oracle
12-11-2001, 03:48 PM
Is Chuck Schumer on Crack? (http://www.nationalreview.com/nr_comment/nr_comment121101.shtml)
A very bad deal.
By Jonah Goldberg
December 11, 2001 4:00 p.m.
There they go again.
On Tuesday, December 11, Sen. Charles Schumer made the formal announcement on the Washington Post op-ed page that the "new New Deal" has begun. "The president can either lead the charge or be run over by it." No doubt the president is grateful for the heads-up from the liberal first-term senator from New York.
Actually, Schumer is just the latest in a parade of liberals to announce that "Big Government Looks Better Now" (that's the headline of Schumer's essay).
In October, New York Times columnist Tom Friedman (brilliant on the Middle East; increasingly dimmer as he moves away from it) declared: "President Bush denigrated Washington during his campaign and repeated the selfish mantra about the surplus that 'it's your money -- not the government's money.' How thankful we are today that we have a Washington, D.C., with its strong institutions -- FEMA, the F.A.A., the F.B.I. and armed forces…" More recently, a New York Times "newsitorial" on the front page announced that "Big Government is Back in Style."
But my favorite such argument came in the November 19 edition of the proudly Lefty magazine The Nation. Former LBJ aide Bill Moyers writes, "This catastrophe has reminded us of a basic truth at the heart of our democracy: No matter our wealth or status or faith, we are all equal before the law, in the voting booth and when death rains down from the sky."
Putting aside the fact that we would all be just as equal when death rains down from the sky if we lived in a dictatorship or a socialist utopia, Moyers takes this truism and seems to translate it into a justification for single-payer health care, the repeal of NAFTA, and a television network dedicated solely to exposing the evils of corporations and conservatives (which is funny if for no other reason than that that's what Moyers has been doing at PBS for 30 years).
So, in a sense, Schumer is a Johnny-come-lately on the whole topic. The significance of Schumer's manifesto-lite is that it telegraphs Democratic arguments going into the next election cycle. Already, in a memo written by James Carville, Stanley Greenberg, and Bob Shrum, the Democrats' top strategists have made it clear that they will not challenge the president on the war overseas. In return, they plan to be in charge of security at home. And, not just the sort of security we associate with airports, borders, and bomb-sniffing dogs. They want to be in charge of economic security, health security, and environmental security. As my colleague Ramesh Ponnuru writes, "their project is to channel Americans' instinctive nationalist reaction to the attacks into a statist communitarianism rather than, say, tighter border control."
...
=http://www.nationalreview.com/nr_comment/nr_comment121101.shtml]Click here to read more
A very bad deal.
By Jonah Goldberg
December 11, 2001 4:00 p.m.
There they go again.
On Tuesday, December 11, Sen. Charles Schumer made the formal announcement on the Washington Post op-ed page that the "new New Deal" has begun. "The president can either lead the charge or be run over by it." No doubt the president is grateful for the heads-up from the liberal first-term senator from New York.
Actually, Schumer is just the latest in a parade of liberals to announce that "Big Government Looks Better Now" (that's the headline of Schumer's essay).
In October, New York Times columnist Tom Friedman (brilliant on the Middle East; increasingly dimmer as he moves away from it) declared: "President Bush denigrated Washington during his campaign and repeated the selfish mantra about the surplus that 'it's your money -- not the government's money.' How thankful we are today that we have a Washington, D.C., with its strong institutions -- FEMA, the F.A.A., the F.B.I. and armed forces…" More recently, a New York Times "newsitorial" on the front page announced that "Big Government is Back in Style."
But my favorite such argument came in the November 19 edition of the proudly Lefty magazine The Nation. Former LBJ aide Bill Moyers writes, "This catastrophe has reminded us of a basic truth at the heart of our democracy: No matter our wealth or status or faith, we are all equal before the law, in the voting booth and when death rains down from the sky."
Putting aside the fact that we would all be just as equal when death rains down from the sky if we lived in a dictatorship or a socialist utopia, Moyers takes this truism and seems to translate it into a justification for single-payer health care, the repeal of NAFTA, and a television network dedicated solely to exposing the evils of corporations and conservatives (which is funny if for no other reason than that that's what Moyers has been doing at PBS for 30 years).
So, in a sense, Schumer is a Johnny-come-lately on the whole topic. The significance of Schumer's manifesto-lite is that it telegraphs Democratic arguments going into the next election cycle. Already, in a memo written by James Carville, Stanley Greenberg, and Bob Shrum, the Democrats' top strategists have made it clear that they will not challenge the president on the war overseas. In return, they plan to be in charge of security at home. And, not just the sort of security we associate with airports, borders, and bomb-sniffing dogs. They want to be in charge of economic security, health security, and environmental security. As my colleague Ramesh Ponnuru writes, "their project is to channel Americans' instinctive nationalist reaction to the attacks into a statist communitarianism rather than, say, tighter border control."
...
=http://www.nationalreview.com/nr_comment/nr_comment121101.shtml]Click here to read more