Forgiving Fareed

Last Monday -- not even a week ago -- I was giving Fareed Zakaria a hard time because he had Ann Coulter on this show -- Global Public Square. Ain’t it funny how it all works out? All is forgiven. Today, in Time magazine, Fareed delivers a devastating blow to the Conservatism of today’s America.

How Today's Conservatism Lost Touch with Reality

”Conservatives now espouse ideas drawn from abstract principles with little regard to the realities of America's present or past. This is a tragedy, because conservatism has an important role to play in modernizing the U.S.”

His article is all the more powerful because of his reasonable tone and his reputation for fairness.

”The U.S. is among the lowest taxed of the big industrial economies. So the case that America is grinding to a halt because of high taxation is not based on facts but is simply a theoretical assertion.”

”Many Republican businessmen have told me that the Obama Administration is the most hostile to business in 50 years. Really? More than that of Richard Nixon, who presided over tax rates that reached 70%, regulations that spanned whole industries, and who actually instituted price and wage controls?”

You’ve heard me talk about it numerous times here but this is a great example of the power of persuasion. The Republican Party and corporations, with their incessant media blitz, have convinced many Americans -- beyond the shadow of a doubt -- that all Democrats (especially that Socialist Obama) are hostile to businesses. Most can’t (or won’t) remember that Richard Nixon created the EPA. Check this out from Wikipedia;

”On July 9, 1970, citing rising concerns over environmental protection and conservation, President Richard Nixon transmitted Reorganization Plan No. 3 to the United States Congress by executive order, creating the EPA as a single, independent agency from a number of smaller arms of different federal agencies. Prior to the establishment of the EPA, the federal government was not structured to comprehensively regulate environmental pollutants.”

I could go on and on about this article but you need to read it for yourself. Send it to your friends. Especially your conservative friends.

”In fact, right now any discussion of government involvement in the economy — even to build vital infrastructure — is impossible because it is a cardinal tenet of the new conservatism that such involvement is always and forever bad. Meanwhile, across the globe, the world's fastest-growing economy, China, has managed to use government involvement to create growth and jobs for three decades. From Singapore to South Korea to Germany to Canada, evidence abounds that some strategic actions by the government can act as catalysts for free-market growth.”

Fareed is being civil but I’ve about lost all my civility on the subject. I can hear the rebuttals to this article now. But I’m convinced that any country in which Michele Bachmann can be considered a serious candidate for office -- much less President of the United States of America -- has already lost touch with reality.

Don Brown
June 16, 2011