That’s not, of course, a contradiction in terms. (Which may be why I’m less spooked than some by the idea of “Progressive conservatism”) Another way of putting this is, as Harvard’s Edward Glaeser did in the NYT, “small-government egalitarianism”. Key point:
Precisely. Glaeser quotes Woodrow Wilson, who though an egregiously terrible president in many ways was correct on this: “If the government is to tell big business men how to run their business, then don’t you see that big business men have to get closer to the government even than they are now?”Libertarian progressivism distrusts big increases in government spending because that spending is likely to favor the privileged.”
All too true. The professor adds:
Today, the New Deal’s heirs are vociferously arguing that more of the stimulus package needs to be spent on public works rather than tax cuts. The big-government skeptics point out that the government can’t spend hundreds of billions of dollars on infrastructure projects both wisely and quickly.
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