American Thinker | by Richard Baehr | Oct. 21, 2007

I am a Jewish conservative and I will try to explain what that means, and why that perspective or orientation makes sense to me, and why I think it should to others. There are many kinds of conservatives. There are small government conservatives, who believe that an economy works better when more of it is in the hands of private rather than public enterprise. I consider myself a small government conservative. Small government conservatives believe that lower tax rates on employment and capital spur an economy and promote work and entrepreneurship. The alternative is the nanny state-where government seeks to control and provide more services, and tax rates are far higher to support this.

In Europe, the fastest growing economies are all the low tax model countries, many of them in Eastern Europe, countries which have had their fill of collectivism, and state control. The slow growing economies, with high unemployment and little new job creation, are in Western Europe, following the high tax, social welfare model. The new leaders in Germany and France are finding out how difficult it is to combat an entrenched culture and laws developed over 50 years that penalize work and job creation even though this model has produced sustained high unemployment levels and slow growth for decades. more »