Friday 11 May 2012

Progressive Enlightenment

Faux Pragmatism

This snippet from Karl, writing at Patterico's blog:

As Jonah Goldberg points out in The Tyranny of Cliches, one of the fundamental cliches of the progressive left is pragmatism, i.e., that they are simply doing “what works.”  It is also one of the progressive left’s fundamental falsehoods.

The past century has been one in which progressives have put forth the idea that Soviet communism is what works,
that Eurofascism is what works, that Maoism is what works, and that Eurosocialism is what works.  The actual history of the past century is one in which Eurofascism was defeated in WWII, Soviet communism was defeated in the Cold War, Maoism has degenerated into a fascism and crony capitalism that only Tom Friedman finds attractive, and Eurosocialism is taking its own road to the dustbin of history. 

To be sure, voters in the UK and France are resisting, the Germans less so.  But fiscal realities will continue to intrude, regardless of which governments they elect.  They will eventually figure out what the OECD and IMF already have about the solution to their problems: spending less is the answer.

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