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Just Another Jim

Just Another Essay



Is It Time to Throw the Bums Out?

Weekly Essay for August 24, 2004 by James E. Nelson

As the presidential election draws near I have come to realize that the labels “Democrat” and “Republican” are not particularly helpful because they are not descriptive of anything. The choice is between statism and socialism. Both statist and socialist mentalities have been a creeping phenomenon in the United States. The socialist agenda has been easier to catalog because FDR’s New Deal was such a clear turn away from capitalism toward socialism. The statist philosophy of the Republicans is a bit more difficult to put a finger on. I would give the “honor” of founder of Republican Statism to Richard Nixon. Because of Watergate many of his “accomplishments” were overlooked, but the reason I would identify Nixon as a statist is that he was the one who put teeth into most of Johnson’s empty Great Society reforms by funding them. Just as government became the major force in helping people under Roosevelt, so the government became the major force in shaping people under Nixon.

Steven Hayward acknowledges that traditionally Nixon has been the darling of the conservatives while “liberals have maintained a blind hatred” of him. But Hayward goes on to say:

In fact the Nixon public policy record would justify reversing these allegiances; any other president who compiled Nixon’s domestic and foreign record would be regarded as standing firmly in the liberal progressive tradition. Johnson has gone down in the history books as the big spender for social welfare programs, yet federal spending grew faster during Nixon’s tenure than during Johnson’s. It was under Nixon that social spending came to exceed defense spending for the first time.

This Republican statism of social spending focused on shaping people had a reprieve under Reagan, but it is back with a vengeance in George W. Bush’s administration. But before we go any farther some definitions would be in order:

Socialism is the political philosophy where the greater good is more important than individual rights. The practice of redistribution of wealth illustrates socialist philosophy better than any other single socialist policy. Under socialism, equality is made an absolute right. When the Founding Fathers spoke of equality under the law, they were saying that everyone would get a fair shake. They weren’t saying that smart people and not-so-smart people should get the same pay because that is equal. The latter approach to life is socialism.

Statism is the political philosophy where the greater good is more important than individual rights. (Sounds familiar doesn’t it.) The difference between statists and socialists is that socialism tends to be collectivist while statism tends to be more interested in control. The extreme of socialism is communism. The extreme of statism is fascism. In practice communism and fascism look very similar, although they come to their positions from two different directions. In the American political tradition, we might say that communism is left-wing extremism while fascism is right-wing extremism.

The classical liberalism of the American Founding Fathers said that less government is better. It feared that big governments inevitably became tyrannical governments. This classically liberal view also said that great responsibility is upon individuals to look out for other individuals. On the left, acts of charity were preferable to government welfare. On the right, civic responsibility was preferable to government regulation and control.

Ronald Reagan was the great modern classical liberal. He began his life as a Democrat because there was a time in history that that party unheld those classic ideals. Midstream he became a Republican because the Democrats had abandoned classical liberalism in favor of socialism. In that transition, the Republican Party took up the mantle of classical liberalism. In other words, Reagan’s change in party affiliation did not reflect a change in his politics; it reflected a change in American political parties. I suspect Ronald Reagan would now be as uncomfortable in the Republican Party as he once was in the Democratic Party because the Republican have now abandoned classical liberalism with a vengeance in favor of statism.

[Although at this point I would part company with Ron Jr. Ronald Reagan was a classical liberal and not a modern liberal in the tradition of the DNC. I suspect the senior Reagan would be as embarrassed over his son’s acquiescence to the Democrats as he would be by the current Republican state of affairs.]

In brief, the classical liberalism of America’s founding fathers distrusted the state. In it’s most libertarian form, a few of the founding fathers considered the state a necessary evil. In contrast to that, both major parties now treat the state as Messianic. We have many ills (although the two parties delineate a different set of ills) and only the state can effectively fix them. For the Democrats the heart of the Messianic state lies in social services. For the Republicans the heart of the Messianic state lies in the Departments of Defense and Homeland Security.

I do not agree with either policy. The Welfare State has been examined at length in many other studies, so I will say little about it here, except that in the years since the New Deal, we have actually fallen farther behind than we once were. Governments do a very poor job of being our caretakers. It is also my contention that governments do a relatively poor job of being our protectors, especially in this post-nation-state age. In order to provide a perception of protection it has been necessary to establish a nascent Police State. I suspect many readers would strongly object to my use of Police State, but I also suspect that most people would have rejected the idea that we were a Welfare State 50 years ago. This is why I call it a nascent police state; it is in its infancy, and yet the simple reality is that the agencies whose responsibility is policing the nation have been given vast new powers. In cities such as Boston, the location of the recent Democratic Convention, it was reported by CNBC that according to polls a majority of Bostonians were opposed to the draconian measures that were being taken to protect the city. National Public Radio reported that many of the measures taken were secret, and one NPR commentator noted that if Bostonians knew to what extent those measures extended, they would be outraged. In its classic form (as defined by wordIQ.com) “A police state is a political condition where the government maintains strict control over society, particularly through suspension of civil rights and often with the use of a force of secret police. This implies that the control by the government contradicts the will of the people being controlled. Thus, a police state is inherently anti-democratic. It is similar to martial law.” Fortunately the situation in Boston is the exception, and yet, if those sort of unpopular controls can be handed down by fiat, the tendency is clearly in the direction of Police State.

Were Bostonians safer because of the “extreme measures” (a term used by a White House official in a report on Boston)? There can be no definitive answer to that question, but my conjecture is that they were not in any significant way safer. What the elevated alert did was make people feel safer, not actually make them safer to any great degree.

It is my position that the sort of expenditures the United States is currently making to make people feel safer, is completely out of proportion to what governments should be doing. I recognize that my position is a minority position. For most Americans the sense of comfort they get from the feeling of being cared for and protected by the government is worth a very large expenditure. I disagree.

But let’s set my disagreement aside for a moment. If we want a big, big government that will make us feel cared for and protected, we need to be willing to pay for it. And this brings me to the current administration. The President has correctly said that these are unusual times. Since the terrorist attacks of three years ago we do need to be extra-vigilant. I agree completely with the administration on this point. But vigilance costs money.

The national debt currently stands at $7.2 Trillion. Because of the efforts of the Reagan administration, and to a certain extent, the first Bush administration, and a group of small-government congressmen, the national debt was under control and on its way to being retired. Then came national emergencies under the younger Bush administration. The costs of the war on terror are mind boggling, and yet the administration has not urged or demanded a significant tax increase to pay for it.

Big governments need big money. It is apparent that the mood of the nation at this time is for big, big government to care for and protect us. If that’s what we want, then we need to be willing pay for it.

The Bush administration and the Republicans have pushed for big, big government with no means of paying for it. The Democrats push for big, big government, but recommend tax increases to pay for. Whether you prefer the socialist or statist vision of the future, it requires a big, big government that uses big, big money. The major difference between the parties at this time is that the Republicans steadfastly refuse to pay for their expenditures while the Democrats are honest enough to say we need massive tax increases.

Both are bad, bad policy. Big, big government is almost always bad, bad policy. But far be it from me to contradict the will of the people. If that’s what we want, we need to be willing to pay for it. Maybe it’s time to get rid of the Statists in favor of the Socialists. At least the Socialists have a vaguely intelligible monetary policy.