Something about Mark Steyn's point about Obama, Paul Anthony Rahe, and Soft Despotism rubs me the wrong way. I think that it is the fact that it isn't totally absurd even though it comes from an individual whose views on Europe, France especially I despise:
To the new Administration, American exceptionalism means an exceptional
effort to harness an exceptionally big government in the cause of
exceptionally massive spending. The can-do spirit means Ty’Sheoma
Bethea can do with some government money: A high-school student in
Dillon, South Carolina, Miss Bethea wrote to the President to ask him
to do something about the peeling paint in her classroom. He read the
letter out approvingly in a televised address to Congress. Imagine if
Miss Bethea gets her way, and the national bureaucracy in Washington
becomes responsible for grade- school paint jobs from Maine to Hawaii.
What size of government would be required for such a project? And is it
compatible with a constitutional republic?
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