Conservatives: "...little regard to the realities"

I just saw this column about how loony conservative Republicans have become by Time magazine's Fareed Zakaria, a moderate conservative who usually has some pretty good insights about issues.

He is spot on about the current Republican party, but is he just noticing it? 

He begins:

From Aristotle to Edmund Burke, the greatest conservative thinkers have said that to change societies, one must understand them, accept them as they are and help them evolve.

Aristotle was a conservative?!  And what's this, "conservatives help societies evolve"?  Maybe before my time they did, but for most of my lifetime they have tried to bolt the door against any change (except backward).

Conservatives now espouse ideas drawn from abstract principles with little regard to the realities of America's present or past. This is a tragedy, ... 

Consider the debates over the economy. The Republican prescription is to cut taxes and slash government spending — then things will bounce back. Now, I would like to see lower rates in the context of tax simplification and reform, but what is the evidence that tax cuts are the best path to revive the U.S. economy? Taxes — federal and state combined — as a percentage of GDP are at their lowest level since 1950. The U.S. is among the lowest taxed of the big industrial economies. So the case that America is grinding to a halt because of high taxation is not based on facts but is simply a theoretical assertion. The rich countries that are in the best shape right now, with strong growth and low unemployment, are ones like Germany and Denmark, neither one characterized by low taxes.

If only the Democrats would shout this from the rooftops!

Many Republican businessmen have told me that the Obama Administration is the most hostile to business in 50 years. Really? More than that of Richard Nixon, who presided over tax rates that reached 70%, regulations that spanned whole industries, and who actually instituted price and wage controls?

In fact, right now any discussion of government involvement in the economy — even to build vital infrastructure — is impossible because it is a cardinal tenet of the new conservatism that such [government] involvement is always and forever bad. ...  From Singapore to South Korea to Germany to Canada, evidence abounds that some strategic actions by the government can act as catalysts for free-market growth.

The fact that the Republicans use the word "hostile" when describing the Obama administration's attitude toward business should tip anyone off that this is off the wall.  No President can afford to be "hostile" toward business in this country.  Trying to protect consumers by ensuring they don't get ripped of by shady businesses, or trying to protect our economy from being destroyed by businesses who are too big to fail is hardly hostile.  You might say it's actually good for businesses. 

Moving on to health care.

When considering health care, for example, Republicans confidently assert that their ideas will lower costs, when we simply do not have much evidence for this. What we do know is that of the world's richest countries, the U.S. has by far the greatest involvement of free markets and the private sector in health care. It also consumes the largest share of GDP, with no significant gains in health on any measurable outcome. ... Republicans don't bother to study existing health care systems anywhere else in the world. They resemble the old Marxists, who refused to look around at actual experience. "I know it works in practice," the old saw goes, "but does it work in theory?"

Zakaria is right, the Republicans have an agenda, shrink government and let the corporations and the rich run the country.  To do that they just make up crap that has no basis in fact and haven't been proved, and hope we're too stupid to figure out that it's all smoke and mirrors.  So far they've gotten away with it.  Does this mean that conservatives like Zakaria at Time magazine will now continue to blow the whistle on them?  I doubt it.  I'm sure that he will continue to treat Republicans like a responsible, respectable party.

--Trakker

Comments

[horsec]

Turn wreckers into builders

shrink government and let the corporations and the rich run the country

Obama should take everything off the table. Then let Republicans put back on the table only those things they will support with taxes.

[Trakker]

That would make and interesting table!