Jerry Wolfgang depend on to predict the future based on economic policy and decisions! LOL
@Jerry
ReplyDeleteThe notion of "slavery" is tossed around inappropriately as a way to coerce thinking along the lines that NWO wants it to go. Same with Nazi, Hitler, and other jejeune comparisons.
I suppose the baby held a gun to the mother's head before it snuck up through her uterus.
That ole Simon Legree slaver-baby.
But we shall overcome, right?
I repeat my objection to Block's evictionism. The fetus did not trepasss into the mother's womb nor since Block is an atheist does the possibility of immaculate conception exist. Block starts his analysis too late. The mother engaged in an activity which placed the fetus there. The fetus in order to survive must remain there for some months. It is more akin to kidnapping than trespassing.And then evicting the fetus when it can not survive is murder.
DeleteKrugman is lying through his teeth. The TARP bail-out was DEFEATED in the HOUSE by a coalition of mostly conservative Republicans and liberal Democrats. It only passed the second time around because Obama came to Washington and lobbied those liberal Democrats to change their votes.
ReplyDelete@Tony
ReplyDeleteYou're talking outside my time-frame. I thought the discussion was about the American post WW 2 dispensation, in which, traditional conservatives have indeed supported limited govt until they were subverted.
Historically, it is a different thing, if you are going back to the Enlightenment. Even so, Burke doesn't fit in with the others.
Outside that, of course, you've started with some assumptions I don't buy, since I'm not a libertarian in your sense at all.
But being a minarchist doesn't make one a totalitarian and even if I were a conservative of the reactionary kind, is it an inevitable step from a Swiss cantonment or an enlightened monarch to Auschwitz?
Too much black and white thinking for my taste..
"I thought the discussion was about the American post WW 2 dispensation, in which, traditional conservatives have indeed supported limited govt until they were subverted."
DeleteNo the discussion is about conservatism period. You can't pick and choose a time period that is convenient.
But let's accept your argument anyway. Post WW2. Where are these "small government" conservatives outside of a small group that are the exception in a majority of statists? Did conservatives not support the Cold War? Did they not support the McCarthyist witch hunt of subversives? Did they not vote in the likes of Nixon and Reagan? Did the neoconservatism of the likes of Buckley not rise to prominence post WW2?
You say "until they were subverted". I'm sorry, but that sounds like another excuse. Maybe you mistake rhetorical convenience for factual actions.
"Even so, Burke doesn't fit in with the others."
Of course there are grades of statism. One is a totalitarian, the other merely a social democrat. In the case of Burke, he was a supporter of the monarchy. There is nothing "small government" about supporting a monarchy, which is another word for royal rulers, especially in historical context.
"Outside that, of course, you've started with some assumptions I don't buy, since I'm not a libertarian in your sense at all."
It's not about being a libertarian, but about accepting things as fact or not accepting them as fact. This means using words of which the definition is relatively clear. That's why i used the definition of "social conservatism" as used by other websites including Wikipedia. I;m not making things up as i go along. I try to use words as they are meant. They are not assumptions.
"But being a minarchist doesn't make one a totalitarian and even if I were a conservative of the reactionary kind, is it an inevitable step from a Swiss cantonment or an enlightened monarch to Auschwitz?"
That sounds like a mighty big strawman to me. Did i ever claim you were a totalitarian? Just because i say someone doesn't support liberty doesn't mean i call them a totalitarian. When it comes to liberty i AM black and white, because virtually EVERYONE supports liberty when it suits them. Liberty in my view means supporting it also when it doesn't suit you. That is what liberty means to me. If you only support it when it suits you, it is not liberty. If it would be, the meaning of the word would be utterly useless and meaningless. In that case even Barack Obama would be a champion of liberty.
Example: do you want religious freedom, yet do not want gay people to be able to adopt children? Then you obviously do not support liberty, because you only want to have it for yourself but want to deny it others.
That is my point.
That is the difference between libertarianism and social conservatism as the latter is commonly defined. So i maintain that the latter does not know liberty.
That is not black and white thinking. That is simply not condoning the meaning of the word liberty in a self-serving and hypocritical manner, which is what all statists do.
"Too much black and white thinking for my taste.."
I hope i have sufficiently argued that without black and white thinking on the word liberty, the word would be useless and meaningless. In that case everyone would want liberty, when reality clearly shows this to be a lie.
By the way, if you're truly a minarchist in the commonly held usage of the word, then you are not a social conservative. You are a libertarian that has culturally conservative leanings.
Again, just trying to use words properly.
@Wolfgang
ReplyDeleteRon Paul? The Tea Party was started by the Koch Bros back in 2000. Ron Paul's connection is that he was employed by the Koch Bros in 1984. The Tea Party grew out of the Citizens for a Sound Economy which Ron Paul was head of in 1984.
Citizens for a Sound Economy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_for_a_Sound_Economy
Are you sure this isn't propaganda being put out by wikipedia...
John McCain suspended his presidential campaign to lobby for TARP.
ReplyDelete