On The Fold I want to focus on something Jonah mentions on The Corner in response to Jed. In justifying Reagan’s use of “messianic rhetoric” versus Obama’s, Jonah states that there’s a big difference between using scripture to justify shrinking the government at home while “liberating” others abroad and using the government to justify expanding the state:
“But the key difference is that invoking scripture in order to justify shrinking government at home and liberating mankind from collectivism abroad is quite different than invoking government to justify an enormous expansion of the state into people lives.”Obviously Jonah sees a difference between using scripture to achieve an end result and using the government. Nothing wrong with that. But what government did Reagan shrink while liberating mankind? It sure wasn’t the American government. In fact, the government shrank in terms of overall size more under Clinton than it ever did Reagan.
This is the crux of modern conservatism, however. They are not worried about facts or about how politicians will govern once in office. They just want their politicians to say all the right stuff and then once in office conservatives could care less. None of that prevents the GOP from still claiming the reins to small government, market capitalism though. Even well-accepted conservative “thinkers” like Jonah Goldberg have accepted as fact that Reagan shrunk government and liberated mankind, when he hardly did anything of the sort.
In Jonah’s world, a world where keyboards are equal to guns, there’s a separation between people and government. Government is a ruling class and people shouldn’t become dependent upon it. Yet in the America I live in the people are the government and getting people to rally around their government is America.
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