Yuval Levin discusses his new book:
The debates about the welfare state or the entitlement state are second-order debates. The egalitarian ideal of justice advanced through certain applications of technical expertise is a progressive ideal Paine would’ve recognized. And the more conservative idea about addressing social problems through the application of social knowledge using social institutions like the family and civil society and markets is something Burke would’ve recognized. They represent different ideals about what kinds of information are available to us.
Paine makes a very powerful case that giving a lot of power to institution between the individual and the state is illegitimate in a society because those institutions are not democratically elected. You live in a place where the Catholic Church has always held power — why should your health care be dependent on them? Just because it’s always been done that way? The debate about the welfare state is a debate over a set of institutions that clearly embody certain definitions of liberal society. I don’t think that quite scrambles left and right. I think the vision you find in the Ryan budget is a pretty recognizably conservative vision, even though it’s being pursued rather aggressively.
The Dish 