Plan 9 From Pacifica

A little while back I suggested that the natural analogue to the reactionaries on Fox News and elsewhere was the John Birch Society, but I wondered at the time if I was being completely fair. In the end I left it that way because it seemed more or less right. Now there’s validation: Next year’s Conservative Political Action Conference is actually being co-sponsored by the John Birch Society! The mind reels.

As I was reading this excellent article in the New Republic, it made me wonder:

The next time Republicans are elected to control the federal government, will they still be the people who think government can’t do anything right? And if so, is there any reason to think they’ll even try to do things right?

Here, from a sidebar to that article, are some choice quotes from conservatives decrying “instrusive” government over the years:

“It may be impracticable that our distinctively American experiment of individual freedom should go on.”
—Senator David Hill (D-NY), in 1894, bemoaning the creation of a federal income tax

“Woman suffrage would give to the wives and daughters of the poor a new opportunity to gratify their envy and mistrust of the rich. Meantime these new voters would become either the purchased or cajoled victims of plausible political manipulators, or the intimidated and helpless voting vassals of imperious employers.”
—Former President Grover Cleveland, in 1905, on why women shouldn’t be able to vote

“[T]he child will become a very dominant factor in the household and might refuse perhaps to do chores before six a.m. or after seven p.m. or to perform any labor.”
—Senator Weldon Heyburn (R-ID), in 1908, on why child labor should remain unregulated

“I fear it may end the progress of a great country and bring its people to the level of the average European. It will furnish delicious food and add great strength to the political demagogue. It will assist in driving worthy and courageous men from public life. It will discourage and defeat the American trait of thrift. It will go a long way toward destroying American initiative and courage.”
—Senator Daniel O. Hastings (R-DE), in 1935, listing the evils of Social Security

“[I]t would make it practically impossible for any publisher in the United States to accept any food, drug, or cosmetic advertising without facing squarely into the doors of a jail.”
—Federal Trade Commission Chair Ewin L. Davis, in 1935, on the dangers of empowering the Food and Drug Administration to regulate the food, drug, and cosmetic industries

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Democrats Clinch a Deal on Health Bill (NYT)

The Republicans’ Take:

Senator Richard Burr, Republican of North Carolina, said that Democrats would pay a political price.

“The lines are drawn,” Senator Burr added. “He has to get 60 votes. If he doesn’t get 60 votes, the American people win. If he does get them, America’s payback will come in the form of the 2010 elections.”

Because there’s nothing the American people love more than having their health care coverage for life-threatening conditions denied because of pre-existing conditions.