Comments On Frum

Every day America is shredded a little more and will take far more to rebuild than to tear down…at some point the cancer will end any hope of a return to any form of functioning democracy.

@Mulchavelli
3 days ago
DOGE did achieve their goals just not their stated goals. The goal was to steal all of our data for monetary gain and to destroy people’s lives, and they were successful at that.

@2639tjw
3 days ago
Modern conservatism (free trade, etc.) had one fatal flaw and that was the mythology of trickle down economics. Like somehow “greed is good” was going to produce anything other than greed. Well .. it didn’t.

@goodun2974
3 days ago
Conservatism actively worked against the idea of a “commons”; it’s “every man for himself”, except with certain groups and classes being favored.

@SailorGerry
3 days ago
Here’s what the economist John Kenneth Galbraith (served as one JFK’s economic advisors) said about ‘trickle-down theory’ (aka ‘Reaganomics’):”If you feed the horse enough oats, some will pass through to feed the sparrows”.

@goodun2974
3 days ago
​ @SailorGerry , also from JKG: “the modern conservative is engaged in man’s oldest exercise in moral philosophy, that is, a moral excuse for selfishness”. And from Frank Wilhoit: “conservatism consists of but one abiding principle: there must be an ingroup whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside an outgroup whom the law binds but does not protect “.

@jhbange
3 days ago (edited)
Indeed, trickle down was already based on a falsehood, that the rich spending money puts money in the pockets of middle and lower income people. But on top of that, it’s based on a much larger misconception, that perpetual economic growth is achievable. The notion is a throwback to a colonial-era mindset that was at the time accurate: you can grow the economic pie by expanding into new unexplored territories. We do not have any unexplored territories in the world anymore. The resource pie is FACTUALLY finite. Economics is, at this point, largely a zero-sum game. Shifting assets to the ultra wealthy means less for everyone else, and this is blatantly obvious. They use this money to “invest” in things like real estate, buying housing and turning it into rental property. This is LITERALLY rent-seeking behavior, which is universally understood to be a purely extractive activity by an unnecessary middleman that makes the world that much worse.

@gking407
1 day ago (edited)
@delta5297 Edmund Burke in the late 1700s got frightened and alarmed when French commoners dared to revolt against their morbidly wealthy queen Marie Antoinette while they were starving. Instead of siding with the citizens Burke decided they were all idiots who needed to know their place. Hence the roots of Conservatism were established.