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
As the saying goes, fools rush in where angels fear to tread. I think there are people with more perspective and sanguinity who do not see losing 15 seats in a legislature of 535 as a big deal. Then there are the chattering classes whose jaws have come unwired and seem to be flappping their gums to any and every tune this week. New direction will come from the national conversation engendered by the presidential election, not from post election cruises of pundits.
IMHO, 5 years of relentless attacks, lies and contrived BS by the LSM (left-stream media) finally wore down W's self-confidence and resolve.
"It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbled, or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena; whose face is marred by the dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions and spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best, knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who, at worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly; so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory or defeat." THEODORE ROOSEVELT (Paris Sorbonne,1910)
""Freedom is the desire of every human heart." Really? ... 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."
Heh. If you say that on FR, be prepared to be called 'loosertarian' and 'libertine.' Mark has finally run up against the foamers.
Fundivangelists? LOL
Socon is so much more ... concise. You're right, though. The republican tent is looking as fractious as the democrat morass ever was.
"The only people we thoroughly defeated were the Germans"
Heh. Unfortunately, relying solely on Japanese histories of WWII provides less that a complete picture of the war's outcome.
Thanks for the post, Tom. Thanks for the ping Pokey!
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.
Part of the problem is too many people don't look at this (the Bush doctrine) in a long term way. come back in 20-30 years and see what this part of the world is like, because that's the time frame the President is looking at. Will this work? I seem to have misplaced my crystal ball so I can't say. This I do suspect it will be 2 steps forward 1 step back. What's the alternative? Nuking the area?
Can we start looking at the forest instead of the trees?
Steyn may be conservatives' clearest visionary writer.
Cute. But the implied insult will do nothing to motivate them to vote for Republican social liberals.
Social conservatives are key to any presidential election. No recent Republican candidate ever won by appealing to social liberals; no recent Democratic candidate ever won except by appealing to social conservatives.
What has happened to the Republican Pary? If they want to be Dems they may as well change parties, because voters, when given a choice between Dems and Dems Lite, seem to opt for The Real Thing.
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.
EXACTLY!!!!
I've noticed it too. Who wouldn't feel that way after recent elctoral events?
They fear nothing of the kind, and I'm not inclined to think these people are crazy. It's an imposture--they pretend this fear in order to express deed-seated disdain and resentment to their ultimate political demise. It's simple. They don't like the conservative religious. It's a childish thing, to reject an alliance out of simple dislike, but people don't invent terms like "Fundiangelist" for any other reason.
True in spades. Returning to freedom of religion as framed in the Bill of Rights hardly means theocracy. The problem is that most of the fundapaths confuse theocracy with a nationwide perception of right and wrong, good and evil.
<< .... are Steyn's columns more and more, well, burdened, grave, sad lately? >>
Yes.
Thanks for the ping to an unusually insightful analysis (well, not unusual for Steyn)
Apparently, Dr. Friedman opposed the Iraq war. I don't agree with Friedman on this issue, but Steyn - invoking Friedman's name on the Iraq war - should at least have been honest enough to acknowledge this fact.
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