Here’s our old friend, John Derbyshire, even crankier than usual:
All the windsocks are now pointing in the direction of more socialism. As the population ages, Americans will want more leisure, drugs, health care, nursing homes, security. As the Jihadist threat continues to metastasize (from the MidEast to Indonesia, Thailand, Africa, the Caucasus, Europe), we shall want the state to have more police powers, more scrutiny of us and our lives. The trend of the last 40 years away from the old Anglo-Saxon rights and liberties — private property rights (google “tobacco settlement,” “Kelo,” etc.), freedom of speech, contract and assembly (“speech codes,” anti-discrimination laws, etc.), limited government (is Washington DC shrinking? looking poorer and shabbier? not that I’ve noticed) — will accelerate. And everybody will be fine with all this, because that’s what everybody wants, except for a few freakish intellectuals like ourselves.
I can certainly see his point. But when Americans and Brits are actually presented with genuine conservatism – the kind exemplified by Reagan and Thatcher or Gingrich in 1994 – they respond. Explain to people that freedom matters, and why, and they will back it. The culprit here is George W. Bush. What he has done is provide a form of Christianist socialism, and glibly presented it as the continuation of the conservative tradition. He has thereby in one stroke delegitimized conservatism itself by falsely claiming its mantle, and also done the damage that socialists normally do to a society’s self-respect, governmental functioning, public finances and individual liberty. It will take a generation to recover. Jonah Goldberg, in a moment of candor last year, predicted that Bush’s re-election would be terrible for the conservative movement. He was right. But he voted for the guy. And that was part of conservatism’s suicide as well. They finally told the truth about Bush – but only after it could make a difference.
The Dish 