*Josef Joffe Destroy's Tony Judt's Book: *While explaining the facts of
life to Judt, and other naive leftists. In, of all places, the New York
Times Book Review.
You'll want to read the entire review
<http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/02/books/review/Joffe-t.html?ref=books>
--- especially if you are on the left --- but here are two key
paragraphs to get you started..
But enough of the fact-slinging. The central problem with "Ill
Fares the Land" is a classic fallacy of the liberal-left
intelligentsia, more in Europe than in the United States. Call it
the "Doctor State Syndrome." The individual is greedy, misguided or
blind. The state is the Hegelian embodiment of the right and the
good that floats above the fray. But the state does not. It is a
party to the conflict over "who gets what, when and how," to recall
Harold Lasswell's definition of politics. It makes its own pitch
for power; it creates privileges, franchises and clienteles. This
is why it is so hard to rein in, let alone cut back. The modern
welfare state creates a new vested interest with each new
entitlement. It corrupts as it does good.
It also invites corruption of itself because the more the state
distributes and regulates, the more it tempts its citizens to
outflank the market and manipulate public power for private gain.
The founding fathers grasped this hard truth, and hence they hemmed
in government. Even the most moderate of social democrats tend to
ignore this insight, and so does Tony Judt.
The evidence for those conclusions can be found in almost any daily
newspaper. The conclusions were understood, as Joffe says, by the
founding fathers. But the evidence is ignored and the conclusions are
now somehow beyond the grasp of many, perhaps most, on the left.
(Honorable exception: Mickey Kaus.)
- 7:14 PM, 2 May 2010 [link]
<http://www.seanet.com/%7Ejimxc/Politics/May2010_1.html#jrm8661>
http://www.seanet.com/~jimxc/Politics/May2010_1.html#jrm8661
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