You might have noticed that I’m on a bit of a hiatus right now. Maybe not, either way is fine. I’ve left the League in the capable hands of my fellow contributors to focus more of my time and attention on various other projects, links for which will be forthcoming as early as Monday.

Today; however, is a bit slow, so I thought I’d drop a quick note in response to Erik’s post of yesterday on the pettiness of current conservative politics, the effort and sincerity of which I appreciated greatly.

In that post, Erik wrote,

Populism, after all, is just a nice word for “mob”. If ever there was a thing that conservatives were meant to protect us against it is the rule of the mob. Conservatives were never supposed to be the mob, were never meant to be its advocates.

In so writing, I think that Erik has succinctly summed up why he, despite twists and turns, ducks, bobs, and weaves, and, ultimately, come what may, is a conservative at heart while at the same time articulating a (if not “the”) pressing Conservative dilemma: Erik and most other conservatives don’t trust people.

I don’t say that to be derisive or condemning, it is a perfectly acceptable position to take given the vagaries of common modern life. But this strikes me as one of the fundamental planks of conservative ideology, when the chips are down, people are not to be trusted. And so we must find ways of protecting ourselves from those that cannot be trusted, namely: everyone — excepting maybe family and close friends, and even then…

I note this primarily because one of the projects in which I am currently engaged is an exercise and exploration into precisely the opposite perspective: given the opportunity, people will, more often than not, demonstrate not only that they are trustworthy, but that they are quite capable of not just meeting, but exceeding your expectations. There are no golden rules here, of course. People cannot 100% of the time either be trusted or not trusted. But I am coming around to the idea that people can be trusted often enough that I find myself increasingly averse to precisely the terms that Erik choose to employ: mob or, in other popular lexicon, the masses.

My projects aside, I think this fundamental lack of trust presents, as I mentioned, a real dilemma for conservatives. Conservatives are supposed to be the advocates of liberty and the watchdogs of tyranny, they rail against the excesses and intrusions of government in all it’s myriad forms. And yet, articulations like Erik’s often break down into beliefs like: keep the government out of my life, except when it comes to those people, if government is supposed to do anything it is to keep me safe from those people! And, of course, the number of ways in which the actions of those people, the mob, the masses, intrude on one’s life are never ending, so the number of ways in which government must be utilized as the means by which the untrustworthiness of those people is mitigated grows in a proportional fashion.

Such is the way that — and believe the legislative trajectory of conservatism bears this out — advocates of liberty and limited government wind up constantly finding new ways to use government as a means of guarding against the excesses and dangers of the mob and, presto change-o, government continues unfathomably to grow under their direction. Call it subtle governmentalism, conservatives claim to be thoroughly averse to government excess and speaking loudly and courageously against it in public, but in private enable a justifyng cognitive dissonance to grow it, time and time again.

At least liberals are upfront about their belief that government is a useful means of providing the needed measures for society, sometimes for the mob/masses and sometimes guarding against. Not so for conservatives who are locked into this sort mistrust-limited government finger trap that seems inevitably to render the majority of their rhetorical flourish empty when the rubber hits the road.

Again, I’m not condemning here, we all have our catch-22s with which to deal. But if this isn’t the major roadblock for conservatives and conservatism in contemporary political practice, it strikes me as a fairly significant one.

Memo to the conservatives who suddenly discovered that they were in favor of limited government when George Bush left office: if you want people to believe that your conversion is real, it would probably help if you don’t whine and complain about Big Government Obama (see also: Ed Driscoll, AJ Strata) when he actually proposes a cut to a program that you just so happen to like.  Either you’re for limited government, or your not.  You don’t get to pick and choose the areas where you think limited government is good and bad and still claim to be an advocate for limited government on the whole. 

Say what you will about the various proposals for health care reform, at least they have a goal in mind that is intended to help people in the here and now that are, in fact, hurting.  But what, exactly, is a mission to the moon supposed to accomplish in the here and now that makes it so necessary to keep in the federal budget at a time when we’re running unprecedented budget deficits? 

Either you’re for limited government, or you’re against it.  Being for it only when the Democrats try to create a program you don’t like, and against it whenever they cut a program that you do like….well, it kinda sends a mixed message.  It also has a tendency to result in y’all not caring too much about fiscal restraint when you actually do return to power, one day.  And, one day, you can rest assured, you will in fact return to power, probably even one day soon.  It would be rather helpful to the cause of limited government if, when you return to power, you didn’t seem to care more about expanding the programs that you do like than about cutting the programs that you don’t.  It kinda makes it a bit more difficult to fight the Democrats when they’re in power on limited government grounds when you insist on fighting for the expansion of government when we’re talking about your pet projects.  And right now: YOU’RE NOT HELPING!

Sincerely,

The Libertarians

Alex Massie channels Frederick Jackson Turner to explain the United States’ attachment to limited government.

CONSERVATIVE, n. A statesman who is enamored of existing evils, as distinguished from the Liberal, who wishes to replace them with others.  ~ Ambrose Bierce

People prefer simple explanations to complicated ones which is why ideology is so sweet to so many.  Unlike ideas, ideology is something we don’t have to work at but can merely accept as our own.  This is not to say that people who accept an ideology haven’t thought it through.  Many have and many haven’t.

As an advocate of limited government and individual liberties I find it especially interesting when the anti-statists show up with their die-hard anti-statist arguments, attributing all the world’s maladies to the growth of the state.  Now, you won’t find an argument from me when it comes to the problems of centralization.  D.C. has become far too central to our politics.  New York has become far too central to our finance, and Los Angeles far too central to our culture.  I say bring back the local as much as possible – culturally, economically, and politically.  But it’s hardly the answer to all of our problems as so many profess it to be.  (Again, simple explanations to complicated problems….) [Read more →]

Andrew Sullivan has this map posted at the Dish today, which he found via Open Left.  What I take from Open Left’s analysis is that by and large white men are not all that progressive.  Why this should be “discouraging” to Sullivan is beyond me, unless we’re conflating a lack of progressiveness with out and out racism.  Which I think would be a mistake.  The second map shows the non-white-male voters who picked Obama.

I also wonder if Yglesias is all that correct with this assessment:

I would say that another message is that progressive politics is badly disadvantaged by a situation in which the overwhelming majorities of political leaders and prominent media figures are white men. There are plenty of white men with progressive views, but in general the majority of white men are not progressive and the majority of progressives are not white men.

I think a lot of minority voters aren’t so much “progressive” as they are in favor of more direct government assistance, something Democrats have promised to do better than Republicans.  A lot of minorities and union members also happen to be staunch social conservatives.  Support for things like gay marriage is very low among black and Hispanic populations.  Union members and minorities just have populist tendencies when it comes to economics. [Read more →]

Enlarging government is like doing drama.  Limiting government is like doing comedy.

Let me explain.

At the Oscars, the Best Picture nominees are almost always dramas.  Usually they are tragic and romantic and perhaps even epic.  The Best Actress segment is typically a handful of tearful, sobbing vignettes plucked from whatever dramatic, tragic, epic-romances are up for the award.  Rarely, if ever, is there a Best anything from comedies.  This is not because comedies are any worse than dramas.  And it’s certainly not because comedic acting is any less of a challenge.

In fact, I’d say that comedy is much, much harder to pull off than drama.  Comedy takes a much, much more refined skill set – and it requires above all that the actors work closely together.  That’s the only way to get the timing right.  Drama – not so much.  I think people are naturally inclined to having their heartstrings pulled, but laughs can’t rely on all the dirty tricks that go into making a drama.  (This is nothing against dirty tricks or dramas, but if you think about your favorite dramas you’ll see that they don’t rely nearly as much on good acting or teamwork between actors as they do on playing off our emotions, our resentments, our sense of injustice.)

Well, government is similar.  It’s easy to pull on heartstrings, play on fear, and thereby contribute to the steady growth of the state.  It’s far, far harder to limit government.  And conservatives have been pretty shabby when it comes to formulating plans to actually do this – and to avoid deregulatory capture, powerful corporate interests grabbing control as government is scaled back, and the loss of important safety nets, we’ll need a plan.  Opposition is not enough.  Often as not we take a cudgel to a problem that requires a toothpick to fix.  This is the equivalent of bad slapstick.

Yes, we’ve supplanted witty dialogue with bad shtick.  When we get on stage, we can’t get any laughs from all these old jokes.

Tragically enough, that leads right back to the drama we are in now.

“If companies that are “too big to fail” are too big to exist, then bills that are “too long to read” are too long to pass. This sort of behavior — passing bills that no one has read — or, that in the case of the healthcare “bill” haven’t even actually been written — represents political corruption of the first order. If representation is the basis on which laws bind the citizen, then why should citizens regard themselves as bound by laws that their representatives haven’t read, or, sometimes, even written yet?”

~ Glenn Reynolds

Congress passed the gigantic, $787 billion “stimulus’’ bill in February – the largest spending bill in history – after having had only 13 hours to master its 1,100 pages. A 300-page amendment was added to Waxman-Markey, the mammoth cap-and-trade energy bill, at 3 a.m. on the day the bill was to be voted on by the House. And that wasn’t the worst of it.

~ Jeff Jacoby

(h/t Conor)

Conservatives like to talk about limiting government, but it’s a lot more difficult to do in practice than in theory.  It is rather like quitting a bad habit – much more difficult than picking it up (which is a fairly good analogy for growth of government in general).  And it’s a lot easier to talk about such limitations when not in power than when the tables turn.  The process of limiting government is subject to all sorts of backlash and unintended consequences, and more often than not it is simply a talking point.

Once government has grown, it’s extremely difficult to cut it back – reason enough, in my mind, to keep it as limited as possible from the outset.  But I think practical steps can be taken to limit the state, and often as not, these can be done by limiting lawmakers themselves, making the legislative process more transparent, and focusing not simply on the limits but on the process.

I like the “read the bill” movement.  I think it would curb Democratic excesses and make Republicans honest.  I think that we should go further, though.  All bills passed in Congress should be limited to exactly the stated purpose of the bill.  If separate laws need to be passed, then they should be passed separately.  There is no reason to include non-germane amendments in our legislation ever.  Take that option off the table.  Why does a tourism bill include E-verify laws?   We need to not only require shorter, more accessible bills which our lawmakers are required to read, we need to put a cap on the breadth of laws and regulations and hand-outs that each bill can include.  [Read more →]