Aamused in Austin, TX

The Rockridge Institute is located here on Planet Berkeley. I came across an article just the other day which I'm still chewing on. It makes some valid points and shows some distinct flaws in our left-leaning knee-jerk outbursts such as 'Bush is an incompetent boob'. (I'm rather fond of more 'earthy' versions of this outburst including the words 'fucking' followed closely by 'idiot'.)

Progressives have fallen into a trap. Emboldened by President Bush’s plummeting approval ratings, progressives increasingly point to Bush’s “failures” and label him and his administration as incompetent. Self-satisfying as this criticism may be, it misses the bigger point. Bush’s disasters — Katrina, the Iraq War, the budget deficit — are not so much a testament to his incompetence or a failure of execution. Rather, they are the natural, even inevitable result of his conservative governing philosophy. It is conservatism itself, carried out according to plan, that is at fault.

Full article is available here and they encourage broad, free distribution.