Tuesday May 22, 2007

The start and finish of an op-ed on the New York Times website, written by Jean Edward Smith, professor of political science at Marshall University:

For more than a generation, Americans have been told that government is the problem, not the solution. The mantra can be traced back to Barry Goldwater’s presidential bid in 1964. It provided the mind-set for the Reagan administration, and it has come to ultimate fruition during the presidency of George W. Bush.

On college campuses and at think tanks across the country, libertarian scholars stoke the urge to eliminate government from our lives. This thinking has led to the privatization of vital government functions such as the care of disabled veterans, the appointment to regulatory commissions of members at odds with the regulations they are sworn to enforce, the refusal of the Environmental Protection Agency to protect the environment, and the surrender of the government’s management of military operations to profit-seeking contractors.

[...]

The ideological obsession of the Bush administration to diminish the role of government has served the country badly. But perhaps this government’s demonstrated inability to improve the lives of ordinary Americans will ensure that future efforts to “repeal the New Deal” are not successful.

Wow. That’s … wow. Okay. Give me a moment to reattach my jaw to my face.

I have no problem with someone being a Democratic shill, but please come up with a charge that is at least not completely laughable on its face. Since when did “libertarian” become a codeword for incompetence and nepotism? And, um, what part of the New Deal did Bush try to repeal, exactly? When was a government department eliminated, or a major regulation repealed, or an entitlement cut back in the last six and a half years? Oh, right. Bush did THE EXACT OPPOSITE OF ALL THOSE THINGS. This would be utterly hysterical if it wasn’t published as a serious editorial on the website of the national paper of record.

Using the power of government for a different goal is not the same as lessening the power of government. It’s thoroughly amazing that the left feels the need to fight a ghost here. It won. Libertarianism, politically, is dead. The government has the largest budget ever and more power than at any point in our nation’s history outside of the three big wars. (And no, the “global war on terror” doesn’t count. Don’t make me slap you, neocons.) And when a Democrat takes over the Oval Office in 2009 — and seriously, if they don’t, they should just give up — I’m presuming that the New York Times will suddenly feel like everything is exactly as they would like it in Washington.