I've abandoned free market principles to save the free market system.
I really don't know quite how to take this. I gather the "Bushisms" are primarily intended to reveal out leader's Inner Oaf--to suggest the sloppy and incoherent interior that lies behind the sloppy and incoherent exterior. But if that is the purpose here, then I think Weisberg has flamed out. It seems to me that as a general proposition, Bush here is entirely right. Or rather, Bush's insight is the kind of thing I've been hearing ever since I first learned any politics (at the feet of Heinz Eulau at Antioch College in the 50s)--often, for what it is worth, about Franklin (destroy capitalism in order to save it) Roosevelt. It's called the irony of history. Hegel (another guy who wasn't always such a standout in the felicitous speech department) would chuckle. Of course it may be that Weisberg expects to understand that Bush is simply no ironist. That may be true, and sufficient, but it's still a modest point, not very well made.
The greater scandal (and this may be what Weisberg had in mind in the first place) is the suggestion that Bush ever had anything to do with free market principles in the first place--unless, that is, the set "anything to do" includes the subset "rape and pillage." Look, for the umpteenth time: denuding the public fisc for your pals is not free market, it is cronyism. The Bush clan has bathed itself so long in the warm chowder of cronyism that we can hardly expect them to catch the point. But the rest of us need not to be fooled. This. Is. Not. A. Free. Market. Regime. And if this is what Weisberg is reminding us of, then bully for him.
In the same vein, I see that The Wall Street Journal is once again reminding us that necessary components of free market capitalism are torture and repression. It's an arguable proposition (many Marxists would agree with it), but one I take to be grotesquely wrong. For the moment, though, if anybody ever again tries to utter the phrase "Wall Street Journal" and the word "libertarian" in the same simple declarative sentence, I think I will oof my cookies.
The greater scandal (and this may be what Weisberg had in mind in the first place) is the suggestion that Bush ever had anything to do with free market principles in the first place--unless, that is, the set "anything to do" includes the subset "rape and pillage." Look, for the umpteenth time: denuding the public fisc for your pals is not free market, it is cronyism. The Bush clan has bathed itself so long in the warm chowder of cronyism that we can hardly expect them to catch the point. But the rest of us need not to be fooled. This. Is. Not. A. Free. Market. Regime. And if this is what Weisberg is reminding us of, then bully for him.
In the same vein, I see that The Wall Street Journal is once again reminding us that necessary components of free market capitalism are torture and repression. It's an arguable proposition (many Marxists would agree with it), but one I take to be grotesquely wrong. For the moment, though, if anybody ever again tries to utter the phrase "Wall Street Journal" and the word "libertarian" in the same simple declarative sentence, I think I will oof my cookies.
No comments:
Post a Comment