Posted on 12/03/2003 9:44:42 AM PST by freedom44
As David Brooks observed in his November 29 op-ed column for the New York Times, conservatives have come a long way in the political arena since the days of Barry Goldwater. No longer insurgents, right-of-center politicians have gotten so good at winning elections that they are now at the center of power. They predominate in the Republican Party, which is arguably the country's majority party and certainly feels free to behave as majority parties do.
The problem is that with this new power, many conservatives have begun to lose sight of what exactly it is they seek to conserve. It is not for a lack of areas where there is a need for someone to stand athwart history and yell, "Stop!" We are witnessing the redefinition – some would say abolition – of marriage and the traditional family, an erosion of American sovereignty that dovetails with a more general assault against the integrity of the nation-state, anti-Western ideology masquerading as multiculturalism and a federal welfare state that continues to balloon in size.
That last is an accomplishment, if that is the proper word for it, of our Republican president and a Republican-controlled Congress. Together, they have passed a massive entitlement expansion in the form of the new Medicare prescription drug benefit and are contemplating a pork-laden annual discretionary spending bill with a price tag of $373 billion and rising. As Stephen Moore of the Cato Institute and the Club for Growth recently asked in an article for the Washington Times, "Where is the fiscal outrage?"
"This was one of the worst years for fiscal conservatives in many moons," wrote Moore. "The federal budget grew by more than $150 billion -- more than twice as much as any year that Bill Clinton was in the White House -- and deficit spending eclipsed $300 billion, a 10-year high." And it all took place with the GOP firmly ensconced at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue.
Big government conservatives rationalize all this by claiming the market-based reforms attached to some of this profligacy will make this all worthwhile to supporters of limited government. Fred Barnes has argued in the Weekly Standard that higher spending is the price Republicans have to pay "to gain free-market reforms and expand individual choice." Brooks argued, "In exchange for massive new spending, they [the Republicans] demand competitive reforms." These conservatives are gambling that the costly new prescription drug benefit will be offset by medical savings accounts and other doses of free-market competition injected into the Medicare system, and that increased education spending crafted in conjunction with Ted Kennedy will be offset by the requirement that schools deemed unsuccessful by the terms of the legislation will be subject to school choice and other conservative education reforms, to cite two examples.
Of course, the modern American welfare state's success as a purveyor of conservative values is, to put it charitably, quite limited, to say nothing of the unintended consequences inherent in expansions of government. A more likely result of these big-spending reforms, even if they do succeed on their own terms, is that they will embolden future administrations and Congresses to make even less responsible power grabs. But the best conservatives can hope for at this point is that their relations in the Beltway are right.
But this doesn't mean that we should become complacent about the changes in the GOP or the conservative movement. It is ironic that the people who obsess the most about politics and claim to have the greatest faith in its power to accomplish good often approach it in the most cynical, trivial manner. It's easy to begin to reduce political disputes to the sort of rivalry found in professional sports, backing your own party as you would root for your favorite team.
Thus, Brooks takes evident pleasure in the transformation of Washington from a Democratic-dominated town to an apparently Republican-dominated one, where the GOP now calls the shots and is in a position to satisfy the K-Street lobbyists. He writes about GOP governance less as if the substance mattered than with the tone of someone amused to watch a child play dress-up in adult's clothes: "The Republicans are now in the habit of winning, and are on permanent offense on all fronts. They offer tax cuts to stimulate the economy and please business. They nominate conservative judges to advance conservative social reform and satisfy religious conservatives. They fight a war on terror."
They fight a war on terror – how cute! Yet there is the little matter of principle, brought up almost as an afterthought: "The only drawback is that now, as the governing party, they have to betray some of the principles that first animated them. This week we saw dozens of conservatives, who once believed in limited government, vote for a new spending program that will cost over $2 trillion over the next 20 years."
But not to worry, Brooks assures us. Sure, the GOP will sell out, abandon its principles and undergo an "ossification process" that will insure its own undoing. That's when the Democrats will be ready to take over again as majority party. You see, it's all part of the game.
Except for one major problem: Under the rules of this game, we have two parties that once in power advocate more spending and bigger government. Republicans spend recklessly and confiscate wealth to lavish upon their constituents. The Democrats tut-tut about fiscal responsibility, but they are just playing a role. They are not interested in cutting spending – the congressional Democrats' prescription drugs proposal cost even more than the GOP's and lacked even the pretense of reform. They merely want to cancel tax cuts and raise marginal tax rates, and the concern about the deficit just happens to be a convenient weapon in their battle to do so.
This goes beyond a principled objection to big government – although it is not merely a matter of abstract principle whether the federal government operates according to the limits set by the U.S. Constitution, given the real-world implications for liberty and the rule of law. It has to do with whether we will spend this nation into bankruptcy, whether there will be a consequential political force that is willing to judge new spending by affordability rather than public appetites. Big government is only sustainable as long as our economy remains sufficiently free to grow and create wealth at a rate that will continue feeding it tax revenues.
One of Brooks' fellow conservative whiz kids, policy wonk James Pinkerton, noted that today's Republicans simply try to manage social welfare issues and sounded a hopeful note about an economic-growth solution to the problems caused by our insatiable appetite for government. Writing in National Review On-Line, he pointed out that the prescription drug benefit costs a lot of money, but hey, there is a lot of money in this country and with an 8.2 percent third-quarter growth rate there is going to be a lot more. But as Pinkerton seems to understand, there will come a point where our welfare state grows to European size. Welfare states of that size inevitably force tax rates up to self-defeating levels, slowing economic growth and undermining the government's ability to provide the benefits.
Medicare was already teetering on the edge of insolvency without this costly addition. Social Security will be next. We have already promised more in entitlements benefits than our federal government has the ability pay, unless some economic or demographic miracle occurs. We need a responsible party that will deal with these realities, rather than two parties committed to "tax, spend and elect" politics. Don't get me wrong; I'm happy the Republicans are in the majority. But I still expect them to abide by the principles that led me to vote for them in the first place.
Perhaps this is too much to ask. Our politics don't just rob Peter to pay Paul – they rob the minority party's supporters to pay the majority party's. This unseemly development would no doubt make the Founding Fathers roll in their graves. But Republican acquiescence in this state of affairs, particularly after becoming more fully the party of the right than at any point in its history, should be disquieting to many pioneering movement conservatives still living. What are today's conservatives trying to conserve?
To paraphrase Scripture, what does it profit a political party to gain majority status if it loses its republic? Conservatives worth the name are charged with preserving rather than squandering their nation's heritage for future generations. There's nothing conservative about running up bills that a future generation will have to pay.
To paraphrase:
"People elect Democrats to Congress so they can get as much money as possible from Washington. They elect Republicans to the White House so they can send as little money as possible to Washington."
Now it should just read, "People elect Democrats and Republicans to Congress and the White House so they can get as much money as possible from Washington. Conservatives are an almost extinct species in Washington."
If suggestions are open, then I nominate 'social status and sinecures'.
Now that the Cold War is over, the "capitalism is freedom" message is less likely to win people over. They'll support free markets against Communism or Islamic fundamentalism and where greater market freedom looks to be the clear path to progress they'll support it, but in the age of globalization, people are more apt to look for security from the consequences of the ever accelerating worldwide movement of people, goods and money. Ronald Reagan's clear connection between freer markets and a stronger America won over many people who aren't convinced that the same connection necessarily applies in the era of globalization. That doesn't mean that creating new government entitlement programs is the way to go, but conservatives might consider that there is also something "conservative" in the current suspicion of markets and commercialization.
President Bush and his administration are more then just a bunch of caretakers. Bush`s tax cuts are found in the basic conservative ideology called supply side economics. Being strong on national and homeland security issues is another bedrock part of the conservative agenda. However, the education bill, the FarmBill and the new Medicare prescription drug legislation, is not part of the conservative agenda. Those who believe Bush is doing a great job in co-opting Democratic issues, is either ignorant, naive or both! In the short term, it may be good politics, but the question is, who will pay the price when the final bill comes due.
Another Nobel Prize economist, James Buchanan, worries that by allowing government to grow so rapidly ahead of the pace of the private sector, we are "killing the goose of free enterprise that lays the golden eggs."
Please elaborate.
European conservatism has tended more to the "small-c" variety, while modern American Conservatism has been more of a continuation or renaissance of classical nineteenth century liberalism. It favors freer markets, lower taxes, less government. European Conservatives have made more of an accomodation with the state.
Even here in the US, there are a few things to consider:
1) One person might favor tradition, continuity, stability, and established moral values without being very enthusiastic about markets and capitalism. Another may celebrate the creative destruction, dynamism, protean freedom, and constant change of market-driven economies. Who's more conservative? Or more Conservative? It may not be so easy to answer, especially for those who are not politically active or involved in the corporate sector. True, the first person may be a Democrat, but the same may also true of the second person, and his support for capitalism may be hinged on its disruption of older social patterns and traditions.
2) You'll find people who went big for Reagan and voted for him to bring prosperity to America. But in Reagan's day, the American economy was thought of as the national economy: GM, US Steel, farmers, miners, and fisheries. Such people might not find that they really have a horse to ride in current American politics. It's certainly possible to argue that they'd better adapt to the changes in the economy, but I'd be hard pressed to deny that many of them were "conservative" -- indeed, more "conservative" than many who embraced globalization and the changes it's brought the country.
3) If you look at the founders of modern American "big C" Conservatism, most of them were born before the Second World War and the Great Depression. Some were born before the First World War, and a few even before the beginning of the Twentieth Century. They were trying to get back to a less statist, more decentralized, more laissez-faire world that they had known first hand, and that had seemed to work for them and their parents and the country as a whole.
Today, George Bush, born after WWII, has lived with the leviathan state all his life. It's not likely that he'll want to go back to something that he doesn't know first hand. Nor is it likely that today's Americans are the kind of people who would want or could get on in that older world. Could we restore what disappeared before we were born without going through wrenching dislocations? Might wholesale rollback, not cause great troubles without bringing the desired consequences. Even if one assumes that pre-New Deal America was better, the way to get there safely is by steady persuasion, gradual evolution, and piecemeal steps, not by any revolutionary attempts to restore what's long gone and can't stand on its own any longer.
That would be the "small-c" conservative way of achieving "Big-C" Conservative goals. President Bush's critics are right in pointing out that he's not following it and taking him to task. But it would be a mistake to overlook Bush's "small-c" conservative virtues, and their absence in some of his more militant critics.
For whatever it's worth, the critics also have a point about the failure or inherent contradiction of a "conservative welfare state." Look at Europe. A welfare state brings with it a class that has a stake in increasing the size and power of government and getting as much for government as it can out of the pockets of the people. Welfare economies also shift people's economic calculations: they come to rely more on what government can do for them and less on their own efforts. They marry less, save less, and have fewer children. Conservative protectionist systems have similar contradictions and failings. Such dreams haven't panned out in practice.
But it is still true that taking government entirely out of the economy and leaving no opportunity to deal with serious problems at the federal level would be a dangerous proceding. And a healthy "small-c" conservative dose of gradualism and satisfaction with half-measures would be better in disentangling government and the economy (to the degree that the two can be separated) than a more radical, imprudent, and heedless approach.
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