[Mb-civic] In Defense Of Success - EJ Dionne - Washington Post

[William Swiggard]

<>In Defense Of Success
Government Really Can Lessen Poverty

By E. J. Dionne Jr.

Tuesday, July 19, 2005; Page A21

The problem with liberals, conservatives often say, is that they are too 
committed to old programs. This is an odd criticism coming from 
conservatives who regularly hail the low-tax, small-government policies 
of Calvin Coolidge as a model for good government. If wanting to bring 
back the 1920s isn't backward-looking, what is?

In fact, liberals suffer from a different problem: They rarely talk 
about what their programs have actually achieved. In the face of the 
attack on government since the 1970s, liberals have often fallen mute -- 
or pretended to be just as anti-government as their conservative rivals.

<>Alternatively, some on the left worry that saying certain things are 
working is a form of selling out because it distracts attention from all 
that is wrong. Ben Wattenberg and the late Richard Scammon cleverly 
parodied this approach more than three decades ago, when they wrote that 
liberals often seemed to declare: "Our programs have failed. Let us 
continue."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/07/18/AR2005071801327.html 

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