Is He One of Us?

Town Hall ^ | October 21, 2005 | Jonah Goldberg

[quidnunc]

The bile accumulating on the right toward the White House has reached China Syndrome proportions and is starting to melt through the floor.

Suddenly, conservatives are starting to question whether George W. Bush is even a one of them at all. One of my heroes, Robert Bork, recently wrote in The Wall Street Journal that "George W. Bush has not governed as a conservative. This George Bush, like his father, is showing himself to be indifferent, if not actively hostile, to conservative values." Conservative columnist Bruce Bartlett opines: "The truth that is now dawning on many movement conservatives is that George W. Bush is not one of them and never has been." Even at National Review Online — where I hang my hat most of the time — several of our contributors have echoed these concerns.

I think this goes too far. Two factors contribute to this misdiagnosis: confusion and disappointment.

Let's start with confusion. Contrary to most stereotypes, conservatism is a much less dogmatic ideology than modern liberalism. The reason liberals don't seem dogmatic and conservatives do is that liberals have settled their dogma, so it has become invisible to them. No liberal disputes in a serious philosophical way that the government should do good things where it can and when it can. Their debates aren't about ideology, they're about tactics. Indeed, the chief disagreement between leftists and liberals over the role of the state is almost entirely pragmatic. Moderate liberals think it's not practical — either economically or politically — to push for a dramatic expansion of the role of the state. Leftists think it would be a good idea politically and, despite all the evidence to the contrary, think it would work economically.

Within conservatism, however, there are enormous philosophical arguments about the proper role of the state. This debate isn't merely between libertarians and social conservatives. It's also between conservatives who are "anti-left" versus those who are "anti-state." Neoconservatives, for example, are famously comfortable with an energetic, interventionist government as long as that government isn't run by secular, atheistic radicals and socialists (I exaggerate a little for the sake of clarity).

-snip-

[razorback-bert]

Upon reading some of these tracts, I see a new pattern. Liberals using "States Rights" to control guns, that the Federal government has no right to tell the states what with guns. Therefore the states have the right to ban guns.


Okay, maybe I need a new layer of tinfoil on my hat.

[BIRDS]

A lot of us have already thought of that, by the way.

~;-D

[MitchellC]

I don't understand why anyone has waited until now to melt down, or has melted down at all. George W. Bush is not, never has been, and never has proclaimed to be a 'small government Conservative.' George W. Bush did not 'betray' anyone in the sense that he's been leading us to believe he was some Conservative purist and only now revealed himself to be otherwise.

[jslade]

That and his spending-a-holic behavior.

Don't forget. Congress spends the money. Bush's failure is the withholding of the veto.

[Walkenfree]

The snag in the Social Security Reform; (Title 42) funds include (among others) Unemployment Insurance& Veteran's,
benefits. I really don't comprehend how anyone would cut taxes ($100,000) on a Million dollar income bracket and then turn around and cut the benefits of poor people. That includes the Medical benefits for low income children?

[KMAJ2]

You need to get your facts straight. I recommend this article for your perusal. Bork is anti-Second Amendment, I suggest you stop trying to tell us otherwise. Will you admit you were wrong ?

-----
Borking the Second Amendment
by Samuel Francis

It has been quite a few years since the world last heard of Robert Bork, but back in 1987 his name was a household -- indeed, a national headline -- word. Judge Bork, of course was one of Ronald Reagan's nominees to the Supreme Court, a nominee whom the liberal Democrats who then controlled the Senate defeated in a particularly ugly and often insulting confirmation battle.

So ugly and insulting was the war waged against Judge Bork by the left that his conservative champions tried to coin a new word, to ``bork'' someone, meaning to stop a person's candidacy for office by systematically smearing him. To this day Judge Bork remains the number one guru of the conservative view of the Constitution.

Unfortunately, it may also be his last day as the guru-in-chief of constitutional issues. In his most recent book, Sloughing toward Gomorrah, Judge Bork manages to carry out a bit of borking on his own -- not on a person but rather on the Constitution itself, and in particular on the Second Amendment.

The Second Amendment, the bete noire of the gun gestapo, states that ``a well regulated Militia, being necessary for the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.'' It is the core of the constitutional argument against gun control, long held to secure the right of individuals to own (buy, sell, keep, and carry) firearms. Judge Bork, however, doesn't think so.

Discussing the carnage of violent crime, Judge Bork rejects gun control as an effective means of reducing it. ``Gun control,'' he writes, ``shifts the equation in favor of the criminal,'' and he's right, as he often is. But when he gets on to the constitutionality of gun control, he's simply wrong, as he usually isn't.

In a footnote on page 166, Judge Bork writes that:

---

``the Supreme Court has consistently ruled that there is no individual right to own a firearm. The Second Amendment was designed to allow states to defend themselves against a possibly tyrannical national government. Now that the federal government has stealth bombers and nuclear weapons, it is hard to imagine what people would need to keep in the garage to serve that purpose.''

---

Judge Bork is in fact wrong in both logic and facts. As to logic, even if the Supreme Court had ruled as he claims, that doesn't settle the issue of constitutionality. The Supreme Court can be wrong, and indeed Judge Bork is a hero to conservatives precisely because he often criticizes the Supreme Court's rulings. By implying that Supreme Court rulings are authoritative if not infallible, he contradicts most of what he has argued throughout his juristic career.

But second, as to facts, he is also wrong that the court ``has consistently ruled that there is no individual right to own a firearm.'' The Oxford Companion to the Supreme Court, a standard reference work on the court and its rulings that really is authoritative, states that one of the main nineteenth century cases, Presser v. Illiois (1886), ``declared that the Second Amendment only protected individuals from federal not state infringement.''

As for twentieth century cases, the main one is a 1939 ruling in United States v. Miller, in which the court held unanimously that ``the Second Amendment protected the citizen's right to own weapons that were ordinary militia weapons.'' That excluded sawed-off shotguns, but left us a pretty heavy arsenal in their place. As to the ``collective right'' that the amendment supposedly expresses, the view that only the people collectively, not as individuals, have a right to keep and bear arms, the Oxford reference book concludes that ``history gives very little support for that view.''

That's more than what Judge Bork offers in support of his view, and as for his claim that government possession of bombers and nukes makes whatever weaponry you have stashed in your garage useless, tell that to the Afghan resistance, the Nicaraguan contras, and indeed the Vietcong, the Sandinistas, and a dozen other guerrilla groups that have laid their local leviathans low with weapons no more advanced than what we can keep in the carport.

For all Judge Bork's juristic learning and thinking, he missed the constitutional boat on what may in the near future be the most important constitutional issue before the court. Maybe the Democrats who kept him off the high bench were on to something, because, if the court does rule on the meaning of the Second Amendment, it will be a good thing that Robert Bork isn't there.

http://www.users.fast.net/~behanna/bork.html

[KMAJ2]

Sorry, bunny, but your other freeper didn't tell the truth. Bork is anti-Second Amendment. In fact, your other Freeper, selectively picked a quote while ignoring the rest. I suggest you learn to research for yourself before making unqualified statements.

Borking the Second Amendment

http://www.users.fast.net/~behanna/bork.html

[tonycavanagh]

re : Neoconservatives, for example, are famously comfortable with an energetic, interventionist government as long as that government isn't run by secular, atheistic radicals and socialists .

LOL Could not have put it better myself.

Truly snall government is that,a truly small government.

[rock58seg]

cracking down on Mexican immigration the wat activists want would drive Mexican-Americans straight over to the Democrats.

Not Really. I live in a predominantly Mexican-American city. Yes there are the Lulac type Organizations, but on the subject of Illegal Immigration, almost anyone you meet wants secure borders.

[Shalom Israel]

You mean, we have to content ourselves with being tax-and-spend liberals for now, in the belief that we'll suddenly do a reversal and become conservatives later?

[rock58seg]

Cmon. There are 30,000,000+ conservatives. Bush was really the best?

Seems the only real opposition he had was Insane McCain. A man I will not for. So out of those 30,000,000 who is the big savior you are proposing for 2008?

[marty60]

AMEN

[Pete'sWife]

In "Saving Private Ryan," the remaining soldiers run for the "Alamo" when they're about to be overrun by the Germans.

FR is my "Alamo," and I believe we're being overrun.

Now, where are those P-51's?

[Shalom Israel]

It's anti-Mexican sentiment, pure and simple!

'Fraid I basically agree. I strongly favor legal immigration and oppose illegal immigration, and on FR I generally take a huge beating whenever I say that. The general reply is that "them Mex'cans is takin' our jobs!" That isn't racism per se, but it isn't strictly "anti-illegal immigration" either. The same folks generally favor tariffs and oppose NAFTA.

[rock58seg]

Why do you post everything twice?

[alnick]

but if this is true:

There's nothing in the article to indicate it's anything but speculation.

[Gondring]

As I ponder the SCOTUS nominee, I wonder how many people here would be comfortable if they went in for heart surgery and found that the surgeon had never actually performed surgery, but was "a very good family practitioner with real, everyday experience"?

And...how many would be comforted to find that the newly proposed surgeon was taking a "crash course" on heart surgery.

But wait...I must just be wanting to "destroy conservatism"--not "care about America"--to ask such a thing... :-( It couldn't possibly be that the SCOTUS decisions are the surgery on the heart of our republic...that forgotten document called The Constitution.

[deaconjim]

Bush understands the concept of tax cuts to increase revenue. He is willing to let the free market work. He is respectful of the military, understands its purpose, and is willing to let them do their jobs when necessary. Bush is not a gun grabber. He is pro-life. He has no apparent pro-homosexual agenda. Bush is prone to doing what he believes is right rather than chasing poll numbers. He choses his people based on their abilities rather than trying to meet a quota (no, I can't explain Miers).

As I said, he barely passes muster. I would prefer that he did away with income taxes altogether, and that he were more aggressive on pushing other conservative issues, but I knew from day one that he was not going to do that. At this point, we have to be happy with what we can get from him, and plan on electing a more conservative president next time around

[NeoCaveman]

But it looks like Santorum will lose in 2006.

It does. The Dems put up the best possible candidate against Santorum for 2006. If Rick survives this he will be Senator for life.

[dawn53]

If Iraq were a huge success right now

Mr. Goldberg needs to define the term "success."

I would call recent events in Iraq a success.