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    Who are the NERD fund donors Mr Snyder?

    Raise the curtain.

    Media supporters of the welfare state have an ideology too


    By Jack McHughs Blog, Section News
    Posted on Thu Jun 25, 2009 at 04:32:29 PM EST
    Tags: media, ideology, statism (all tags)

    Two respected non-partisan organizations were cited in a recent Holland Sentinel editorial, "Finishing the budget must be Lansing's only priority" (June 24). The Citizens Research Council was labeled "non-partisan," while my own organization, the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, was dubbed "ideological."

    The CRC implicitly, and often explicitly, endorses the welfare/regulatory state status quo; it studies the current goverrnment establishment with an eye toward presenting options to make it more efficient and sustainable. The Mackinac Center studies state government with an eye toward toward reducing its current size and scope, and often makes specific recommendations for doing so.

    It is incorrect to imply that only the group opposing the big-government status quo is motivated by ideology, while the one supporting the status quo is ideology-neutral. In fact both groups are ideological. The Mackinac Center's ideology is technically called "classical liberalism," which is a preference for limited government instead of a welfare/regulatory state. The ideology that motivates the CRC, Michigan's state government and those who endorse its current size and scope is correctly (if scratchily) called "welfare statism." People who accept the status quo, and particularly those at the CRC, would characterize themselves as being supporters of "good government," which is certainly true.

    Failing to recognize that the group one belongs to has an ideology is a form of ethnocentrism common to most people. It's a tendency that every one of us fall prey to in varying measures, journalists included. Lifting the ethnocentric blinders usually requires an outsider to point out that the worldview one takes as the "natural state" is in fact a social construct - an ideology.

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    Is the Holland Sentinel smoking crack? (none / 0) (#1)
    by KG One on Thu Jun 25, 2009 at 05:18:39 PM EST
    Aside from you point about perpetuating government, I have never know the CRC to ever be in opposition to a tax hike, ANY tax hike.

    How any rational person can label that as "non-partisian"?

    Non-partisan AND Ideological (none / 0) (#2)
    by Jack McHughs Blog on Thu Jun 25, 2009 at 05:54:52 PM EST
    KG, you also have never seen the Mackinac Center support a tax hike, but that doesn't make us any less non-partisan than CRC genuinely is.

    We like elected members of either (or any) party whose behavior consistently supports our limited government preferences. Our feelings about those whose behavior moves public policy away in the opposite direction are different - and we aren't quite so virtuous as to always be able to separate the sin from the sinner, either. ;-) Regular readers of Right Michigan know very well that more than a few Republicans fall into that latter category.
     

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