The case for "big" government and Liberalism.

Leaving aside Wieseltier's desire for Obama to declare the case for liberalism, which I think he actually does rather well - he's certainly the first presidential candidate that I have ever heard espouse the case for unions - Wieseltier actually makes the case rather beautifully himself:

I want the president to tell the American people that, contrary to what they have been taught for many years, government is a jewel of human association and an heirloom of human reason; that government, though it may do ill, does good; that a lot of the good that government does only it can do; that the size of government must be fitted to the size of its tasks, and so, for a polity such as ours, big government is the only government; that strong government comports well with strong freedom, unless Madison was wrong; that a government based on rights cannot exclude from its concern the adversities of the people who confer upon it its legitimacy, or consign their remediation to the charitable moods of a preferred and decadent few; that Ronald Reagan, when he proclaimed categorically, without exception or complication, that "government is not the solution to the problem, government is the problem," was a fool; and that nobody was ever rescued, or enlarged, by being left alone. For all its grotesqueness, American government is a beautiful thing.

That's excellently put.

Tags: Liberalism, government, Obama