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"  David Brooks says that, after years of gridlock much like ours, the new British coalition government is finally going to tackle its fiscal problems. The reason? The two parties are now in an economically conservative, socially liberal embrace ... they disagree on many things (immigration, Europe, electoral reform) but they tend to agree on the need for fiscal restraint ... As a result, Brooks says, the two parties will now &amp;quot;share the political pain&amp;quot; that will come from the only real solutions to their debt problem, which is the same solution America needs to arrive at \u2014 figuring out &amp;quot;how to trim the welfare state and raise taxes while still funding the things that lead to long-term growth.&amp;quot; And how did the Brits achieve this magic happy state? It helps that the Conservative government has already moved to a more communitarian &amp;quot;Big Society&amp;quot; governing philosophy. No longer purely free market, the Tories emphasize rebuilding social bonds. That means they speak less about slashing government as a matter of principle and more about improving it and decentralizing power. This little platoons approach has left- and right-wing variants and has the potential to break down the old ideologies. This is what I&amp;#039;ve been saying for almost two years now: it&amp;#039;s only when the Republicans give up the fantasy of small government \u2014 which means giving up their fantasy of gutting Social Security and Medicare \u2014 that we can move forward and fix the government that we have in the real world. Unfortunately, it looks as if they&amp;#039;re going to swing the fences in November and beyond, which means we&amp;#039;ll put off structural changes to Social Security and Medicare another few years. Just like the communists who ravaged Russia, they are pursuing an ideal straight to the disaster they wish to avoid. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/news/a7488/british-debt-crisis-051410/>