Shortly after the bailout legislation was shot down in the House, someone Arnold Kling said, “David Brooks is not going to be happy.” ”David Brooks must be horrified.”  He had no idea:

And let us recognize above all the 228 who voted no — the authors of this revolt of the nihilists [bold mine-DL]. They showed the world how much they detest their own leaders and the collected expertise of the Treasury and Fed.

This may seem pedantic, but nihilists are exactly what the opponents of the bill are not.  You may think that they have helped unleash destructive forces, but they did not do so out of some perverse desire to tear everything to the ground a la Bazarov.  Far from being nihilists, the opponents of the bill were persuaded, I think reasonably enough, that they were resisting a dangerous encroachment of government power and an abuse of taxpayers’ money; they believed that they were preserving a system and a part of the modern American way of life.  Perhaps they were wrong, but whatever else they were they definitely believed in preservation, not destruction.

Filed under: politics