Combating popular misconceptions about American economics, society and politics.
Thursday, November 7, 2013
John Stewart on the Conservative Message: "If it was presented in this fashion, the conversation would be different"
STEWART: Your politics have shifted from liberal
to conservative. Here is my issue with conservative politics as they
stand right now. It’s too easy. It doesn’t have any of the
responsibility of governance. If your mantra is government cannot help,
then any chaos or lethargy that you sow in the government helps to prove
your point. You have no incentive to be responsible in creating
solutions to many of the problems that face us.
KRAUTHAMMER: That
would be true but unfortunately, the assumption is a caricature. The
conservative idea is not that government has no role. You might have
argued that in the thirties when conservatives opposed the New Deal.
There’s no question of accepting the great achievements of liberalism —
the achievements of the New Deal, of Social Security, Medicaid,
Medicare. The idea that you rescue the elderly and don’t allow the
elderly to enter into destitution is a consensual idea that
conservatives, at least the mainstream of conservatives —
STEWART: I
would say that the rhetoric is the same. If you lock at the rhetoric
when conservatives opposed the New Deal, opposed Social Security,
opposed Medicare — it is identical. Ted Cruz quotes Ronald Reagan’s
Medicare speech in 1960 as he opposed Obamacare.
KRAUTHAMMER: Ted
Cruz is not the official spokesman for American conservatism. If you
want somebody who has been out there, who has offered an alternative —
the person who offered an alternative for example is … Paul Ryan. But,
let me start with his assumption. His assumption is not that government
doesn’t have a role. His assumption is that the welfare state as
established with great success by liberals has now reached a point where
it no longer fits. With the new demographics and with the higher
technology and medicine, we will simply become insolvent unless we
radically reform. I’ll give you one fact. When Social Security was
instituted, the age of longevity was 62. Today life expectancy is 80. So
what you have is a huge change in the demographics and when you look to
Europe, which is the social democratic state where we’re headed which
has all the entitlements of the government activities which a liberal
would want and — to with which American liberalism is headed — it became
insolvent because it never adapted to the change in demographics and
the change in technology. And it has had a rude awakening.
STEWART:
If it was ever presented in that fashion, the way you just presented
it, I think the conversation we would be having in this country would be
very different.
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