Sometimes you can learn the most about something when people you would expect all to be on one side of the debate start arguing with each other. The folks over at the corner, National Review Online's forum for all its writers, are having quite the set-to about the merits of the proposed $700 billion bailout. Mark R. Levin, for example, thanks House Republicans "for taking a bold stand against what had been a stampede on a scale I have never before witnessed on matters of huge consequence." But Victor Davis Hanson doesn't think much of them:
Free-market Republican House members gave high-minded speeches and then panicked in the face of populist outrage just when the country needed their calm, hand-in-glove with Democratic House ideologues — the one claiming we are getting socialism, the other robber-baron capitalism.They are as captive to public outrage over the bailout now as they soon will be to the next phase of outrage over shattered retirement accounts.
It looks like more of them are for the bailout than against. Bill "Stand athwart history and yell STOP!" Buckley must be turning over (to the right, of course) in his grave.
Comments
"Mark R. Levin, for example, thanks House Republicans 'for taking a bold stand against what had been a stampede on a scale I have never before witnessed on matters of huge consequence.'
Victor Davis Hanson is a wonderful writer ...one of my favorites but he has some populist leanings.
The "them" and "us" in this scenario has been carefully nurtured by the drive-by media to be "Main Street vs Wall Street." Wall Street is just a second-string player.
The government is the culprit here with its unfunded giveaway programs so it seems silly that politicians and the heads of government agencies should be the surgeons to repair the damage that they themselves caused. If they threw away money on subprime mortgages, why should we trust them with another trillion dollars?