Comments Posted By lgude
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KILL THE MESSENGER! OR IS THE MESSAGE ALREADY DEAD?
I recognize the process of blogging from the last couple of years doing Yankeewombat.com. I've come to very similar conclusions myself about how much blogs are about our own development and I'll see if I can do a piece on the media aspects of the effects of blogging on the blogger at my newer blog newmediatheory.net. Ironically I tend to think of conservatism as ahead of liberalism (my background) because it reinvented itself more recently under Thatcher and Reagan. So a conservative calling for new blood and ideas is good news indeed. That is supposed to be the job of the 'progressive' side of politics, but of course its everyone's job. I believe the left have a nascent neo-left in things like the Euston Menefesto but it hasn't really gelled yet. I think the radical left is as reactionary and empty as a cabal of clerical monarchists. 'Hey, I like the Christianist iconography of your Che t-shirt dude.' Or whatever.
If I had to point at one issue where I think a new conservativtism might make a real contribution it's the debate on national healthcare that is coming up in the US sooner or later. I say that from Australia where we have both a national and private heath care system and after many adjustments to both by both our Labor Party and more conservative Liberal Party we have a very good system worthy of study. It seems to be working well because we have managed to make them complementary in a way that each acts as a safety net for the other and each keeps the other relatively honest.
Put another way the market doesn't work that well for healthcare, but I think market principles can be utilized if government sets public and private entities up in a way that the players are forced to modify their behavior or lose out to the rival system. If waiting lists get too long, more people buy private health insurance. If private care gets too expensive more people drop their private coverage and rely on the government system. I like the idea of a conservatism that deals with today's problems and institutions on the basis of hard experience rather than ideology that fixes it gaze on an impossible future in the middle distance.
Comment Posted By lgude On 24.10.2007 @ 08:37
