Reform conservatism is an answer to the wrong question

Not only is this defeatist at its core, abandoning the cause of small government at the outset, but it fails to address the most important problem facing the country.

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“Reform conservatism” is an answer to the question: how can we promote the goal of freedom and small government—without posing any outright challenge to the welfare state? The answer: you can’t. All you can do is tinker around the edges of Leviathan. And ultimately, it won’t make much difference, because it will all be overwelmed in the coming disaster.

America’s real problem is that we have entrenched a set of middle-class entitlements that are about to yawn wide open and swallow the economy. They’ve already swallowed the federal budget. Non-defense discretionary spending—the stuff left over after entitlements and the military—has been whittled down to insignificance and is about to disappear altogether. Defense spending is still quite large, but not much larger than the deficit. What this means is that most of the money the federal government actually raises in taxes is immediately spent on entitlements, and we have to borrow huge sums of money to pay for anything else.

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