{"id":440,"date":"2012-01-11T16:02:36","date_gmt":"2012-01-11T20:02:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.bmbs.org\/?p=440"},"modified":"2012-01-11T16:02:36","modified_gmt":"2012-01-11T20:02:36","slug":"where-are-the-liberals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.bmbs.org\/?p=440","title":{"rendered":"Where Are the Liberals?"},"content":{"rendered":"

In today’s New York Times<\/em>, columnist David Brooks wonders why, if “liberals” have so much “cultural power,” why are they so weak politically.\u00a0 Brooks posits that two perceptions are responsible: a) that “liberals” believe in the federal government, and b) that the federal government is not trustworthy or effective.<\/p>\n

Brooks says:\u00a0 “Why don\u2019t Americans trust their government? It\u2019s not because they dislike individual programs like Medicare. It\u2019s more likely because they think the whole system is rigged. Or to put it in the economists\u2019 language, they believe the government has been captured by rent-seekers.\u00a0 This is the disease that corrodes government at all times and in all places.”\u00a0 Interestingly, Brooks concedes that “Some of these rent-seeking groups are corporate types.”<\/p>\n

Making things worse for the Dems themselves, Brooks notes: “In an attempt to match Republican rhetoric, Democratic politicians are perpetually soiling the name of government for the sake of short-term gain. How many times have you heard Democrats from Carter to Obama running against Washington, accusing it of being insular, shortsighted, corrupt and petty? If the surgeon himself thinks his tools are rancid, why shouldn\u2019t you?”<\/p>\n

All good questions.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In today’s New York Times, columnist David Brooks wonders why, if “liberals” have so much “cultural power,” why are they so weak politically.\u00a0 Brooks posits that two perceptions are responsible: a) that “liberals” believe in the federal government, and b) … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.bmbs.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/440"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.bmbs.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.bmbs.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.bmbs.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.bmbs.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=440"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blog.bmbs.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/440\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":442,"href":"https:\/\/blog.bmbs.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/440\/revisions\/442"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.bmbs.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=440"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.bmbs.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=440"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.bmbs.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=440"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}