Monday, April 18, 2005
The whining liberals at National Review
The libertarian leaning conservatives over at National Review always seem to find some kind of law they want passed whenever they get offended.
Now, because of this tragedy, Jonah Goldberg’s typical kneejerk reaction is that school busses should have seatbelts. Of course, Jonah ignores the facts:
# Safety Statistics. Last year, 45 states had not a single child killed as a school bus occupant - an incredible safety record. Between 1990 and 2000, an average of just six children each year died as school bus passengers. These tragedies typically involved unavoidable, severe circumstances.
# Trust the school bus for the best safety for your child. The Transportation Research Board of the National Academy of Sciences estimates that every year more than 800 school-aged children are killed as passengers in other motor vehicles, or walking or riding bicycles, during “normal school transportation hours.” Most of these deaths could be prevented if children rode in school buses. Parents need to know that driving a child to school is not a safety smart decision - hands down, the school bus is the safest way to and from school. Even worse, allowing a child to drive themselves to school, or riding with other teenagers to school, increases the risk of fatality by 10 percent.
Come on Jonah, go ahead and say it: “I’m doing it for the children. If it saves the life of one child...”
Note: I like Jonah, and agree with a lot, (not all), of what is espoused over at NRO. It gets me how easily they shrug off their anti-big-government costumes for special causes. A lot days they sound like a gaggle of whining liberals.
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With regard to marijuana legalization and a few other issues perhaps NRO is libertarian leaning, but, by my reading, it would be tough to attribute a classical liberal bent to a website that regularly argues for interventionism and government intervention, for better or worse, in social issues. Further, conservatives are much more intrusive and given to passing laws than libertarians. This is precisely why libertarians have had such issues with the current administration over things like the PATRIOT Act.
Shawn, I assume you meant “classical libertarian bent”.
As to whether or not they are libertarians or plain old conservatives, some days The Corner switches back-and-forth so fast I get whiplash. Which I wouldn’t mind so much, except they’re so self righteous about it. Which, I guess, is the core of my complaint.
I’m guessing Shawn meant just what he said. A classical liberal is much closer to a Libertarian than a Democrat these days. Virginia Postrel, for instance, describes herself as a classical liberal.
And the Corner is primarily populated by straight up religious (read: Catholic) conservatives. As it should be, since it’s run by a magazine founded by Bill Buckley.
Yeah, classical liberal=libertarian. Liberalism, with its emphasis on state control, hardly fits the definition of the word “liberal.” Then again, since neo-conservatives seem to have likewise fallen in love with statism, I guess definitions are beginning to matter less and less. You can have a lot more government or jus more government. Libertarianism is not really chic in any quarters these days.
What rock are you people living under?
The only groups I see trying to get more government intervention lately have been so called ‘conservative’ groups. For saking the party i grew up with in PA.
No one argued that conservatives aren’t a big government party, Uber. I was just saying that National Review conservatives are not libertarians.