
 |
|
Nov. 6, 2009
JWisdom.com Zero to 1/60th: How
to Empower An Hour with Gavriel Aryeh Sande (7 minutes)
Nov. 5, 2009
JWisdom.com Hidden Hints: Unlocking
Faith & Prayer with Rabbi Jay Yaacov Schwartz (10 minutes)
Nov. 4, 2009
JWisdom.com When God played peacemaker
With Rabbi Sroy Levitansky (5 minutes)
Nov. 3, 2009
JWisdom.com Are you are closet idolater?
With Sara Yoheved Rigler (10 minutes)
Nov. 2, 2009
JWisdom.com Abraham's Strange Change
With Rabbi Yitzchok Fingerer (5 minutes)
Oct. 30, 2009
Oct. 29, 2009
JWisdom.com We Must Revamp our
Religious Vocabulary With Gavriel Aryeh Sanders ( 10 minutes)
Oct. 28, 2009
JWisdom.com Why what we wear
impacts who we are
With Rabbis Mordechai Becher, Menachem Golberger and Aliza Bulow ( 10 minutes)
Oct. 27, 2009
Paul Greenberg: The United Nations Is Outraged Again, Or: Department of Mideast Static
JWisdom.com The Science of Love
With Rabbi Jonathan Rietti ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 26, 2009
JWisdom.com Wisdom and Wonks
With Rabbi Eytan Feiner ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 23, 2009
JWisdom.com Watermark and oneness
with Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 4 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick Stop using limited powers in a way that expands our enemies' advantages over us
Oct. 22, 2009
JWisdom.com No More More Family Fights --- Really?
By Sarah Chana Radcliffe ( 5 minutes)
Oct. 21, 2009
Tonya Alanez: Holocaust denier sues survivor, calling Auschwitz memoir 'vicious lies'
JWisdom.com Meditating Jewishly: A
Panacea for Success by Sarah Yoheved Rigler ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 20, 2009
Dennis Prager: Obama and Dalai Lama: Why Israel Worries about U.S. President
JWisdom.com Abraham was not religious
By Rabbi Yitzchok Fingerer ( 6 minutes)
Oct. 19, 2009
JWisdom.comWhy Good People Do Bad Things
By Rabbi Eytan Feiner ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 16, 2009
JWisdom.com Hearing Voices
By Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 5 minutes)
Oct. 15, 2009
JWisdom.com: Former MTV producer and stand-up comedian Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff: Taming a Control Freak (A VERY fast 15 minutes)
|
| |
Jewish World Review
January 30, 2009 / 5 Shevat 5769
Catching up with the British parade
By
Jonah Goldberg
| 
|
|
|
|
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
LONDON From this side of the Atlantic, the refusal of House Republicans to support Barack Obama's so-called stimulus plan looks nothing less than Churchillian.
Alas, here in Britain, the lesson of compassionate conservatism's welcome demise remains lost on the Tory leadership. British conservatives remain fascinated with oxymorons such as "progressive conservatism" and "Red Toryism." (Sometimes the prefix "oxy" in "oxymoron" seems like gilding the lily.)
The longstanding argument against such pernicious sloganeering is still valid. Conservatives who lose their skepticism of government activism invariably fall into the trap of saying "me too" to whatever happens to be the political fad of the day, and hence wind up getting pulled in a direction not of their own choosing, as Nobel Prize-winning economist Friedrich Hayek once put it.
For instance, Tory party leader David Cameron has a circus-act flexibility when it comes to ideological principles. No adjective is too constraining for his brand of shmoo-like conservatism; "Green," "compassionate," "progressive," "radical," even "libertarian paternalism," his conservatism can fit into them all, for his philosophical invertebracy is boundless. Meanwhile, Boris Johnson, the mop-topped conservative mayor of London and former editor of the indispensable conservative journal The Spectator, seems to see conservatism as a mere facet to his own charming eccentricity. Both men have a politician's love of popularity, rather than an ideologue's love of principle, so both are scrambling like teenagers who've spotted Paris Hilton at the mall to ingratiate themselves with Barack Obama, the ex officio president of the United Kingdom.
And herein lies the chief problem with the effort to make conservatism into a philosophy of government activism. "Progressive conservatives" will care more about being popular than being conservative. If they didn't care about being popular, they wouldn't have taken up the modifier "progressive" in the first place. With yes-men riding shotgun whenever liberals are at the wheel, the gas pedal of progressivism will always get the lead foot, while the brake of conservatism gets a few perfunctory taps.
Evidence of the reckless driving this yields can be found everywhere in Britain today. In fact, by American conservative standards, Britain is a horror show, or, put more constructively, a canary in the coal mine. "Reforms" that would result in bloody protest in America are newspaper filler here. Just in the last week, British papers have been full of stories about a policeman who used Britain's omnipresent security cameras to monitor his cheating wife. They are supposed to be used as part of the criminalization of eating while you drive. The government is seeking the ability to disseminate health, tax and other personal records to whatever agencies, public or private, it chooses. A new pilot program has officials knocking on doors to make sure citizens are managing their leftovers properly. Of course, Britain's socialized medicine churns out a new cautionary tale every day. Meanwhile, a new study has found that in much of England, 60 percent to 70 percent of economic output comes directly from the government.
It didn't happen overnight. This is merely one small slice of a parade of horribles, stretching back decades, that could only have been allowed to march for so long because parties from both left and right happily saluted and applauded the growth of the state from the reviewing stand.
Many Tories will tell you that a generous welfare state is necessary to maintain a sense of national community and cohesion. The only problem is that there's no evidence the ever-rising tide of nanny-statism has done anything but erode the shores of British resolve.
Meanwhile, Obama's stimulus plan appears to be little more than an effort to catch up with the British parade. It would cost more than the Iraq and Afghanistan wars combined, while stimulating little other than his administration's ambitions to get its fingers deeper into everything from higher education to health care, expanding entitlements and making any future restraints on spending seem like severe "cuts." As Obama's chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, said recently, "You don't ever want a crisis to go to waste; it's an opportunity to do important things that you would otherwise avoid."
There is a role for government in our current predicament. I even favor a stimulus, albeit via the tax code so as to stimulate the economy, not the government. But the prospect of borrowing money we don't have to buy what we don't need, in order to make America more like what I don't want, makes me grateful that at least America's conservative party has finally remembered how to say "no."
Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.
To comment on JWR contributor Jonah Goldberg's column
click here.
Jonah Goldberg Archives
© 2006 TMS
|
|

Arnold Ahlert
Mitch Albom
Michael Barone
Dave Barry
Tony Blankley
Andy Borowitz
David Broder
Stratfor Briefing
Mona Charen
Linda Chavez
Ann Coulter
Greg Crosby
Larry Elder
Suzanne Fields
John Fund
Frank J. Gaffney
Lloyd Garver
Jonah Goldberg
Julia Gorin
Jonathan Gurwitz
Paul Greenberg
Lewis Grossberger
Victor Davis Hanson
Betsy Hart
Nat Hentoff
David Horowitz
Laura Ingraham
Cheri Jacobus Jeff Jacoby
Paul Johnson
Jack Kelly
Ed Koch
Ch. Krauthammer
Michael Ledeen
John Leo
David Limbaugh
Kathryn Lopez
Rich Lowry
Michelle Malkin
Jackie Mason
Dick Morris
Bill O'Reilly
Jim Mullen
Clarence Page
Kathleen Parker
Dennis Prager
Wesley Pruden
Tom Purcell
Jonathan Rauch
Celia Rivenbark
Robert Robb
Cokie & Steve Roberts
Pat Sajak
Debra J. Saunders
Culture Shlock
Roger Simon
Michael Smerconish
Thomas Sowell
Mark Steyn
John Stossel
Cal Thomas
Bob Tyrrell
Diana West
Dave Weinbaum
George Will
Walter Williams
Byron York
Mort Zuckerman

Robert Arial
Chuck Asay
Baloo
Chip Bok
Dry Bones
Lisa Benson
John Branch
Gary Brookins
John Cole
J. D. Crowe
John Deering
Brian Duffy
Everything's Relative
Mallard Fillmore
Jake Fuller
Bob Gorrel
Joe Heller
David Hitch
Jerry Holber
Steve Kelley
Jeff Koterba
Dick Locher
Chan Lowe
Ranan R. Lurie
Jimmy Margulies
Rick McKee
Michael Ramirez
Kevin Siers
Jeff Stahler
Ed Stein
Danna Summers
John Trever
Gary Varvel
Kirk Walters

How 2
Lori Borgman
The Savvy Consumer
Elder matters
Fixit
Dr. Peter Gott
GET A JOB! by Marty Nemko
Richard Lederer
Tech Maven
Every Monday Matters
Nutrition Myths
Bookmark These
Bruce Williams
How Stuff Works
|