Comments on: The Financier http://www.frumforum.com/the-financier Building a conservatism that can win again Sat, 11 Feb 2012 17:50:44 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.2 hourly 1 By: rittelme-this http://www.frumforum.com/the-financier/comment-page-1#comment-61631 rittelme-this Thu, 27 Aug 2009 04:41:36 +0000 http://www.newmajority.com/?p=7648#comment-61631 "Civil servants should not be appointed or removed on political grounds" -- a popular opinion, but not unassailable! Before TV and radio a party needed ward-heelers, and ward-heelers needed day jobs. Where else should they have gotten them but patronage? Should politics have been left to wealthy men and bored society matrons? I can understand exempting certain categories from the vagaries of party politics -- schoolteachers, say -- but, if it makes the difference between a party that functions and one that doesn't, isn't patronage worth it? Or, at the very least, wasn't it worth it in the 1880s when parties depended on it? “Civil servants should not be appointed or removed on political grounds” — a popular opinion, but not unassailable! Before TV and radio a party needed ward-heelers, and ward-heelers needed day jobs. Where else should they have gotten them but patronage? Should politics have been left to wealthy men and bored society matrons?

I can understand exempting certain categories from the vagaries of party politics — schoolteachers, say — but, if it makes the difference between a party that functions and one that doesn’t, isn’t patronage worth it? Or, at the very least, wasn’t it worth it in the 1880s when parties depended on it?

]]> By: The Titan http://www.frumforum.com/the-financier/comment-page-1#comment-56585 The Titan Mon, 20 Jul 2009 03:45:33 +0000 http://www.newmajority.com/?p=7648#comment-56585 [...] Ayn Rand novel written by a socialist” was my assessment of Thomas Dreiser’s The Financier. That description applies even more forcefully to Dreiser’s [...] [...] Ayn Rand novel written by a socialist” was my assessment of Thomas Dreiser’s The Financier. That description applies even more forcefully to Dreiser’s [...]

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