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Conservatism: Not TBTF

In recent weeks, two formerly bright lines of political demarcation have become indistinct, to Barack Obama's advantage.

By George F. Will | NEWSWEEK
Published Jul 19, 2008
From the magazine issue dated Jul 28, 2008

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  • Posted By: deh1954 @ 09/19/2008 12:53:46 PM

    Comment: The fact is that we have been ruled by conservatives for the past 40 years, Clinton included. Conservatism was proven a failed government philosophy when the Founding Fathers formed this country and chose a liberal form of government known as Democracy. And conservatism as defined in the context of these times has also proven to be a dismal failure. Unfettered capitalism is a return to the rule of natural law. Under such law, even if we all started from the same position with the same abilities, at the end of each leg of the competition, a settling-up and adjustment would occur that would improve the conditions and abilities of the winners and reduce that of the losers so that the next leg of competition would have the winners starting from a favored position. If you play this game over thousands of legs and scores of generations, you get what we've got right now. Unfettered capitalism is designed to eliminate the middle class by continuing to concentrate wealth and power for the strongest. Human beings created the rule of law to help level the playing field. The conservatives gained and maintained power because they successfully define the discussion so that an argument against a candidate could simply be a label such as "liberal" (simple words for simple minds). Nothing more need be said just as in days past the use of the word "communist" had the same impact, ending the discussion. The fact is that democratic socialism is a better blend of government and economy for the benefit of the most people (exception the uber-rich). As erudite as George Will and others of his ilk can sound, they are just plain wrong. Liberalism has never been proven a failure. Its flaws are a myth: strong on social issues, weak on financial and national security. The best of times have always been during Democratic administrations (not a coincidence as Will implies) especially under FDR and JFK/LBJ. With the exception of Lincoln's presidency, most of the real progress made in our history occurred during these administrations. Liberals have been at a disadvantage because we are not willing to ???swiftboat??? the truth so freely. There has never been a choice so clear as the one between McCain and Obama, not since, uh, Bush and Kerry. It is tragic that after these past 40 years and especially the past 8, that this election is even close. If we could have 40 years of a liberal government and economy, today's times would be something our grandchildren would find difficult to comprehend.

  • Posted By: jnakhoul @ 07/25/2008 5:21:55 PM

    Comment: holyroller stop smoking crack. nobody takes that as a fact, anyone with a brain doesn't actually believe mr. obama is a space alien muslim

  • Posted By: madkeyray @ 07/24/2008 2:06:24 PM

    Comment: Conservatives, republicans are seeming like a bunch of liars. They never admit when Mccain is wrong. They don't realize how damaging it is to continue the same negative attacks and spin while the leader of their party is George W. Bush. When conservatives defends Mccain no matter if he's right or wrong instead of admitting the truth or just focusing on half truths it's harder to vote for another republican President. If the conservatives were more honest with the failures of President Bush it would be easier to believe another republican president will be different than Bush. So far in this election its been the same old republican play book to win an election and the American people can't take that chance.

  • Posted By: allinmymind @ 07/23/2008 1:57:36 PM

    Comment: It's not the first time a "conservative", "laizzez faire", "free-market", republican president used socialist-style bail out of a dying manufacturer...remember when ronald Reagan threw the life-line to Harley-Davidson?
    The problem with reactionaries in govenrnment is that they want to play by whatever rules they think are good at the time.

  • Posted By: HolyRoller @ 07/21/2008 11:25:12 PM

    Comment: ATTN......... ALL OBAMAMOHAMMEDS....BREAKING NEWS...HUSSEIN BIRTH CERTIFICATE FAKE...............

    Laugh it off. Ignore it. Whatever you like. THIS WILL get MSM coverage. For the entire story go to.......

    ....................... http://noquarterusa.net/blog/2008/07/21/forensics-expert-obama-birth-certificate-is-a-forgery

    Larry Johnson and others are going to FORCE an inquiry. Here is a snippet........

    The following report was written for TD/NQ by Techdude, who hurried to complete it after his tires were slashed and a mutilated rabbit was found hanging by his front door. He is currently working on another exclusive follow-on report.

    Who threatened Techdude, and why? And if his findings are correct, why did Barack Obama publish a fake Certificate of Live Birth (COLB) on his own website, FightTheSmears, and on DailyKos?

    Well, well, well....what's up with this??? We will all find out soon. Check out the entire investigation.

    NOBAMA!!!

    • Posted By: Cazador1972 @ 07/27/2008 11:38:02 PM

      Comment: Doobie Roller, I'm still waiting for Fox News to break at least ONE of the half a dozen things you have blamed Obama for in this forum.

      I can almost see you talking to your church bigot friends about the latest nonsense about Obama and fooling yourselves into thinking it's true. But nothing ever changes, does it? Fox News would LOVE for any of this to be true, but not even them believe this crazy hype you're so intent in believing it's true.

      Besides, the only US president I've seen holding hands with the Muslims you so hate, is the patron saint of all right wing nuts, George bush.

  • Posted By: OnlyCureJGK @ 07/21/2008 8:53:46 PM

    Comment: Homosexuals should not be aloud to spend time with children and corrupt there minds. Homosexuality is just as wrong as Murder they are both depraved sick crimes against what is natural.
    Both these crimes fly in the face of what is normal decient human behavior.
    Anyone that supports homosexual activity is a contributor to it.
    Homosexuality is wrong.
    Its is not diversity it is perverisity
    They should be given the mental help they need.
    It is not about left or right wing politics its about right and wrong.
    Homosexuality is wrong and always will be just because you say its not does not mean its true.

    • Posted By: jnakhoul @ 07/25/2008 5:24:34 PM

      Comment: well i believe your wrong, so i guess i just poked a major hole in your argument. the problem is your applying your moralty and you think its the only moralty that exist. if you have a problem with being gay then don't be gay. if you don't have anything nice to say, go jump

  • Posted By: jath123 @ 07/21/2008 3:29:49 PM

    Comment: By the way, Mr. Will, privatizing profits while externalizing losses and liabilities isn'y any kind of socialism. It is the essence of Robber Barron capitalism. In what bizarro universe is "privatizing profits" part of socialism? I am not arguing the strengths of weaknesses of either system, I am simply calling you out on your feeble attempt to take one of the worst attributes of your pet system and hang it around the neck of the system you hate. Let's be a bit more intellectually honest than that, shall we?

  • Posted By: jath123 @ 07/21/2008 3:22:23 PM

    Comment: "doctorfixit" should change his name to "doctorspinit." Sorry Doctor, but the Republicans didn't fail because of poor execution of power. They failed because of their excellent execution of power. They effectively enacted the polices they wanted to, and now the policies have failed. The source of many of the banking, mortgage, credit, and debt problems we are now suffering can be traced back to banking deregulation and consolidation. Whether it was Republicans or Democrats supporting these policies doesn't detract from the fact that they are CONSERVATIVE policies. They failed. This extends also to George W. Bush, whom Republicans want you to think failed because he wasn't conservative enough. Quite the contrary; he embodies the perverse contradictions that ARE modern day conservatism. The notion that the scorched-earth, party-before-country Republicans don't fight hard enough is a joke. Their problem is simply that we all now see them for what they are.

  • Posted By: timrogers @ 07/21/2008 1:02:26 PM

    Comment: The TBTF theory explians the conservative embrace of government solutions for private problems because the Republican party is now the entity that is too big to fail. Conservatives have always favored staying in power over political principles, and have always favored preservation of their own capital over preservation of political doctrine. The conservatives who bemoan interference in the markets dislike helping others but consider govenment assistance for themselves as good business and sound policy. Capitalism is not a code, but guidelines which are adjusted when those with the most to lose choose to adjust them. The Republican party is too scared now to allow ideology to prevent goverment bailouts for the money store on Wall Street. What is good for Wall Street is good for the Republican Party; explaining it as an effort to save the economy from collapse is good politics.

  • Posted By: doctorfixit @ 07/20/2008 11:05:28 PM

    Comment: The fact that the conservatives were unable to stop McCain, despite his suicidal amnesty proposal, is testimony to their lack of power. Both Bush presidencies had a great deal to do with the unraveling of what Newt Gingrich started. Remember, even Gingrich was bamboozled by Clinton's psychopathic abilities to hoodwink people. Conservatives have to learn guerrilla warfare. They simply cannot fight liberalism with conventional weapons.

  • Posted By: judithod @ 07/20/2008 8:32:17 PM

    Comment: Suggest you stick to baseball, Mr. Will. And you may have Obama, Pelosi, and Reid on your team; I don't want those losers on mine.

  • Posted By: judithod @ 07/20/2008 8:30:57 PM

    Comment: Suggest you stick to baseball, Mr. Will. And you may have Obama, Pelosi, and Reid on your team; don't want those losers on mine!

  • Posted By: Anju Chandel @ 07/20/2008 6:56:49 PM

    Comment: The difference between both the American presidential candidates is that while Barack Obama is trying to be a genuine leader, John McCain is only trying to be the president !

  • Posted By: mkbowlus@comcast.net @ 07/20/2008 6:27:22 PM

    Comment: "Romance", what an appropriate term: delusional, short lived and often self destructive. Mr. Will has a way with words and they generaly inspire pasionate responses. I'm not sure there are any solutions in this muck, but the raking is interesting. Whose fault is it? The egoism projected by pundits pointing lasers at the powerpoint slide show only dream of such individual power. The ability to "will" policy into being, effect consumer preferences and global markets, just by having an opinion... "if only they would listen to ME!"
    Economics, like meterology is a discipline for the masses: we can all be "right" sometime. And the good men said, "Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.... nodding their heads... ever more secure in their version of blah, blah, blah, than ever before... Farce may be the lowest form of comedy, but it never fails to to amuse.

  • Posted By: thinkgra @ 07/20/2008 3:49:20 PM

    Comment: "keeping profits private, but socializing losses."
    Isn't that the logical extension of business' mandate to maximize profits and externalize losses? And in response to Jim's critique of Clinton, I might mention that it was the Republicans under Bush who perfected the art of naming legislation to reflect the opposite of the end it achieved, i.e. "The Clear Skies Act." Frequently, the text of the bill was witheld until the last minute, as in Phil Gramm's "Enron Exception."
    "Clinton's shifting, dishonesty and lack of principle distorted and confused our entire political system "?
    Clinton is a rank amateru compared to W.

  • Posted By: olderwiser @ 07/20/2008 3:18:29 PM

    Comment: I'm going in and take a nap. I yield to the weekend drunk bloggers. Have a good time.

  • Posted By: Steve5684 @ 07/20/2008 2:50:45 PM

    Comment: Yah, I enjoy paying welfare for poor trash who never tried, or to subsidize some investment banker's get rich quick scheme turned market collapes.

  • Posted By: Steve5684 @ 07/20/2008 2:49:49 PM

    Comment: Hands off my money government. You sick bastards already steal 40% of my check before it ever gets to me.

    • Posted By: olderwiser @ 07/20/2008 3:06:17 PM

      Comment: Well, Steve5684, you are making millions of dollars a year if you are in the 40 per cent bracket. Why complain?

  • Posted By: gglenc @ 07/20/2008 2:39:32 PM

    Comment: Mr. Will's offering that somehow "corporatism" is good for America, is tantamount to sayng that Mussolini's Corporatism (i.e. FASCISM) was good for Italy...or Hitler's fascism in Nazi Germany.

    The United States government during the past 30 years via its "deregulation mania" has CAUSED America's economic downfall. WE taxpayers were LIED to by presidents and Congress that it would be GOOD for America in a "free market" (as if there IS such a thing), when in fact it only OPENED the ability of corrupt corporatists to sell Americans' birthrights.

    Then, when the corporatists reached the END of their corruption, as the "free market" fell apart as it always does without "regulation" by US, the citizens, then the "Corporatists" run TO government, meaning to us, the TAXPAYERS, to pay for THEIR, the corporatists, corruption via bail-outs!

    IF there was any reason to overthrow the government AND the corporatists by any foreign nation, or citizens of this nation, the thesis by Mr. Will demonstrates it. Corporatism is CORRUPTION by its very ELITIST definition. Corporatism IS Fascism.

    That Mr. Will has not recognized the difference between "Populist Conservatism" and what he calls "conservative corporatism" demonstrates what is WRONG among so-called, "Conservatives." They simply do not have the intellectual power to KNOW the difference between what is GOOD for this nation and what has SUBVERTED this nation into a third rate nation BY the CORPORATISTS using their own brand of "SOCIALISM" via the U.S. Government.

    That Mr. Will does NOT know the difference should cause true CONSERVATIVES to change their affilations and to create a NEW MOVEMENT among those of us who ARE populists and do NOT support subversives like the fascist corporatists, trying to pose themselves as "conservatives." They are NOT and never have been anything "conservative."

  • Posted By: Jim_009911 @ 07/20/2008 1:47:14 PM

    Comment: The most significant thing about all of this "death of conservatism" talk is the complete lack of historical perspective that it inevitably displays. In terms of economic policy, we have been living in Reagan's world for almost 30 years. The Clinton Administration essentially conceded (or was forced to concede) that Reagan was right, and contented itself to nibbling around the edges. Lest anyone forget, during the 90s the presidency was all the Democrats had (thanks to Ross Perot). Republicans held majorities in both houses of Congress, and also the majority of governorships and state legislatures. In other words, the American people have not seen true liberalism in action since the Carter Administration, if not LBJ.

    If the current trend toward Democrats continues, there is about to be a massive public education provided about what liberalism actually looks like and produces. The rubber has not really hit the road on these ideological policy differences for a long, long time. That's why conservatives have found themselves in limbo. The baby is being thrown out with the bath water because people have forgotten the baby is even there. I maintain, and have for a long time, that the Clinton Administration was the most destructive thing to happen to America in recent memory--but maybe not in the way people normally think of it. Clinton's shifting, dishonesty and lack of principle distorted and confused our entire political system in ways that most people have never recognized. The end result is that people truly do not even know what they're voting for anymore. Luckily, the political scene will eventually return to its own equilibrium. The Left is feeling its oats. The gloves are off. The games are over. Given their chance, they will pursue global warming mythology to its logical conclusion. They will gut the military. They will raise taxes, over and over again, and they will attempt to nationalize health care. It is perhaps only then that people will be forced to remember that Reagan was right after all.

    If the Left is right that Bush is Nixon and Iraq is Viet Nam, then they must concede the flip side--Barack Obama is Jimmy Carter. My personal bet? Newt Gingrich in 2012.

    • Posted By: thehappyamerican @ 07/20/2008 7:37:53 PM

      Comment: My bet...GOP controls US house and Senate in 2010. the De-Kennedy-izing of america has begun! And it's not going to stop! Even if McCain misses The Train!

    • Posted By: olderwiser @ 07/20/2008 3:13:37 PM

      Comment: Jim, the real sum of historical perspective on the matter of change from political left to right is the pendulum swing. The right goes too far and the left comes back, and vice versa. It's almost as if gravity is in charge as the pendulum rises so high on one side that it can only fall back and head the other way. Along with this, to help it change, is the inevitable corruption that the power causes the longer it continues on either the left or the right, each in its own particular style. Neither left nor right "dies". It just sulks in the background for a while and then gets to work on coming back, which it always does. If you don't like the way it is now, just stand still and your favorite will come back.

      • Posted By: olderwiser @ 07/20/2008 3:17:03 PM

        Comment: It's not so much a question of whether the government screws everything up, it is whether it screws it up in the style that you prefer.

  • Posted By: Jim_009911 @ 07/20/2008 1:45:17 PM

    Comment: The most significant thing about all of this "death of conservatism" talk is the complete lack of historical perspective that it inevitably displays. In terms of economic policy, we have been living in Reagan's world for almost 30 years. The Clinton Administration essentially conceded (or was forced to concede) that Reagan was right, and contented itself to nibbling around the edges. Lest anyone forget, during the 90s the presidency was all the Democrats had (thanks to Ross Perot). Republicans held majorities in both houses of Congress, and also the majority of governorships and state legislatures. In other words, the American people have not seen true liberalism in action since the Carter Administration, if not LBJ.

    If the current trend toward Democrats continues, there is about to be a massive public education provided about what liberalism actually looks like and produces. The rubber has not really hit the road on these ideological policy differences for a long, long time. That's why conservatives have found themselves in limbo. The baby is being thrown out with the bath water because people have forgotten the baby is even there. I maintain, and have for a long time, that the Clinton Administration was the most destructive thing to happen to America in recent memory--but maybe not in the way people normally think of it. Clinton's shifting, dishonesty and lack of principle distorted and confused our entire political system in ways that most people have never recognized. The end result is that people truly do not even know what they're voting for anymore. Luckily, the political scene will eventually return to its own equilibrium. The Left is feeling its oats. The gloves are off. The games are over. Given their chance, they will pursue global warming mythology to its logical conclusion. They will gut the military. They will raise taxes, over and over again, and they will attempt to nationalize health care. It is perhaps only then that people will be forced to remember that Reagan was right after all.

    If the Left is right that Bush is Nixon and Iraq is Viet Nam, then they must concede the flip side--Barack Obama is Jimmy Carter. My personal bet? Newt Gingrich in 2012.

  • Posted By: mnjam @ 07/20/2008 11:47:29 AM

    Comment: "The romance of capitalism was never more intense and the prestige of entrepreneurs was never higher???not in the Gilded Age, not in the "roaring '20s," not in the "go-go" Reagan years of tax-cutting and deregulating???than in the 1990s. That was during a Democratic administration, which had the good luck to coincide with the flourishing of information-technology industries."

    What drivel.

    The circumstances that favored growth in the Clinton years were very much operative in the Bush years: IT innovation, boomers in their peak earnings and savings years, a rapidly growing global economy. The difference in American economic performance is NOT due to extrinsic circumstance but due to policy.

    Investment, both public and private, is what matters. Tax cuts for the rich funded by borrowing, whether from the SS trust fund or foreigners, reduce investment, public and private. Clinton, by eliminating those tax cuts and the associated deficit, increased public and private investment and savings. Bush, by restoring those tax cuts, reduced public AND private investment. Corporate profits may have soared under Bush, but fix business investment as a percentage of GDP declined. The ???savings??? from tax cuts did not flow into productive investment but went to fund a ruinous and pointless housing bubble via the medium of ???subprime bonds.??? And so on.

    People like Will, caught up in a scholastic and morbid debate over ???conservativism??? and ???liberalism??? aka ???socialism,??? seem unable to learn from history.

    "

    • Posted By: olderwiser @ 07/20/2008 1:04:36 PM

      Comment: Yeah, mnjam, "the romance of capitalism", being romance and all, leads to "the love of money", and we all know what that leads to.We say all that money and we just said, "screw it". There you have it. The romance of capitalism in a nutshell.

      • Posted By: carminejd @ 07/20/2008 1:32:50 PM

        Comment: The Bush years created a bi-modal earning curve: A bump in the numbers of the belligerantly ignorant, proudly illiterate, happily diagnosed, socially worked and largely jailed on one end, a drop in the hard-working struggling poor in the middle and then another vastly larger bump in relatively well off Americans on the other side. The "drivel" is your arugalite presumption that a free market, mixed with transparent and consistently enforced laws, doesn't work. Enjoy your hope-dope salad.

        • Posted By: mnjam @ 07/20/2008 4:19:54 PM

          Comment: Your comment has nothing to do with mine. I wasn't criticizing free markets.. My point was that they require certain things to produce growth, including BOTH "consistently enforced laws" (which we did not have under Bush) AND the right kinds of public investment. There would be no private automobile industry if the public did not build roads. There would have been no railroads if the publics had not given railroad companies land grants. And so on. If you don???t understand this, you need to study economic theory or history. Or perhaps even increase your consumption of green, leafy vegetables, including argula.

          • Posted By: carminejd @ 07/20/2008 6:37:45 PM

            Comment: No arugala for me until after November at the earliest. But I agree, the design (and enforcement) of economic mechanism is the issue. I disagree with you regarding Bush tax cuts. They have been more boon than debacle for the majority of Americans. And I think totally "whack" your apparent allusion that public investment should be a default position. Look at government intervention in Brazilian rain forest development for a clear view of that nightmare. Only when it is genuinely a "too big [and too damn important] to fail" organization should we look to government intervention, but even then the cost to the institution should be downright punitive. For starters, the complete overhaul of the institution --read Fanny and colleges of Education -- including new management and an investigation for fraud. In Capitalist Democracies, we pay our Government, essentially, to be good cops and protectors not to pretend to be innovators.

        • Posted By: olderwiser @ 07/20/2008 3:02:04 PM

          Comment: That was Viet Nam, wasn't it? The arugalite at the end of the tunnel that Nixon always talked about?

  • Posted By: black saint @ 07/20/2008 11:21:43 AM

    Comment: Very good! Privatizing Profits but Socializing failures, Another way of saying the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, paying for the rich. Like providing an invading horde of Uneducated peons and Criminals for Businesses to employ at slave wages so they can pocket the profits and make the tax payers pay for their Medical, Schools and Welfare to the tune of net 20k per year!

  • Posted By: Pete Kent @ 07/20/2008 10:46:27 AM

    Comment: I lump Geoge Will in with Ann Coulter. Their shrill pro-Obama voices are as silent to me as dog whistles. George Will is a singular disapointment. He continues to use his polemics to advance Obama's cause while doing nothing to help the true conservative and patriotic in the race -- McCain.

    I no longer read him. I have consigned him to the ash heap of punditry.

    He will become irrelevant once the McCain tide sweeps the nation.

    • Posted By: olderwiser @ 07/20/2008 12:09:25 PM

      Comment: Well, shoot, pete. If I were you, the next time I saw my brother, Clark Kent, go into a phone booth to change clothes, I would phone him before he flies out of there and tell him to go and push George Will's building over where he writes all of this pinko commie liberal spending Democrat bilge trying to get Obama into office. Actually, George Will is in on a secret plot by all of those who write editorials to defeat Mc Cain because he is so dull that the stories about him will put readers to sleep and news sales will tank like a lot full of SUV's. Just hold your bile a while and things will get much more exciting.

      • Posted By: Pete Kent @ 07/20/2008 7:30:10 PM

        Comment: You make my point: Will, Coulter and Limaugh are all salivating over an Obama win so they can have real grist for their talk show mills. They are not legitimate opinion leaders they are just hucksters looking for business. Of thye big conservative commentators, only Sean Hannity has taken a principled approach.

  • Posted By: olderwiser @ 07/20/2008 10:44:32 AM

    Comment: We can pay Mars with loans from Pluto, and Pluto with loans from Saturn, and, oh well, you know what I mean.

  • Posted By: olderwiser @ 07/20/2008 10:36:07 AM

    Comment: Whack A Mole is a game that recently was invented in Iraq. Trouble would break out in the country where the troops were not located. The troops would rush there and quell the trouble, "whacking" it, as one would whack a mole which suddenly appeared through a hole in its underground tunnel. As soon as the trouble was whacked, then another trouble would emerge in another place where the troops were not, and they would rush there to whack, and on it went, ad infinitum, as the "game mole" would escape and go elsewhere to appear.
    This game is so much fun for the moles and for those who profit from the whacking that it is expanding out of country into the world. As General Petraeus has effectively suppressed the mole appearances in Iraq, the moles have migrated to Afghanistan where they are popping out in so many places that the troops are unable to whack them all.
    The Original Mole, Osama Ben Laden, quit appearing. We whacked just one time, missed him, and he went underground. The whacking got so bad in Afghanistan, that we went to Iraq to whack. But now that the fun has thinned out in Iraq, we are about to move most of our troops to Afghanistan where the whacking right now is superior.
    There are envious world leaders who see all of the fun of this game who wish that they only had the resources to play it. Once they catch on that you really don't need any money to play it, as our leaders did, and that you simply borrow the money that generations of citizens in the future will pay back, they will jump on the wagon and play, too.
    This is consistent with the tradition of the United States in leading the world since World War II. Having led them in our form of government, and in how to duplicate our many modern conveniences, we are now leading them in how to continue their favorite follies with debt. Once the whole world catches onto this and runs out of currency, then we will show them how to borrow from other planets. We have already sent some machine envoys to Mars, and the secret news that comes back from there tells us that there is enough borrowing there to last more than the petroleum that we have been burning here for a hundred years. Once we run out of the money that doesn't exist here, we will open up the universe and borrow where the lenders will last forever. I can't wait to see the new games.

  • Posted By: carminejd @ 07/20/2008 10:24:59 AM

    Comment: There is a presumption with which I repectfully disagree: The war in Afghaanistan was indeed about Afghanistan. The war in Iraq was not about Iraq, but Iran, and we are still in the middle of this silent war with Iran, which soon will likely become a very noisy military action. So this is not so much Big Government waiting to fail but a Big War we cannot fail. Regarding Republican/Conservative social programs, particularly EDUCATION, and the Fanny et al bail out, these actions are also required if we hope to keep conservativism alive. Stupid children end up Victim Democrats, Social Workers or simply the tattooed, drugged and rivetted unemployed , but they are certainly unable to produce much that is economically useful or personally satisfying. Regarding Fanny and friends, if we have extremely limited capital available, which the Fanny crowd has precipitated, again there will be little produced that is economically useful. The role of Conservative Government is vigorously to enforce honesty in contracts. It is not to push badly run organizations into oblivion. The entire mess we now have with scarce capital is that our government has confused governmental incompetence with a free market place. Bad government, kleptocratic government, self interested government or a government too tied to doing favors for criminally leaning organizations and monopolies, say Fanny et al, is worse than no government at all. So, saving failing but useful institutions is not contrary to conservative principles at all, but allowing criminals to continue doing business is. So long as our governement protects the producers of dangerously useless garbage like public education, psycho-pharmacological drugs and bizarre structured debt vehicles-- tranches etc, well that isn't just Republican Big Government about to fail, rather it is wicked incompetent government that must fail.

    • Posted By: olderwiser @ 07/20/2008 10:40:34 AM

      Comment: I am fascinated by the new political party, the "kleptocrats". Actually, for the past eight years, they have been the "Klepticans". The Kleptocrats are soon to take over from them, but still, "klepto" is the correct prefix for the fix that we find ourselves in.

  • Posted By: uuforyou @ 07/20/2008 10:18:46 AM

    Comment: The Conservative movement is dead.
    America is moving to the center/left.

    Barack Obama is going to be the next great president
    of the United States of America. I trust and support Obama!

    www.Bravenewfilms.org
    www.therealmccain.com

  • Posted By: notroubleatall1963 @ 07/19/2008 10:42:23 PM

    Comment: Hooray for Obama!

  • Posted By: love234america @ 07/19/2008 4:58:02 PM

    Comment: Obama should feel right at home with all the Islamic population

    • Posted By: muslimsforpresidents @ 07/20/2008 10:13:41 AM

      Comment: Hey bigot, move back to your trailer trash home, and don't come out. Your an absolute shmuck and putz for saying that about Obama, and has nothing to do with George F. Will's article.

 
 
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