American politics has munged the meaning of both Liberalism and Conservatism to parody or farce. However, even the slur of 'liberalism' defines a form of politics that is consistent for an argument within liberal democracy of the role of the individual and a state; Conservatism however now means pre-modernism, pre-enlightenment, and executive authoritarianism. American conservatism is no longer founded within the political philosophy of liberalism or republicanism.

The irony for American conservatives is that America is a very liberal nation and John McCain's politics are an argument within liberalism as to the role of the individual and state. He has been made a front-runner through the primaries, where average voters democratically, through varying state by state laws, choose the candidates that will run for the national executive. Yet the power-brokers in GOP and conservative politics see him as a traitor to conservatism.

This is a modern conservatism founded in hyper-nationalism (immigration and the enemy within), where religion and the state are fused, where the executive is the ultimate authority, and the state is unencumbered by individual or political rights. This is a pre-enlightenment and pre-modern view of the state.

Since the collapse of socialism as a viable political philosophy, the new challenger to liberalism and republicanism has become the American view of conservatism. This is mirrored in other parts of the world, such as the suffocating Islamic systems in the Middle East which is why conservative commentators like Dinesh D'Suiza find common ground with Juhayman al Uteybi and Osama Bin Laden.

This article is correct, but it is also an inside window into the fall of American conservatism. It is written in populist terms with some mythical conspiratorial elite and supposedly non-elected policy makers:

That is the deal the Federal Reserve has made on behalf of the public. It's the latest chapter in the socialization of risk and its corollary, moral hazard.

Anyone who works long enough on Wall Street knows, at least subconsciously, that this is the way things work: if the going gets tough, a small coterie of unelected and mostly unaccountable officials in Washington will probably decide that your employer is too important to fail.

In an effort to keep that from happening, wages, savings, fixed-income streams, and Social Security checks will be inflated away to "ensure the stability of the financial system."

I agree that this risk shouldn't be socialised, and there was a time when US policy makers would let big companies fail without being bailed out, however this article serves more as insight into conservatism's lost nature. You can imagine a populist like Chavez railing against the government with the same language.

The supposedly unelected policy makers are not the apolitical hidden elite this article imagines. The US Federal Reserve is one of the more political reserve banks and is politically influenced. There was an article not so long ago of Bush himself persuading fed policy by sending a bunch of cuss-words down the telephone line.

It is populism at its worst, similar to Cheney's "deficits don't matter." They do, just not politically.

Populism from the current Administration and Congress is an easier cop out than enforcing an economic policy that punishes failed risk with economic failure. This darwinianism is how it is supposed to be. The Bush Administration and Congress are avoiding that by inflating their way out of economic difficulties.

The title of the article, "Papering over the problem" is absolutely correct. It is a bad policy. However it is not one from a hidden elite, or non-elected policy makers; the policy is inherently political.

John Howard espoused his philosophy of conservative governance in his Australia Day speech in 2006. It included:

The permanent challenge for Australia is to avoid the extremes of big, overbearing government on the one hand and laissez-faire indifference on the other.

There is much in American society which I admire, but I have long held the view that the absence of an effective safety net in that country means that too many needy citizens fall by the wayside. That is not the path that Australia will tread. Nor do we want the burdens of nanny state paternalism that now weigh down many economies in Europe.

In this he is constrained as Australians are used to many of the social institutions such as medicare - which is really only a modern institution - and Howard was a majoritarian and nationalist populist. There are always inconsistencies in these views as well, Howard increased the pace of national legislation, regulation and centralization, while weakening many other wider safety nets through sectarian subsidy (private health for instance).

It is also popular to bash the laissez-faire nature of America, but it is that laissez-faire with which Australian economic rationalism was based upon, not to mention American capitalism saw off central planning and communism as an alternative means of social organization.

The main failure of modern American government was governance itself. The lack of adherence to existing regulations meant that financial institutions were able to act criminally and fraudulently; leading to a massive taxpayer bailout of the financial system under-pinning the American and global economy.

Australia did not have that issue, and certainly not to the same extent as the US did. In this Australian conservatism was superior to American conservatism.