Adorable little blogging superstar Matt Yglesias (heretofore known as “Yggy”) has an interesting essay on the split between “anti-state” and “anti-Left” righties since the Bush administration started Greating its own Society. As he notes, the state and the Left used to be the same until about 10 years ago:
The National Review hasn’t gone in for Weekly Standard-style ideological revisionism and “big government conservatism.” They still offer a sort of token opposition to things like the Medicare bill or farm subsidies. But they don’t get nearly as agitated about this stuff as they do about the alleged evils of the universities, hollywood, the media, or the governments of western Europe. … Insofar as the left has any influence on the world, that influence stems primarily from Turtle Bay, Hollywood, academia, Brussles, or elsewhere.
Yggy tells the anti-state crowd:
You don’t need to start loving the Democratic Party, but you probably realize that, in retrospect, the divided government of the 1980s and 1990s was optimal from the perspective of pure suspicion of the state. Gridlock makes it relatively unlikely that the government will embark upon any ambitious new schemes.
It doesn’t always hold – many lobbying groups are adept at getting their way no matter who’s in charge (MPAA and RIAA especially), and divided government can lead to massive changes (welfare reform). But if you’re relatively happy the way things are, you couldn’t ask for more than to have your government roughly balanced. Ironically, that’s a terrible thing for the anti-state crowd: the best they can hope for is that government will be so bogged down that life won’t get any more regulated and expensive. There’s a better chance of Paris Hilton’s rack never showing up online again than the state actually shrinking. Now, speaking to Yggy’s points about “ideological revisionism” and double standards on the Right…
I’m not sure the Weekly Standard has changed at all since its founding 10 years ago – it has always pushed for military intervention, America’s prerogative to lead the world instead of going with the crowd, cutting taxes and reforming the social bureaucracy. They like cutting spending so they can put it elsewhere, and have never hid from it – standard “neocon” or “national greatness” stuff.
On double standards…yes, there’s some of that. But speaking personally, there are also priorities. I’m not thrilled about a burgeoning Medicare bill, subsidies and tariffs, but we can always tweak those later. I’ll take higher deficits for a couple decades if the Anglosphere (and Europe, rather late to the game) can make some positive changes in the Middle East, Russia and other places full of tyranny and hopelessness. Yggy may think we’ve all abandoned principle, but I would say we finally found something more than fleeting to stand for. (Via Hit & Run.)
I’m a tech journalist who’s making a TV show about a college newspaper.