From National Review and  Jonah Goldberg, For the Left, It’s Always Time for a New New Deal

You can explain all day how the New Deal prolonged the Great Depression and they won’t care. They’re like our new canine visitor Pippa, who apparently thinks every moment is the best moment for a New Throw of the tennis ball.. After 9/11 Chuck Schumer raced to the pages of the Washington Post to explain that terrorism requires a new New Deal. After Katrina, liberals said “Aha! This proves we need a new New Deal.” Thomas Friedman has a shortcut macro on his keyboard that allows him to vomit up a column arguing that pretty much everything (but especially climate change!) requires, , nay demands, a new New Deal. They don’t always use the phrase “new New Deal.” Often, they use the hackneyed language of the “moral equivalent of war” instead (see this latest installment at The Atlantic of this ancient trope). But, as I’ve written 8 trillion times, that’s the same frickin’ argument.

The real appeal of the New Deal wasn’t its alleged success, it’s that the New Deal is synonymous with a time when progressives had nearly unfettered political power to do what they wanted. Liberals don’t really worship the New Deal, they worship themselves. The New Deal is just a talisman in their undying faith in their own ability to guide society and make decisions for others better than people can make for themselves. And, at a fundamental level, the desire for an unending string of New Deals going on forever, is indistinguishable from socialism. Liberals used to be honest about this point, as when Arthur Schlesinger let slip in the pages of Partisan Review that “There seems no inherent obstacle to the gradual advance of socialism in the United States through a series of New Deals.”

Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/425717/hillary-clinton-democratic-debates-new-new-deal

HKO

Progressivism has always been about more central government power.  This practically how it is defined.  The problem is that as long as we fall short of some vague elitist notion of Utopia the government never has enough power and always needs more.  Hence a never ending need for New Deals.

print