Johnson - As I've said

Johnson - As I've said before, I was a liberal until I was in the middle of college. Most of the artifacts of that liberalsm have been hunted down and destroyed. There are really only two ways, besides my admissions, to prove that I was ever a liberal at all. If you tell any of my high school classmates that I evolved (by age 25, no less) into a conservative talk show host, they'll probably assume you're nuts (the ones that don't know, already, anyway). And when I was at North Dakota Boy's State in the summer of 1980, I wrote (in my capacity as a state party chairman) a party platform rife with "redistributions of wealth" and "interlocking foreign policy with the UN" and probably a dozen instances of the term Progressive.

Then, in college, I encountered the work of four thinkers:

• Alexandr Solzhenitzyn
• George Orwell
• P.J. O'Rourke
• and finally, and perhaps most importantly, Paul Johnson.

All but Orwell were people who, like me, had started life on the left and swung to the right (to whatever extent).

But the marquee name - the one who gave me the intellectual backing to the rafts of anecdotes that the other three provided - was Johnson.

Best of all, Johnson is still in action. His critique of the EU in Forbes is a classic.

The truth is that the EU has been living beyond its means, and its bills are coming due. The biggest bill of all--the cost of generous state pensions, which in most EU countries are underfunded--is looming. It's true that most advanced countries are having difficulties meeting pensions because people are living longer and work forces are expanding more slowly (or not at all). Britain is running into a pension crisis. Most of those who banked on a healthy private pension for their old age are going to be disappointed, partly because returns on investments are so low and partly because the Labour finance minister, Gordon Brown, has been raiding the till by abolishing tax-free pension dividends. This is the issue that will lose Tony Blair the next election, as the pain of Labour's 'pension raid' is felt. But at least Britain has a properly funded public pension plan. And the British economy is moving forward, perhaps not as fast as America's, but at a healthy and accelerating rate.

The omens for continental Europe, however, are sinister. The entire plan for perpetual improvement upon which the EU depends is based on continuous economic expansion. There is no provision for stagnation. As we see in Japan, once stagnation sets in, it can last many years. Americans should count their blessings, above all the supreme blessing of having an economy that is run by businessmen not bureaucrats, or that--under wise governance--runs itself. "

Read the whole thing. You'll be glad you did.

Then, when you're done, read Modern Times, the Birth of the Modern, and Intellectuals. Thorough yet enjoyable, rigorous yet fast-reading, all three books should be on the Christmas List of any conservatives you love, or any liberals you'd love to convert.

Posted by Mitch at September 30, 2003 06:01 AM