Brad DeLong writes that “America’s best hope for sane technocratic governance required the elimination of the Republican Party from our political system as rapidly as possible.”
There are two things wrong with that statement. One is that he wants a technocratic government. Top-down. Orderly. Planned. But we live in a bottom-up world. Everything from language to Wikipedia to the economy itself is is a spontaneous order. They grow and evolve despite, not because of, direction from above. The most beautiful designs have no designer.
The other flaw is that DeLong favors a one-party state. Such regimes have been tried many times over the years. The results have rarely been humane.
I am neither conservative nor a Republican. But I sure am glad that America has two parties instead of one. That second party is proof that some people can’t shut other people out of the political discourse simply for disagreeing. Freedom of speech and thought are thought are the cornerstones of a liberal society. DeLong rejects them at our peril.
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1. Frito-Lays dumped their eco-friendly SunChips bags after consumers complained about the loud crinkling noise of the new material. (Facebook users even started a group called, “Sorry But I Can’t Hear You Over This SunChips Bag.”)
2. More U.S. cities are taxing or banning plastic shopping bags.
3. The D.C. Board of Elections and Ethics has ended their weeklong experiment with online voting. Officials had encouraged hackers to give the voting website their “best shot.” One University of Michigan professor instructed his students to do just that. His students succeeded in altering the website so that it played the U. of Michigan fight song after every vote was cast.
4. Dave Weigel’s new Slate column is about how “conservative critics of conservatism are explaining the conservative comeback.”
5. The Atlantic has an interesting slideshow on the estimated net worth (in today’s dollars) of each U.S. president.
The other day I had a piece on ConservativeHome, possibly the most popular politics blog in the UK, on what the election really showed about America. It was in response to what I thought was a series of misperceptions published in The Times. The bottom line is that conservatism, especially economic conservatism, is not dead, immigration isn’t going to kill it and that if you’re looking for evidence that Reaganism is gone, you won’t find it in this election.
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