Chris
06-15-2012, 06:31 AM
I post this here because it involves crony capitalism. When the author says collective, he means society as a whole, us, the country class, not the state collective, the ruling class.
It’s Not a Welfare State, It’s a Special Interest State (http://www.american.com/archive/2012/june/its-not-a-welfare-state-its-a-special-interest-state)
...A crisis might cause us to circle back to option one, a period of creative politics and institution building. It could also result in governments of a shape as yet undreamt of. Lenin is reputed to have said that the Bolsheviks did not seize power in Russia; they found it lying in the gutter, and picked it up. Many, both in and out of the United States, are waiting to see if American power is headed for the gutter.
However it turns out, the fault, or the virtue, will not be in our stars but in our collective selves. And a good start toward a sunny outcome would be to retire the term “welfare state” and face squarely what we have truly created: Big SIS, a special interest state that is, in the words of AEI’s Michael Greve, “an unstructured, undisciplined, exploitative interest group free-for-all.”
As the Tea Parties show, the people understand that Big SIS is not viable, and this is precisely why they so scare the Washington establishment. Linguistic clarity will enhance the debate.
It’s Not a Welfare State, It’s a Special Interest State (http://www.american.com/archive/2012/june/its-not-a-welfare-state-its-a-special-interest-state)
...A crisis might cause us to circle back to option one, a period of creative politics and institution building. It could also result in governments of a shape as yet undreamt of. Lenin is reputed to have said that the Bolsheviks did not seize power in Russia; they found it lying in the gutter, and picked it up. Many, both in and out of the United States, are waiting to see if American power is headed for the gutter.
However it turns out, the fault, or the virtue, will not be in our stars but in our collective selves. And a good start toward a sunny outcome would be to retire the term “welfare state” and face squarely what we have truly created: Big SIS, a special interest state that is, in the words of AEI’s Michael Greve, “an unstructured, undisciplined, exploitative interest group free-for-all.”
As the Tea Parties show, the people understand that Big SIS is not viable, and this is precisely why they so scare the Washington establishment. Linguistic clarity will enhance the debate.