# There's Nothing "Conservative" About Reneging on the Debt  ## Metadata - Author:: [[Charlie Sykes]] - Full Title:: There's Nothing "Conservative" About Reneging on the Debt - Category: #articles - URL: https://morningshots.thebulwark.com/p/theres-nothing-conservative-about?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email ## Highlights > Any plan to pay bondholders but not fund school lunches or the FAA or food safety or XYZ is just target practice for us,” a senior Democratic aide said… ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gq06fkq6wq6dtft869zhxdzp)) > The consequences of reneging on past bills could be dire… > **Worst of all, not raising the debt limit — that is, defaulting on our debt, for the first time in U.S. history — might cause a global financial crisis.** ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gq06g4bk15mhy2pkp2c8d9yf)) > The sanctity of contracts is at the heart of the success of the capitalist enterprise over the past two centuries,” **[Justin Fox wrote in](https://hbr.org/2011/07/what-kind-of-country-reneges-o)** ***[Harvard Business Review](https://hbr.org/2011/07/what-kind-of-country-reneges-o)***. “Mess with it at your peril.” ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gq06h3q778fzpkwyyd39ey63)) > My primer on the moral authority of contracts has been Harvard Law Professor Charles Fried’s *[Contract as Promise](http://www.amazon.com/Contract-as-Promise-Charles-Fried/dp/0674169301)*, written in 1981 (four years before Fried went to Washington to become Ronald Reagan’s Solicitor General) as a defense of the “classical liberal” (what most Americans would call conservative) approach to contracts against an assault from the Left. Yet now a group of politicians who call themselves conservatives appear willing to cheerfully repudiate the contracts that the U.S. government has entered into — or, perhaps worse, cheerfully pretend that their actions aren’t putting the country at risk of default. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gq06hgd0s377pgha8r78zm51)) > Fox quoted historian [Mark Lilla, who tried to suss out the origins of the faux-conservativism of the radicals he called “Tea Party Jacobins”:](https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2010/05/27/tea-party-jacobins/) > > **The new Jacobins have two classic American traits that have grown much more pronounced in recent decades: blanket distrust of institutions and an astonishing — and unwarranted — confidence in the self. They are apocalyptic pessimists about public life and childlike optimists swaddled in self-esteem when it comes to their own powers.** ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gq06hw3vae0t7b22bfkxpy49)) > It’s worth remembering that the vote over the debt limit is a self-inflicted, artificial crisis ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gq06j7h106wymsnv5rh2v708)) > **This is not what democracy looks like, and it is not rational governance.** > ***It’s madness.*** > **Which is, apparently, why we keep doing it.** ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gq06jthxxkgkec6ae3ed2rxr)) > Now, should Democrats have dealt with the debt limit while they still controlled both chambers of Congress? [Yes](https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/18/gop-debt-ceiling-plan-financial-crisis-recession/?itid=lk_inline_manual_31). [Absolutely](https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/22/debt-ceiling-deadline-congress-lame-duck/?itid=lk_inline_manual_31). If we breach the debt ceiling in the coming months, their failure to do so could turn out to be the biggest tactical blunder of the Biden era. > Even if Democrats erred in not neutralizing this bomb when they had the chance, though, blame for any subsequent carnage should be on the maniacs lighting the fuse. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gq06kq9swejdcq85r9ckc4zx)) # There's Nothing "Conservative" About Reneging on the Debt  ## Metadata - Author:: [[Charlie Sykes]] - Full Title:: There's Nothing "Conservative" About Reneging on the Debt - Category: #articles - URL: https://morningshots.thebulwark.com/p/theres-nothing-conservative-about?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email ## Highlights > Any plan to pay bondholders but not fund school lunches or the FAA or food safety or XYZ is just target practice for us,” a senior Democratic aide said… ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gq06fkq6wq6dtft869zhxdzp)) > The consequences of reneging on past bills could be dire… > **Worst of all, not raising the debt limit — that is, defaulting on our debt, for the first time in U.S. history — might cause a global financial crisis.** ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gq06g4bk15mhy2pkp2c8d9yf)) > The sanctity of contracts is at the heart of the success of the capitalist enterprise over the past two centuries,” **[Justin Fox wrote in](https://hbr.org/2011/07/what-kind-of-country-reneges-o)** ***[Harvard Business Review](https://hbr.org/2011/07/what-kind-of-country-reneges-o)***. “Mess with it at your peril.” ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gq06h3q778fzpkwyyd39ey63)) > My primer on the moral authority of contracts has been Harvard Law Professor Charles Fried’s *[Contract as Promise](http://www.amazon.com/Contract-as-Promise-Charles-Fried/dp/0674169301)*, written in 1981 (four years before Fried went to Washington to become Ronald Reagan’s Solicitor General) as a defense of the “classical liberal” (what most Americans would call conservative) approach to contracts against an assault from the Left. Yet now a group of politicians who call themselves conservatives appear willing to cheerfully repudiate the contracts that the U.S. government has entered into — or, perhaps worse, cheerfully pretend that their actions aren’t putting the country at risk of default. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gq06hgd0s377pgha8r78zm51)) > Fox quoted historian [Mark Lilla, who tried to suss out the origins of the faux-conservativism of the radicals he called “Tea Party Jacobins”:](https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2010/05/27/tea-party-jacobins/) > > **The new Jacobins have two classic American traits that have grown much more pronounced in recent decades: blanket distrust of institutions and an astonishing — and unwarranted — confidence in the self. They are apocalyptic pessimists about public life and childlike optimists swaddled in self-esteem when it comes to their own powers.** ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gq06hw3vae0t7b22bfkxpy49)) > It’s worth remembering that the vote over the debt limit is a self-inflicted, artificial crisis ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gq06j7h106wymsnv5rh2v708)) > **This is not what democracy looks like, and it is not rational governance.** > ***It’s madness.*** > **Which is, apparently, why we keep doing it.** ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gq06jthxxkgkec6ae3ed2rxr)) > Now, should Democrats have dealt with the debt limit while they still controlled both chambers of Congress? [Yes](https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/18/gop-debt-ceiling-plan-financial-crisis-recession/?itid=lk_inline_manual_31). [Absolutely](https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/22/debt-ceiling-deadline-congress-lame-duck/?itid=lk_inline_manual_31). If we breach the debt ceiling in the coming months, their failure to do so could turn out to be the biggest tactical blunder of the Biden era. > Even if Democrats erred in not neutralizing this bomb when they had the chance, though, blame for any subsequent carnage should be on the maniacs lighting the fuse. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gq06kq9swejdcq85r9ckc4zx))