http://iowacomicbookclub.com/uncategorized/1209 I’ve taken my time writing in response to Tuesday evening’s political events – the speeches of Obama and Jindal – but the ground has not shifted in the intervening days. The best vocalized reaction from a pundit, I have found, comes from David Brooks:
http://justrpg.com/default.asp?pid=606 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WoKd9irM9dM&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q2ztrF253DE
Obama’s speech was muscular and serious, a ripening of all the maturity he showed as a candidate. And it was all the more impressive beside the pygmy performance of Jindal. Jindal’s condescension to his audience left me with the distinct impression that he has no brain – which I hear is not true, but he will now have to convince me otherwise. He certainly seemed to be without “guts,” i.e. a reservoir of real human experience with which to govern. Perhaps this failure will be good for him in this regard.
The Republican “answer” of “fiscal discipline and less government” is incoherent at best and more likely a flat out piece of lying doublethink. The reason it is incoherent is that the primary task most Republicans see for America in this generation is victory in the “war on terror” – a task which is presumably only suitable for government to undertake. This has been the cause of the huge increases in federal spending. You can’t have an empire without a large federal budget.
But the incoherence of the modern Republicans goes down deeper and deeper the more you plunge in. You cannot support both small government and big business. The reason why small government is good is because power corrupts – man is weak, greedy, and imperious – not trustworthy, in short – and so power is better off distributed. But the same philosophy argues against the concentration of power in big business as well. What is more, a small, powerless government cannot ride the horse of big, powerful business. The horse will purchase the rider, in that instance. Have we not seen that?
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