disecting Will's "the case for conservatism"

The Case for Conservatism

By George F. Will
Thursday, May 31, 2007; Page A19

"Conservatism's recovery of its intellectual equilibrium requires a confident explanation of why America has two parties and why the conservative one is preferable."

This is just arrogant, why we have two parties, its called a democracy. It would've been fine if Will just stated Conservatism one is preferable but he has the gall to ask why even two, why not one.  Answer Russia,China, Nazi Germany are failed states-states meaning countries, because their own party status allows them to breed coruption as the norm. Two party system offers a check. Which begs the question, is Will against Checks and Balances. Also in America Conservatism is an ideology, not a party like they have in England.

"Today's political argument involves perennial themes that give it more seriousness than many participants understand."

We mere mortals are too inexperienced for such essay arguments. Again the arrogant tone.

"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."

"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."

"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."

Ok let's go back and argue Reagan conservatism, the idea that "government is not the solution to the problem, government is the problem." The whole movement is based on proving this-see federal government responce to Hurricaine Katrina

"Hence liberals' hostility to school choice programs that challenge public education's semimonopoly."

Seperation of church and state.

"Hence hostility to private accounts funded by a portion of each individual's Social Security taxes." We're not "hostile", we just happen to realize there is already such a thing, they're called 401ks and IRA's.

"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."

"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.

"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.

"Conservatism argues, as did the Founders, that self-interestedness is 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."

Ok children you are about to get a history lesson, this is why George Washington had an all volunteer army that could go home at any time, because having conscripted men fight a war against a country, is against their freedom and equality. Now this volunteer army was made exactly that way by the Second Continental Congress. Washington lost more battles than he won. Is this a good thing then?  Secondly, I grow tired that any conservative hugs the founding fathers. The founding fathers were people risking their necks to form a new country. A conservative-or Loyalist was very happy with him or herself going to costume balls in London's high society and being a subject of the crown.

"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."

And yet they embrace ADM.

"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.

"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."

Ok just beneath you'll see what I was talking about.

"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." 

This is the flaw to the whole movement, is that Conservative person wants to live in America, talk about being patriotic by waving the flag but put up a tantrum over taxes because that pays for America maintenance ie roads. Kennedy made it clear that the wealthy conservatives are to blame when he said in that same Inaugural of his signature phrase, " if a free society cannot save the many who are poor it cannot save the few who are rich,"
In otherwards, whether they like it or not are responsible.  Now say you like to masturbate, your country is not responsible for you masterbating. Masturbation by its definition is a one person thing.  Now say you like sex, you get off having sex. Sex in itself isn't bad. Now lets say you've had a history of partners that say yes and you have the wildest most passionate sex, then one day you a partner, lets say its a woman, who wants more to be thought of as a peice of meat. She says no to the sex until after a year in the relationship. You can't wait that long so you rape her.  Now should government look the other way because you're "embracing a spacious and expanding sphere of life?" What about the woman/victim? 

"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."

And here is why the Republican Party deserves to lose. They're all taking about torture-excuse me,"alternative interrogation techniques," and they're embracing it. Anything to get those terrorists. Debating torture is just for people in Ivy League Universitys who are disconnected from the real world. 

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.

And then the guy doesn't even endorse what he's endorsing. Gotta love it

http://www.washingto...

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Comments

Plagerism? (presidentialman - 6/1/2007 2:07:51 AM)

The first time I read this a phrase stuck out,

"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." I think I read this in a David Brooks column, maybe it was blandness. And for that matter I seem to remember read the who Conservatism is good argument in a David Brooks column. I don't know but the phrase stuck with me as a where have I heard that before.

Modern Conservatism Failed (Hugo Estrada - 6/1/2007 1:51:13 PM)

Thank you, presidentialman, for writing about this. I saw the entry this morning, and I wanted to write about it as well.

Why does George Will feel the need to defend conservatism at this point? Because Will and most conservatives have to deal with the fact that real conservatism failed.

Since the modern conservative movement began, they have constructed an ideology and a plan for the nation that, according to them, it would not only bring prosperity but also raise the human spirit. If only they got the chance to run things to prove their theory, they would show the world.

Their big chance to run their plans finally happened with George W. Bush and their total control over Congress. So the conservative social contract was put into practice. Taxes came down, military spending went up, aggressive foreign policies were adopted.

And then reality began catching up. The Iraq occupation was more costly and more complicated than they originally thought. There is no point in detailing the mistakes, the violence and the deaths. We all know them too well.

And modern conservatism failed to improve the lives of the American middle class. Supply side  economics is nothing but subsidies to the richest people in the country, and no invisible hand has redistributed the wealth to most of the population during the Bush years. On the contrary, income inequality is on the rise and has never been higher.

But if we must find find one symbolic event to mark the end of modern conservatism, something like the fall of the Berlin Wall for communism, it would have to be the response to Katrina. Katrina was the one event that showed how the conservative paradise of wealth and human dignity was an dream that had nothing to do with reality.

We saw how our conservative government failed to protect American citizens in American soil. We learned that we couldn't use the national guard effectively to help New Orleans because most of their people and equipment were in Iraq. We watched how our government was unable to response because it had been properly starved by its conservative leaders. And we also heard the ugly-step child of conservatism, their racist wing, not only showing no compassion for the victims, but even blaming the people of New Orleans for their misfortunes.

Would we grant any respect to a modern communist who rhapsodizes about the Communism if he fails to explain the failures of real Communism? No.

So we shouldn't grant any respect to George F. Will who failed to address the failures of modern conservatism in his defense of his ideology either.