Week of Quotes Part 3

Ideas are powerful. Even old ideas can remain influential for years. While Obama would like to say his ideas are new and that his government spending necessary and revolutionary, he's really just practicing old economic ideas, namely Keynesian economics and LBJ-type government spending. It's yet to be seen whether Obama will outspend and out-liberal FDR and LBJ, but BHO is giving them a run for our money.

In that vein, then, I give you Lord John Maynard Keynes. It is the liberal establishment that's always appreciated Keynes, but Obama's consistent insistence that he's bringing a new era of governing to Washington has always been misleading. Keynes responds decades ago:

The ideas of economists and political philospohers, both when they are right
and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood.
Indeed the world is ruled by little else. Practical men, who believe
themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually the
slave of some defunct economist. Madmen in authority, who hear voices in
the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years
back. I am sure that the power of vested interests is vastly exaggerated
compared with the gradual encroachment of ideas.

From The Worldy Philosophers by Robert Heilbroner