GOP's small government sham says Glenn Greenwald

[Universe Prince]

http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/02/21/libertarianism/index.html

There's a major political fraud underway:  the GOP is once again donning their libertarian, limited-government masks in order to re-invent itself and, more important, to co-opt the energy and passion of the Ron-Paul-faction that spawned and sustains the "tea party" movement.  The Party that spat contempt at Paul during the Bush years and was diametrically opposed to most of his platform now pretends to share his views.  Standard-issue Republicans and Ron Paul libertarians are as incompatible as two factions can be -- recall that the most celebrated right-wing moment of the 2008 presidential campaign was when Rudy Giuliani all but accused Paul of being an America-hating Terrorist-lover for daring to suggest that America's conduct might contribute to Islamic radicalism -- yet the Republicans, aided by the media, are pretending that this is one unified, harmonious, "small government" political movement. [...] This is what Republicans always do.  When in power, they massively expand the power of the state in every realm.  Deficit spending and the national debt skyrocket.  The National Security State is bloated beyond description through wars and occupations, while no limits are tolerated on the Surveillance State.  Then, when out of power, they suddenly pretend to re-discover their "small government principles."  The very same Republicans who spent the 1990s vehemently opposing Bill Clinton's Terrorism-justified attempts to expand government surveillance and executive authority then, once in power, presided over the largest expansion in history of those very same powers.  The last eight years of Republican rule was characterized by nothing other than endlessly expanded government power, even as they insisted -- both before they were empowered and again now -- that they are the standard-bearers of government restraint. [...] ... Right-wing mavens like Ann Coulter, Sarah Palin and National Review are suddenly feigning great respect for Ron Paul and like-minded activists because they're eager that the sham will be maintained:  the blatant sham that the modern GOP and its movement conservatives are a coherent vehicle for those who believe in small government principles. ... [...] But that GOP limited government rhetoric is simply never matched by that Party's conduct, especially when they wield power.  The very idea that a political party dominated by neocons, warmongers, surveillance fetishists, and privacy-hating social conservatives will be a party of "limited government" is absurd on its face.  There literally is no myth more transparent than the Republican Party's claim to believe in restrained government power.  For that reason, it's only a matter of time before the fundamental incompatibility of the "tea party movement" and the political party cynically exploiting it is exposed.

Seems to me, Greenwald has pretty well pegged the hypocrisy of the Republican Party on its supposed limited government principles. I'm starting to believe that all those folks who say George W. Bush and John McCain are not real conservatives are wrong. Maybe George W. Bush and John McCain are real conservatives, and the ones claiming otherwise are the folks who are not real conservatives. Then what are they? I don't know. Maybe they're libertarians and don't realize it.

You may scoff, but that is kind of how I came to describe myself as libertarian. I was raised by conservative/Republican parents to believe in things like liberty and smaller government and the importance of the individual. Over the years, however, I saw the conservatives/Republicans in general consistently supporting larger government, more regulations, interference in the lives of individuals. My change from identifying as a conservative to identifying as a libertarian came not because I changed my core values, but because I held to my core values and realized conservatism and the Republican Party were not in alignment with those core values. And what Greenwald describes is exactly the sort of thing that influenced my thinking. Republican Party politicians talking about smaller government, limited government, liberty, and yet almost never following through with those ideas once in power. As the saying goes, actions speak louder than words. Conservatives and the Republican Party consistently prove they are not interested in limiting government, shrinking government, or protecting liberty. The few of their number who do consistently try are disdained when the Republicans are in power, imitated when the Republicans are not in power, but almost never actually supported.

Greenwald is right to suspect the Republican politicians and talking heads of doing the same thing now. My one main fear for the tea party movement is that it will be taken over by Republicans and used for votes and then either forgotten or corrupted when the Republican politicians get back in power. "Tea Party Republicans" are like "liberaltarian Democrats" and jackalopes. I don't believe they exist.

[Plane]

(sigh)


   I was hopeing that the Republican National leadership understood the reasons behind their recent spanking.

    Or the Democrats their even more recent spanking.


    If they don't get the reason for the spanking the expected educational benefit from the spanking is lost.

[BT]

There is a philosophical approach to governance and then there is the practical.

Greenwald and our resident libertarian tend to the philosophical side.

But i have yet to see much more than finger shaking hypocrisy bombs from that side of the field.

Never have i seen a definition of what small government is, what it would look like, how it would work.

Yes the concept is liberty, in this country the framework is the constitution and the delivery mechanism is government. Theoretically conflicts between the three are settled by an "independent" judiciary.

So what does small government look like to you?

Less taxes?

Bush did that.

Less regulation?

Bush didn't do so good with that.

What services would small government provide?

Would it still be in the school, water, trash, police, fire, emergency, road building, defense business? What about public health, housing codes, animal control, environmental protection?

How about safe food? Water?

How small should government be? And how would you get from where we are to where you want to be?

This response is open to all comers.

[Xavier_Onassis]

If we are going to have Big Oil. Big Pharma, Big Banks, and other Big enterprises, we need to remember that what businesses always seek is monopoly, or as close as they can get to it. They DETEST competition. So if we are to enjoy the benefits of competition, then we need a government with the regulations and the enforcement powers necessary to ensure that there is competition.

My major concern is that the promises of Social Security income, which I have paid into since I was 16, are kept. I would really like police that try to track down burglars and muggers as opposed to those who stop motorists for petty traffic offenses in which no one was harmed, endangered, or even annoyed. I don't want a government that will put cameras on every stoplight and impose fines of over $150 on those it supposedly "catches". I always stop and wait for lights, but when there are cameras, people are likely to make abrupt stops and cause accidents. Sometimes lights are broken and refuse to change.

I want a government that has fair elections that are not decided based on 30 second attack ads paid for by wealthy donors. We need decent education in the US, and what we have needs some reform, because it does not get the results it should.

A government should be chosen based on what we need, not on size--like clothes and shoes. It should be big enough to cover what it needs to, and not be so small as to constrain movement.

[Universe Prince]

There is a philosophical approach to governance and then there is the practical.

Greenwald and our resident libertarian tend to the philosophical side.

That is so much nonsense. You've set up a false division between philosophy and practicality. And then you attempt to imply that what Greenwald and, presumably, I have to say is somehow removed from practicality. You set up this strawman of the wholly impractical libertarianism and then you try to knock it down and claim it as proof that libertarianism is impractical. Well, your argumentation is seriously flawed.

But i have yet to see much more than finger shaking hypocrisy bombs from that side of the field.

This is like President Obama claiming he hasn't seen the Republicans provide any alternatives to his health care plan. Which is to say, you're either not paying attention or you're deliberately ignoring what is going on. Do I even need to mention the Cato Institute? Perhaps less well known is the Reason Foundation, which does more than just publish Reason magazine. Libertarians addressing policy issues and offering solutions are easily found if you bother to look.

Never have i seen a definition of what small government is, what it would look like, how it would work.

Yes the concept is liberty, in this country the framework is the constitution and the delivery mechanism is government. Theoretically conflicts between the three are settled by an "independent" judiciary.

So what does small government look like to you?

Less taxes?

Bush did that.

Less regulation?

Bush didn't do so good with that.

What services would small government provide?

Would it still be in the school, water, trash, police, fire, emergency, road building, defense business? What about public health, housing codes, animal control, environmental protection?

How about safe food? Water?

And here we get to the worst part of the usual criticism of libertarians/libertarianism, the old "you can't tell me how it would work" bit. Yes, the question was about small government, and then how everything else is supposed to work under a small government. As if somehow libertarianism isn't practical if a libertarian does not present a detailed plan for how every part of society will function.

So define for me a conservative government. Please include its approach to handling taxation, regulation, foreign policy, national security, primary education, secondary education, water treatment, trash and litter, law enforcement, fire departments, natural disaster, road construction and maintenance, public health, building and housing codes, animal control, food safety, package labeling, medicine, tobacco, alcohol, other drugs, airlines, business, economics, television, radio, video games, internet, telecommunications, privacy, free speech, marriage, drug use in sports, civil rights, biotechnology, immigration, land use, weapons, energy, natural resources, pollution, agriculture, manufacturing, civil disputes, censorship, pornography, domestic trade, international trade, banking, child safety, intellectual property, labor laws, poverty, prisons, traffic control and space exploration. If you cannot provide a detailed and foolproof plan for the handling of all of those things, accounting for any and all problems that might arise now or in the future, then a conservative government must therefore impractical and could never work.

Is that asking too much? Well that is what libertarians get told about libertarianism. And that is where this challenge of BT's is headed. It doesn't matter what small government outline I or any other libertarian might manage to produce. The inevitable response is some variation of "that's not practical; you have no understanding of how the real world works." Which only leads back to complaints that no one ever explains how small government/libertarianism would work. I've done this dance before. Unless I get some reasonable assurances of better discussion, I see no point in doing it again.

I didn't start this thread to discuss the practicality of conservatism or libertarianism. The point was to discuss the apparent incompatibility of the Tea Party movement/libertarians and the Republican Party. If anyone wants to discuss what Greenwald or I actually said in the initial post, I'll be happy and pleased to have that discussion with you.

[BT]

Try not to take my posts personally Prince.

Although I am personally interested in your vision of governance, small governance and no governance, and where the dividing lines might fall, I'm not quite sure that looking at Cato or Reason would provide your  vision . They might provide their vision, but if you are saying their vision is your vision so be it.

Greenwald is just stirring the pot. You are simply claiming the Tea Party movement for the libertarians. I think it is more independent than that.

[Universe Prince]

I didn't say Cato or Reason would provide my positions. Greenwald is making a valid point about the separation between Republican Party rhetoric and Republican Party conduct. I think the Tea Party movement is far more libertarian in nature than many people are giving or willing to give it credit for being.

My reply to your post is not about taking your post personally. I've had these discussions before. I know how the game works.

[BT]

I think the Tea Party movement is far more libertarian in nature than many people are giving or willing to give it credit for being.

But it isn't a libertarian movement, nor is it a Republican movement although I'm quite sure the Tea Partiers have more commonality with libertarians and Republicans than they do the Democrat Party.

[Universe Prince]

I think the Tea Party movement is far more libertarian in nature than many people are giving or willing to give it credit for being.

But it isn't a libertarian movement, nor is it a Republican movement although I'm quite sure the Tea Partiers have more commonality with libertarians and Republicans than they do the Democrat Party.

It isn't a Libertarian Party movement, but it might be a libertarian movement, even if many of the people themselves don't fully realize how libertarian their ideas are.

[Universe Prince]

Echoing Greenwald's comments, Jacob Sullum has similar reservations about the Mount Vernon Statement.

http://reason.com/archives/2010/02/24/fight-the-power

The day before last weekend’s Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington, D.C., a group of prominent conservatives gathered a few miles away at the Virginia estate of our first president. Their Mount Vernon Statement swears fealty to a "constitutional conservatism" that "applies the principle of limited government based on the rule of law to every proposal" and "honors the central place of individual liberty in American politics and life." If only they meant it. [...] The document’s John Hancock is Ed Meese, who as attorney general during the Reagan administration enthusiastically waged wars on dirty pictures and politically incorrect intoxicants. Whatever you may think about the morality of pornography or drugs, the enumerated powers of the federal government do not include the authority to ban either of them. [...] Likewise, one searches the Constitution in vain for the power to create a national board of censors charged with regulating the content of TV shows. Yet Brent Bozell, the Mount Vernon Statement’s seventh signer and main organizer, is the founder of the Parents Television Council, an organization dedicated to manipulating this power, which would be unconstitutional even if the First Amendment did not exist. [...] By enlisting the federal government in their moral crusades, conservatives do not merely alienate potential allies who reject their premises about the appropriate use of force. They sanction the idea that the federal government can do whatever the Constitution does not explicitly forbid, as opposed to the Framers’ vision of a federal government that can do only what the Constitution explicitly allows. [...] I do not expect constitutional conservatives to be libertarians. But is it asking too much to expect them to be constitutionalists?

[BT]

I still say Greenwald is stirring the pot and apparently small "L" libertarians want to take credit for the Tea Party Movement. What is surprising is all these libertarians who are all about the individual pointing fingers at groups.

[Universe Prince]

Right. 'Cause libertarians are anti-groups. [insert eye roll indicating sarcasm and disbelief here]

[BT]

Right. 'Cause libertarians are anti-groups. [insert eye roll indicating sarcasm and disbelief here]

No they are pro individual. does liberty apply to groups or to the individual?

[Michael Tee]

individual liberty trumps group liberty

That was an interesting and well-conducted (on both sides) debate in which Prince has won every exchange.

[Plane]

individual liberty trumps group liberty

That was an interesting and well-conducted (on both sides) debate in which Prince has won every exchange.

True.