What Is Conservatism?

Tyler Cowen provides his answer in list form. Number eight:

Fiscal conservatism is part and parcel of conservatism per se.  A state wrecked by debt is a state due to perish or fall into decay.  This is a lesson from history.  States must "save up their powder" for true crises and it is a kind of narcissistic arrogation to think that the personal failures of particular individuals -- often those with weak values -- meet this standard.

There is one glimmer of hope in the current insanity on the right. And it is that with Bush's spending and borrowing binge finally over, and the recession pushing the debt into the danger zone, some on the right are finally saying today what Bruce Bartlett and I were saying six years ago: that the first job of conservative government is to restore fiscal balance by cutting spending. This is enormously difficult right now because of the recession, but it is, in my view, the first priority of actual conservative governance in the future. Which is why when you hear Michael Steele prattling on about a Medicare bill of rights it's so depressing. If the GOP party chairman is pledging to throw away any fiscal restraint and become a Democrat of the cynical scare-the-seniors variety, then the reformation has a ways to go.

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