Last time Americans were sold on an imminent threat requiring unchecked executive authority, we got a bloody quagmire

The American Conservative -- Fourteen Days

As we go to press, Congress is poised to give Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson 5 percent of our GDP to make the worst possible investment. He wants taxpayers to take out Wall Street’s trash—and pay $700 billion for the privilege.

Sound familiar? Last time Americans were sold on an imminent threat requiring unchecked executive authority, we got a bloody quagmire. Now the rush is on again. Congress is balking at the massive outlay, but Representative Average, from the 4th district of Wherever, is a little fuzzy on how derivatives work. So when the Fed chairman and Treasury secretary say that if he doesn’t play along, it’s economic Armageddon—don’t forget that the election is just two months away—he’ll give them what they want.

Our friends at The Nation have discovered a kind of socialism that they don’t like, the kind that involves banks. Give the leading magazine of the Left points—it’s right about bailouts that nationalize risk while keeping profits private. William Greider calls this “Goldman Sachs Socialism,” though it turns out he favors outright communism over Paulson’s puny measures: “Washington should literally take control of the banking and finance sector and employ its emergency powers to oversee and direct these private, profit-making enterprises.”

Who’s to blame for the unfolding financial crisis? According to many conservatives, poor black people and, of course, Democrats.

National Review Online indicts President Carter’s Community Reinvestment Act for the meltdown. The CRA emboldened community organizers—like you-know-who—to force banks to make loans to uncreditworthy minorities, you see. Terry Jones of Investor’s Business Daily blames Clinton’s “multicultural housing policy” and his mandates to increase home ownership among blacks and Hispanics.

Nothing excuses politically correct credit, but did community organizers really force lenders to infect all financial markets by repackaging their bad mortgages into securities? Did poor blacks invent credit default swaps?

  The neocons are a treasonous pack of swine, but these paleo-conservatives at The American Conservative Magazine seem like a pretty decent bunch of folks on the whole. I'm mostly more in agreement with The Nation, and it is nice to see it regarded cordially by the paleo-cons. I've long since concluded that if there is any hope for the US, it lies in an alliance between the Left and paleo-cons (Ron Paul, for example) with an agreement to disagree on things like socialised medicing and so forth and settle such issues once the country is saved from the neocons and the Fascists for Jesus and the like.