Hoppe (from 2005) stirs it up:

… one of the most fundamental laws of economics … says that all compulsory wealth or income redistribution, regardless of the criteria on which it is based, involves taking from some — the havers of something — and giving it to others — the non-havers of something. Accordingly, the incentive to be a haver is reduced, and the incentive to be a non-haver increased. What the haver has is characteristically something considered “good,” and what the non-haver does not have is something “bad” or a deficiency. Indeed, this is the very idea underlying any redistribution: some have too much good stuff and others not enough. The result of every redistribution is that one will thereby produce less good and increasingly more bad, less perfection and more deficiencies. By subsidizing with tax funds (with funds taken from others) people who are poor, more poverty (bad) will be created. By subsidizing people because they are unemployed, more unemployment (bad) will be created. By subsidizing unwed mothers, there will be more unwed mothers and more illegitimate births (bad), etc. […] Obviously, this basic insight applies to the entire system of so-called social security that has been implemented in Western Europe (from the 1880s onward) and the U.S. (since the 1930s): of compulsory government “insurance” against old age, illness, occupational injury, unemployment, indigence, etc. In conjunction with the even older compulsory system of public education, these institutions and practices amount to a massive attack on the institution of the family and personal responsibility.

With the conclusion:

Most contemporary conservatives, then, especially among the media darlings, are not conservatives but socialists — either of the internationalist sort (the new and neoconservative welfare-warfare statists and global social democrats) or of the nationalist variety (the Buchananite populists). Genuine conservatives must be opposed to both. In order to restore social and cultural norms, true conservatives can only be radical libertarians, and they must demand the demolition — as a moral and economic distortion — of the entire structure of the interventionist state.

(Everything works for me except the senseless ‘demand’ rhetoric, which is residual Jacobinism.)

HT Hurlock.

Richard Fernandez makes a basic, but essential point:

Mention repealing Obamacare and you are told it is impossible; even John Boehner said, it’s the ‘law of the land’. Brown vs Board is the law of the land, Roe vs Wade is the law of the land, but Hobby Lobby or Citizens United is an abomination to be repealed or ignored soonest. It’s like a ratchet. It moves only in the way of the approved narrative.

This is the same insight identified by this blog as The Idea of Neoreaction, which is to say: recognition of a degenerative ratchet as the central mechanism of ‘progress’ (to the Left). Fernandez draws explicit attention to its constitutive asymmetry. Partisan polarity is revealed as a one-way conveyor, alternating between ‘stop’ and ‘go left’. Two-party democratic politics is structurally-established as an inevitable loser’s game for the Right. Once this is seen, how is the thought of ‘conservative activism’ in any way sustainable, except as a transparently futile joke? Hasn’t the line already been crossed to the dark side?

Fernandez is still hedging:

… the real news is this: it’s not working any more. Even Obamacare might actually be repealed. Liberal foreign policy might really go down in flames. Already the authorities are warning of bombs on inbound airline flights. And Obama might actually be the worst president since World War 2. Things used to be under control; what happened? […] History suggests that over time all conflict becomes symmetrical.  Eventually both sides become equally brutal. […] If there is any lesson taught by history it is that man when driven far enough is the most dangerous and merciless life form on the planet.

It’s not at all clear to me what’s really being said here. Is this an anticipation of counter-revolution? Or is it merely the tired claim that the next election could really make a difference? 

Even in the most depressing case, something is being seen that would very much rather not be seen. If acute conservative opinion is tiring of its role as the Cathedral’s loyal opposition, it indicates that the mechanism is beginning to break down.