I've been mean (again!) to the leftists lately so I'll make amends by praising this article by the Decembrist, which describes Bush as a 'Nixonian liberal.' Here's the start:
For a long time, I've argued that there wasn't much profit to talking about Bush as a conservative, right-wing, or extremist President. Sure, he betrayed his promise to "change the tone" in Washington. But conservative isn't a word loaded with bad connotations, unlike "liberal," and more importantly, it concedes too much: Bush is not conservative in the least, certainly not in the Burkean sense in which conservative means respecting a pre-existing order and our duty to future generations, or even in the vulgar sense of merely favoring a smaller government.
Those definitions of liberal and conservative differ in important ways from my preferred definitions, but the comparison to Nixon is valid.
I found that article through Brad DeLong, who comments on the same:
The highly thoughtful Decembrist puts his finger on the core problem of modern liberalism. How can one support the idea of an activist government when half the time that government will be run by malevolent or incompetent Republicans?
This caught my attention as it's similar to something I've thought for a long time. Neither the left nor right would be so eager to push for government expansion if they would just stop to envision their political adversaries running the government.
Like the idea of a government security force to combat terrorism and other crime with enhanced detention powers? You know, like the ability to declare anyone a terrorist and then hold that person indefinitely, or conduct secret wiretaps at will. Fine. Just think of that with Hillary Clinton calling the shots. Doesn't sound so good now, does it?
How about universal healthcare? You and I might disagree on the economic impact, but you'd have to agree that such a government program would have to have control over health care in general, deciding who gets what treatment and when. Now imagine John Ashcroft running the thing. Hope you don't mind him seeing your medical records.
Feel free to come up with your own examples. The possibilities are endless.
Posted by Walter at December 22, 2003 10:49 PM