The Corner | National Review Online

The Corner | National Review Online: "Unfortunately, you’ve grown up hearing voices that incessantly warn of government as nothing more than some separate, sinister entity that’s at the root of all our problems; some of these same voices also doing their best to gum up the works. They’ll warn that tyranny is always lurking just around the corner. You should reject these voices. Because what they suggest is that our brave and creative and unique experiment in self-rule is somehow just a sham with which we can’t be trusted.

We have never been a people who place all of our faith in government to solve our problems; we shouldn’t want to. But we don’t think the government is the source of all our problems, either. Because we understand that this democracy is ours. And as citizens, we understand that it’s not about what America can do for us; it’s about what can be done by us, together, through the hard and frustrating but absolutely necessary work of self-government. And, Class of 2013, you have to be involved in that process.

The founders trusted us with this awesome authority. We should trust ourselves with it, too."

'via Blog this'


This speech implicitly hits on two premises underlie modern liberalism that when put together  logically lead to hostility to democracy.

Premise One: our democratic government can and should do a lot of things well--things beyond even the scope of what we are currently doing.

Premise Two: when government does a bad job, it is because anti-government forces have thwarted what otherwise could have been accomplished. Government's failures should be blamed on those people who were not on board with accomplishing the task.

When you put the two together, you start to understand why Thomas Friedman is always extolling the virtues of China's lack of democracy. Their government can get things done because they don't have messy election and democracy to deal with.

If you believe that (1) government should do more, and (2) it's efforts to do so are frequently thwarted by democratic opposition, you eventually must conclude that (3) democracy is not a the best form of government to get done what needs to be done.