Forget about all of the flummery and empty rhetoric of what makes a Republican a Republican or a Democrat a Democrat. What I care about is efficiency and effectiveness. The two primary reasons I believe in a limited federal government are: 1) Freedom and 2) Efficiency. If I thought government bureaucrats and high-brow intellectuals could run or health care system, financial sector, auto industry, etc. better than the private sector, I guess you be able to call me a liberal. The fact remains that government bureaucrats and high-brow intellectuals have never and will never be able to walk and chew gum at the same time much less run an extremely sophisticated and complex PRIVATE industry.
I worked for both a member of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives while living in D.C. The biggest takeaway for was best explained by the late and great Ronald Reagan who said, "The nine most dangerous words in the English language are 'I'm from the government and I'm here to help.'"
Some of the highlights of the Mr. Goldberg's article:
I know many smart liberals for whom no idea is too complex, no concept or organizational flow chart too hard to grasp. They want government to take over this, run that, manage some other things, and in all cases put people exactly like them in charge of pretty much everything. Many are geniuses, with SAT scores so high you could get a bloody nose just looking at them.
But you wouldn’t ask one to run a car wash.
The chairman of a small college’s English department thinks it’s obvious intellectuals should take over health care, but he can’t manage the class schedules of three professors or run a meeting without it coming to blows or tears. A pundit defends government intervention in almost every sphere of economic life, but he can’t figure out how to manage the interns or his checking account.
The most famous story of an intellectual hypocrite getting his comeuppance is the tale of George McGovern and his inn. The senator, 1972 presidential nominee and college professor thought he could run a vast, technologically sophisticated nation with a diverse population and an entrepreneurial culture. Then, after leaving Washington, he bought an inn in Connecticut to while away his retirement years. For a guy as smart as him, running an inn should have been child’s play. But it went belly-up before the end of the year, with a contritely befuddled McGovern marveling at how much harder running a business was than he thought.
Now, I also know lots of conservatives who are basket cases at everything other than reading and writing books and articles, giving speeches, and thinking Big Thoughts (likewise, I know liberals who despise conservative moralizing about sex and religion who nonetheless live chaste, pious lives themselves). The point is that conservatives don’t presume to be smart enough to run everything, because conservative dogma takes it as an article of faith that no one can be that smart.
Moral hypocrisy is still worth exposing, I guess. But we are living in a moment when revealing intellectual hypocrisy should take precedence. A J. P. Morgan chart reprinted on the “Enterprise Blog” shows that less than 10 percent of President Obama’s cabinet has private-sector experience, the least of any cabinet in a century. From the stimulus to health-care reform and cap-and-trade, Washington is now run by people who think they know how to run everything, when in reality they can barely run anything.
Moral hypocrisy is still worth exposing, I guess. But we are living in a moment when revealing intellectual hypocrisy should take precedence. A J. P. Morgan chart reprinted on the “Enterprise Blog” shows that less than 10 percent of President Obama’s cabinet has private-sector experience, the least of any cabinet in a century. From the stimulus to health-care reform and cap-and-trade, Washington is now run by people who think they know how to run everything, when in reality they can barely run anything.
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