Little Red Blog

It isn't often that the examples are so clearly stated in the print media of New York City, unless you are talking about a paper other than the Times.

Ryan Sager, for the New York Post, has hit the nail on the head, in his opinion piece aptly titled: The Power of Good Ideas."

Here the good ideas are those of conservatism in a city that for far too long fell into decay as a bastion of Liberal policies and their ideals. While the ideals may sound so grand and wonderful, the implementation forgets that mankind is not built to do good, but must rather work at it.

Sager offers

"a New York Times editor interviewed liberal columnist Anthony Lewis as he was retiring from the paper. One question: "Have you changed your views on socialism?" Lewis' answer: "I'm still for it. But it doesn't work.""

Yet so many still support the socialist ideals in practice not just in spirit. New York offers the examples of how the ideas of conservatism are not only superior in spirit but in practical implementation. These are ideas that lead to an improvement in man, something that Liberalism once stood for.

As examples Sager points to welfare reform, restored standards at CUNY, and broken-window policing. Each offers powerful evidence of how standards actually bring men to greater responsibility and accountability.

Then the question of course is:

"Can Bush bring Americans around to his compassionate-conservative agenda of holding children to tougher academic standards, opening up social services to entrepreneurship and reducing the tax burden on all Americans?

Maybe he could if all Americans were New Yorkers."

The question I have is will New Yorkers quickly forget the transformation and how it happened, as the Germans and South Korean's have forgotten the role the U.S. played in their success. For me, I've seen how easy it is to forget, I did it. And that is a terrible thing to admit, and something that haunts me everyday.