Principled and Pragmatic
Hugh Hewitt points to a significant challenge to Republicans in his brief discussion of the Bush administrations plans to reduce farm subsidies. As a matter of principle, farm subsidies should be cut or eliminated. Despite marketing campaigns that portray them as a means to protect and enable small farms, the subsidies turn out to be nothing more than corporate welfare. Pragmatically, the reduction or elimination of farm subsidies is a dangerous political move that, if handled ineffectively, could result in political defeats across the heartland.
No matter the issue, the challenge for principled center-right conservatives or libertarians (small “l” not the party) is to find the balance between our principles and the pragmatic implementation or not of them. While reading the blogs listed on the sidebar, I’m often struck by the struggle to find this balance and, at the same time, find that I’m unwilling to argue against the principle on almost all occasions (excepting of course when I disagree with it). This, I believe, is because principle is rare in public discourse, and the expression of it is noteworthy. That being said, we must also show our willingness to accept the pragmatic options that will most definitely fall short of our objectives, for our greatest objective has to be to have those who, at least marginally, share our worldview in the hallowed chambers of the House, Senate, White House, and Supreme Court.
Hugh was on Dennis Prager’s show for the last hour flogging Blog. It was, as you’d expect, an excellent hour even though much of it was Hugh explaining blogs to Dennis, who still doesn’t have one.
