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Era of Big Government Has Just Begun
TechCentralStation.com ^ | 09/23/2002 | James Pinkerton

Posted on 09/23/2002 7:18:00 PM PDT by billybudd

Conservatives who support "regime change" in Iraq might reflect that the forthcoming war for Baghdad is likely to change the government here in the U.S. as well. Indeed, a close look at a new document published on Friday by the White House, "The National Security Strategy of the United States," shows that the despairing wisdom of the early- 20th-century American anti-war radical Randolph Bourne - "war is the health of the state" - has been proven yet again.

Put simply, President Bush, once a small-government governor with a unilateralist bent, is morphing into a big-government presidential multilateralist. Maybe that was a necessary transformation, in the wake of 9/11, but that was Bourne's point: the words "national security" usually kibosh principles about the size and scope of government. Which explains why Uncle Sam always seems to get beefier - and greener - year after year, no matter who's in the White House.

Media headlines focused mostly on the military aspects of the new Bush policy. "Bush to Outline Doctrine of Striking Foes First," read The New York Times, which printed a leaked copy on Friday morning. Later in the day, Reuters headlined, "Bush Outlines Strategy of Preemptive Strikes." CNN described it, simply, as "First Strike Doctrine." Needless to say, many Americans will support the Bush strategy of anti-terror pre-emption, first outlined in a June 1 presidential speech at West Point, which has now been elaborated and turned into a formal politico-military doctrine.

In this paper, the Bush Administration has demonstrated a rushing ambition to occupy new beachheads of respectability and legitimacy. It's an ambition that threatens to spill over traditional policy categories, carrying unfamiliar ideas about everything from foreign aid to global warming. In choosing to define just about every problem the world faces as a potential national security threat, it is unwittingly inviting back the era of big, bigger, biggest government. As so often happens in Washington, once a committee sits down to draft a document, every agency eventually wangles its way into the drafting room, and thus every square inch of bureaucratic "turf" gets some treatment - and the prospect of more funding as fertilizer - in the final text.

So while the first five sections of the nine-section document hew closely to traditional national security topics - that is, terrorism and weapons of mass destruction, topics that most Americans could plausibly imagine the White House's National Security Council taking up as an agenda item - some of the later sections go off on their own merry, spendthrifty way. Section VII, for example, is entitled "Expand the Circle of Development by Opening Societies and Building the Infrastructure of Democracy"; it veers off into social-policy platitudes that read as if they were written by the Ford Foundation: "A world where some live in comfort and plenty, while half of the human race lives on less than $2 a day, is neither just nor stable." In that same bleeding-heart vein, the strategy adds, "The United States will deliver greater development assistance through the New Millennium Challenge Account to nations that govern justly, invest in their people, and encourage economic freedom. We will also continue to lead the world in efforts to reduce the terrible toll of HIV/AIDS and other infectious diseases." If left-leaning philanthrocrats didn't provide the impetus behind that promise, one can nonetheless expect NGOs to sidle up to the trough, offering to help Washington spend the billions that will gush forth from that policy pledge.

To be sure, the Bush people tried hard to keep their ideological vigor, even amidst the occupational hazard of Beltway-itis. Deep in the text, for instance, is a specific endorsement of "tax policies - particularly lower marginal rates - that improve incentives for work and investment." But elsewhere, even when it means well, the document dances atop potential land mines. It declares that American victory in the Cold War left the world with "a single sustainable model for national success: freedom, democracy, and free enterprise" - which sounds wonderful to Cato-ite ears at first hearing. But look closer, at the S-word: "sustainable." A whole huge United Nations conference was built upon that word, the World Summit on Sustainable Development, which met in Johannesburg, South Africa, earlier this month. And so every time the Bushies embrace that favored buzzword of the left, they open the door for others - in the media, in Congress, in subsequent presidential administrations - to spin those buzzwords over toward the port side of the ideological aisle.

'Twas ever thus. In the late 1960s, the Nixon Administration left in place such nice-sounding but policy-freighted words as "affirmative action" and "equal opportunity." Soon, those phrases were encased inside ever-burgeoning bureaucracies and enforcement schemes that bear perverse and anti-conservative fruit even to this day.

Moreover, in some places, the text mostly concedes the arguments of the left, especially the green left. One might consider, as a further f'rinstance, the discussion of climate change. The document doesn't mention the Kyoto Treaty by name, but it might just as well:

Economic growth should be accompanied by global efforts to stabilize greenhouse gas concentrations associated with this growth, containing them at a level that prevents dangerous human interference with the global climate. Our overall objective is to reduce America's greenhouse gas emissions relative to the size of our economy, cutting such emissions per unit of economic activity by 18 percent over the next 10 years, by the year 2012. Our strategies for attaining this goal will be to:

remain committed to the basic U.N. Framework Convention for international cooperation;

obtain agreements with key industries to cut emissions of some of the most potent greenhouse gases and give transferable credits to companies that can show real cuts;

develop improved standards for measuring and registering emission reductions.

Remember when the Bush Administration declared that the science behind the Kyoto Treaty, as well as the politics, was "fatally flawed"? That was just 18 months ago, but it now seems like a different presidency ago. When pressed on this topic by irate 2000-election supporters - the red-state folks who voted Bush-Cheney - the administration will surely insist that it has no intention of revisiting the Kyoto treaty. Yet as Chris Horner of the Competitive Enterprise Institute has pointed out, the administration has never formally retracted Kyoto, leaving the factory-closing treaty with at least some residual legal force. And so from now on, greens and other multilateralists will cite this document as still more proof that the administration has acknowledged the seriousness of the climate change issue, yet still drags it feet on "doing something." And so there could begin a long and painful process in which the administration eventually bows to pressure - pressure that it helped build - losing one factory-worker job at a time.

Will the Bushies really do that? Sure they will, if they conclude that keeping the anti-Iraq alliance together, including Britain's pro-Kyoto Tony Blair, is more important than maintaining every last jot and tittle of American national sovereignty. Also, a legacy-minded 43rd president might eventually figure that the individuals and institutions that can most confer the esteem of the "world community" are strongly on the side of submerging national sovereignty. No wonder the strategy document brims with evidence that Bush is "growing" in office. Here's an excerpt from the cover-letter, signed by the president himself:

We are guided by the conviction that no nation can build a safer, better world alone. Alliances and multilateral institutions can multiply the strength of freedom-loving nations. The United States is committed to lasting institutions like the United Nations, the World Trade Organization, the Organization of American States, and NATO as well as other long-standing alliances.

One wonders how the folks back in Crawford, Tex., will react when they get wind of the pro-globalocracy sentiments now being evinced by their sometime neighbor at Prairie Chapel.

In issuing this document, in all its expansive, world-girdling policy plenitude, Bush may be thinking he has absorbed the lesson of the last year, which is that the U.S. needs to maintain at least the appearance of international cooperation to be effective in the war on terror. But in fact, he may well have learned the wrong lesson. In thinking he has to surrender to planetary pieties, at least rhetorically, he has neglected the lesson of his own powerful speech to the United Nations on September 12. In that address, the American president proved that his leadership could pull the world his way, by explicit word and implicit deed. Bush may well succeed in his short-term mission of rallying support for war against the Iraqi regime, but in the long term, he has provided the ideopolitical compost for the expansion of government here at home.


TOPICS: Editorial; Foreign Affairs; Government
KEYWORDS: bush; government; iraq; kyoto; spending; un
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To: billybudd
Phft!
221 posted on 09/25/2002 4:27:01 PM PDT by verity
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To: MJY1288
You started it $ick Head

And it appears that I finished it pretty well........

222 posted on 09/26/2002 8:22:46 AM PDT by Joe Hadenuf
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To: Joe Hadenuf
"And it appears that I finished it pretty well........"

I agree, No one can argue the fact that you're a skillfull troublemaker. It's obvious by the way you make an entrance to a thread with a personal attack on most if not all accasions.

Other than bitching and whining, It's quite clear name calling and personal attacks are your primary contributions here on Free Republic. But don't feel alone, there are plenty around here just like you.... ( .02%rs )

223 posted on 09/26/2002 9:21:23 AM PDT by MJY1288
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To: Joe Hadenuf; Texasforever; VaBthang4; RedBloodedAmerican
.02%er =


224 posted on 09/26/2002 9:30:08 AM PDT by MJY1288
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To: billybudd
ROTFLMAO!!!
225 posted on 09/26/2002 12:52:04 PM PDT by NeoCaveman
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To: MJY1288
What's the matter? No Mexicans to spit at today?

First off $ick head, none of my post were directed at you, and you are the one that wants 100,000 government agents on the borders. Second, Yopu are just a whining p*ssy like the rest of you worthless Libertarians Yuck FouOther than bitching and whining,

It's quite clear name calling and personal attacks are your primary contributions here on Free Republic. But don't feel alone, there are plenty around here just like you.... ( .02%rs )

And what are your primary contributions to the Free Republic? Besides being guilty of the very thing you are ranting about?

And besides monthly contributions, what am I suppose to be contributing too? Someones club, someones clique? A political mill, homeowners association type, cookie cutter opinion? Am I suppose to tow the line, and contribute a lock step opinion with others? Not my style. Never has been.

I am not a party boy just so you know. We tend to think for ourselves out here.

Would love to have you out to our high desert home, for a couple of cool ones, sit on the porch for a spell and explain to you why we stand a few paces the right of Reagan and Bush. I reckon you would even feel at home and actually like me, and the rest of our bunch.

And tell you what MJ, we wont even make you drink any beer out of the ol nasty cowboy boot. We save that for the real mean ones.

226 posted on 10/07/2002 8:22:38 PM PDT by Joe Hadenuf
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To: Joe Hadenuf
You are a p*ssy, You couldn't respond to my reponse to your screed on that other thread because you have no argument. I would ping everyone to this thread to prove my point, But I will give you a pass because I feel sorry for you..

You have proven yourself to be a p*ssy

227 posted on 10/07/2002 8:29:38 PM PDT by MJY1288
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To: MJY1288
Oh, your going to be the real tough guy on the key board huh? Talkin loud and tough and all that. That's OK, I kind of figured as much.....


228 posted on 10/07/2002 8:32:03 PM PDT by Joe Hadenuf
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To: Joe Hadenuf
Oh Yea p*ssy, Tell me why you chose to go back two weeks of old threads to respond to me. You're a p*ssy, just fess up
229 posted on 10/07/2002 8:33:42 PM PDT by MJY1288
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To: MJY1288
I would ping everyone to this thread to prove my point, But I will give you a pass because I feel sorry for you..

Go ahead MJ, call and ping the clique committee and the homeowners association types. We could use a laugh. Hehehe.

230 posted on 10/07/2002 8:35:57 PM PDT by Joe Hadenuf
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To: MJY1288
I didn't want to mess up the love fest over there. So what's the big question you have for Joe? Get it off your chest. It shouldn't hurt, hehehe.....
231 posted on 10/07/2002 8:37:35 PM PDT by Joe Hadenuf
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To: Joe Hadenuf
You made my point for me by posting to this two week old thread.... You're a P*ussy
232 posted on 10/07/2002 8:39:07 PM PDT by MJY1288
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To: MJY1288
Wait a minute MJ, I gotta go smoke a cigar on the porch and shut the damn dogs up, back in a minute MJ....
233 posted on 10/07/2002 8:39:19 PM PDT by Joe Hadenuf
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To: Joe Hadenuf
You and Bill Clinton
234 posted on 10/07/2002 8:40:03 PM PDT by MJY1288
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To: billybudd
The whole article trash. Even the title that big govenment 'just began' is a lie, is this guy kidding, it started during Roosevelts rein.
235 posted on 10/07/2002 8:42:35 PM PDT by John Lenin
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To: Joe Hadenuf
I'm done exchanging barbs with you, have a great life in the wilderness.
236 posted on 10/07/2002 8:43:35 PM PDT by MJY1288
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To: MJY1288
OK, I am back MJ. You know your Mom and probably Jim Rob wouldn't appreciate you using such mean nasty words. My, where did you ever learn such nasty street talk? You must live on some mean streets there MJ....

Now, what is it you would like me to respond to? Oh, and don't worry about me hitting the panic abuse button on you, not my style Mj, hehehe....

237 posted on 10/07/2002 8:45:27 PM PDT by Joe Hadenuf
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To: MJY1288
I'm done exchanging barbs with you, have a great life in the wilderness.

Actually MJ I work in a big ol city, I just come out here to get away once in a while. You know. If you want to run off that's OK. Just be careful out there BJ, er MJ, sorry.....

238 posted on 10/07/2002 8:49:59 PM PDT by Joe Hadenuf
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To: Joe Hadenuf
LOL, I know the abuse button isn't what you scared of, It's the fact that you have been exposed fot the little man you are that you're afraid of.

have a great life "Joe Isntmanenuf" I'm done wallowing in your lonely pit of irrelevance

239 posted on 10/07/2002 8:53:53 PM PDT by MJY1288
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To: MJY1288
LOL, I know the abuse button isn't what you scared of, It's the fact that you have been exposed fot the little man you are that you're afraid of.

Is this some kind of code? Don't be going stupid on me MJ.

have a great life "Joe Isntmanenuf" I'm done wallowing in your lonely pit of irrelevance

Uh, are you a woman? Seriously..

240 posted on 10/07/2002 9:00:47 PM PDT by Joe Hadenuf
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