tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3647180678398772674.post8518581027704343824..comments2024-01-19T16:57:32.385-08:00Comments on Six Foot Turkey: I Doubt ThatJoshua Leachhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04786588059362202964noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3647180678398772674.post-19352002428291812282014-01-13T13:06:21.503-08:002014-01-13T13:06:21.503-08:00Good points and intriguing examples. I definitely...Good points and intriguing examples. I definitely think his emphasis on mobility as the best criterion betrays "economic individualism" for the reasons given above-- but it is probably tempered by other considerations somewhat more than I realized.Joshua Leachhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04786588059362202964noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3647180678398772674.post-89720511031518897622014-01-13T12:40:42.811-08:002014-01-13T12:40:42.811-08:00I basically agree with your point about social mob...I basically agree with your point about social mobility, but (and I'm sure you knew this was coming) I have to take issue with your description of Douthat as an "economic individualist." Obviously this is partly a matter of semantics, but here are some fairly recent quotes/selections from his writing which I think show that, while not a liberal, he's quite far from being a laissez-faire libertarian-meets-hardline social conservative.<br /><br />"This Catholic case for limited government, however, is not a case for the Ayn Randian temptation inherent to a capitalism-friendly politics. There is no Catholic warrant for valorizing entrepreneurs at the expense of ordinary workers, or for dismissing all regulation as unnecessary and all redistribution as immoral ... The pope’s words ... should ... inspire Catholics to ask more — often much more — of the Republican Party, on a range of policy issues." - http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/01/opinion/sunday/douthat-the-pope-and-the-right.html<br /><br />"[C]onservatives simply cannot make economic policy successfully (or credibly cast themselves as a populist party on these issues) if they ignore the actual performance of the American economy over the last generation, and if they refuse to see that distributional issues as well as arguments from efficiency and liberty have to play a role in the way that we reform our tax code and our welfare state." - http://douthat.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/06/04/libertarian-populism-and-its-limits/<br /><br />"... the basic 'reform conservative' agenda looks something like this ... A tax reform that caps deductions and lowers rates, but also reduces the burden on working parents and the lower middle class, whether through an expanded child tax credit or some other means of reducing payroll tax liability ... A repeal or revision of Obamacare that aims to ease us toward a system of near-universal catastrophic health insurance, and includes some kind of flat tax credit or voucher explicitly designed for that purpose ... A “market monetarist” monetary policy as an alternative both to further fiscal stimulus and to the tight money/fiscal austerity combination advanced by many Republicans today ..." - http://douthat.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/05/30/what-is-reform-conservatism/<br /><br />"[T]here are still pro-life Democrats for a reason: Because many abortion opponents can’t reconcile their views on social justice with the harder-edged, “any redistribution equals socialism” tendencies in the Republican Party ... Where was the pro-family pressure on conservative lawmakers to propose reforms that actually leveled the playing field between workers with employer-provided health insurance and those without it? Where was the pro-life Republican lawmaker standing up for the funding necessary to make high-risk pools actually work? Where was the right-of-center health care proposal that an anti-abortion but otherwise center-left Democrat might have felt comfortable breaking with his party and backing?" - http://douthat.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/03/24/sympathy-for-bart-stupak/<br /><br />I don't necessarily agree with all or even most of the agenda implied by these passages, but it seems to me that they fall pretty far short of economic individualism in any traditional sense.<br />Ajayhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16863145396520268530noreply@blogger.com