The view that we know less than we thought we knew about how to change the human condition came, in time, to be called neoconservatism. Many ... , myself included, disliked the term because we did not think we were conservative, neo or paleo. (I voted for John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson and Hubert Humphrey and worked in the latter's presidential campaign.) It would have been better if we had been called policy skeptics; that is, people who thought it was hard, though not impossible, to make useful and important changes in public policy.
James Q. WilsonI believe we ought to subsidize some health care for the poor, but Medicare subsidizes everyone's health care
James Q. WilsonMany, if not most, of the difficulties we experience in dealing with government agencies arise from the agencies being part of a fragmented and open political systemโฆThe central feature of the American constitutional systemโthe separation of powersโexacerbates many of these problems. The governments of the US were not designed to be efficient or powerful, but to be tolerable and malleable. Those who designed these arrangements always assumed that the federal government would exercise few and limited powers.
James Q. Wilson