Let me misread that again
Over at Peach Pundit, regular Athens Banner-Herald conservative contributor Jeff Emmanuel has highlighted a fascinating speech by Sen. Johnny Isakson (R-GA).
Fascinating in the sense that it offers no enlightment whatsover and contributes absolutely nothing to today's dialogue.
We should be honest about what government can and cannot do. The economic prosperity we all crave flows from the entrepreneurial inspiration of the American people, not from their representatives in Washington. Mandates, protectionism, isolationism, high taxes are all bad for America and bad for Americans.
...
This debate is a classic contrast between two very different philosophies. Ours believes in the marketplace, the competitive system that has brought the United States of America so much prosperity. The other argument says government and Washington know better.
This would be a compelling argument if the actual debate going in our country was between socialist forces determined to reinstitute 19th-century tariffs and close up every single overseas U.S. military base and purist libertarian types who want to bring an end to all sorts of government activism.
In the real world, however, the discussion is focused on the minimum wage ... and Isakson is lukewarm to an increase in the minimum wage. But he hasn't called for its abolition either.
So in one fell swoop, the junior senator has completely misinterpreted the entire political dialogue in our country while grasping to a position that betrays his own utopian vision of government.
Hey, I like grand ideological and philosophical discussions, but I also like them to be consistent and within the appropriate context. Creating a false argument to score some cheap bonus points isn't exactly the best way to do so.
Fascinating in the sense that it offers no enlightment whatsover and contributes absolutely nothing to today's dialogue.
We should be honest about what government can and cannot do. The economic prosperity we all crave flows from the entrepreneurial inspiration of the American people, not from their representatives in Washington. Mandates, protectionism, isolationism, high taxes are all bad for America and bad for Americans.
...
This debate is a classic contrast between two very different philosophies. Ours believes in the marketplace, the competitive system that has brought the United States of America so much prosperity. The other argument says government and Washington know better.
This would be a compelling argument if the actual debate going in our country was between socialist forces determined to reinstitute 19th-century tariffs and close up every single overseas U.S. military base and purist libertarian types who want to bring an end to all sorts of government activism.
In the real world, however, the discussion is focused on the minimum wage ... and Isakson is lukewarm to an increase in the minimum wage. But he hasn't called for its abolition either.
So in one fell swoop, the junior senator has completely misinterpreted the entire political dialogue in our country while grasping to a position that betrays his own utopian vision of government.
Hey, I like grand ideological and philosophical discussions, but I also like them to be consistent and within the appropriate context. Creating a false argument to score some cheap bonus points isn't exactly the best way to do so.
posted by Jmac at 5:48 PM
3 Comments:
This is the kind of rhetorical false choice that has been the mainstay of so many milquetoast conservatives in this country over the last several years.
They can come out and say "we want the market to decide everything" all they want, we know it ain't true, because from 1994 to 2007, they were in charge of the situation, and folks in Washington still made some pretty big decisions on how 'the market' would be controlled.
Also, it was the promise of a higher minimum wage that encouraged the Americans to elect more Democrats than Republicans. If I recall, that decision wasn't made only in Washington City, but in many, many Congressional districts around the nation by many, many American voters.
He can wax libertarian all he wants, it was that sort of posturing, with absolutely no follow through that lost Republicans the House and the Senate this time around.
Maybe Isaakson should just be read as urging which way we should be "leaning." Granted that in the real world we have more choices than "socialism" and "libertarianism", but the question is--which ideal should be guiding our vision? What are we working towards?
...it was the promise of a higher minimum wage that encouraged the Americans to elect more Democrats than Republicans.
Yeah, that and the whole bumbling of anything the Republicans touched (um, Iraq, for instance). But the minimum wage promises are nice, too, I suppose.
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