Oil Spill Makes Liberals

In the wake of the British Petroleum spill in the Gulf, who dares to defend conservative free-market principles decrying regulation? Nobody can afford to, writes The Wall Street Journal. “Only a short while ago, of course, the populist right was riding high, sweeping the primaries and insisting that the operations of the market must not be interfered with; that government intervention of even the slightest kind dangerously diminishes human freedom,” writes columnist Thomas Frank. “But things are different today. The catastrophe is too great to brush it off with the usual laissez-faire scholasticism. So the great debate must wait. We are all liberals for the duration.”