I Was Never A Fan

Back In The Days When The Market Was A Kind Of Secular God And All The World Thrilled To Behold The Amazing Powers Of Private Capital, The Idea Of Privatizing Highways And Airports And Other Bits Of Our Transportation Infrastructure Made A Certain Kind Of Sense.

What Is At Stake In The Debate Over Health Care Is More Than The Mere Crafting Of Policy. The Issue Is Now The Identity Of The Democratic Party.

Money Never Seems To Be Interested In Strengthening Regulatory Agencies, For Example, But Always In Subverting Them, In Making Them Miss The Danger Signs In Coal Mines And In Derivatives Trading And In Deep-sea Oil Wells.

This Aesthetic Quality, Then, Is What Politics Is All About. It's Authenticity That Separates Winners From Losers, Good Politics From Bad, And He-man Leader-types From Consultant-directed Puppet-boys.

Just As The Financial Crisis Has Created Toxic Assets And 'zombie' Financial Institutions, So Has It Transformed Conservatism Into A Movement Of The Living Dead.