I Like Charles Koch
I've been reading lots of stuff on billionaire Charles Koch recently. Yesterday the Washington Post had an interview with him and the head of the United Negro (gasp!) College Fund. The two are friends, with some political differences to be sure. The Washington Post has another short interview with him today.
He considers himself a classic liberal, that being the old style liberal believing in doing as you want, just don't hurt anybody. Kinda as we saw with the hippies back in the '60s. I'd say he's right and he's not as enamored of Republicans as some might think:
"I like a lot of the Republican rhetoric better than the Democrats’. But when they’re in office, it’s pretty much the same thing. It’s serving their supporters, it’s corporate welfare, it’s cronyism which is so destructive, particularly to the disadvantaged. I think the Democrats are taking us down the road to serfdom at 100 miles an hour, and I think the Republicans are taking us at 70 miles an hour. If we can have a candidate like Calvin Coolidge that would reverse that trajectory, or like [former prime minister William] Gladstone did in Great Britain, man, I would shout it to the world. But I haven’t seen that yet."
So why does he seem to still support Republicans? Simple enough: He thinks they offer the best chance- however small- to bring about the changes he'd like to see made. As he points out, if he had his way, there would be lots of changes made already. He's not as powerful as some like to think. I wish him the best in his endeavors.
posted by Fred Mangels @ 2:49 PM
4 comments
4 Comments:
You would.
Here's a more liberal interpretation of Frack-Water Jack's 'Civil Rights' angle. Perhaps not in that classic sense, which properly belongs only to those two, madcap, '60's hippies, Chuck and Dave Koch, but that slobbic-liberal newspaper, The Chicago Tribune:
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/huppke/ct-koch-brothers-forum-huppke-20150803-story.html
And no one is being harmed by Koch industries, eh? Just too many government regulations crimping the owner's freedoms.
Yes, Chaz Koch is the rich, white epitome of MLK, Jr. and his fight for civil rights. Which bridge will Chaz be marching across?
A "classic liberal" is a conservative. The terms have evolved.
"A "classic liberal" is a conservative."
The terms might have evolved, but I'm not sure you could say a classic liberal is a conservative. For example, during the Viet Nam War conservatives, at least most I was aware of, supported the war. The hippies, and some others, thought it wrong.
Then there's the pot thing that many hippie/ classic liberals supported leaving alone. The "conservatives" went down hard on it.
There were some on the side, like William Buckley and Barry Goldwater that might have been in tune with the classic liberals, at least on some issues (not sure where Goldwater stood on pot).
I'm not sure you could describe most classic liberals as conservatives. There might well be a large number of them now, but it's hard to say as they're ignored by the mainstream media and the concept of Classic Liberal isn't even on their radar.
I can't think of any of the major candidates considered to be on the Republican/ Conservative side that I'd call classic liberal, aside from maybe Rand Paul, and that would be a stretch.
The "Negro" in United Negro College Fund came from it's founding in 1944 - I'm assuming by an African American.
"Negro" was a term you used in polite society (ie the blogosphere) in 2015. Yes, I did *gasp* when I read it.
For the record, Coolidge is the first-coming of Reagan for staunch Republicans such as Michael Medved. He is loved.
It's interesting to hear Charles Koch complain about corporate welfare. He would have a great deal of influence to work against it.
I'm glad you like Charles though Fred, you can't be too happy with Rand's (and thus libertarian's) national hopes lately. No schadenfreude, I am sincerely sorry that he is being Trumped like everyone else.
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