In a recent article on sugar subsidies, George Will confuses the definitions of liberal and conservative, making the mind-blowingly stupid and ignorant error of calling state protectionism a "liberal" economic policy as opposed to "conservative" capitalism.
In reality -- and this is basic Western history -- state protectionism used to be the only thing around in a trade system of a few dueling powers with complete control over their domain, called mercantilism. Capitalism is the newer and individually liberating, and hence more liberal by both traditional definitions of the term, replacement. People quickly found that pure capitalism soon becomes a trade system of a few dueling powers with complete control over their domains and so tempered it with regulations of varying fairness and effect, but that's an argument for a different time.
Will is promoting the popular partisan linquistic idiocy where if anything is good, it must be conservative, and if anything is bad, it must be liberal, damn the facts of history. Another telling example is where Will says the subsidies are all the Democrats' fault, while Republicans doing the same thing (like Bush with his steel and softwood tariffs) are just not being true Republicans.
Accusing the left and socialism of being the evil behind sugar subsidies is more hogwash. I've heard plenty of arguments against the subsidies, and they have all (until now) been from the left wing: Mother Jones and other progressive or quasi-socialist sources. Instead of trying to impose a complex situation onto the left-against-right dichotomy, can't a lot of these things just be a matter of powerful business self-interests against less powerful business self-interests?
Posted by Warrior Tang at February 12, 2004 07:10 PM