The Broken Neocons

[M. Johnson]

The Broken Neocons
Posted by Bill Anderson on March 20, 2010 01:23 PM

As the U.S. economy continues to plunge, the Neo-Cons (emphasis on “Cons”) are blaming…libertarians. Now, I rarely read David Brooks’ silly column in the NY Times, as I already spend too much time following Paul Krugman’s economically-illiterate missives. However, Brooks now has my attention as he has discovered why things are so bad. (Yes, Wal-Mart is partly to blame, Brooks tells us.) In his own words:

The United States is becoming a broken society. The public has contempt for the political class. Public debt is piling up at an astonishing and unrelenting pace. Middle-class wages have lagged. Unemployment will remain high. It will take years to fully recover from the financial crisis.

This confluence of crises has produced a surge in vehement libertarianism. People are disgusted with Washington. The Tea Party movement rallies against big government, big business and the ruling class in general. Even beyond their ranks, there is a corrosive cynicism about public action.

But never fear! The Neo-Cons, who have done more than anyone else to create this crisis, also have the solution! Read on!

But there is another way to respond to these problems that is more communitarian and less libertarian. This alternative has been explored most fully by the British writer Phillip Blond.

Yes, Phillip Blond is the Keeper of the Secret!

Economically, Blond lays out three big areas of reform: remoralize the market, relocalize the economy and recapitalize the poor. This would mean passing zoning legislation to give small shopkeepers a shot against the retail giants, reducing barriers to entry for new businesses, revitalizing local banks, encouraging employee share ownership, setting up local capital funds so community associations could invest in local enterprises, rewarding savings, cutting regulations that socialize risk and privatize profit, and reducing the subsidies that flow from big government and big business.

Yes, both regulate and deregulate! All at the same time! Oh, it gets better:

To create a civil state, Blond would reduce the power of senior government officials and widen the discretion of front-line civil servants, the people actually working in neighborhoods. He would decentralize power, giving more budget authority to the smallest units of government. He would funnel more services through charities. He would increase investments in infrastructure, so that more places could be vibrant economic hubs. He would rebuild the “village college” so that universities would be more intertwined with the towns around them.

Essentially, Blond would take a political culture that has been oriented around individual choice and replace it with one oriented around relationships and associations.

I feel so much better now. Like all Neo-Cons, David Brooks knows what is best for us. Granted, I look at this drivel as something about as intelligent as a “Blond joke,” but there it is.

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