Althouse: "A conservative — he’s one who holds things together."

May 7, 2015

"A conservative — he’s one who holds things together."

"He shouldn’t fight all progressive movements, but he should be the balance wheel to hold the movement to where it won’t get out of hand."

35 comments:

rhhardin said...: Watches would run really fast without a balance wheel.; 5/7/15, 10:36 AM
Ignorance is Bliss said...: A conservative — he’s one who holds things together.

We try, but you sure as hell don't make it easy sometimes.; 5/7/15, 10:39 AM
damikesc said...: Not sure how tripling pensions and increasing public welfare payments is conservative, but to each their own, I guess.

A conservative would ask how will this be paid for in several years or if the economy goes South...; 5/7/15, 10:42 AM
Big Mike said...: We conservatives don't fight all progressive movements. It's a myth that you left-of-center folks have to make yourselves feel better.; 5/7/15, 10:42 AM
MeatPopscicle1234 said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 5/7/15, 10:56 AM
Hagar said...: "Means of Ascent" is the least satisfactory of Caro's four volumes (so far) on LBJ. Caro set it up as too much a parable of good (Stevenson) vs. evil (Johnson).
If Coke Stevenson had survived two-terms as governor of Texas, he had at least heard of such a thing as corruption in government.; 5/7/15, 11:04 AM
Hagar said...: Caro's interest, he says, is in people who can see where power may lie, though others don't, and make use of it.
"The Powerbroker" about Robert Moses is a one-volume exposition of that for those who feel the LBJ series is too much to digest.; 5/7/15, 11:08 AM
Jaq said...: As Jonah Goldberg once observed, nine out of ten new ideas a bad ones full of unintended consequences and even intended bad ones. So just on percentages, the staunch conservative is usually right.; 5/7/15, 11:10 AM
David said...: Also known as father.; 5/7/15, 11:12 AM
Ann Althouse said...: ""Means of Ascent" is the least satisfactory of Caro's four volumes (so far) on LBJ. Caro set it up as too much a parable of good (Stevenson) vs. evil (Johnson)."

I would love to see the movie!; 5/7/15, 11:18 AM
Ann Althouse said...: It had Hugo Black and Abe Fortas in big minor roles.; 5/7/15, 11:19 AM
Ann Althouse said...: And it was all about how LBJ should have been relegated to nonentity in 1948. What a crazy fluke changed everything? Box 13!!!!; 5/7/15, 11:20 AM
damikesc said...: And it was all about how LBJ should have been relegated to nonentity in 1948. What a crazy fluke changed everything? Box 13!!!!

Professor, isn't "fluke" being awfully generous?; 5/7/15, 11:35 AM
Sebastian said...: "and he saw the house, and the love with which it was filled"

Inequality of love: the most basic and unjust of all.

SJW of all countries unite, you have nothing to lose but your bourgeois emotions.; 5/7/15, 11:51 AM
Rusty said...: You're fucking welcome.; 5/7/15, 11:53 AM
Bilwick said...: In other words, don't put any real roadblocks on the Road to Serfdom--just kind of drag your heels Fred Flintstone style to slow the bus down before it reaches its dismal destination. What he seems to be describing is what I call (after Brooks and Frum) the "Uncle Dave" type of conservative--docile, deferential to their betters, and no real threat to the Plantation.

If his concept of "conservatism" is correct, I'm glad I no longer think of myself as a "conservative."; 5/7/15, 11:59 AM
garage mahal said...: A conservative — he’s one who holds things together

Blowing up government and shutting it down are fine ways to hold things together.; 5/7/15, 12:36 PM
Gahrie said...: Blowing up government and shutting it down are fine ways to hold things together.

When government and government spending are the problems, yes they are.

You Lefties aren't willing to admit that government can be the problem, let alone that it is the problem.

Conservatives realize that excessive government is usually the problem.; 5/7/15, 12:49 PM
Mountain Maven said...: Not working, is spinning apart; 5/7/15, 1:03 PM
Ann Althouse said...: "Professor, isn't "fluke" being awfully generous?"

I'm referring to the final legal proceeding and how close it came to ending Johnson's career. There was a fluke in the timing of what Hugo Black did and what was happening in the proceeding before the masters with the ballot box. That was a very exciting climax. That's why I wrote "Box 13!!!"; 5/7/15, 1:13 PM
Ann Althouse said...: But I don't mean to be generous toward LBJ. As Caro tells it, he was a man who would do anything — anything! — to win.; 5/7/15, 1:13 PM
Michael said...: Garage

Baltimore. 50 years of Democrat rule.

You must be so very very proud.; 5/7/15, 1:15 PM
traditionalguy said...: The trouble is the computers that actually are getting closer everyday to the capacity to run a communist fiasco command economy. The hardware is already here and the software is coming on fast.

Revealing that super secret is what Edward Snowden did for better or worse.

Which side will conservatives side with the day cash dollars is illegal and computer account credits alone are allowed for doing all business...under a number assigned to each humanoid.

Most conservatives who are wealthy will be all for it provided they are running it; 5/7/15, 1:18 PM
E Hines said...: "He shouldn’t fight all progressive movements, but he should be the balance wheel to hold the movement to where it won’t get out of hand."

Of course he--a Conservative--should. Here's Herb Croly, a founder of the Progressive movement (a movement Hillary Clinton has proclaimed herself to be a proud member of):

To be sure, any increase in centralized power and responsibility, expedient or inexpedient, is injurious to certain aspects of traditional American democracy. But the fault in that case lies with the democratic tradition; and the erroneous and misleading tradition must yield before the march of constructive national democracy. ...the average American individual is morally and intellectually inadequate to serious and consistent conception of his responsibilities as a democrat.

Nothing any Progressive since has said or done--from TRoosevelt, through Wilson and FRoosevelt, to Obama--has been inconsistent with this.

Eric Hines; 5/7/15, 1:34 PM
Mitch H. said...: traditionguy, the Soviet delusion that sufficient calculation capacity could make command economies function was a fad of the late Fifties and early Sixties, and you'll still encounter Trotskyites - especially in science fiction - who insist that "one more time around might do it", but I'm still with Hayek. Economic functionality just does not respond to modeling, unless you so compromise your "command economy" with so many market functions that you've essentially virtualized the free market and called it "command".

I work in agricultural IT, precision ag specifically, and my boss constantly runs around trying to virtualize ground knowledge and market functions with technocratic solutions. As far as I can tell, it's mostly fruitless. Our best work is in cutting costs on fertilizer and pesticide applications and other helper functions. His decades-long dream of an actually useful, automated "Decision Support System" looks to me to be as far off as commercial fusion.; 5/7/15, 1:58 PM
n.n said...: Conservatism functions as inertia in a social system that serves to preserve or stabilize a state. Its value may be judged by evaluating a juxtaposition of its circumstantial static and dynamic principles.; 5/7/15, 2:15 PM
James in Belgrade said...: Cato also points out that the 1942 election was stolen from LBJ by similar means. If the 1942 election had been clean, he would have been the incumbent in 1948 and likely have won easily.; 5/7/15, 2:17 PM
damikesc said...: Economic functionality just does not respond to modeling, unless you so compromise your "command economy" with so many market functions that you've essentially virtualized the free market and called it "command".

Climate change notoriously doesn't respond to modeling yet massive legislation is passed (or just simply decided to have passed by bureaucrats who should be driven off a cliff) because of it.; 5/7/15, 2:45 PM
Etienne said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 5/7/15, 2:56 PM
Etienne said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 5/7/15, 3:02 PM
buwaya said...: My ambition is to move things backwards.; 5/7/15, 3:58 PM
Drago said...: If the lefties were only 10% correct on policy, the Soviet Union would be alive and kicking today.; 5/7/15, 4:19 PM
Rick said...: Blowing up government and shutting it down are fine ways to hold things together.

Taking the keys away from the drunk driver is a fine idea.; 5/7/15, 4:47 PM
Henry said...: It reads like Coke could have used the word "father". The pronoun "he" follows naturally.; 5/7/15, 11:52 PM
Fen said...: "he should be the balance wheel to hold the movement to where it won’t get out of hand."

Defeatist bullshit. He's talking about holding a static defensive position until its eventually overrun. Fuck off loser. We fight.; 5/8/15, 2:55 AM