Sunday, May 25, 2008

Conservatives, the good news


This thumbsucker piece from George Packer in The New Yorker has been all the rage in the blogosphere over the last couple of weeks or so. Let's stipulate that the share price of American conservatism is as low right now as it's ever been in my lifetime. Still I'm less than impressed. I could quibble with this or that meme of Packer's argument, but let's look at the big picture instead.

In terms of any real integrity liberalism (and any other variant further Left) in America has been a spent force since the time Jimmy Carter Administration. It seems a bit odd now, but intelligent people of good will used to believe that the government could take money out of the private sector and solve poverty or other big-ticket societal problems. It looked good for a time, but in the Seventies that bumped up against reality, and in that respect nothing has really changed since then.

We should expect that the voters can and likely will send the GOP out to the wilderness for a while. But whether it's about energy, demographics, health care or Islamic radicalism ultimately the body politic will want answers instead of excuses and liberalism doesn't have any.

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