Posted on 11/19/2006 2:39:53 AM PST by Tom D.
'Free to lose' isn't good philosophy for the right wing
November 19, 2006 BY MARK STEYN Sun-Times Columnist If Milton Friedman had to die, then a week after the defeat of a Republican Congress that had apparently forgotten every lesson Friedman taught in Free To Choose is eerily apt timing. As it happens, had ill health not intervened, Professor Friedman would have been disembarking round about now from a National Review post-election cruise with yours truly and various other pundits and commentators.
Instead, we were obliged to sail without him, and in the days that followed I found myself wondering what the great man would have made of the most salient feature of our deliberations: On the one hand, there are those conservatives for whom the war trumps everything and peripheral piffle like "No Child Left Behind" can be argued over when the jihad's been seen off. On the other, there are those conservatives for whom the war is peripheral and, insofar as it exists, it doesn't begin to mitigate the abandonment of Friedmanite principles on public spending, education and much else. There is a huge gulf between these two forces, to the point where the War Party and the Small Government Party seem as mutually hostile as the Sunni and Shia on their worst days. If the Republicans can't reunite these two wings before 2008, they'll lose again and keep on losing.
Take, for example, Ward Connerly, whose Michigan ballot proposition against racial quotas was one of the few victories conservatives won on Election Day. (Needless to say, most GOP bigwigs, including washed-up gubernatorial loser Dick DeVos, opposed it.) In a discussion of conservative core values, Connerly suggested it wasn't the role of the federal government to impose democracy on the entire planet. And put like that, he has a point. However, I support the Bush Doctrine on two grounds -- first, for "utopian" reasons: If the Middle East becomes a region of free states, it will have been the right thing to do and the option most consistent with American values (unlike the stability fetishists' preference for sticking with Mubarak, the House of Saud and the other thugs and autocrats). But, second, it also makes sense from a cynical realpolitik perspective: Promoting liberty and democracy, even if they ultimately fail, is still a good way of messing with the thugs' heads. It's one of the few real points of pressure America and its allies can bring to bear against rogue nations, and in the case of Iran, the one with the clearest shot at being effective. In other words, even if it ultimately flops, seriously promoting liberty and democracy could cause all kinds of headaches for the mullahs, Assad, Mubarak and the rest of the gang. However it turns out, it's the "realist" option.
The president doesn't frame it like that, alas. Instead, he says stuff like: "Freedom is the desire of every human heart." Really? It's unclear whether that's the case in Gaza and the Sunni Triangle. But it's absolutely certain that it's not the case in Berlin and Paris, Stockholm and London, Toronto and New Orleans. The story of the Western world since 1945 is that, invited to choose between freedom and government "security," large numbers of people vote to dump freedom -- the freedom to make your own decisions about health care, education, property rights, seat belts and a ton of other stuff. I would welcome the president using "Freedom is the desire of every human heart" in Chicago and Dallas, and, if it catches on there, then applying it to Ramadi and Tikrit.
Meanwhile, from the War Party's point of view, the Bush Doctrine is beginning to accumulate way too many opt-outs. For example, a couple of weeks back, U.S. forces in Baghdad captured a death squad commander of Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army only to be forced to release him on the orders of the prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki. When I had the honor of discussing the war with the president recently, he was at pains to emphasize that Iraq was "sovereign." That may be. But, at a time when a gazillion free-lance militias are running around the joint ignoring the sovereign government, it seems a mite pedantic to insist that the sole militia in the country that has to obey every last memo from Prime Minister Maliki is the U.S. armed forces. Muqtada al-Sadr is an emblem not of democracy's flowering but of the arid soil in which it's expected to grow. America would have been better off capturing and executing him two years ago.
That's not the worst mistake, alas. The crucial missed opportunity (as some of us pointed out at the time) occurred five years ago, back when the president still had his post-9/11 approval ratings. You can't hold them forever, obviously, but, while he had them, George W. Bush could have used them for a "teaching moment." As we can see in Europe every day of the week, Big Government is a national security issue -- for all the reasons Milton Friedman understood: In diminishing individual liberty, it transforms free-born citizens into nanny-state charges to the point where it imperils the existence of the nation. If ever there was a time for not introducing a new prescription drug entitlement, wartime is it. Yet the president and Congress apparently decided that they could fight a long existential struggle abroad while Big Government continued to swell and bloat at home.
It has been strange for me in these days since the election to spend so much time with so many figures I admire and to find that each group barely recognizes each other's concerns. The War Party is the War Party, the Small Government Party is the Small Government Party, and ne'er the twain shall meet, apparently. That way lies disaster: You can't be in favor of assertive American foreign policy overseas and increasing Europeanization domestically; likewise, you can't take a reductively libertarian view while the rest of the planet goes to pieces. Someone in the GOP needs to do what Ronald Reagan did so brilliantly a quarter-century ago:reconcile the big challenges abroad with a small-government philosophy at home. The House and the Senate will not return to Republican hands until they do.
©Mark Steyn 2006
Is it my imagination, or are Steyn's columns more and more, well, burdened, grave, sad lately? There's plenty of reason for it, of course . . .
The thing is I think the Small Government (in terms of spending and entitlements) wing of the party now exists mainly in terms of half the people on an NRO cruise, not actual people out in the country.
The main division in reality among the mass of voters in the party is not between the War and Small Government folks, it's between Fundivangelist Social Cons and the not particularly religious.
Good read from Steyn. He's one of the few voices who can criticise the political right in America with any real legitimacy.
Yes he does sound less optimistic, but so am I.
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." -Manuel II Paleologus
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." -Manuel II Paleologus
***The president doesn't frame it like that, alas. Instead, he says stuff like: "Freedom is the desire of every human heart." Really? It's unclear whether that's the case in Gaza and the Sunni Triangle. But it's absolutely certain that it's not the case in Berlin and Paris, Stockholm and London, Toronto and New Orleans. The story of the Western world since 1945 is that, invited to choose between freedom and government "security," large numbers of people vote to dump freedom -- the freedom to make your own decisions about health care, education, property rights, seat belts and a ton of other stuff. I would welcome the president using "Freedom is the desire of every human heart" in Chicago and Dallas, and, if it catches on there, then applying it to Ramadi and Tikrit. ***
Only Mark Steyn can expose the myth, and sum up the dilemma, of America in one paragraph.
My only regret is that so many of Mr. Steyn's comments are too long to fit into the space allotted for taglines....
Perhaps so, but I sense he is (like so many of us Conservatives) approaching a point of frustration due to his perception of different factions not willing to cooperate and the results becoming debilitating for the party.
His is a clarion call for all factions within the party to start to work together if we are going to reclaim a majority in Congress in 08 and most of all, IMHO, he is calling for something akin to a Reagan Era/1994 Contract direction which we could all support.
Sadly, beginning with the "top" their is not much in the way of such a movement, direction, philosophy or goals toward achieving that end.
Sound like Styne is loosing patience with the Prez.
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." -Manuel II Paleologus
Very objective and timely article!!! Mark Steyn routinely hits the ball out of the park. Hope the GOP is paying attention.
Twelve years of betrayal by Bush 1 and 2 will do that to conservatives. Oh yes, we have two years more of betrayal to make it twelve.
Amen to that. Now pray we don't get shafted on immigration and brace for the attack of the Bush-bots.
Sooner or later President Bush is going to have to learn to trust the American people and tell us what is going on instead of spouting platitudes over and over and over until most of the people doze off.
I love this president, and I know he's trying to "protect" us from the truth, but we're big boys and girls and will stand by him if he will trust us.
We cooperate on FR
Amen. Now the trick is finding enough R's to buy into that philosophy and unfortunately, there aren't many in either house which adheres thereto and the few that do, have been so frightened by the MSM and cowed by the pseudo-Republicans and the other RINO's that they are practically, impotent. Sad. Very sad and depressing!!!!
I don't see how amnesty for illegal immigrants doesn't happen anytime soon, and I don't see how the entire U.S. as well as conservatism doesn't vanish at some point solely because amnesty for illegal immigrants is allowed to happen.
I know so do I and voted for him twice (though the last time it was more against Kerry, than for W) and though he is not articulate, I wish he would (and would have in the past) take a page from the Gipper's book and bypass the MSM and begin speaking directly to the people.
Of course, he would have to have a message that resonates and his unwillingness to address the root cause of terrorism (ISLAM) as well as his intransigence on Border Security, leaves him with little to articulate about which anyone (other than the left and libs) will respond to.
"The main division in reality among the mass of voters in the party is not between the War and Small Government folks, it's between Fundivangelist Social Cons and the not particularly religious."
I dunno. I'm not particularly religious, but I'm also socially conservative. One does not have to be religious to believe that abortion is both the taking of innocent life and thinly veiled eugenics, that marriage -is- supposed to be about providing a stable platform for children, etc. etc.
Unfortunately, I seem to be in a minority. Fact is, there's an incredible and irrational and extreme hatred for "fundamentalists" among the non-religious lately. I truly don't understand it. Every time I want to hear the word "theocracy" I want to heave... I mean, for God's sake, if the social cons got absolutely every last thing they wanted - abortion illegal, prayer in schools, cleaned up network TV, etc. etc. - it would at worst be a return to the laws of the 50's regarding these matters. Was the U.S. a "theocracy" in the 50's? I really wish the people who live in unending fear of an impending theocracy would get a grip.
Qwinn
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