Word: statism
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...humanity against ideology. The 20th was the most ideological of centuries. Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin systematically sacrificed millions to false and terrible dogmas. Even within the democracies, ideologues believed that the Great Depression imposed an either/or choice: if you abandon laissez-faire, you are condemned to total statism. "Partial regimentation cannot be made to work," said Herbert Hoover, "and still maintain live democratic institutions...
...Fried made the case of `statism' [in the rentcontrol debate]," Turk says. "He argued that localcommunities have very limited powers and that itis the state which grants and withdraws powers atits whim. I think he has severely warped what wasthe home rule relationship between localcommunities and their states...
Within a few years, this debacle was a laughing stock even in the Soviet Union itself; and yet, today, it is an idea which is again be enthusiastically touted as a spur of creativity. Where could such an outlandish failure of socialist statism find a new intellectual home? Where else, but the place that has always shown itself a safe-haven for bureaucratic absurdities. As though it has not done enough in preserving the tradition of pointless paperwork, generous sinecures, proliferating committees, sub-committees, and ad hoc working groups, Harvard has now decided it should adopt the animus...
...Warren T. Brookes succinctly captured this sentiment when he recently wrote, "If the so-called American 'liberal' left had any real self-respect, they would now be engaged in agonized reflection and collective head-banging over the appalling errors of their own pusillanimous predelictions for the impoverishing hand of statism, and their long contempt for freedom's economic agenda...
...these inconvenient facts don't discourage conservatives. Eastern Europe's flirtation with social democracy, they believe, is just a symptom of their inability to wean themselves from welfare statism. After the Hungarians and Czechs learn a few tough lessons about the economic infeasibility of welfare, conservatives say, they will see that the only way to true prosperity is the American way--a sink-or-swim economy...