Friday, June 03, 2005

NannyState 9-1-1


"Personal responsibility schmanzability.
You need me to take care of you."

"The notion that people can actually think for themselves, that offense and even hurt are natural parts of human life, that difference of opinion is not a threat to anything but a sign of cultural health - these notions are now verboten under the neo-puritan order. No drugs, no sex, no jokes, no fights: this is a culture slowly being sedated into simpering nothingness." Andrew Sullivan- Journalist

(Thanks, Andrew- couldn't have said it better myself. For more critical thinking from a true intellectual, read his website at www.andrewsullivan.com/index.php)


President Dubya, to be sure, has made impressive inroads in advancing the cause of freedom in the world. This is why I find it somewhat ironic that that same zeal for economic and social freedom does not seem to apply to his domestic policies.

Ironic, to be sure, but not without precedent in the world of professional politics. According to University of Alabama professor David Beito, libertarian and progressive pundits are wrong to see Bush's domestic policy as an anomaly.

"Bush's praises of the "glories of human freedom" could easily be culled from the foreign policy speeches of the greatest friends of the welfare/regulatory state of the twentieth century: Woodrow Wilson (his true mentor in foreign policy), Franklin D. Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, and Lyndon B. Johnson. Interestingly, each of these men defended interventionist government at home on the same grounds: it enables greater "freedom."

He continues: "It is conservatives like Sullivan, who support grand Wilsonian foreign policies overseas but think that they can have small government at home, not Bush, who are emeshed in a contradiction. Bush is merely following a familiar pattern. Given the circumstances, it would have been a "strange exception" if he had pursued a different course in domestic policy."
Posted by David T. Beito on the History News Network blog:http://hnn.us/blogs/entries/3186.html

The moral of the story: Gonzo foreign policy almost always results in a loss of liberty at home. Is it worth the price? This is what Americans need to decide.

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