While I mostly agree with Fareed, his tenet that the the Conservatives of the past were somehow better at creating a better economy is nuts. I do not know when Americans will understand that growth maximization at the expense of social well being in not good policy. Humanity matters.
Read more: http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,2077943,00.html#ixzz1PpiiKEAq
How Today’s Conservatism Lost Touch with Reality
By Fareed Zakaria Thursday, June 16, 2011
Read more: http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,2077943,00.html#ixzz1PpcdyWNV
"Conservatism is true." That’s what George Will told me when I interviewed him as an eager student many years ago. His formulation might have been a touch arrogant, but Will’s basic point was intelligent. Conservatism, he explained, was rooted in reality. Unlike the abstract theories of Marxism and socialism, it started not from an imagined society but from the world as it actually exists. From Aristotle to Edmund Burke, the greatest conservative thinkers have said that to change societies, one must understand them, accept them as they are and help them evolve.
Watching this election campaign, one wonders what has happened to that tradition. Conservatives now espouse ideas drawn from abstract principles with little regard to the realities of America’s present or past. This is a tragedy, because conservatism has an important role to play in modernizing the U.S. (See "The Heart of Conservative Values: Not Where It Used to Be?"
Consider the debates over the economy. The Republican prescription is to cut taxes and slash government spending — then things will bounce back. Now, I would like to see lower rates in the context of tax simplification and reform, but what is the evidence that tax cuts are the best path to revive the U.S. economy? Taxes — federal and state combined — as a percentage of GDP are at their lowest level since 1950. The U.S. is among the lowest taxed of the big industrial economies. So the case that America is grinding to a halt because of high taxation is not based on facts but is simply a theoretical assertion. The rich countries that are in the best shape right now, with strong growth and low unemployment, are ones like Germany and Denmark, neither one characterized by low taxes.
Many Republican businessmen have told me that the Obama Administration is the most hostile to business in 50 years. Really? More than that of Richard Nixon, who presided over tax rates that reached 70%, regulations that spanned whole industries, and who actually instituted price and wage controls?
Party Politics: How Conservatism Lost Touch with Reality – TIME
