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Unfortunately, humans are not like pristine, elegant theories. We're quite messy and complex and full of contradiction. No matter how well-thought-out your theory, as soon as people have to put it into practice, parts get left out, changed, warped, corrupted and just generally screwed up.
As soon as a theory comes into practice, other forces besides the original motivations spoil the broth: greed, laziness, fear, ignorance, prejudice... As Hunter said about the grand conservative experiment we've been suffering under since 2001:
We could choose to believe that they've just been terribly unlucky in electing leaders too dimwitted or corrupt to really implement conservatism, of course. We could choose to keep believing in the power of unimpeded unicorn farts. Or we could judge conservatism, quite reasonably, on the actions of those that say they are conservatives, and hold them to be the true conservative intent:* Tax cuts for the rich, and an increased tax burden on the poor and middle class.
* Cash giveaways of historic proportions to selected industries.
* A stifling and public condemnation of science.
* Record deficits.
* Rampant nepotism and cronyism.
* Decreased civil liberties.
* Pork by the barrelful.
What's conservatism? That is. There's no question about it, and hand-waving speeches don't enter into it. Conservatives have the entirety of legislative and executive power, in the Presidency, in the Senate, and in the House. They could choose to implement whatever they want. They have chosen to implement precisely what they want. We're living it.
See, it doesn't matter when conservatives point to Bush's huge spending and say, "But he wasn't really conservative! So this doesn't count!" Well, we can point to their great bugaboo, the old Soviet Union and say, "But that wasn't Communism, so that doesn't count." They shouldn't buy that argument any more than we should buy theirs.
They gave it a shot, they held all the cards, all the levers of power and they failed. What is the lesson we should derive from all of this? The biggest one is that grand theories do not work. Period. The world is too messy, changes too quickly, and people always screw them up.
I believe the practical lesson is that when we go to define who we are and what we will do, while we should have basic, core values that inform our actions, those values should be policy-agnostic. Yes, there will be policies out there, but we don't start out by knowing what they are.
We instead should clearly define out values, our objectives, our goals and then develop policies that fit the realities of the times that strongly support these goals. As the realities change, change policies, but always, always check those policies against your basic values, your goals for where you want this country to be in 5, 10, 15 years. Every single policy, every single program should be validated against these values. How strongly, how weakly do they support those values? If you can't justify it against those values, then seriously question if it is needed. In other words, bring rationality back into government, but rationality based on guiding principles of core values. I call it "Value-driven Pragmatism."
The failure of grand policy schemes based on theoretically ideas of how government and society should work always fail because they're not truly based in reality. Societies are not neat and tidy machines. We have to be able to adapt our policies and governmental structures to a rapidly changing world, but our adaptations have to align with certain, basic values.
Without the strong, underlying value system, we have chaos and the strong and powerful will eventually win over the weak. Without the ability to adapt to a reality-based view of the world, we end up relying on the purity of unicorn farts to see us through.
Plane Crazy