Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev came out swinging against the policies of the current Russian regime, and hinted yesterday that he may return to politics in some fashion. He urged Vladimir Putin to restructure the economy and cut government spending. "We have paternalistic expectations of government support," he told a conference gathered at one of his charitable organizations.
Hmm...reduce reliance on big government; restructure the economy, presumably away from central planning toward market-based reform and ensuring political freedoms?
Sounds downright conservative.
Truly, the world has been turned on its head
Saturday, November 21, 2009
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3 comments:
Good Grief! Ronald Reagan had more of an impact on this guy than I thought.
Most social scientist describe conservatives as being most likely to seek status quo and avoid change... the current use of conservatism, which is frequently misused, is once again misused.... protectionist policies use to be associated with conservatism.... here are some more:
Gorbachev actions were down-right liberal...However, he did not intend to be so... regardless, he wanted change, just not as much as the country received.
• resistant to change
• having social or political views favoring conservatism
• cautious: avoiding excess; "a conservative estimate"
• a person who is reluctant to accept changes and new ideas
• button-down: unimaginatively conventional; "a colorful character in the buttoned-down, dull-grey world of business"- Newsweek
• a member of a Conservative Party
• bourgeois: conforming to the standards and conventions of the middle class; "a bourgeois mentality"
Thank you for the gratuitous, if useless textbook definition of "conservatism".
The point of my post was to contrast the current US administration's advocacy of modern progressive/liberal "big government" policies against someone who once administered some of the very same policies in his own country and now appears to be speaking out critically on them. And I think if you polled these social scientists to which you refer, you would find that most if not all would include some sort of verbiage on limited government in their definition of modern (US) conservatism.
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