Here’s an excellent interview done by Yale’s The Politic of Deirdre McCloskey. A slice from Deirdre:
Yes, the so-called New Liberalism was slow socialism, as was an American Progressivism recommending the sterilization of defectives to improve the Aryan race and a minimum wage to drive non-Aryan immigrants out of the labor force, not to speak of carrying a big stick and joining a war to end all wars. The slow socialism took longer to implement than the fast versions in Bolshevism and Nazism. It was pushed along by the taking of powers by governments in the 20th-century wars, hot and cold. Calling it “modern liberalism” has always been an abuse of language. And it was an abuse of people to implement it.
It still is.
George Will rightly laments Americans’ increasingly weak grasp of reality. A slice:
The GND [Green New Deal] has no practical importance but much significance. First, it underscores the rise of the politics of gestures that are as flamboyant as they are empty: President Trump has his wall, the left has its GND. Second, it reprises the progressive desire to militarize everything but the military, to conscript everyone into vast collective undertakings that supposedly justify vast excisions from personal liberty and the setting side of pesky constitutional impediments. See President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s call in his first inaugural address for power “as great as the power that would be given to me if we were in fact invaded by a foreign foe.”
For those who need yet more evidence that industrial policies – state-engineered attempts to develop particular industries – are costly follies, here’s that evidence.
Tim Carney explains that the Green New Deal would spark a cronyist corporate feeding frenzy.
Jeffrey Tucker explores the connection between liberty and meaning.
