Posted by David Bernstein:
Amtrak and the Weaknesses of Modern Liberalism:
I have been criticized in the past for suggesting that modern
liberalism often seems to support government spending, as such,
without much regard to the need for and efficacy of any particular
program. Thanks to Leonard Fein for unintentionally supporting my
point. In essay in the April Moment magazine, Fein, in the course of
explaining why American Jews should stay liberal as a matter of Jewish
values, critiques the president's latest budget proposal:
It is a budget of a poor country, a country that cannot afford food
stamps a hungry, that plans to cut between it to the 2003 and
thousand people from the program mostly working people with
families and children; a budget that says to Amtrak "if you can't
make it in the open market, you don't deserve to survive"...
Hold on! Amtrak? You mean the Amtrak that is largely used by wealthy
business travelers (with poor people using Greyhound?) The Amtrak that
wastes billions of dollars running nearly empty trains to the
districts of influential congressmen? The Amtrak that spent untold
millions purchasing new high-speed trains, but never got around to
upgrading the tracks to accommodate higher speeds? An Amtrak, in
short, that redistributes wealth upwards, is run in a corrupt manner,
and is grossly mismanaged? Is protectinig this was modern liberalism
is all about? In fairness to Fein, he does go on to talk about Pell
grants, Medicaid, and other programs intended to help the poor. But I
think his inability to distinguish between government spending that
actually serves liberalism's purported goals, and wasteful government
boondoggles that receive reflexive support because they exist outside
the market is an endemic problem that modern liberalism has yet to
adequately address.
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