My review of George Will’s The Conservative Sensibility.
For Will, the apotheosis of the first phase of liberalism was the American Founding, with a capital F. Madison and the other Founders took at as given that human nature made us sufficiently equal to deserve identical treatment under the law, sufficiently different to benefit from liberty and autonomy, sufficiently bellicose to require a government that could resolve disputes peacefully, and sufficiently factional that preventing one coalition from dominating the rest required a system of checks and balances.
Something of note:
G.F. Will continues, in his writings (if not in his thinking) to reify “Government,” rather than to carefully qualify that Government is only a mechanism, with NO objectives of ITS own; but, is employed for the objectives of human actors who occupy various sectors of what makes up government.
Government does not DO anything, people use the mechanisms of governments to do things.
That is especially true of the Administrative State and the diversity of objectives sought through its operations.
It strikes me that conservative and libertarian intellectuals have very low status in contemporary political life. Instead, the contest is between progressive elites on the one hand and populists on the other.
If the bottom has dropped out of liberalism, what becomes of America’s relationship to the developing world or the world of emerging markets? The new either/or — that Kling sees — includes neither free markets nor rugged individualism. What voice is left to counter China’s iron fist in Southeast Asia, for example? To whom will the new entrepreneur class of ASEAN turn? Where is the vivid sample to which those in the streets of Hong Kong and Taipei might attach their complaint? How long can the individual live without the language of individualism?
In terms of the early 1900 Progressive movement (Roosevelt through Wilson), I really do wonder if this was led by government officials or by changes in the ease of movement of people and goods. With both cars and railroads cross state line was a lot easier and started the weakening of local and state governments. So if the local elite wanted Prohibition on their populations, then they could simply institute Prohibition laws in their area. And it is way underestimated how much of the US had some form of Prohibition in 1915 in their area. However, because of cars and trucks, somebody could now drive to wet town or state.
Secondly, in terms of future conservationism is that the world is heading more toward a homogenizing big mega cities. We are seeing this reality in London versus the supporters of Brexit as there are lots of complaints London is losing its ‘Britishish’ And big mega cities tend to have lots of regulation and strong local government. I know Singapore has been called the libertarian Marxist city on earth.
It always surprises me how infrequently economic observations are used to explain human behaviors on this blog.
Will’s conservative sensibilities would make for a better world, but people act in their marginal economic interests, and treat political opportunities the same way. Will’s conservatism requires perpetual discipline. The opportunities to use government to gain economic opportunities or to perpetuate political support are always there, and it will eventually wear down that discipline. The effect is ratchet-like.
Rather than see the deterioration of conservatism as an ideological assault, maybe we should just see it as a set of disciplines that are difficult to maintain over the long haul due to basic human economic behaviors.
Th system of check and balances came from English Law. The founders ultimately had a simple job, remove the monarchy. Then they included an executive back in the pot during the 1787 convention, But that came with some errors, like making coinage a government function. They alse blundered with the senate. The senate is colonial because the system was designed for states to be some sort of private colony. That turned out to be an error after a while. The 14th amendment became ambiguous and expensive regarding due process, many saying it was an unnecessary repeat of the Bill of Rights which is fundamental.
Conservative means checks and balances and suffer through the blunders. But the blunders, are bigger than the bill of rights these days, where California regularly restricts the right of speech and assembly. (Unions imposing on legislatures). But California is too huge and pays nice taxes, so checks and balances were sold by the judiciary.
And the Supremes have been getting anxiious to create new law, get into the game. The Supremes are set up to do less work as time goes by, the original design. There are only a few fundamental conflicts unobserved in the Constitution, and most of these came up and were adjudicated. The Supremes should be mostly idle but they get nervous and begin creating law, and that jams the appellate courts and causes huge expenses.
Foreign policy:
The Civil War had destructive results that are still unfolding, as also the Vietnam War. US politicians blundering on the foreign stage has become an ever larger problem.
Was an admission ever made?
”
Calculated Risk: Hoocoodanode?: Earlier today, I saw Greg “Bush economist” Mankiw was a little touchy about a Krugman blog comment. My reaction was that Mankiw has some explaining to do. A key embarrassment for the economics profession in general, and Bush economists Greg Mankiw and Eddie Lazear in particular, is how they missed the biggest economic story of our times…. This was a typical response from the right (this is from a post by Professor Arnold Kling) in August 2006:
Apparently, the echo chamber of left-wing macro pundits has pronounced a recession to be imminent. For example, Nouriel Roubini writes, “Given the recent flow of dismal economic indicators, I now believe that the odds of a U.S. recession by year end have increased from 50% to 70%.” For these pundits, the most dismal indicator is that we have a Republican Administration. They have been gloomy for six years now…
Sure Roubini was early (I thought so at the time), but show me someone who has been more right! And this brings me to Krugman’s column:
… Why did so many observers dismiss the obvious signs of a housing bubble, even though the 1990s dot-com bubble was fresh in our memories? Why did so many people insist that our financial system was “resilient,” as Alan Greenspan put it, when in 1998 the collapse of a single hedge fund, Long-Term Capital Management, temporarily paralyzed credit markets around the world? Why did almost everyone believe in the omnipotence of the Federal Reserve when its counterpart, the Bank of Japan, spent a decade trying and failing to jump-start a stalled economy?
One answer to these questions is that nobody likes a party pooper…. There’s also another reason the economic policy establishment failed to see the current crisis coming. The crises of the 1990s and the early years of this decade should have been seen as dire omens, as intimations of still worse troubles to come. But everyone was too busy celebrating our success in getting through those crises to notice…
In addition to looking forward, I think certain economists need to do some serious soul searching. Instead of leaving it to us to guess why their analysis was so flawed, I believe the time has come for Mankiw, Kling and many other economists to write a post titled “Why I was wrong”.”
https://www.bradford-delong.com/2019/08/why-i-was-wrong.html#more
Obviously not.