The Age of the Welfare State Smashup

It took a day after the election for me to realize what had happened. It is simply this: the old order has ended. We have now moved into a new era. Responsible Republican Reform is dead. The new age of the welfare state smashup has begun. In the old era, conservatives offered to the American people a gradualist way of reforming the welfare state away from its administrative absolutism. We now realize that our effort was a failure. Apart from the obvious reason why the American people were never going to give up their entitlements until the money ran out, there is another reason. Karl Marx taught us why in The German Ideology. The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas: i.e., the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force. The ruling class can call for an end to racism and then flog its supporters with racist propaganda; it can call for an end to sexism and then make blatant appeals to a single sex. In can deplore private remarks about the 47 percent and then make naked appeals to self-interest. It gets to do this until the day comes when the ruling class loses its right to rule, and that day is not yet. With the re-election of Barack Obama and the confirmation of the mother of all entitlements, ObamaCare, the ruling class has welded into place the fourth wall of the administrative state, and we all now live in its iron cage. We are now fully confined and controlled by the four-trillion-dollar iron fences of government pensions, government health care, government education, and government welfare, just as liberals want us to be.

Read more: The Age of the Welfare State Smashup By Christopher Chantrill Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/11/the_age_of_the_welfare_state_smashup.html#ixzz2CNpihKK4