Democracy is on the brink of a sea change. By Janet Daley. The Telegraph, January 26, 2013.
Daley:
The
core message was pounded home relentlessly: American government is now in the
redistribution and welfare-provision business, and this is not (contrary to
appearances) at variance with the founding fathers’ conception of a nation that
is inherently opposed to state interference and domination over the individual.
This is the new credo of American nationhood: the government, not the community
or the household, will be the moral arbiter of social virtue. The traditional
suspicion of the overweening power of the state is now a thing of the past.
Democracy is about electing a government that will be there to protect you from
hardship, shelter you from the storm and absolve you from sin. Well, no, maybe
not that last one – but the concept of the state as moral saviour is not so
remote from this, is it?
