It’s Not the New Hotness Just Because You Call It the New Hotness

David Brooks, writing in today’s New York Times, has a peculiar view of something he calls “Fresh Start Conservativism.

Democrats believe in fine-tuning the economy. They believe in intervening in a thousand little ways to address problems. Republicans believe these thousands of little Band-Aids hinder movement and distort productivity. But Republicans do believe, or at least should, that positive government can help prepare people for the rigors of competition, so they can have an open field and fair chance.

Here’s what’s peculiar. As I thumb through my copy of the Constitution, I can’t find any place where the Founders envisioned any such thing as “positive government”. Indeed, history has demonstrated pretty conclusively that government can only be an impedance. Now there are some times when we want the restraining hand of government, but we should never be so foolish as to believe that we can use its heavy hand to uplift or empower or whatever cool new buzzword we’ve concocted this year. Government doesn’t work that way and it never has.

Brooks new conservatism would do such things as mandate volunteer service for young people, government officials who would visit “children in chaotic homes” to give them “some authority in their lives”, and a reform of rules on teacher certification. Brooks seems to have forgotten that the government can actually be restrained from interfering with us and our lives. He also seems to have forgotten that many of the problems he wants to solve were caused by government interference in the first place.

It’s a shame that a man as smart as Brooks would try to reinvent the Edsel and foist it on us with a shiny new name.

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Category: Political Pontifications, The Good Old US of A