{"id":2050,"date":"2008-01-31T12:45:09","date_gmt":"2008-01-31T17:45:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=2050"},"modified":"2008-01-31T13:17:59","modified_gmt":"2008-01-31T18:17:59","slug":"clintons-malaise-moment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=2050","title":{"rendered":"Clinton’s Malaise Moment (UPDATE: Or Not)"},"content":{"rendered":"

As I’ve pointed out on this blog since its very first day, I started out as a liberal.\u00a0 I’d probably have called myself a liberal into my early twenties; I voted for Reagan in secret in ’84.<\/p>\n

But I remember pretty keenly when I first started having serious questions about liberalism.\u00a0 It was Jimmy Carter’s infamous “Malaise” speech.\u00a0 I remember the speech – reading, hearing, watching, I don’t remember exactly how <\/em>I remember it, but I do – and thinking “so that smug little bastard’s got his<\/em>, and now he’s telling me I gotta assume I won’t get mine<\/em>?\u00a0 Screw him”.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It took me a few years to realize that Carter was not the aberration – that Carter and his malaise were the rule, not the exception; that liberalism was all about <\/em>patiently, politely asking those who had theirs – the money,\u00a0the jobs, the medical care, the information, the security, the power <\/em>–\u00a0if you could have yours, your post-tax income or work or CAT scan or news or police protection or motivation or whatever.\u00a0 Pretty please?\u00a0 If I promise to be happy to pay for a better Minnesota?<\/p>\n

And I have to hope that every time someone, somewhere, hears this deeply stupid remark by Bill Clinton<\/a>, that a new conservative gets his or her wings:<\/p>\n

In a long, and interesting speech, [Clinton] characterized what the U.S. and other industrialized nations need to do to combat global warming this way: “We just have to slow down our economy and cut back our greenhouse gas emissions ’cause we have to save the planet for our grandchildren.”<\/p>\n

At a time that the nation is worried about a recession is that really the characterization his wife would want him making? “Slow down our economy”?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Reading this, I think we need to start by taking a moment to thank God or ineluctible fate or biology or whatever for Newt Gingrich and the ’94 Revolution; between Hillarycare and this sort of attitude, the United States could have come out of the nineties with an economy the size of Bulgaria.<\/p>\n

Bill!\u00a0 Slapnuts<\/strike> Mr. President?\u00a0\u00a0 Let’s accept, hypothetically, that global warming is both real and significantly driven by human activity (and I am <\/em>being hypothetical).\u00a0 It is only through economic growth that humankind will develop a rational response<\/em>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Economic growth slows population growth, as people develop the ability to feed<\/em> themselves, curb child mortality, and need to have fewer kids to ensure survival.<\/p>\n

Economic growth funds and eventually drives the innovations that allow society to perpetuate itself.\u00a0<\/p>\n

If humankind indeed does <\/em>need to save itself from itself, it will be through<\/em> economic growth and the innovation that it drives.\u00a0 Not <\/em>through stagnation.<\/p>\n

Not <\/em>through Tic conceits like “slowing the economy down”.<\/p>\n

Note to President Clinton:\u00a0 the right stage door is calling.\u00a0 You’re late for your exit.<\/p>\n

UPDATE AND CORRECTION<\/strike> ADJUSTMENT: Commenter “Terry” notes that I took the quote out of context (see first comment, below).\u00a0<\/p>\n

So Clinton’s not advocating economic shrinkage.\u00a0 My bad.<\/p>\n

Of course, his former Veep and most of the Green movement are, <\/em>so my overall conclusions don’t change.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As I’ve pointed out on this blog since its very first day, I started out as a liberal.\u00a0 I’d probably have called myself a liberal into my early twenties; I voted for Reagan in secret in ’84. But I remember pretty keenly when I first started having serious questions about liberalism.\u00a0 It was Jimmy Carter’s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,35,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2050","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-history-and-its-making","category-money","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2050","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2050"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2050\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2050"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2050"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2050"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}