Expect Conservatives To Defend Obamacare
by Thomas E. Woods, Jr.
TomWoods.com
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This
is what I mean when I say
that figuring out what the conservative position is or ought to
be on this or that is like nailing jelly to a wall.
The message
of this
op-ed in the Philadelphia Inquirer is that we conservatives,
and our pal Romney, are just trying to trim the crazy excesses of
the LBJ liberalism of the 1960s. Why, weÂ’re not attacking the
New Deal! “Romney simply wants to protect a safety net built
on conservative New Deal principles from the Great Society-like
overreach of Obama.”
What were once
fought tooth and nail as wealth redistribution and obvious violations
of the Constitution are now “conservative New Deal principles.”
The word “entitlement” is used favorably as well. Defending
such things has become conservative, now that enough time has passed.
We just want to administer the programs of liberalism more efficiently,
and call it conservatism.
The general
principle, evidently, is not that wealth redistribution is wrong
in itself or necessarily opposed to conservatism. The problem is
with wealth redistribution that favors constituencies not known
for voting Republican.
LBJÂ’s
programs caused all kinds of social pathologies, but according to
the article, “conservative New Deal” social insurance
causes no such problems.
Here
is what a conservative whose philosophy is a bit broader than just
the platitudes of Reagan and Romney had to say about that, even
though he was speaking about Sweden.
Reprinted
with permission from TomWoods.com.
October
23, 2012
Thomas
E. Woods, Jr. [send him
mail; visit his
website], a senior fellow of the Ludwig von Mises Institute,
is the creator of Tom
Woods’s Liberty Classroom, a libertarian educational
resource. He is the author of eleven books, including the New
York Times bestsellers Meltdown
(on the financial crisis; read Ron Paul’s foreword)
and The
Politically Incorrect Guide to American History, and most
recently Nullification
and Rollback.
Copyright
© 2012 Thomas
Woods