For the first time in 75 years, we have the makings of an American Supreme Court

You make an interesting point with the "net diminishment". That is what I think the critics of Bush and your Third Way are missing. At least in their minds, less government does lie at the end of the rainbow... Of course, less gov was at the end of the communist reainbow as well.

Their= Bush and OJ.

Sorry.

Hey Benny, what's your point?

"Of course, less gov was at the end of the communist reainbow as well."

No it wasn't.

andrew- the state was to 'wither away' according to Marx. Our guys thought it would always be with us as a sort necessary evil kind of thing so it's powers were strictly limited and diffused among the states. Benny can't tell the difference between the two ideas and ought to be pitied rather than excoriated. God looks out for children and morons, and so should we all.

Not less government--a less powerful state.

Marx thought the state would wither away but didn't spend too much time contemplating how that could be done. He had visions of a tumultuous societal cataclysm even before he developed his creed. His specialty was destruction and vituperation, not constructive engagement or societal improvement. He had a loathsome personality (his favorite play was Shakespeare's Timon of Athens, whose main character is a lot like him) and was basically the last guy in the world you'd ever want to trust running anything. He thought at the end we'd all be ruled by Hegel's ghost.

OJ: Point taken. I'll have to think about the difference.

Fred: You assume OJ, Bush and the Third Way is what the Founders had in mind.

And thankfully, God also looks after drunks and the USA.

No, the Founders favored the First Way. It failed. You can't have a universal franchise and not end up with a mandatory government safety net. The Third Way just seeks to use the mandates to force individuals to provide it for themselves. The Second Way prefers that the State do so.

But the Founders weren't opposed to government per se:

http://www.brothersjudd.com/index.cfm/fuseaction/reviews.detail/book_id/1385/

McCain was quoted on NPR as calling the Wisconsin decision "regrettable".

His candidacy is fast becoming forgettable.

Voters are on his side when it comes to CFR--the Constitution just isn't.

We had a British History prof at Colgate who was married to a Lady. In his lecture on Marx he laid his entire philosophy at his being an abject failure in a capitalist system who ground out his resentments while nursing hemmorhoids.

The 'first way' is the only way. The so-called second way (3rd,4th way?) created the massive failure of the administrative state. If one made their living from the power of said administraive state while being honest enough to admit it's failure one would need a 'third way'. The third way is bunk, a rationalization to protect failed interests. Third wayers should admit the failure of the administrative state and the social engineering schemes of the old third way,i.e., New deal, demo. soc., fasc., etc. Like calling Labour, 'New Labour', it's still Labour and the premise is wrong.

Matt- What difference does it make how loathsome a personality marx was. He believed that the cycles of historical development and it's ultimate destination were his discoveries. His deterministic historicism presented as 'science' was Hegelian in nature, of course, but so what? The 'end of history', '1st,2nd, 3rd, etc., etc., way stuff is just as hegelian and just as silly but the personalities presenting seem benign in comparison. It's the ideas, not the personalities, that bear watching.

"andrew- the state was to 'wither away' according to Marx."

I know that's what he said. I had to read that junk in school, too. The crazy and confused who are drawn to communism in the first place aren't the type of people who would surrender power. Outside of that one statement about withering away has any communist ever gone through the pretense that power would be given up.

He got the starting point and the destination wrong, all else follows.

Those failures are all the Second Way. They were the polar responses to the failure of the First Way. The only remaining question is whether the Third Way tilts more towards the First--with a higher degree of freedom--or towards the Second--with a higher degree of security.

Be nice if all the expletive deleted lefties got out of the way so we could continue testing the third way.

Benny, their = Bush, oj and erp among many others.

Lots of good stuff here.

OJ: Is "this net diminishment of state power is inded the conservative direction." true? I can't think of a sclerotic state that has governed a healthy society. Wouldn't a smaller but still powerful state be more conservative?

And this: "Those failures are all the Second Way. They were the polar responses to the failure of the First Way. The only remaining question is whether the Third Way tilts more towards the First--with a higher degree of freedom--or towards the Second--with a higher degree of security." How does religion and religiosity play into this? Or, in general what forces tilt a Third Way (Anglosphere?) country to the First or Second Way?

Only if we're willing to indulge in semantic games. A system that mandates personal HSAs, IRAs, unemployment insurance accounts, school vouchers, etc. from birth will, of course, end up being quite massive--because such accounts will grow larger than when the state holds the money and redistributes it. We can pretend that we've shrunken government/state power, but in fact it is only the State itself that will have been reduced, greater state power having been utilized to coerce the personal savings in the first place.

The more support available to the individual from civil society the less dependent he is on the State. To the extent that you have a family, neighborhood organizations, a church, etc., to fall back on for help the less you need to fall back on the State. That is why the left, which favors the state, is hostile to all.

There were no 'first way failures', only progressive hubris.

erp-please conduct your 'tests' elsewhere. we've had enough experiments.

If FDR had only had the support of progressives there'd have been no New Deal. The Second Way was so popular that we're the only developed nation to have avoided most of its worst excesses. Thank the Court, the Constitution and the church.

FDR thought of himself as a 'progressive' battling the 'cave dwellers'. The biggest ass to hold the office. The progressives then, as now, were, like FDR, unlettered Marxists. I pity the fools.

As Mussolini and Hitler were doing their things in 1930's Europe, FDR was doing his thing here. The "progressives", like Harold Ickes et al, worked for the jerk and were running the show. The original Third Way: saving 'capitalism' AND liberal democratic/republicanism from itself.

No, statism was the Second Way and Hoover was no slouch at it.

The great engineer was up to his neck in the progressive, social engineering spirit of the age , the third way of it's time: Synthesisizing the constitution and the European isms. FDR was Hoover on steroids. The American thesis/European anti-thesis= third way bunk.

fred.

Too much water under the bridge to go back to the first way (also my personal choice) and the second way has been totally discredited, so unless you have a better suggestion, testing the third way is the best option on the table.

If Coolidge was the Second Wat then we're just on the Fourth, rather than the Third.

erp- If the 'second way' were completely discredited, as you say, there would be no need for a so-called 'third way'. Hegel and Marx should be scrapped.

False. Marxism was only a form of statism and not the most prevalent one.

It is indeed because the Second Way was discreditted though that there are no Marxist parties in the West nor even any Statist leaders. Bill Clinton and Tony Blair were toi the Right of Churchill and Ike/Reagan.

All modern forms of statism are rationalizations of Hegel and Marx.

"modern" gives away the point, but even at that it's untrue. The Sa'uds didn't require Marx.