Don’t Just Take My Word For It
I’ve come the conclusion that the beliefs and hence the policies of Liberals are an article of faith based primarily on feelings, whereas Conservatives tend base their thinking more on their assessment of human nature. “One of the older political sayings is that a ‘conservative is a liberal who’s been mugged.’” (Arnold Ahlert)
I have no credibility with most Liberals because, after all, I’m firmly in the Conservative camp, a captive of the Right. So, if I and other Conservatives are not to be believed about the rationale for conservatism, how about those prominent Liberals who have changed sides? Are their reasons for becoming Conservatives also not to be believed?
A number of highly regarded Liberals have changed sides, and their conversion to conservatism tells us a great deal about the difference between the two philosophies.
Thomas Sowell: An American economist, political writer, and commentator, and currently a senior fellow of the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. In an interview with “The American Enterprise online,” he was asked about having started out as a Marxist. Sowell’s response was: “Yes. The first time I read anything really serious about him was when I was about 19. I remember buying an old, secondhand set of encyclopedias for a dollar and 19 cents…In it was a long piece about Marx with all these quotations from him, and it all seemed to ring so true. Fortunately, even during my period of Marxism I had respect for evidence and logic, so it was only a matter of time before my Marxism began to unravel as I compared what actually happened in history to what was supposed to happen.”
Ronald Reagan (1911-2004): Started his political career as a New Deal Liberal, was president of a union, the Screen Actors Guild, and an active Democrat. “As president of the Screen Actors Guild, Reagan became embroiled in disputes over the issue of Communism in the film industry; his political views shifted from liberal to conservative.” (The White House official website). On the difference between a communist and an anti-communist he said, “How do you tell a Communist? Well, it’s someone who reads Marx and Lenin. And how do you tell an anti-Communist? It’s someone who understands Marx and Lenin.” (Ronald Reagan - Remarks in Arlington, Virginia, September 25, 1987)
David Horowitz, publisher of Front Page Magazine: His “parents were long-standing members of the Communist Party. While still identifying as a Marxist…in 1968 Horowitz wrote several books that were influential in New Left critiques of American society and particularly its foreign policy. He was an editor at the influential New Left magazine, Rampart, and a confidant of Black Panthers leader Huey P. Newton, and cited experiences with his involvement in the Panthers as the primary catalyst for reassessing his views.”
“Norman Podhoretz, former editor of Commentary magazine, said of Horowitz: ‘…David Horowitz is hated by the Left because he is not only an apostate but has been even more relentless and aggressive in attacking his former political allies than some of us who preceded him in what I once called ‘breaking ranks’ with that world. He has also taken the polemical and organizational techniques he learned in his days on the left, and figured out how to use them against the Left, whose vulnerabilities he knows in his bones…” (Front Page Magazine)
David Mamet, American author, essayist, playwright, screenwriter and film director: Recently wrote an article with the intriguing title, “Why I Am No Longer a ‘Brain-Dead Liberal, an election-season essay’” (The Village Voice, March 11th, 2008), in which he stated, “The conservative…holds that people are each out to make a living, and the best way for government to facilitate that is to stay out of the way, as the inevitable abuses and failures of this system (free-market economics) are less than those of government intervention. I took the liberal view for many decades, but I believe I have changed my mind…As a child of the ’60s, I accepted as an article of faith that government is corrupt, that business is exploitative, and that people are generally good at heart…I’d observed that lust, greed, envy, sloth, and their pals are giving the world a good run for its money, but that nonetheless, people in general seem to get from day to day; and that we in the United States get from day to day under rather wonderful and privileged circumstances…”
So, if my own reasons for being a “conservative” do not pass muster with Liberals, perhaps the reasons of others far more accomplished than I will be acceptable.
© 2008 Harris R. Sherline, All Rights Reserved
Who Needs Economic Stimulus?
With all the people in government who profess to know how to manage the economy, you would think they could get it right, at least occasionally. But if anyone could really do it, there would be perpetual prosperity, right?
Economic cycles are a fact of life, whether in the “free market” economy we supposedly have here in the good ‘ol U.S. of A or the centralized control models of the socialist and communist societies.
So, why the panic when the economy turns down? Is an “economic stimulus package” truly necessary?” Not really, except for the impact it may have on politicians getting re-elected. There is no recession, at least not yet, and the rush to “stimulate” the economy is just political posturing, nothing more.
Newt Gingrich, former Speaker of the House of Representatives, recently commented, “First of all you don’t want to propose a stimulus package. That’s like steroids for athletes. You want an economic growth package and that package ought to start with less government spending, less bureaucracy, it ought to start with lower taxes, it ought to focus on how do we get people to create jobs…how do we get breakthroughs in the cost of energy so that we can become less and less reliant on the Middle East. I think we need that kind of approach rather than how do I pump up the system in a way that is ultimately going to be very destructive.”
Alan Reynolds, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, also pointed out, “All proposals for fiscal stimulus claim to ‘jump-start’ the economy by having the government borrow money from Smith and give it to Jones. Unfortunately, Smith is paid interest on that IOU, which implies a higher tax burden on somebody.”
Democrats and Republicans both favor an “economic stimulus package” and can’t seem to get a bill on the President’s desk fast enough. But, the fact that they agree doesn’t make them right. Furthermore, historically, by the time politicians get around to doing something about a recession, it has usually already bottomed out and is headed back up.
The major elements of the “economic stimulus” package we’re hearing about will accomplish next to nothing. Stimulating short-term consumer spending by distributing borrowed money will not provide an adequate rationale for businesses to expand, because after the money has been spent by the recipients, we will be right back where we started. The proposed “stimulus” of $150 billion may sound like a lot of money, but at approximately 1/1,000 of 1% of a $14 trillion economy, it’s relatively meaningless. Furthermore, the IRS has stated they will not be able to get the checks into the mail before May or June, which means the spending that follows probably won’t even show up in the numbers until the first quarter of 2009.
Businesses do not expand and create new jobs unless they expect a stable economy that will produce sufficient long-term sales growth with adequate profit margins to justify the risk of borrowing to finance expansion. A temporary increase in sales of the sort that will result from a short-term economic stimulus will not accomplish that.
“What we see is a bunch of self-serving fat cats whose first commandment is ‘do as I say, not as I do.’ Have to be responsible with money? We don’t. Have to prepare for your future? We don’t. We can run this country right into the ground and every single one of us still be sitting pretty.” (Arnold Ahlert, “Take Your $800 and Shove It,”politicalmavens.com)
© 2008 Harris R. Sherline, All Rights Reserved