In William Black’s excellent blog, New Economic Perspectives, he has written the post, Why Progressive Austerians do the Greatest Damage.

To many people, it seems paradoxical that conservatives target not the worst social programs, but the best.  There is no paradox.  Bad government programs are desirable from the right’s perspective – they discredit government intervention.  Good government programs pose an existential challenge to conservative memes, so they are the prime target for attack.

This is exactly the kind of paradox that falls under Greenberg’s Law Of Counterproductive Behavior, which states:

If you see a behavior that seems to you to be counterproductive, perhaps you have misunderstood what the actor was trying to produce.

I recommend Black’s article to you because it has many other interesting things to say besides the one I focused on above.

As an exercise to the reader, I suggest seeing if you can name the politicians who are most guilty of being progressive auterians.  Also ask yourself if you are guilty of being a progressive auterian.