Republican Whiners

One might think that a libertarian would be more hysterical about ‘health care reform’ than the Republicans and its direct-action cadres, the Neo-Con-Gelicals of the Tea Party, 9/12 groups and other self-styled ‘activist’ organizations. It’s true that I do believe the agenda of the Progressives is hopelessly misguided and destructive to the fabric of liberty as we know it in the U.S. With that said, I’m not at all angry with Progressive Democrats, though.  I am angry at the real Marxists and Socialists who hide behind the Progressive banner, but they are not in the majority in the Democrat party, contrary to Glenn Beck’s red-baiting. In my view, this has been coming for a long time. The Democrats have earned this victory by having done the hard work of building a real, coherent political philosophy and movement, whereas the Republicans simply have not.

A bit more on the Progressive movement is probably in order. The fact is that Progressives have gone to great lengths to build up a philosophical foundation for their beliefs and policies. Their moral justification is exquisite in fact, and is probably most rationally justified by John Rawls’  Theory of Social Justice. As well, many of their criticisms of capitalism and U.S. society are based on Critical Theory, which attempts to unify sociological and philosophical threads of theoretical work, and is an entire discipline of thought. Critical Theory has a strong, well defined epistemology all of its own, and many Progressive ideas lean on it heavily. Progressivism, in fact, is the very foundation of modern sociology and a belief in it is considered axiomatic in those circles as the only viable way to improve a capitalist, free society. Their policy recommendations flow from these well formed intellectual foundations. So, when I see proposals to ‘reform health care’ with a strong hand from the federal government, I’m not surprised and I don’t see it as part of some Trotskyite revanchist movement. Quite to the contrary, in fact, I expect it, as they have talked about this policy for decades, they run on this platform plank and the current slate of candidates in the Congress – and Obama himself – were very up front about their desire to reform health care in the way that they have proposed. I don’t agree with them, but I also can’t claim surprise, or that this is some rash, crazy move on their part. They won the right to do so, and if they succeed, it can rightfully be seen as a consequence of democracy in action, despite what the opinion polls of the moment say.

So pardon me if I’m not freaking out. My anger is actually focused on the Republicans, who for years have promised smaller government, a reliance on free markets and fiscal responsibility but have failed to lead the country in that direction. With respect to our health care system, which currently isn’t really any kind of unified system at all, and in its current state is a rather chaotic mish-mash of public-private entities that is certainly not sustainable based solely on it’s spiraling costs, the Republicans have offered little of substance to counter the very real problems we all face. They occasionally mumble about privatization of some entitlement programs, but their actual policy initiatives have been half-hearted at best, and looked at dispassionately, don’t add up to much. Worse yet, the Republicans have held power in significant ways in the past 30 years but have failed miserably to build a competing theoretical worldview to what is on offer from Progressives. Instead, they rely on a melange of patriotism, feigned fiscal responsibility, the illusion of small government and fierce opposition to the march of Progressivism; a battle they’ve fought poorly and have almost continuously lost ground in. Make no mistake, the cause of individual liberty, as it is constructed by classical liberalism, is losing ground in our country, and in Western democracies in general (Rawls’ theory is in many ways a rejection of it). I love when I hear Progressives complain about the sway of conservatives over society, as though I’m not going to notice that government in all of it’s forms now takes 46% of our GDP, compared to 6.8% one hundred years ago. The Progressive impulse has taken root in every level of government and one can daily see its relentless march – and its dire consequences in cities like Cleveland and Detroit, for example. They are winning and are continuing to win. The Republicans are left to negotiate the terms of the reduction of our liberties and nowhere are they succeeding in turning back the tide. Under Gingrich, there was a bit of an anomaly with welfare reform, but even now, despite the wild success of that initiative, welfare reform is being rolled back by Progressives.

The root cause of my anger is at the timidity of the Republican’s defense of liberty and free markets. There is a reason for this. It’s because they’ve sold their souls to crony capitalists, religious fundamentalists and other bigots, and if they were to actually stand up for liberty and free markets, they would need to turn their backs on the agendas of these special interests.

Let’s take the corporate interests first. If they really thought long and hard about our current corporate society, with the protections corporations have, they would have to question the very existence of them. If you’ve never thought about it, here’s a quick primer. The corporation, as an entity, enjoys limited liability for its actions, in the sense that shareholders cannot be held liable for the actions of corporations in any way, other than losing the value of their holdings. Compare this to say a sole proprietorship or partnership in which the owners are legally and financially liable for the actions of corporations. Consider, for example, how the shareholders of AIG would have reacted if they were held accountable for AIG’s losses. Imagine their own net worth was at risk – they would certainly not have been nearly as blind to AIG’s activities. In political philosophy terms, it’s called the agent-principal problem. Management and boards are supposed to act as agents of the shareholders, but in fact quickly develop interests of their own that subjugate the actual interests of shareholders. The shareholders are protected from this insanity because owning shares in a corporation is a kind of option in that downside is only limited to the capital one invests but the upside is unlimited. To take this a step further, our protected and highly regulated banking and securities industries hold monopoly power over the credit and equity markets, so they manipulate them to keep shareholders at bay while creating wealth for themselves and corporate managers (who are board members of other corporations). Politicians of all stripes are bought off along the way – and the truth is that most Republicans or Democrats don’t even understand this problem well, but it’s just as true that Republicans are their willing apologists. I don’t blame the Democrats – they don’t claim to believe in free markets as a core value. But the Republicans do, and either through stupidity  and/or venality, they choose to turn a blind eye towards the insanity of modern corporate America and its enablers in the legally corrupt financial services sector. If they were really proponents of free markets they would address these problems straight on, promoting free banking, eliminating the Federal Reserve, change corporate structures to reintroduce accountability to owners and a host of other policies. Ask any Republican about these and other like-minded ideas and he will just kind of dimly smile, barely able to understand what is being discussed. Again – the Democrats don’t either – but they don’t claim to be the protectors of capitalism, do they?

Okay, so what about their defense of individual liberty? Well, it’s clear that the Republicans made some of deals with the devil along that road. By making common cause with conservatives who are anti-drugs, anti-gambling, anti-gay, anti-porn, pro-religion – you get the point, yes? – they support government intervention into the private lives of humans in many ways that violate one’s natural rights. So, when they try to argue with the Progressives about individual rights, well they often get hung by their own hypocrisy. As well, they don’t understand that Progressivism has already accounted for and resolved these conflicts in theory.  On another front, and worse yet, Republicans have also bought into a bigotry that moral majority types accept as revealed truth – that faith in a Christian god is at the core of what makes our country great, in order to mollify and activate their most enervated supporters. And why not? The sanctimony and self-righteousness of a Neo-Con-Gelical, who believes that he is doing God’s work is a powerful political force. It’s a big part of the Tea Party movement, and they are the Republican’s answer to ACORN and union activists. I get it, it’s the crass politics of power – but when they do this, they quite clearly lose any legitimacy to their pretense of support for individual liberty. Also, perhaps by default, and some would say by design, they’ve become the comfortable home for the racists in our society. The “Southern Strategy” of the post civil-rights era has made folks who are “good Americans”, you know, white, very comfortable in their assumption of moral superiority. This isn’t overt, but it’s very real – and I was a life long Republican until about 2003, I have seen this firsthand. Let me put it another way. The average white racist (who is in the minority in the party) is much more comfortable with the Republican party than the Democratic party. You can call this an accident, but without Republican resurgence in the south, it would not be competitive nationally. The party doesn’t speak loudly about equality and doesn’t intentionally make those who aren’t really for liberty for all Americans uncomfortable. I’ve only really come to terms with this as a libertarian, which, as “The Party of Principle” makes one really look head on at liberty, making any tolerance of racial or ethnic hatred impossible. This is why the Republicans are so suspect when they talk about immigration or affirmative action – they don’t get the benefit of the doubt, fairly or unfairly – but regardless, they haven’t earned the public mantle of standing for equality the way the Democrats have.  All of this and more make their bleating about individual liberty fall on deaf ears to anyone outside of their most rabid base – and the funny part is they don’t even know it how silly they look to anyone outside of their echo chamber.

So now we come to health care and suddenly the American public, who was just subjected to 8 years of George Bush and Tom Delay, are supposed to believe that suddenly the Republicans actually have workable policy solutions to the problems in our health care sector? After ceding any legitimate moral high ground  in terms of really supporting individual liberty or free markets, they don’t even realize how ridiculous they sound by railing for these ideas. It’s made even worse now by the likes of Beck or Palin – who personify the self-styled political activists in the Tea Party movement. After never bothering to even study history or political philosophy in any formal way, and while completely ignoring the need to build a foundation of a counter-political philosophy to Progressivism, they suddenly just pour out into the streets and the halls of our nations capitol – or onto our TVs, crying foul. If you listen to their complaints, they are barely rational. I heard a caller to Rush Limbaugh the other day complain because when she called into the congressional switchboard and asked the operator if she should complain to him/her only, she was told a bit snottily that she needed to give him the name of her representative so she could put her through. She didn’t even know that she had to talk to her specific representative to lodge a complaint. I’ve seen countless scenes like this while traipsing around on the blogosphere. David Frum had one of his reporters do an informal survey of Tea Party protesters in DC  on tax issues, asking simple questions about whether Obama has actually raised taxes (no – he cut them) or what percentage of GDP the Federal Govt takes (most said for 40% or greater – answer: 20% and that’s not a record either). I’m not taking cheap shots at these folks for the sake of belittling them, btw, I’m trying to point out that the unintellectual posture, or perhaps better said, the intellectual laziness of the Republicans is biting them in their own posteriors. They have not done the hard work of building a real movement that relies on a strong, well defined philosophy that they actually have supported with real policies. No, they just cherry pick the aspects of classical liberalism and free market economics which suit their current issue, rally the troops into a frenzy with half truths and then wonder why the rest of us don’t take them seriously. At all – really, if you’re a Republican and you’ve actually read this far, know that virtually nobody outside of the Neo-Con-Gelicals – about 20%  – of the population can listen to your hysteria without laughing or getting angry. You are winning nobody new to the cause. The only reason that there is hope for the Republicans in the next election cycle is because the Democrats are ridiculous in their own ways. The truth of our current political reality is that when either one of the parties gets power, the citizenry immediately turns on them out of just plain old common sense. There is no swing to conservatism now and there was no swing to Progressivism in the last election cycle. Both parties are incredibly screwed up in their own ways, and the American public quickly gets sickened by either of them as soon as it assumes power.

Libertarians actually stand for such things as free markets and individual liberty, and brook no quarter from those who don’t adhere to these ideals. We are working very diligently at building up real intellectual support for our philosophy, and libertarian academics are spreading out through the intellectual world elucidating it in growing numbers. In twenty years, when we have a solid base of support and are winning elections, the Republicans won’t understand why. They really need to stop being such whiners, and instead build a coherent movement that can attract principled people who insist on policies and strategies that make sense, instead of vague, unbelievable tropes and populist rhetoric with no basis in principles or philosophy. But see, they can’t because they’d have to shake off most of their base, and they would never risk power to stand on principle. But in the meantime, the Republicans should stop whining about the Democrats  – it’s really quite pathetic.

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