Excellent rant about what's wrong with the major American political viewpoints: Conservatives couldn't care less about anyone but themselves. Libertarians are unrealistic fantasists. Liberals are incompetents without the courage of their convictions.
Willamette Week Online | Cover Story | Candidates for Metro president.
I hate your politics.
Each of you carries baggage from your political affiliation, and all of that baggage has a punky smell to it, like one of your larger species of rodent crawled in and expired in your folded underwear. Listening to any of you yammer on about the geopolitical situation is enough to make one want to melt down one's dental fillings with a beeswax candle and then jam an ice pick into the freshly exposed nerve, just to have something else to think about.
5.14.2002
The editors of The New Republic on Bush abandoning his free market "principles" for political gain and to help big business fatcats.
The New Republic Online: Making Hay
These recent deviations from free-market orthodoxy have been dramatic enough that it's tempting to conclude the president has no coherent economic philosophy at all. But that isn't quite true. A clear pattern has lately emerged: When intervention in the market would benefit a wide range of Americans--say, a substantive patients' bill of rights or a prescription-drug plan--Bush opposes it. Ditto for an intervention that would actually make the economy run more smoothly--as in the case of reforms to the accounting industry. Indeed, it seems only when a market intervention lacks a compelling economic rationale and helps the few at the expense of the many--as in the steel, energy, and agriculture decisions--that the president sets aside his free-market principles. Call it "uncompassionate unconservatism."
The reason is that while only intermittently pro-market, Bush is steadfastly pro-business. Just how far the president is willing to bend the former principle in service of the latter can be seen in the farm bill he is preparing to sign into law.
The New Republic Online: Making Hay
These recent deviations from free-market orthodoxy have been dramatic enough that it's tempting to conclude the president has no coherent economic philosophy at all. But that isn't quite true. A clear pattern has lately emerged: When intervention in the market would benefit a wide range of Americans--say, a substantive patients' bill of rights or a prescription-drug plan--Bush opposes it. Ditto for an intervention that would actually make the economy run more smoothly--as in the case of reforms to the accounting industry. Indeed, it seems only when a market intervention lacks a compelling economic rationale and helps the few at the expense of the many--as in the steel, energy, and agriculture decisions--that the president sets aside his free-market principles. Call it "uncompassionate unconservatism."
The reason is that while only intermittently pro-market, Bush is steadfastly pro-business. Just how far the president is willing to bend the former principle in service of the latter can be seen in the farm bill he is preparing to sign into law.
Jonathan Chait responds to David Broder's slamming of the idea of John McCain switching parties to run for the Presidency as a Democrat, and his apparently willful misreading of people who advocate a switch:
The New Republic Online: No More Mr. Nice Columnist .
I find McCain admirable because he has embraced a worldview that, on issue after issue, elevates the broader good above narrow self-interest: on tax cuts, pork, environmental and gun regulations, foreign policy, and so on. It's all lost on Broder.
The New Republic Online: No More Mr. Nice Columnist .
I find McCain admirable because he has embraced a worldview that, on issue after issue, elevates the broader good above narrow self-interest: on tax cuts, pork, environmental and gun regulations, foreign policy, and so on. It's all lost on Broder.
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