Friedmanism

Kevin Drum is writing about The Economist magazine and Social Security, but I think it's a good description of the general phenomenon of "Friedmanism."

In other words, there's no real crisis, the details of Bush's plan are all wrong, and it does nothing to rescue Social Security anyway. But we support it for the same reason George Bush does: because it's one of our ideological hobbyhorses.

And if it eventually becomes law as one of his usual bloated, policy-free, crony friendly monstrosities, they'll be able to point back to this editorial and piously say, We'd never have supported doing it that way. We endorsed the proper version of privatization.

And then they'll move on to enthusiastic support of his next plan.