Many believe that in last week's Budget Charlie McCreevy made a terrible mistake, as if it was an accident which, with a bit of care, he might have avoided.
It was nothing of the sort.
It was, to be sure, a bloody awful Budget (and this week's effort was no better), but it was no mistake. Anyone who thinks it was unintentional is, like Bertie Ahern checking on Ray Burke, barking up the wrong tree.
McCreevy and his allies may have misjudged the reaction, including the enlightened self-interest of many among the middle classes who would prefer a more egalitarian society to one obsessed with security.
McCreevy and his allies knew what they were doing, and why. It had more to do with economic supply and demand than with human need.
It had nothing to do with closing the gap between rich and poor - the direction agreed by the social partners at the National Economic and Social Council (NESC).
Indeed, it had less to do with redistribution - or partnership - than with protecting the gains of those who have gained most from the prosperity of the 1990s.
They're to be protected, not against competition, but against the demands and needs of less fortunate neighbours, and the community.
To get the message across, a new vocabulary had to be devised. Once, in far-off lands, there was collectivisation which forced people together in a way that paid little respect to their separate needs.
Now, there's collectivisation in reverse, in which people are to be forced apart, not by local officials in cheap uniforms but by the relentless pressure of economics.
THIS is class politics by another name in a society where class is rarely mentioned, seldom analysed - and pervades everything.
This is the class politics of the new right and economic dogma, in which the likes of Sean Barrett of Trinity calls McCreevy "the economists' hero" and applies the label "redistributive extremists" to CORI and the Combat Poverty Agency.
Brendan Butler of IBEC, Barrett's ally on Later with Finlay, used less flowery rhetoric but came up with the hard sell: the biggest threat to the economy now, he said, was a major shortage of labour.
This, in the eyes of the economists' hero, explains and justifies everything, including the Budget which, as Mary Harney said, set the Government's stamp on the society it wants to create.
The Budget which - after a week of turmoil - Bertie Ahern described as "excellent" and "absolutely wonderful".
Could this be the latest version of an old headline, "Sewer crisis worsens - Bertie steps in"? McCreevy, whom he called "an excellent Minister for Finance", had better watch out.
He wins such praise only from cheerleaders on Today FM, some of whom - like Barrett - sound as if they had discovered reds, even under episcopal beds. The Government, with an eye on the greedy, not the needy, subscribes to their new right dogma which insists that wealth creation and redistribution are mutually exclusive.
And if, in the interest of wealth creation or avoiding redistribution, corners have to be cut, well, what are corners for?
We heard yesterday how health safety inspectors who visited several hundred house-building sites had to close one in 10 of them because of the risk to life and limb.
For evidence of corner-cutting at other levels, tune in to Flood and Moriarty.
The Government, however, behaves as if the rest of us can neither see nor hear what's happening. It keeps up the cute hoor's pretence that it cares for social inclusion when only a village idiot would believe it.
AS John Bruton said on Tuesday, "The Budget drawn up by K Club Charlie represents the values of the K Club . . . Those thrusting profit-seeking values have colonised Fianna Fail."
"This was not a mistake," said Ruairi Quinn when the Government and its supporters hid behind the smoke screen of McCreevy's poor presentation and botched tactics.
"Deputy McCreevy did not make a gaffe. He believes this kind of distortion."
Bruton and Quinn have the right air of it. So have their incisive colleagues Michael Noonan, Derek McDowell and Michael D. Higgins.
Comic opera posturing by Fianna Fail backbenchers is no answer to serious argument. The lies about ESRI proposals or understandings in NESC have been exposed.
The new vocabulary is both ugly and transparent. First, there was incentivisation, by which the unemployed - the undeserving poor - would be forced out to work.
Now there's individualisation, which could kill two ideological birds with one stone, getting married women into the official labour force and reducing the need for socially awkward immigrants.
The Government shares the attitude of the new right but sometimes uses a different kind of rhetoric. It's as if, in the argument between the exclusive American way and Europe's social democracy, it can follow both.
The Budget is built on American lines, but Ahern told the social partners he was committed to the European ideal of partnership.
The trouble is that he had already offered his thoughts on the subject to Shane Kenny in a telling RTE interview three weeks ago.
KENNY asked about regulation. Ahern replied: "We have to be very conscious that we keep away from the bureaucratic ways that we could very well drift into.
"We must streamline the effort that is put into business to keeping things simple, to keeping things competitive and not just getting ourselves into a regulatory environment which I do not think a country of Ireland's size can afford or, I would contend, most of the time is not necessary.
"The question has to be asked: why has the American economy and the Asian economy for most of these last 20 years been beating the socks off the European economy?
"I think as Europeans we have to look and ask the question and make the necessary decisions to prepare ourselves for the next millennium."
McCreevy and Mary Harney will have a powerful influence on these decisions. They stand with the new right. Now we know where Ahern himself stands.
He favours the American model, with its minimal regulation and maximum emphasis on competitiveness and the market.
This is not an arcane issue of interest only to economists and politicians, although many commentators had long failed so recognise its significance.
What the low-tax, deregulated American system means was starkly illustrated by the great George Mitchell on Prime Time when he spoke of his role in the campaign for healthcare.
He said: "Forty-two million Americans do not have health insurance and, because they do not have health insurance, they may not get healthcare."
And that's where we're bound.