Wednesday, December 24, 2008

Dangerous Economics -- Keynesian Economics



True conservatives should and need to reject this economic view... something the neo-cons talked about, but like their liberal counter-parts, could nor ultimately reject:

“…Although neocons are proud to have broken in many ways with the post-Cold War consensus, they can reasonably claim that their ideas have deep roots in early American and British history, and in policies advocated by American presidencies such as John Quincy Adams and Theodore Roosevelt, and by British prime ministers Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair. As such, and because of the quality of the neoconservatives’ research and advocacy, their fundamental ideas are likely to survive changes of control of the White House.


“So, too, with domestic policy. The programs advocated by neoconservatives in the fields of crime, welfare reform, and what has been called ‘the culture war’ did not spring fully formed from the minds of those who helped George W. Bush to fashion ‘compassionate conservatism.’ Instead, these ideas originated with Victorian reformers, were then buried under the mass of legislation that constitutes the New Deal of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, and by President Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society, to re-emerge in the articles, pamphlets, and proposals of the neocons. In the area of domestic policy the ‘neo’ prefix may turn out to be as potentially misleading as it can be in the foreign policy field (or at least too all-encompassing to describe what neo-conservatism is about.


“But we must begin our discussion of the development of neoconservatism with a disclaimer. As David Brooks notes in an essay included in this volume, ‘If you ever read a sentence that starts with “Neocons believe”, there is a 99.44 per cent chance everything else in that sentence will be untrue’.”


(The Neocon Reader, ed., Irwin Stelzer, p.4)