USA: Forged in Freedom

(An argument between me, Robert Burack, and Bob Bowen at http://www.weeklyfilibuster.com)

BURACK: Continuing war. Economic collapse. Global threats. Dilution of values. Natural disasters leading to poverty and suffering.

It can all get pretty heavy. Earlier this year, Bill Maher remorsed about the country’s seeming lack of ability to do “great things”. I agreed wholeheartedly. Then we elected Barack Obama.

It’s a new year – a new possibility. The first one hundred days of a presidency are usually the most productive, and I’m excited to see what is going to get accomplished. It’s just going to be nice to finally have a President that asks us to sacrifice something – to be better as a collective whole. Because, if we learned anything in 2008, it was that we’re all in this together.

CAVEDON: We do great things as persons, not as a nation. America was founded on the premise that persons ought to be free, not that nations ought to accomplish “great things.” The greatest things we’ve ever done, like putting railroads across the country, reaping wealth that put Europe to shame, creating a unique literary tradition, making films that are the best in the world, putting man into the sky to fly, and creating not one but two machines that let us communicate globally in an instant (telephones and computers) was all done by personal initiative and effort.

We can do great things. Let’s not politicize everything and look to the government to crusade and dream for us. That’s dictionary “totalitarianism” – the idea that the state should have total ambition, total reach, and total resources ready to address any issue that “the people” want it to.

BOWEN: Let’s look at what we have done together. We put a man on the moon. We saved Europe and became rich at the same time with the Marshall plan. We ended racism in our legal systems with the Voting Rights Act and the Civil Rights Act. We used Social Security to save our senior citizens from abject poverty. We faced down Stalin and Khruschev. We ensured people’s life savings with the FDIC. We proved to the world that democracy could work and now event the most brutal totalitarian regimes pretend to be democratic.

If that were all, then we would meerly be a wonderful nation. Democracy is not all about individuals. Some of it is about what we choose to do together. The tasks that we recognize are simply too great to do alone. It is those tasks on which a national spirit thrives. We face great challenges in the next several decades, but with a track-record like the one we have, we have reason to be confident.

Every day, people suffer and die of terrible diseases. How is it acceptable that we are doing less than everything that we can to cure cancer, MS, AIDS, huntingtons, alzheimers, and dozens more? This is the work of a great nation. In the richest country in the world, middle and working class people are bankrupted by medical bills because we are the only nation in the world without universal health insurance. We owe it to the uninsured and the under-insured to fix our system.

By the way, something I had to get out: to lay railroads across this country we exploited Chinese immigrants to pay them low wages in jobs with high fatality rates because of racism. Let’s not tout that as one of our greatest achievements.

CAVEDON: We put a man on the moon; I’ll chalk that one up for the Feds. Saving Europe? Please. We didn’t enter the war until we were directly hit, at which point doing anything less would have been cowardly. The Marshall Plan helped make inefficient bureaucratic welfare states throughout Europe possible by breaking prosperity away from economic sanity. We ended racism in our legal systems, sure, but never forget that it was legal systems that made institutional racism possible. We used Social Security to force every American, no matter how well-off or far-sighted, to buy into socialized pensions that will either bankrupt themselves in a few decades or face privatization (not to mention that our seniors were NOT living in abject poverty before Social Security and the market has grown by a third in the past forty years! Show me any Social Security account with that kind of growth, even after factoring in recession!). We faced down Stalin? Where? We faced down Khrushchev by taking American missiles out of Turkey quietly – hoorah humility. We proved to the world democracy and free markets could work by being rich and free without central control of our lives and money.

America is doing more research than any other nation on the planet to research cures for everything from cancer to HIV/AIDS to genetic diseases to heart disease. Our private system of health research and insurance means that people can choose to pay for more experimental treatments than they are elsewhere. In the UK, every treatment must be certified by a central government body. One of the criteria they use for certification is cost effectiveness. If a treatment does not extend average life expectancies by a certain amount per pound spent, it is not approved. A recent kidney treatment extended average life spans by six months in patients; unfortunately, the government cost ratios mandated at least a year of improvement before the drug could be used. In America, you are free to make your own choices about the kind of treatment you need with your doctor. Unfortunately, new HHS Secretary Daschle’s plan could change that: http://www.reason.com/news/show/130726.html

Universal health insurance will not come without dramatic new government control of the health care system. 130,000 pages of Medicare regulations already set the standards for what is cost-appropriate. Believe me, I’ve purchased more than one wheelchair and other pieces of medically necessary equipment through private insurance and still had to have my needs meet state standards. As long as the government is footing the bill for health care, it and not competition, my freedom to pick insurers, and my doctors will have the power to ultimately say what I can consider. If we want to truly help the poor, let’s limit tort and liability so that doctors can take patients as Good Samaritans and make house visits without fearing the lawyer. Let’s give more tax deductions for research of new drugs and cut back on restrictions that prevent people from freely choosing alternative and experimental treatments. Let’s shrink down Medicare and Medicaid so that more private insurers can be innovative with their coverage plans.

Finally, as for railroads, the labor standards sucked and were abusive, fine. In the end, though, it is perhaps more of a testament to the dedication of Chinese immigrants that the system came out as well as it did, just as Southern agriculture is a credit to the slaves who built it from nothing. In so much as the overlords and task masters get credit, you are right, it is wrong because so many were forced to work without contracts they freely entered. Perhaps, though, the end result is a source of pride for the people whose ancestors still worked through it all and made something impressive. But then, I’m just another white guy from the middle class who cannot really speak of such things.

Equality through Capitalist Mobility

Contrary to popular media headlines, the average American is now making approximately 20% more than his father. Much of the change has been in non-monetary compensation, meaning that workers are now getting more health care, 401 (k)s, vacation days, and optional training than ever before. That, coupled with more productivity, means the average American can buy things today that were impossible even two decades ago: personal computers and music players, four phone lines, flat screen TVs, central air, imported cars, digital cameras, video cameras…

That growth has not been limited to the rich. Now, even most poor households have TVs, computers, cell phones, freezers, climate control, and other amenities that were limited to at least the middle class a few decades ago.

America is more unequal in terms of short-run wealth, maybe, but what about social mobility, another crucial factor in equality (in the long run)? France’s presidents have been culled from elites at the top civic universities for years, and business leaders in the UK are often descended from old lines of prestige (Sir Richard Branson, anyone?). Meanwhile, in the US, Warren Buffett has lived in the same modest house that he first bought fifty years ago when it was all he could afford and the president-elect grew up in a broken urban household.

Our willingness to have less short-term equality by lowering tax rates and reducing regulations in fact makes the field more open for nouveaux riche to get a foothold. Fewer tariffs, subsidies, corporate taxes, labor regulations, and nationalized industries means less of a skewed field towards established corporations and more room for the kind of innovation and creativity that means the powerful stay on their toes and the young guns just might have a shot at glory.

The exception to this rule, of course, is government action. America has joined Britain in subsidizing its banks, meaning fresh lenders with new business strategies will be unlikely to take the place of disastrously bad management. America has joined France in subsidizing its automakers, meaning new companies and even foreign-owned companies better set to meet the market’s demands are shoved back.

The kind of inequality that we need to worry about more than any other is the kind that puts trenches in the playing field of the market and that combines the power of politicians and corporate elites. It is the abandoning of the free market for corporatism. It is the rise of those too big to fail backed up by those to important to lose.

It is, in a phrase, government intervention.

War Cry

Written September 20, 2008

Tonight, Senator John McCain lost the election for President of the United States to Senator Barack Obama. After nine long months of campaigning, America has decided that it has had enough of Republican leadership. In March, control of the White House will pass to the Democrats. Along with their increased control in both houses of Congress, the Presidency will enable Democrats to move ahead on a series of sweeping reforms and changes in the size and scope of the federal government. Due to our relatively weak numbers and failed brand, Republicans will have little say in how the government moves ahead to address a broad array of issues. Obama has campaigned on a platform of progressivism. From universal public health care to reinstating gun control policies to instating left-leaning judges to raising taxes on businesses, Democrats will set forth in 2009 to remake America into a more liberal, activist place. The federal government will be on the hunt for dragons to slay, dragons like violence, poverty, ignorance, and disease.

As conservatives, where do we now stand? Is it time to stop fighting modern liberalism and cede ground to the welfare state? Is it time to fully embrace secular values and abandon romantic notions of strict Constitutionalism? Is it time to accept the era of benevolent governance and become America’s Tories?

To these questions I answer a resounding “no.” We on the right, from traditionalism to libertarianism, stand for something different and valuable in America. Different because we rely on free initiative in a way that liberals from Washington to Paris cannot comprehend. Valuable because we are the last vanguards of the Revolution, which set forth the extremely radical and yet intensely conservative message that people, guided by the wisdom of the ages, are their own best hope. This message cannot, I repeat cannot, be lost to America in the face of modern progressivism.

Progressivism, or the desire to use centralized government to address the pressing needs of the nation, is both addictive and flawed. It is extremely addictive because it appeals in a very real way to the emotional needs of people. The dragons mentioned above are very real and cause a great deal of harm to many people. In a democracy, it is only natural that the people will look to the government for a redress of their every grievance. The great tragedy of the human condition is that nothing, not even the mighty forces of empire, can slay the beasts. As evidenced by the failures of every progress-minded regime from Bolshevik Russia to welfarist Germany to socialist India, centralized government is not the answer. Whenever government fails, however, people have a tendency to ask it to do more. However irrational it may seem, Americans today looked for more government after government-sanctioned HMOs and regulation imploded the health care system. Americans looked for more government after FEMA failed the victims of Katrina. Americans looked for more government after No Child Left Behind left America’s children behind. Is it understandable that people want powerful bodies to fix the messes? Of course. Is it irrational to expect wolves to protect chickens from… wolves? Quite.

The Right is unique in America in its insistence that the flourishing of human liberty in matters personal and financial and the decentralization of power are the greatest safeguards of freedom and prosperity. We will be called callous, heartless, savage, ignorant, and out-of-touch in the coming years as we fight a losing battle against the further bureaucratization of our society. In the coming decade, though, when Washington pencil-pushers establish the standards for the health care of every American, when tax rates approach 50% for businesses, when unarmed victims are shot in their own homes, when this country faces a demographic crisis because of abortion and unchecked immigration, and when Americans have a sense of apathy after all these years of chasing dragons, we will still be here speaking of liberty lost. We will be the promise of a new day for America, a new hope for a people ready to shake off the shackles of big government and set forth once again on the bold experiment that is life in a free market, representative republic.

In order to be ready to meet the needs of America, we must spend our time in the opposition renewing the Right and returning to the core principles that have always defined our worldview. It is time to move on past the politics of yesterday. America lost faith in conservatives the moment they lost faith in themselves. Over the past eight years, the GOP has sacrificed its heart to the gods of power and control. Once upon a century, we were the party that fought the unneeded deployment of American troops to Bosnia, Haiti, Somalia, and even Vietnam. We stood toe-to-toe against Democrats with a vision of creating a friendlier, more Utopian world to live in. Now, we are the party that “liberated” Iraq, threatened to enter into a nuclear war with Iran and North Korea, and kicked off a new Cold War with Russia. Once upon a decade, we forced a liberal Democrat to balance the federal budget and almost passed a constitutional amendment that would end the days of spending money that the government does not have. Now, we are the party responsible for record increases in the federal budget for education and health care. Once upon a millennium, our philosophical forbears wrote the Magna Carta, the Declaration of Independence, and the Federalist Papers. Now, we are the party that made extraordinary rendition ordinary, waterboarded prisoners of war, and argued that security demands sacrificing the liberty of habeas corpus. Ben Franklin and Thomas Jefferson would be mortified.

In order to keep our power to do such things, we have run campaigns of deception. We spat on the war record of John Kerry, a rather poor presidential candidate but an exceptional winter patriot. We blamed liberals for everything from Southwestern-Mexican assimilation plots to hating America and forgetting 9/11. We accused our next president, a devoted public servant, Christian father, and faithful husband, of being a Muslim black nationalist traitor who cannot wait to teach your kids sex ed. Is it any wonder we just lost to a man quite unafraid to base his campaign on hope, change, and service?

What is it that made us such cowards in the world? We can win debates without the use of fear and authoritarianism. We do not need threats of terrorism and anti-Americanism at home to win elections. We stand for personal enterprise, liberty, and tradition. Is this really so lost a cause that we need to be slanderers and bullies to win anything? We do not need to fight baby-killers to win protection for the unborn. We do not need to fight Hollywood elitists to keep our guns. We do not need to fight Frenchmen to hold judges to the letter of the law. We do not need to fight communists to cut taxes. We do not need to fight traitors to keep America safe. All we need to do is remind Americans of their Constitution and their sacred freedom in the face of temptation to give the government free reign over our lives.

If I am wrong on this note, may the Right rot forever in hell where it belongs. Any ideology that needs terror and intimidation to win the day is surely morally depraved to its very core. Any philosophy that need only call people to free themselves, learn from the wise, and take responsibility for one another directly, however, belongs enshrined in the depths of our hearts.

Tonight, we have a chance to reclaim our mantle of freedom from the neoconservatives and liberals within our party who have hijacked us for their own designs and ambitions. Tonight, the politics of old died entirely. Senator McCain, who could have begun the transition back to conservatism in earnest, will not be given that duty. Now, it is incumbent on us to force that transition in here and now in full force. Tonight is a resounding blow to our identity in these recent years. Tonight is a mandate for a Right so old it looks new.

Tonight, the Right is dead. Starting tonight, long live the Right!

Postscript, written October 22, 2008

This is not to excuse the Obama campaign and ought not to be taken as a sign that the Democrats are pure, virtuous, and positive on the campaign trail. Though the most blatantly gross attacks have come from the right, Democrats have asserted that Governor Palin is nothing less than an American theocrat and would-be Puritan. She faked her own pregnancy, banned books, and supported militant separatism, according to extreme liberals. According to reality, she is a devoted family woman and reasonable patriot.

According to mainstream liberals, McCain is about to tax your health benefits “for the first time” and destroy employer-based health care, while Obama will cut taxes for 95% of Americans. Employer-based health care is a broken system and McCain is simply proposing switching existing benefits from employer health care to personal health care. Obama cannot cut taxes for the one-third of Americans who do not pay income taxes to begin with. McCain also “wants” the Iraq War to go on for another hundred years, Palin is not a “real woman” because she is pro-life, and McCain’s energy plan is less “comprehensive” than Obama’s, despite the fact that it contains nearly all of Obama’s proposals plus some aimed at traditional energy production.

Though these are more policy-oriented attacks, they are potentially even more destructive than GOP tabloidia, given that many Americans put more stock in them and believe them more readily. If we truly want a new kind of politics, we will have to acknowledge that one candidate truly does want to cut different taxes more than the other, that one candidate supports abortion rights more than the other, and that one wants troops in Iraq without timelines while the other does not. Once we get that far, perhaps we can actually debate the relative merits here rather than trying to steal the other man’s essential talking points.

Postscript, written November 5, 2008 at 12:45 AM

Tomorrow morning, I will wake up in what is still very much Washington’s America. Perhaps the day will come when America wakes up and remembers how very disturbingly radical Washington actually was and realize that our rights, freedoms, liberty, and prosperity do not belong to the city.