From Shields:
"American voters are philosophically conservative but operationally liberal. That is not a contradiction...when interviewed Americans will more often tell you that they want the federal government, with all its red tape, out of their pockets, out of their hair and a lot smaller. Unmistakably conservative.But these same folks...when told that just outside of Pocatello, Idaho, a single can of tuna fish had been discovered with a trace of botulism in it, react less theoretically: Where the heck was the federal government? I want a full report on my desk by tomorrow morning explaining what went wrong and what is being done about it. Who's responsible? Emphatically liberal-activist
'All most Americans want is an accountable, energetic, effective but small federal government working on our side — 24 hours a day — cheap'...
The philosophical conservatives' quarter-century day in the sun is about to end. Deregulation, the magic silver bullet to cure any and all national ills, has been found wanting. You had to know that...'self-regulation' (the preferred euphemism for U.S.government authorities asking no questions and demanding no answers)[would eventually end]...we can now hold a real countrywide debate about the proper role of government in our national life...
We could begin with this: 'The legitimate object of government is to do for a community of people what they need to have done, but cannot do at all, or cannot so well do, for themselves — in their separate and individual capacities.' That is the straightforward definition of the nation's most revered Republican, Abraham Lincoln...
'We must find practical controls over blind economic forces and blindly selfish men,' Franklin Delano Roosevelt told his fellow citizens the last time their country went through a similar financial crisis."
http://www.caglepost.com/column.aspx?c=7889
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