Steven Bainbridge says conservatives shouldn't be looking for new ideas:
To me, this is basically wrong headed. I can’t think of anything more contrary to the spirit of Burkean conservatism than a seach for the “next big thing.” Indeed, I would argue that a large part of the problem with modern conservatism is that Bush and the K Street Gang were more concerned with finding something big to do than with standing athwart history shouting stop.Instead, it is the Libertarians and the progressives who are Big Idea people. Despite their obvious differences in philosophy, they share the absurd belief that if only their big idea(s) came to pass, society would inexorably progress towards some ideal.
In contrast, I stand with Buckley ("Don’t let ideologues try to create heaven on earth, because they’ll deprive us of freedom and make things a lot worse") and Bill Bonner ("Traditional American conservatism was not a doctrine of world improvement, but a mood of skepticism toward all “isms” and empire builders").
I understand that, but as a policy matter, conservatives need to figure out how they're going to stop the juggernaut. Reagan did it with tax cuts, big increases in defense spending, and deregulation. The first two are pretty much out of the picture, and no one's mounted a serious drive at deregulation for more than a decade. It would be nice if one could win an election on "Don't just do something--stand there!" This would quite warm my little heart. But it doesn't work. Conservatives need to figure out how they are going to roll back the bad ideas and prevent new bad ones from getting through. For that, they need a proposal a bit more eloquent than "Stop!"
Jimmy Carter did a lot more for deregulation than Ronald Reagan, including airlines and oil.
Then you don't believe in conservatism. A "conservative" that struggles to come up with new big wonderful ideas that will solve the eternal problems of injustice, poverty and bad luck isn't a conservative -- he's a progressive, by definition.
What you're forgetting perhaps is that Reagan didn't inject those ideas into a vacuum; each was a specific response to progressive ideas (60% marginal tax rates, detente, planned economy) that had metastasized out of control. Each was indeed not much more than yelling stop to the trend lines you could draw from 1945 to 1976.
It's fair to argue that conservatives are not needed right now. We really have had a good two decades of fairly conservative government, by post-Industrial Revolution standards. The collectivist madness of the 30s and 40s was largely abandoned. The conservatives won.
But after they win, well, there's not much for them to do. If you're raison d'etre is standing in the way of folly, but there isn't much folly going on, there's not much for you to do but sit down (or, in the case of a Republican Congress, sit around making asses out of yourself; you know what they say about idle hands and the Devil).
Naturally, that means the return of folly, human nature being as incapable of learning from history as it is. It looks like the years ahead are going to be all about rediscovering the collectivist and Hope 'n' Change narrative-based follies of ten thousand yesteryears going right back to the Romans, and it will only be after that rock o' doom gets good and rolling that the job for conservatives -- jumping up and saying hold on a minute you giddy fools -- will return. As it always does.
"Reagan did it with tax cuts, big increases in defense spending, and deregulation."
Don't forget huge, crushing deficits.
You have to love the cognitive dissonance where libertarians will actually take away your freedom because of their big (scary) idea. The idea being that a bloated federal government is not just a bad idea, it's against the law (Constitution).
When I think of my own conservative/libertarian/rightist principles, it's not that I want the next Big Thing, but rather that I want a new idea of how to apply the old principles of liberty and limited government. Sometimes that does mean yelling stop, as Buckley said, but some times it means undoing a change that took us away from liberty, and sometimes it means making a change that makes us freer than ever before. The Big Idea (liberty) is an old one, but the implimentation may be quite novel.
There were still plenty of things for conservatives to stop, plenty of New Deal progressive weeds to tear out, but having lost the moral authority to do so thanks to their Comstockian pursuit of Clinton's sex life in 1998, any momentum ground to a halt.
Really, if conservatives had allowed ol' Billy Jeff to continue to rut around and sent Ken Starr on his way, they could have followed welfare reform with Social Security and Medicare reform, too. We'll never know.
Instead, Partisanship Uber Alles, rather than the ultimate goal of doing what needed to be done for the good of the conservative movement in general.
Well put. The result of not engaging (and simply saying “no” or “stop” isn’t engaging the issue) on issues like health care reform or the environment is that whatever those favoring even greater government intervention and control propose becomes the default position and the one that has all the momentum.
Yes you can stop Hillarycare version 1.0 by pointing out how it would screw things up for people who were already satisfied with the insurance coverage that they already have. But then they come back with Hillarycare 2.0 and Obamacare where they “promise” that you can keep your existing coverage (while whittling away at with a new set of federal mandated benefits, an employer mandate, etc.). McCain to his credit (and Bush in his last term finally addressed the issue) has put forth the framework for a consumer-driven health care reform that empowers patients rather than third-parties but the challenge is in getting conservatives to push as hard for it as they’ve pushed for issues like tax cuts or school choice.
Confidence in the Republican Party is at a generational low right now.
Confidence in government as a whole is also similarly low. People are angry about pork, angry about overregulation, angry about corruption. Politician is a dirty word, and the government itself is an object of revulsion and derision.
That is the opportunity.
[Free advice from a liberal friend, worth what you're paying for it:]
The present Republican Party/conservative movement is a marriage of convenience between true-believer crazies ("And then we can eliminate Medicare! And all federal environmental laws too!") and the practitioners of government by checkbook ("So long as you keep the Democrats tied up with your nonsense, I would be pleased to subscribe to your newsletter.").
If the Republicans wanted to meaningfully engage in policy debate, they might be well served by putting away their copies of The Road To Serfdom, and instead concentrating on the following points:
1) The welfare state is not going away. For the foreseeable future, the federal government will play important roles in providing support and care to the aged, the disabled, the unemployed, the poor, those afflicted by natural disasters, etc.
2) The federal regulatory state is not going away.
3) Government spending must be backed with taxes.
4) Some environmental problems are real.
If Republicans took these points to heart, and then actually engaged in policy debate on the basis of traditionally conservative precepts -- incentives matter, moral hazard matters, good management matters, taxes should be as low as possible, spending should be controlled, regulation can be counterproductive, growth raises all boats -- then you'd actually have something. Instead, you have what serves for policy talk on the Republican side of the aisle now, which is a joke.
By way of example, the two biggest federal government entitlements are Social Security and Medicare. With respect to Social Security, the current administration was unable to articulate any plan for Social Security reform that would pass the laugh test, notwithstanding that the president spent the first year of his second term speechifying about it. With respect to Medicare, you have Part D, about which the best can be said is that it's not quite as horrible as people say. If the administration, backed by a Republican Congress, had given some honest thought to workable ways of improving those programs, it might have accomplished something significant and valuable. Alternatively, the administation could have devoted its time to streamlining and otherwise reforming other areas of government. Instead, less than nothing was accomplished.
The coming election will be a rout (well deserved by the GOP). There is nothing that conservatives can (or should -- see above under "rout, well deserved") do about it.
Ultimately, liberals will go too far, and people will eventually throw them out. That is when conservatives need to be ready. So for now, the best thing for a conservative/libertarian to do is kick back, relax and enjoy the show.
Steven Bainbridge seems to be confusing principles and the applications of those principles. The basic ideas underlying Ronald Reagan's reforms are as sound as they ever were.
But the problems we face are different, and so the applications of those principles have to be different. At bottom, though, the Republican party will do well if it returns to being the party of Regan. The Reagan ideas--economic liberalization, a respect for traditional values balanced by a concern for personal freedom, and a strong national defence to deter our enemies--are good ideas.
"With respect to Social Security, the current administration was unable to articulate any plan for Social Security reform that would pass the laugh test, notwithstanding that the president spent the first year of his second term speechifying about it."
This isn't fair. There were two parts to Bush's proposed Social Security reform. The first, progressive indexing of benefits -- the idea of a Democrat, Bob Pozen -- made perfect sense. Look up the details of it. The second, private accounts, muddied the waters unnecessarily. I get what Bush was going for -- expanding the ownership/investor society, and giving folks currently left out of that (e.g., many blacks, for both income and cultural reasons) a shot at building a measure of intergenerational wealth -- but was never politically feasible. Granted, successful social security systems with private accounts exist in Hong Kong and Chile, but America is still a few decades behind when it comes to social insurance.
The Dems' counterproposal on Social Security? Nothing; they just demagogued the issue.
On Medicare, Bush did initially try to make his Part D expansion contingent on reforms to Parts A & B, but folded in the end, settling for marginal concessions (e.g., expanding HSAs).
The best approach for Republicans to hold off the beast is to push for real trust funds/sovereign wealth funds for Medicare and Social Security, even if that means initial tax increases to create the surplus tax revenues to fund them. The key will be to make sure that the surplus tax revenue is invested in something other than Treasury securities, so liberals can't immediate spend the money on new expansions of government.
That will, in one shot, restrain the growth of government, give Americans a truer sense of the cost of current entitlements, and give the bond market the warm & fuzzies that our sovereign debt rating won't be at the mercy of an entitlements time bomb.
Bainbridge is right. Republicans need nothing new at all.
They need something 25 years old.
Newt accomplished quite a bit by parroting Reagan... And Newt is a bookish nerd with a funny voice and big head (literally). (Not being mean... The same is true of me on all counts.)
The Republicans are not in trouble for lack of vision. They are in trouble for ignoring the vision shared by the base. McCain's heresies on immigration and free speech are small beer compared to the rest of the congressional Republicans':
- rampant spending,
- legalized corruption via pork barrel spending,
- overregulation (especially small businesses),
- politicization of Iraq,
- inaction or even acquiesences on social security, medicare, unions, affirmative action, and Democrat-led issues,
- The list goes on...
The GOP's best hope for 2008 is to latch onto McCain's message of honor, integrity, competence, and adherence to core values... Even if his values are not identical to Reagan's.
The GOP base feels like it has no representatives anymore. The nominal Republicans seem to be a bunch of leftward-drifting, hypocritical, amoral crooks that no different from the Democrats of 1992.
That is largely why Obama's "change" message resonates with some moderate Bush voters (in spite of Obama's reliably far-left record).
The GOP needs to run against incumbency. It can be 1994 all over again.
It's a big hurdle... Almost every right-leaning person in DC has one thing in common... They make their living fromt the current GOP machine. Fixing that machine means would lead to a shakeup that could make their lives much harder. (Classic agency problem of incumbent management.)
Change needs to come from the grass roots. Rich folks bankrolling organizations that excite the GOP base and gaining millions of members... A moveon.org for the right. Something that appeals to cops, teachers, bankers, business owners, etc... Not just the Freepers.
It's a longshot. I am not going to do it. Politically, I'm not a leader. Start a movement. I'll pay dues.
"...tax cuts, big increases in defense spending, and deregulation. The first two are pretty much out of the picture, and no one's mounted a serious drive at deregulation for more than a decade."-MM
This is the kind of quote that feeds the impression many of us have that Megan McArdle is kind of a weak sister in the battle to roll back the state. Some of us say:
By contrast, Megan says:
If everyone had that attitude, there never would have been a candidate Goldwater or a President Reagan. Nor would there have been a Prime Minister Thatcher. Megan is a lively and interesting blogger, but she has basically made her peace with socialism. So she just isn't a reliable ally if the fight to roll it back.
Not so long ago Milton Friedman implored libertarians and conservatives 'Keep fighting, the battle's only half won.' Now, Megan tells us, 'The battle is over and we have largely lost.' I'm with Milton.
Fred:
On Social Security, the administration indicated at various points that it liked progressive indexing but never actually made a proposal. And the fact that indexing was being proposed in tandem with private accounts made the indexing proposal itself suspect: people guessed that the administration intended to undermine the program by limiting the non-private part to the elderly poor. If people actually believe that the Republicans weren't trying to blow up Social Security, maybe it would have received a better hearing.
(You're right the Democrats didn't make a counterproposal; they didn't need to. Fiddling with Social Security was your idea, not mine. Maybe I'd tweak the payroll tax caps a bit but otherwise I'd leave it alone.)
On Medicare, the problem wasn't that the administration didn't extract reforms in exchange for Part D -- the problem is that Part D is itself an extremely flawed piece of work.
In any event, the lesson is that you can deal with Social Security and Medicare as realities in the universe and try to think and talk seriously about how they can be improved, or you can build cloud castles about how you're going to wish them away.
rwe:
Um, good luck with that.
Change for the sake of change is idiotic on its face - it's like saying "anything else will be better" - but that's just so much BS. Only those truly afflicted with BDS can honestly believe that any change is better than the status quo. Now, you can certainly believe that things could be better, and that a certain change in policy will make them better, but Obama hasn't offered that. He's just said that if you don't don't like how things are now, he will change them. If he wins on this platform it will be one of the greatest democratic con jobs of all time.
If people actually believe that the Republicans weren't trying to blow up Social Security
Gosh, where could people have gotten that idea? Surely not from demagoguing D's. Unless, of course, you have something in the nature of a quote from an actual elected Republican official (Ron Paul doesn't count).
"You're right the Democrats didn't make a counterproposal; they didn't need to. Fiddling with Social Security was your idea, not mine."
The "idea" that the current fiscal trajectory of Social Security is unsustainable absent reform comes from Social Security's trustees. If Democrats care about keeping the program funded in the future, they do need to propose a solution eventually instead of demagoguing the issue. The longer they wait, the more painful the fix will be.
"Maybe I'd tweak the payroll tax caps a bit but otherwise I'd leave it alone."
The payroll tax caps have been "tweaked" up about 50% in the last ten years. That hasn't solved Social Security's fiscal problems.
Remember, too, that there is no cap on the Medicare portion of the payroll tax, so you can't fix Medicare's fiscal problems by tweaking that.
Dems really would have been smarter in the long run taking advantage of Bush's willingness to compromise with them on reforms for Medicare and Social Security. Neither side would have gotten everything they wanted, but any bad aftertaste could have been blamed on President Bush. Now, if Obama wins in November, the chickens will come home to roost (to borrow his pastor's phrase) on his watch.
Alkali, I read your post above. You basically want to tinker around the edges of the welfare state. Some of us want bolder reforms.
I think it's fair to say that people generally found Reagan's ideas more inspiring than Ford's. So perhaps you'll forgive some of us for doubting the wisdom of your advice to Republicans, which amounts to this:
Fred: I take your point on Medicare, although I don't think the solution looks anything like "Let's envision a society where the government doesn't pay for the bulk old people's health care," which is where a substantial part of the Republican policy talk is directed.
rwe: I think it makes more sense to look at what Reagan actually did in office, which was generally consistent with the four points I made above (subject to some quibbling about his handling of the environment). The notion that we can have the government we had in 1900 is a bad idea, and it is a losing idea, and Republicans are better off not being the party of that idea.
Rob Lyman: Of course Republicans who run for office don't say that we should blow up Social Security -- they generally don't think we should, and even if they did they aren't so stupid as to say so. That's where the party's ideological apparatus is, though. And that disconnect is the problem. The Congressmen go to the policy shop and say, "What do you have for me?" And when the answer is an awesome plan to threaten people with having to eat cat food in their retirement, they go back to Congress and vote their constitutents a bridge to prove that they got something done.
People misunderstand conservatism as a justification for dismissing the possibility of new phenomena that demand a response. You can be conservative and still understand that cars introduce new issues to be dealt with by man. What separates you from the "liberal" is your approach, which is grounded in prior experience as opposed to experimentation with untried means.
Er, this is just a bit ironic, in a thread extolling the wisdom of a 'do nothing' policy.
There is nothing wrong with Social Security, and it is not about to go under; that's pap put out to scare the citizens into 'reform'. At worst, it is a problem that can comfortably be put on the back burner for the next twenty years or so . . . unlike more immediate problems such as the over-reliance on fossil fuels and the attendant consequences. Same thing pretty much with public schooling. Or any of a number of privatization schemes, or deregulation 'bonanzas'.
Iow, the new 'Conservative' ideas are in fact extremely radical. In fact, they have proven to be extremely unpalatable because of very tangible real-world consequences. In fact, the do-nothing conservatism is now considered to be 'liberal'.
Sorry, but that's the way it is.
"I think it makes more sense to look at what Reagan actually did in office, which was generally consistent with the four points I made above.
Not really. Reagan was content to have large deficits rather than rescind his tax cuts. And he halved the number of pages in the federal register, which means he roughly halved the burden of regulation. So your points 2 and 3 are blown out of the water straight away.
As for point 1, certainly Reagan wasn't able to make the kinds of entitlement reforms he would have liked. But it's clear that the need for such reform is becoming increasingly pressing.
Anyway, your political slogan would essentially be:
I don't think that's a winner. That's not Thatcherism (or Reaganism). It's the old Tory creed that Thatcher and Reagan attacked with scorn. It's the discredited creed of Edward Heath.
an awesome plan to threaten people with having to eat cat food in their retirement...
Oh, come on, not even the "party's ideological apparatus" is behind that. Hell, I'm a gun-toting right-wing raving madman and I don't favor it; I just think that rich boomers shouldn't get their mountain-biking-in-Italy and boutique-winery-opening dreams subsidized by taxing me. Let them work a few more years; they're going to live a few more years, after all. Of course, no politician can say that, so maybe you're right about the disconnect.
That said, Medicare is a much bigger problem. Don't have any good ideas on that one.
"although I don't think the solution looks anything like "Let's envision a society where the government doesn't pay for the bulk old people's health care,"
Since no one is advocating that, we can put that straw man away. The question is how to control the costs of the program that are rising 3x as fast as our trend GDP growth. Two pretty basic ideas might be to phase in a higher age for Medicare eligibility (like we did 20 years ago for Social Security), and, as I said before, to raise taxes to create an initial surplus and then invest that in a trust fund/sovereign wealth fund where those assets could conceivably grow as fast or faster than Medicare's costs.
The reason Dems aren't talking about the fiscal issues of our current entitlement programs is because they are too busy proposing expensive new ones.
Sigh. From the wiki:
And of course, everyone knows by now that Reagan _raised taxes_(in fact, more than Clinton, depending on how you define 'raising taxes'.)
The apparent contradiction with Friedman's data may be resolved by seeing Niskanen as referring to statutory deregulation and Friedman to administrative deregulation.
This is interesting, because of course the President has far more power to administratively deregulate than to legislatively deregulate. In other words, it may be the Reagan does deserve credit here for doing things that Carter could have done, but didn't.
I don't know if that's true, the sentence just jumped out at me.
Rob Lyman, I don't even read that guy's posts any more. There's no point, as anyone who looks here and here can see. Follow the links and scroll down the threads to see how pointless exchanges with that interlocutor are.
If you want to respond to him, go ahead. I've been advised not to, and have decided to take that advice.
"The spirit of Burkean conservatism": what force has that had on Americans who call themselves "conservatives"?
rwe, you are one of the most dishonest hacks it has been my displeasure to know on this blog. For example, your latest wingnuttery of referring to Caroline Hoxby as 'respected', when in fact she's a hack who has been accused of academic dishonesty to achieve pre-determined results. Or presenting 'links' that aren't. Or this little gem, Mr. Patriot:
_I'm_ a moderate. _You're_ a wingnut who thinks that posting self-serving statements by Friedman, Hoover, Cato, et al constitutes some sort of 'proof'. You also seem quite free with discussing the patriotism of others.
Real conservatives, who -- unlike Bainbridge, Buckley and the fictitious conservatives they write about -- have actual influence over the course of human affairs, are the originators of bad ideas, not opponents.
I certainly understand the authors' conceit that their political champion George W. Bush is "not a true conservative." Bush's Midas touch in reverse, where everything he touches turns to shit, it too obvious to deny. I wouldn't want to be associated with him either.
But guess what. Bush is the truest conservative of all. His failures are a direct result of his conservatism, not an accident of his personal incompetence or some other such dodge.
Face it, conservatives. There's no weaseling your way out of this Presidency and you are warmly invited to eat it and smile.
Certainly. But it does make the point that Reagan wasn't all that concerned with deregulation, as some would have, and that the deregulation that people associate with that term - statuatory (I think, I may be wrong in how it differs from administrative deregulation) did not have him as the primary mover. No less an critic than Cato says that he _failed_ to sustain the regulatory momentum built up in the 70's.
Iow, I am simply addressing a factual error made a poster who is, er, excessively partisan, shall we say.
Nothing can reform the Republican Party other than wholesale removal/retirement of the present office-holders. I write this unhappily since I firmly believe that an Obama presidency with the sure and large legislative majorities will lead to a vast increase in spending, taxes, and regulations. My only real hope is for a McCain victory in November that goes along with the Democratic control of Congress. Conservatives probably can hope for nothing more than divided government.
"And of course, everyone knows by now that Reagan _raised taxes_(in fact, more than Clinton, depending on how you define 'raising taxes'.)"
The top marginal income tax rate pre-Reagan was 70%; after, it was 28%. Same with the top capital gains rate, if memory serves. The main tax that was raised was the payroll tax which was approximately doubled, as part of the bipartisan Greenspan Commission to extend the solvency of Social Security.
Sigh. I can see why you wish to remain anonymous, given your tomfoolery (I'm guessing you don't know what scent of violets refers to):
Or how about Bruce Bartlett:
And of course there's always the wiki:
and:
Iow crowing that the top marginal rate on income taxes from 70% to 28% as if that refutes the point only goes to show how much you really know about the subject. None of this stuff is hard to find, though I acquired my knowledge of it the old-fashioned way: by living through it.
rwe:
So you prefer no regulations at all? If that is the case, understand that the present Credit Crunch is the type of thing you'll get on a regular basis. You gotta love libertarians. They have no concept of real world applications of their ideas.
JKC,
With no regulations, you wouldn't have had a credit crunch. You wouldn't have had a credit expansion to begin with. Without the government regulations authorizing the creation of the GSEs, the secondary market for mortgages would never have gotten so large. Maybe 50% of Americans would be homeowners instead of 66%, and mortgage interest rates would be a couple of points higher.
SOV says to another poster "I'm guessing you don't know what scent of violets refers to." I don't know about that other poster, but *I* don't. I just thought it was a random cool handle. Do you have an explaination or a link to an explaination for what you mean?
Thanks
What alkali said.
I think there is a general failure among conservative posters here, Megan included, to address what alkali is saying at a deeper level:
A Burkean conservative position in 2008 involves defense of the tried and proven elements of the Federal welfare and regulatory state, such as Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, the EPA, FDA, NIH, and so forth. These institutions have allowed the development of a prosperous society and economy in the US well adapted to modern postindustrial capitalism, and "returning" to a theory of government circa 1900 or 1920 in the context of a 21st-century economy is a wild and unpredictable idea. Projects like privatizing social security are not "conservative" in the Burkean sense at all -- they are radical and highly risky. The understanding of the term "conservative" needs to take this into account; you can't wield the term in its Burkean sense when what you are proposing is in fact ideological and radical.
These institutions [SS, Medicare, the regulatory agencies] have allowed the development of a prosperous society and economy in the US well adapted to modern postindustrial capitalism,
Really now? As opposed to, say, at best failing to entirely throttle a growth of prosperity actually driven by personal initiative and a stable and relatively plentiful supply of capital?
And you know this...how? Because God told you in a dream one night? Because it's just intuitively obvious if you went to public school and read the New York Times?
You remind me of those who defended the practise of bleeding as medical treatment in the 1700s. Hey look, we bled this tuberculosis patient and then he got better! It works!
Carl,
the United States is the richest country on earth.
The Burkean conservative position is, don't mess with a winning formula.
The position you hold is that vast, untested, sweeping changes in the US's political and economic system, viz. eliminating the social safety net and regulatory structure which the US and every other advanced capitalist country possess, would make us all richer. That is possible. (I consider it an illiterate and ignorant position, but we will leave that be for the moment.) But it cannot be called "conservative" in the Burkean sense.
Re: The understanding of the term "conservative" needs to take this into account; you can't wield the term in its Burkean sense when what you are proposing is in fact ideological and radical.
This is true of modern "conservatism" in general. It is not in any sense "conservative". It has become a radical ideology, seeking to fix what isn't broken, upset stable apple carts, and let loose bulls in china shops and skunks at garden parties. While at the same time ignoring things that are badly broken (e.g., our system of healthcare financing) whose necessary fixes do not fit in its preconceived mold. Today it is the conservatives who slavishly follow "pointy-headed intellectuals" and ignore both simple common sense and the sentiments of the American people.
The problem is that conservatives are yelling stop instead of giving any positive reasons why. A simple statement of "Does this work?" was enough to radically change the welfare system in the 1990's.
It is not enough to say that government should not be spending money on a problem, conservatives need to show that if the money is spent from a different source that it will be more effective in accomplishing the intended result.
Rob...shhh....you're giving it away!
IOW, we've been driving around successfully with low tires for so long now that actually airing them up seems "wild and unpredictable."
This strikes me as the same kind of thinking that often keeps poor people from improving their situation: just give me stability, security, and predictability because I'm too fearful of actually growing and changing to improve.
Brooksfoe writes: These institutions have allowed the development of a prosperous society and economy in the US well adapted to modern postindustrial capitalism, and "returning" to a theory of government circa 1900 or 1920 in the context of a 21st-century economy is a wild and unpredictable idea... The understanding of the term "conservative" needs to take this into account; you can't wield the term in its Burkean sense when what you are proposing is in fact ideological and radical... The Burkean conservative position is, don't mess with a winning formula.
There are several problems with Brooksfoe's analysis:
First, I can't speak for Fred or any others here who prefer Reagan to Ford, Nixon or Eisenhower, but I don't take Edmund Burke as a kind of guru. He was one interesting political philosopher among many. Regardless, I think Brooksfoe misunderstands him. Burke did not interpret conservatism as a kind of slavery to the status quo.
Second, he is guilty of the logical fallacy post hoc ergo procter hoc. His argument seems to be "The government grew and the economy grew, therefore the economy grew because the government grew." But of course that doesn't follow. And there is no economic theory that justifies such a claim. Conservatives and libertarians, however, have ample economic theory in which to ground our policies--the work of Hayek, Friedman, Buchanan, Lucas, Barro, etc... (these economists haven't always agreed on every point, of course, but they do broadly agree on the power of a free market to raise living standards).
Third, he is caricaturing his opponents. As a practical matter, few if any of us believe that a return to the very minimal government of 100 years ago is possible. And, since some of the regualtions and programs that have developed since then have been good ones, such a return might not even be desirable. Instead, what we say is this: "Government spending at all levels represents about 1/3 of GDP. Let's try and bring it down to 30% or 28%. There is nothing sacrosanct about that 1/3 number, and there is plenty of reason to believe that such high levels of spending require taxes that cause significant economic inefficiencies."
So, to put it more succinctly, Brooksfoe and Alakli are just plain wrong.
Correction: Brooks is guilty of the fallacy Post hoc ergo propter hoc. For the typo I say: Mea culpa mea culpa mea maxima culpa.
Tom, scent of violets refers to a nineteenth century physics problem that was solved with the use of statistics. Say you uncork a bottle of perfume in the corner of one room. Some time later, a person on the other side of the room will be able to smell it. Why? The answer involved atomic theory, random walks, etc, and by plugging in plausible values for the size of atoms, how many there are in a given volume, and how fast they move, they were able to predict from first principles just how soon the scent of violets would be detectable across a room of a given size. Better, their predictions were extremely accurate, and working backwards, they were able to tighten their estimates of certain numbers that were later independently verified as being correct. An astonishing feat of predicting microscopic properties from macroscopic phenomena, especially given that at that time, many scientists were skeptical that atoms even existed.
I agree with brooksfoe's characterization of my comments, and would add this to the discussion of Reagan's deregulatory efforts:
My point above was that conservatives should reconcile themselves to the existence of the regulatory state, not that they shouldn't favor various efforts at deregulation.
My sense is that when Reagan took office, there were a lot of people who were either part of the Republican ideological coterie or friendly to it who collectively had a lot of substantive knowledge of and experience with a lot of different areas of federal regulation, and those people had concrete ideas for reducing or eliminating regulatory burdens. Accordingly, when the administration came into power, it was ready to appoint a lot of people who could go to the career civil servants and say, "Why don't we do it this way?" (or even "We're going to start doing it this way"). Those efforts were tied to some broad themes about the costs of regulation and the ways regulatory processes can go askew. However, you didn't see a big effort to abolish or cripple the federal regulatory apparatus.
My strong sense is that Bush 43 had the big themes but was unable or unwilling to make the concrete efforts required to deal with particular areas of regulation. Instead, they had people who took dictation from industry, and young lawyers who didn't take regulation seriously because they wrote a paper in law school about why James Madison would think the EPA is unconstitutional. That is just living in fairyland.
Sigh. This seems to demonstrate a certain of, shall we say, ahistoricity. In reality, in the analogy, the "growth of prosperity actually driven by personal initiative and a stable and relatively plentiful supply of capital?" would be the bleeding to treat turbuculosis. To which the reply then and now was, 'Oh really? If it's such a good treatment, then why do so many die?'
Because in reality, you see, those conditions were most closely applied in the 19th to early 20th century in America, to the detriment of many, many people. It was only after, say, the publication of "The Jungle" that relatively sanitary conditions were imposed on the meat packing industry - externally imposed by the government. Spare me the bromides about how the industry was 'just about to comply to those standards, until the government came along and messed it up.'
The same with Social Security, etc. Those programs were brought into existence because the so-called free market was not working. Not because some high-and-mighty government official (probably a dirty no-good Democrat, according to the mythology) arbitrarily decided one day to impose draconian restraints upon the good businessmen across the land.
I say this all with some bemusement, because I am one of those conservatives. I don't want to drastically alter Social Security, not because of some lofty principle or philosophy, I don't want to change it because it seems to be working pretty good so far, and why fix something that ain't obviously broke? I'm against vouchers for the same reason: what we have works about as well as can be expected, given the current culture, why fix it? The same with various schemes to 'deregulate' various utilities or to 'privatize' government offices like the postal service.
rwe:
I think you would be correct in characterizing my claim as follows: there is a substantial part of the conservative ideological apparatus that contends "a return to the very minimal government of 100 years ago is possible," or is at least willing to treat that prospect as worth taking seriously. Unfortunately, I don't think that's a caricature, but if you disagree, fair enough.
(Again, to be clear, I don't think Republican candidates for office seriously entertain that view: indeed, I think that separation between the views of elected officials and the views of the ideological apparatus represents a big problem for the conservative movement.)
Unfortunately, alkali, there exists a very powerful constituency that seems to call a lot of shots in the current Republican party who do want to return to the regulatory and tax climate of one hundred years ago - for what they see as very pragmatic reasons. The candidates who buck this group of donors don't tend to receive a lot of money or other support from them :-(
SoV:
Actually, think that many if not most of the big donors to the Republican party know that it is not feasible to roll back to 1900, but pragmatically see the Republican party as more in line with their views notwithstanding the fact that many party ideologues hold that radical and unworkable position.
I expect for some, that's a cynical play ("If they want to throw sand in the gears of the Democrats for whatever reason, I'm happy to buy them some sand"), while others take the view that the "go back to 1900" crowd is just posturing and can't really be serious, while still others take the view that while the "go back to 1900" crowd makes a lot of noise they don't have any real juice with elected Republicans.
In any event, I don't think that kind of thing is good for conservatives. Among other things, I think some of those donors have been peeled off by the Democrats, or at least have lost some of their enthusiasm for the GOP.
"It would be nice if one could win an election on "Don't just do something--stand there!" "
Hey - it worked for Harding!
Alkali, I think you are overestimating the number of Republicans who think that a return to 1900 is possible (or even desirable). But many Democrats (and even some Republicans) seem to want an ever expanding government. Look at the recent farm bill. Just resisting that urge to grow the government would be a success. In fact, that's essentially what Reagan did. He did not succeed in rolling back the liberal welfare state, but he did halt the growth of government (as a share of GDP). And that was important.
Anyway, I was a little rough on your comments above. I follow the original RWE's advice:
You make your points clearly and well though, even if I disagree with them.
When I say 'pragmatically', I mean that this is what the donors I describe want for personally for themselves, not for anyone else. While all of them might agree in the abstract that a return to 1900 is not possible, they are individually more than happy to lobby vigorously for tax breaks for their companies and corporations, deregulation of their activities, whether it be the amount of overtime an employee has coming to him, or workplace safety, or pollution restrictions. Here is a typical example of what I mean:
Quite frankly - and I may be showing my old fogyness here, I admit - I don't see how, 'the magic of the marketplace' is going to compel these people to clean up their act.
And Liberals are more than happy to lobby vigorously for keeping taxes, and other of their pet concerns, too...
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/16/AR2007011601612.html
http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2007/10/dem-pushing-spy.html
Welcome to politics in America.
I don't understand the point you're trying to make. It doesn't appear to have anything to do with what I was saying.
My point is simply that lobbying "vigorously" for pet causes (some of which all of us might agree are bad) happens on both sides of the aisle, and isn't soley a "Bush" or "Republican" or "pro-return to 1900s" thing. It was intended more as an "addendum" to your last post than anything else...just didn't want that to get lost in the shuffle while we're hammering on the conservatives.
As I agree with rwe that the number of actual Republicans who think that a return to 1900 with no workplace safety or pollution regulation is at best overestimated (and at worst a straw man), may I borrow from a comment of yours on a previous post...
"I suspect that very few 'liberals' hold with these ideas, and that in point of fact few 'liberals' are actually liberal - at this point, that label is just a tag that conservatives like to apply to those who don't agree with them."
...and swap the 'Liberal' and 'Conservative' labels?
You seem to be trying very hard to imply an equivalence, merely on the strength of lobbying hard. But there has to be more than that to establish the equivalence. Otherwise, someone who is lobbying hard to speed up caseworker reviews to prevent adopted children from being abused and killed is 'just the same' as someone lobbying to get a special permit to release mercury into the environment near a residential area.
And, imho, the two are not the same at all.
Similarly, with your attempt to maintain that 'both sides do it' as far as labeling. They don't. From what I have seen the people who call themselves conservative are far more likely to label those they disagree with as 'liberal' than vice versa (the reason being, of course, is to imply an equivalence at the margins, so to speak. Conservatives are hardly going to retort that someone holds the ideas that they do because they are moderates. Thus the alternative labeling, that they hold the opinions that they do because they 'liberal', implying that it is merely a left\right difference, as opposed to a mainstream\fringe difference.)
Now, it may be that there are people calling themselves 'conservatives' who really aren't. And if that is your point, I agree. But that is way, way different than applying a non-desired designation to _somebody_else_.
One other thing I would add: the Texas Clean Air Act and the CARE program were passed by the Texas Legislature, so in this case it looks like 'the magic of the marketplace' and 'the magic of the government' have both failed to effectively handle the problem.
Re: This strikes me as the same kind of thinking that often keeps poor people from improving their situation: just give me stability, security, and predictability because I'm too fearful of actually growing and changing to improve.
Revolution for the sake of revolution may have warmed Chairman Mao's heart, but I never thought I'd hear conservatives arguing for that policy!
Moreover, the US as a whole is not poor or desperate. It is a fantastically rich and powerful country. It has some problems which require attention, but none of these problems require revolutionary change. Yes, even healthcare (where some liberals want revolution) can be solved by reforming the existing system not by tearing it down and starting over. When George Bush took office he inherited a successful nation-- he should have left well enough alone with some moderate and careful tinkering where tinkering seemed needed. Instead, he made a huge mess. Now his party is paying the price. Maybe there's a lesson some folks need to learn there?
You seem to be trying very hard to imply an equivalence, merely on the strength of lobbying hard.
No, that's why the word "vigorously" is in quotes, and my examples are ones that push the definition of lobbying.
And, imho, the two are not the same at all.
I agree 100%.
Similarly, with your attempt to maintain that 'both sides do it' as far as labeling. They don't. From what I have seen the people who call themselves conservative are far more likely to label those they disagree with as 'liberal' than vice versa
Far more likely? We'll have to agree to disagree, unless you have some reliable national stats. Of course, we probably run in different social circles so that may account for some of it. But that's what American politics is all about: define the opposition as "fringe" or "far Left" or "Hard Right-wing" regardless.
Conservatives are hardly going to retort that someone holds the ideas that they do because they are moderates
Just like some conservatives are branded as "pro-war" or "anti-poor" or "racist" if they oppose certain legislation - even if on reasonable grounds.
Now, it may be that there are people calling themselves 'conservatives' who really aren't.
I'm sure that's the case for both liberals & conservatives.
Revolution for the sake of revolution may have warmed Chairman Mao's heart, but I never thought I'd hear conservatives arguing for that policy!
JonF, who is arguing for revolution for the sake of revolution? All I'm saying is that we shouldn't allow our nation & it's policies to be "locked" into a static state where we're unwilling to carefully consider change just because things have been a certain way for a very long time...even if they are mostly successful. Is there no room for improvement?
re: Is there no room for improvement?
Yes, and see my posts. But the things "conservatives" suggest aren't modest improvements or cautious fixes. They want to burn the house down and try some untested, often half-based, intellectual theory. Well, we've seen the results in foreign policy, and the Bush economy isn't exactly an advertisement for such experimentation either.
Again, if it ain't broke don't fix it!
You've got to be kidding me. Just look at this blog, for instance. Check out any any voucher thread; how many times do you see posts that go on about 'liberals' don't like vouchers because . Despite the fact that being against vouchers is a _moderate_ position.
If you've got some contrary evidence, I'd sure like to see it, but I can tell you right now I'm very very very tired of being called a 'liberal' when, except for certain cultural shifts like racial tolerance or tolerance of people being openly gay, I'm pretty much an Eisenhower Republican. Heck, I voted for Bush the Elder for President, because I thought Dukakis would be yet another ineffectual liberal.
Strangely enough, I _never_ hear complaints from anyone about how they have been mistakenly taken for a conservative. Go figure.
Yep. That's me, the 'If it ain't broke, don't fix it part'. One other thing that annoys me about these radical fixer-uppers is their presumption; if they have an idea for privatizing the Post Office, I regard the notion with a healthy dose of skepticism, but I'll listen. And if I remain skeptical, and I tell them why, they have the gall to complain that my reasons "aren't convincing". Uh, buddy? I'm supporting the status quo, the default position if no action is taken. _You've_ got to convince _me_, not the other way around. To try to prance around pretending otherwise is just going to make me harden my resolve that I was right not to be convinced in the first place.
"But guess what. Bush is the truest conservative of all."
TR: In some respects, but in other respects not. He was very interested in untested experiments. He increased spending. In social areas he was the truest conservative, mostly, but that's not really what brought him down. (Faith-based initiatives and partial-birth abortion restrictions are not why people are angry with him, if you think they are you need to get in touch with reality)
I like the idea of a truly conservative Republican untainted by libertarianism, but it's probably not going to happen. Dole ran on something like moderation and cautiousness on untested experiments, but he lost. It's difficult to get people excited on "true conservatism." Which would in essence mean saying more than just "The government is not going to solve all your problems." It'd also mean saying things like
"As President I can't solve all your problems.
You aren't going to solve all your problems either.
Life will always contain suffering and injustice.
Poverty will always exist and any dream of eliminating it will turn into a nightmare.
Murder, rape, drug addiction will also always exist.
My administration is mostly about preservation and avoiding deterioration. We'll try to do those thing by using our understanding of how things went wrong."
It's a bit hard to get excitement for "hurray he's for less deterioration!" I mean "vote for me, I'll keep what's good and try to avoid making things worse" could get my vote, but probably isn't much of a rallying cry.
It depends very much on why you're against them, as to whether it is a moderate position.
I'll grant you that the word "liberal" has become more or less a slur amongst the Right, the Center, and even somewhat in common language. Much more so than the word "conservative." Usually, I find the slanders against the Right to be more targeted: you're callous, heartless, greedy, pro big business, racist, anti-poor, the 'wealthy' (snarl), the "barking crazy rightwingers" who have systematically been destroying our nation under Bush, etc. All I'm saying is that they do exist. Sorry if you have often found yourself to be mis-classified.
Why do we even need a Post Office anymore? And why does it have to have a legal monopoly? Personally, I see this as an example of why government solutions are usually "less-than-optimal." They require a level of coercion, in the form of monopoly/taxation/law, that would never be allowed in the private sector and they force out all competition.
Thomas R, I agree wholeheartedly. Finding a politician who would actually say he (or she) can't solve all our problems? Riiiiiiiiiight.
I say that not caring for vouchers is a moderate position because _every_ time the issue has come up in a popular election, i.e., every time the voters have a say in the issue, the scheme is voted down. Not hard to figure out.
Same thing with the Post Office privatization - setting aside the issue of whether or not such privatization, the notion is perceived as being right wing, while keeping the USPS as is gets the moderate vote.
One can always make the argument that just because something is popular doesn't make it right, of course. But that is a separate issue from whether or not it is a liberal, moderate, or conservative position.