Bleh. What a way to start off after the break.
Jon's guest is right-winger Arthur Brooks, President of the American Enterprise Institute, whose new book has gotten a bit of the (traditional) media treatment of Importancy And Seriousness. I'm not sure that warrants a spot on TDS, though I suppose it depends on what Jon does with the interview. The thesis of the book appears to be predictable, ludicrous, and slightly scary. Here's from Newt Gingrich's marketing piece:
...First, there is a fundamental disagreement about America’s future between a socialist, redistributionist minority (the 30% coalition) and a massive free enterprise, work ethic, opportunity oriented majority (the 70% majority). For years I have spoken and written that "we are the majority". It is a concept I learned from Ronald Reagan in the 1970s....Second, there is an elite system of power which enables the 30% coalition to dominate the 70% majority...Third, this is a conflict over values...
After you have read this book and committed its arguments and its salient facts to memory, you will be able to debate any elitist redistributionist leftist and win the day in both moral rhetoric and factual analysis.
Every American about their country’s future and worried by the radicalism of the Obama-Pelosi-Reid machine should read The Battle. It is the ammunition with which to save our country and change our history for the better.
Yeah, that ratio seems a bit off, doesn't it? Even this self-described compatriot takes issue with that:
The values that Brooks expresses in The Battle are eerily similar to my own. I really wish this book were right from cover to cover. But I'm afraid that Brooks' analysis of public opinion is deeply mistaken. While the median American is almost certainly more pro-market than the median European, he's still a social democrat. And while recent policies are probably a little more statist than the median American prefers, the statist quo is very popular.
Brooks' whole book revolves around his 70/30 claim: 70% of Americans are pro-market, and just 30% are anti-market. His data work seems OK as far as it goes, but he ignores three key problems. ...{summary: polls are only as good as their methods and questions, which are often stupid -- Tia.}
Once you take a more realistic view of American public opinion, there's not much of a split between the policies voters want and the policies voters get. Even the 2008 bailout looks fairly popular if you include an intermediate response option. I wish it weren't so, but if the American public wanted free-market policies, they'd have them. The point of free-market philosophy is not to defend public opinion, but to change it....
There are quibbles to be had with that too, but getting back to Brooks: if you want a thoughtful response, you'll have to go elsewhere. I quite enjoyed this, however:
Neocon Vampires Sink Their Fangs Into the Tea Parties
Remember the neoconservatives? Maybe you don’t. Their death was announced on the cover of Time magazine long before George W. Bush left the White House. By now you might think that they’re, thankfully, only a footnote to the history of a frightening bygone era.
But no. Like vampires, the neocons never die. They constantly revive themselves, going where the vein is richest, eager to feed upon new blood. Now -- we should have seen it coming -- they are sinking their fangs into the Tea Party. That’s where the fresh political blood is, so that’s where the neocons are.
Their latest calling card is a headline in the Washington Post: "THE NEW CULTURE WAR," with "CULTURE WAR" spelled out in blood red letters. The subhead: "On one side, the forces of free enterprise. On the other, an expanding and paternalistic government. It’s time to choose."...Like any good bureaucrat, Brooks is out to revive his organization and make it dominate again. He knows that the neocons have faced death by irrelevance several times in the past. So he’s doing what Ann Rice’s vampires do: resurrecting his movement by dressing it up to suit the times, so neocons can pass as ordinary Tea Party folks, just a tad more clever, witty, and charming than the rest..Neocons, like military leaders, have always relied on the same old trick: Create a fictional caricature of your opponent as a threat to your very existence and rally the troops to fight against it....
It's a novel approach to an exhaustingly familiar topic, but worth reading if you've got a couple minutes. Like, perhaps, the time that Jon's talking to his neo-con of the night.
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