Sticking With Small

BIG government is back. Since September 11, Americans have been looking to Washington again for answers— disregarding a generation of conservative warnings that it creates more problems than it solves. “When the chips are down, where do we turn?” asks Jeff Faux in The American Prospect, a liberal magazine. “To the government’s firefighters, police officers, and rescue teams. To the nonprofit sector’s blood banks and shelters. And to big government’s army, navy, and air force.”

Bill Moyers, writing in The Nation, a leftist magazine, is able to find the silver lining in 9/11: “This catastrophe has reminded us of a basic truth at the heart of our democracy: No matter our wealth or status or faith, we are all equal before the law, in the voting booth and when death rains down from the sky.” (Now that’s comforting.) From that strange untruth, he takes a quick leap to the usual redistributionist agenda. The country’s most prominent Democratic consultants argue that Americans are looking favorably on government activism to express their feelings of national solidarity. In short, as the headline of a New York Times “news analysis” put it, “Big Government Is Back in Style.” (When hasn’t it been, for the Times?)

About the Author

Ramesh Ponnuru

Ramesh Ponnuru is the editor of National Review, a columnist for the Washington Post, and a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.

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BIG government is back. Since September 11, Americans have been looking to Washington again for answers— disregarding a generation of conservative warnings that it creates more problems than it solves. “When the chips are down, where do we turn?” asks Jeff Faux in The American Prospect, a liberal magazine. “To the government’s firefighters, police officers, and rescue teams. To the nonprofit sector’s blood banks and shelters. And to big government’s army, navy, and air force.”

Bill Moyers, writing in The Nation, a leftist magazine, is able to find the silver lining in 9/11: “This catastrophe has reminded us of a basic truth at the heart of our democracy: No matter our wealth or status or faith, we are all equal before the law, in the voting booth and when death rains down from the sky.” (Now that’s comforting.) From that strange untruth, he takes a quick leap to the usual redistributionist agenda. The country’s most prominent Democratic consultants argue that Americans are looking favorably on government activism to express their feelings of national solidarity. In short, as the headline of a New York Times “news analysis” put it, “Big Government Is Back in Style.” (When hasn’t it been, for the Times?)