[quote]Uncle Gabby wrote:
pat36 wrote:
Here is my oversimplification of the two parties:
Democrats - Big government nannies. Plan and implement government controls upon all it’s citizens. A morally deprived party who seeks to create loyalty through indebtedness.
Republicans - Folks who talk a good game at times, but in the end are a bunch of pussies who cave to pressure from democrats. They say they are for smaller government and less government control but do the opposite and they grow the government.
Both parties are in control of special interests and any control that we think we have is at best an illusion. Special interests need to be banned from the political process outright.
That’s why I don’t subscribe to a political party…I believe in making up my own mind.
I generally agree with your assesment of both parties, except I don’t think the Republicans are pussies who cave to the Democrats. Like the Democrats, they are beholden to their own interests, sponsers, bosses, whatever you want to call them, who fund their campaigns, and in exchange expect and often get tax dollars in the form of pork, no bid contracts, etc. So they’re both in the same race, they just have different stickers on their cars.
However, Democrats want to solve national problems with government buracracy, while the Republicans want to put everything on the private sector. Both solutions tend to result in inefficiency and corruption. It seems to me that anyone who wants to solve every problem with the same answer must be either really stupid or totally insane.[/quote]
Great post. I think both parties are too beholden to a one-size-fits-all approach.
Maybe I’m way off, so please tell me if I am. To me Conservatism should center around prudence. Prudence about domestic changes, and prudence concering our actions abroad.
But it seems like there is another form of Conservatism that want’s to inolve us in struggles that aren’t our own. No matter the cost in US lives or wealth.
[quote]Sloth wrote:
Maybe I’m way off, so please tell me if I am. To me Conservatism should center around prudence. Prudence about domestic changes, and prudence concering our actions abroad.
But it seems like there is another form of Conservatism that want’s to inolve us in struggles that aren’t our own. No matter the cost in US lives or wealth. [/quote]
Some enjoyable reading:
[i]AMERICAN CONSERVATISM
The Burke Habit
Prudence, skepticism and “unbought grace.”
by JEFFREY HART
Tuesday, December 27, 2005 12:01 a.m. EST
In “The Conservative Mind” (1953), a founding document of the American conservative movement, Russell Kirk assembled an array of major thinkers beginning with Edmund Burke and made a major statement. He proved that conservative thought in America existed, and even that such thought was highly intelligent–a demonstration very much needed at the time.
Today we are in a very different and more complicated situation. Nevertheless, a synthesis is possible, based on what American conservatism has achieved and left unachieved since Kirk’s volume. Any political position is only as important as the thought by which it is derived; the political philosopher presiding will be Burke, but a Burke interpreted for a new constitutional republic and for modern life. Here, then, is my assessment of the ideas held in balance in the American Conservative Mind today.
Hard utopianism. During the 20th century, socialism and communism tried to effect versions of their Perfect Man in the Perfect Society. But as Pascal had written, “Man is neither angel nor brute, and the misfortune is that he who would act the angel acts the brute.” In abstract theory was born the Gulag. One of conservatism’s most noble enterprises from its beginning was its informed anti-communism.
Soft utopianism. Both hard and soft utopianism ignore flawed human nature. Soft utopianism believes in benevolent illusions, most abstractly stated in the proposition that all goals are reconcilable, as in such dreams as the Family of Man, World Peace, multiculturalism, pacifism and Wilsonian global democracy. To all of these the Conservative Mind objects. Men do not all desire the same things: Domination is a powerful desire. The phrase about the lion lying down with the lamb is commonly quoted; but Isaiah knew his vision of peace would take divine intervention, not at all to be counted on. Without such intervention, the lion dines well.
The nation. Soft utopianism speaks of the “nation-state” as if it were a passing nuisance. But the Conservative Mind knows that there must be much that is valid in the idea of the nation, because nations are rooted in history. Arising out of tribes, ancient cosmological empires, theocracies, city-states, imperial systems and feudal organization, we now have the nation. Imperfect as the nation may be, it alone–as far as we know–can protect many of the basic elements of civilized existence.
It follows that national defense remains a necessity, threatened almost always by “lie-down-with-the-lambism,” as well as by recurrent, and more obviously hostile, hard utopianisms. In the earliest narratives of the West, both the Greek “Iliad” and the Hebrew Pentateuch, wars are central. Soft utopianism often has encouraged more frequent wars, as it is irresistibly tempting to the lion’s claws and teeth. The Conservative Mind, most of the time, has shown a healthy resistance to utopianism and its various informing ideologies. Ideology is always wrong because it edits reality and paralyzes thought.
Constitutional government. Depending on English tradition and classical theory, the Founders designed a government by the “deliberate sense” of the people. The “sense” originated with the people, but it was made “deliberate” by the delaying institutions built into the constitutional structure. This system aims at government not by majorities alone but by stable consensus, because under the Constitution major changes almost always require a consensus that lasts over a considerable period of time. Though the Supreme Court stands as constitutional arbiter, it is not a legislature. The correct workings of the system depend upon mutual restraint among the branches. And the court, which is the weakest of the three, should behave with due modesty toward the legislature. The legislature is the closest to “We the people,” the basis of legitimacy in a free society. Legislation is more easily revised or repealed than a court ruling, and therefore judicial restraint is necessary.
Free-market economics. American conservatism emerged during a period when socialism in various forms had become a tacit orthodoxy. The thought of Friedrich Hayek, Ludwig von Mises and Milton Friedman informed its understanding of economic questions. At length, the free market triumphed through much of the world, and today there are very few socialists in major university economics departments, an almost total transformation since 1953. But the utopian temptation can turn such free-market thought into a utopianism of its own–that is, free markets to be effected even while excluding every other value and purpose . . .
. . . such as Beauty, broadly defined. The desire for Beauty may be natural to human beings, like other natural desires. It appeared early, in prehistoric cave murals. In literature (for example, Dante) and in other forms of representation–painting, sculpture, music, architecture–Heaven is always beautiful, Hell ugly. Plato taught that the love of Beauty led to the Good. Among the needs of civilization is what Burke called the “unbought grace of life.”
The word “unbought” should be pondered. Beauty has been clamorously present in the American Conservative Mind through its almost total absence. The tradition of regard for woodland and wildlife was present from the beginnings of the nation and continued through conservative exemplars such as the Republican Theodore Roosevelt, who established the National Parks. Embarrassingly for conservatives (at least one hopes it is embarrassing), stewardship of the environment is now left mostly to liberal Democrats.
Not all ideas and initiatives by liberals are bad ones. Burke’s unbought beauties are part of civilized life, and therefore ought to occupy much of the Conservative Mind. The absence of this consideration remains a mark of yahooism and is prominent in Republicanism today. As if by an intrinsic law, when the free market becomes a kind of utopianism it maximizes ordinary human imperfection–here, greed, short views and the resulting barbarism.
Religion. Religion is an integral part of the distinctive identity of Western civilization. But this recognition is only manifest in traditional forms of religion–repeat, traditional, or intellectually and institutionally developed, not dependent upon spasms of emotion. This meant religion in its magisterial forms.
What the time calls for is a recovery of the great structure of metaphysics, with the Resurrection as its fulcrum, established as history, and interpreted through Greek philosophy. The representation of this metaphysics through language and ritual took 10 centuries to perfect. The dome of the sacred, however, has been shattered. The act of reconstruction will require a large effort of intellect, which is never populist and certainly not grounded on emotion, an unreliable guide. Religion not based on a structure of thought always exhibits wild inspired swings and fades in a generation or two.
Abortion. This has been a focus of conservative, and national, attention since Roe v. Wade. Yet abortion as an issue, its availability indeed as a widespread demand, did not arrive from nowhere. Burke had a sense of the great power and complexity of forces driving important social processes and changes. Nevertheless, most conservatives defend the “right to life,” even of a single-cell embryo, and call for a total ban on abortion. To put it flatly, this is not going to happen. Too many powerful social forces are aligned against it, and it is therefore a utopian notion.
Roe relocated decision-making about abortion from state governments to the individual woman, and was thus a libertarian, not a liberal, ruling. Planned Parenthood v. Casey supported Roe, but gave it a social dimension, making the woman’s choice a derivative of the women’s revolution. This has been the result of many accumulating social facts, and its results already have been largely assimilated. Roe reflected, and reflects, a relentlessly changing social actuality. Simply to pull an abstract “right to life” out of the Declaration of Independence is not conservative but Jacobinical. To be sure, the Roe decision was certainly an example of judicial overreach. Combined with Casey, however, it did address the reality of the American social process.
Wilsonianism. The Republican Party now presents itself as the party of Hard Wilsonianism, which is no more plausible than the original Soft Wilsonianism, which balkanized Central Europe with dire consequences. No one has ever thought Wilsonianism to be conservative, ignoring as it does the intractability of culture and people’s high valuation of a modus vivendi. Wilsonianism derives from Locke and Rousseau in their belief in the fundamental goodness of mankind and hence in a convergence of interests.
George W. Bush has firmly situated himself in this tradition, as in his 2003 pronouncement, “The human heart desires the same good things everywhere on earth.” Welcome to Iraq. Whereas realism counsels great prudence in complex cultural situations, Wilsonianism rushes optimistically ahead. Not every country is Denmark. The fighting in Iraq has gone on for more than two years, and the ultimate result of “democratization” in that fractured nation remains very much in doubt, as does the long-range influence of the Iraq invasion on conditions in the Middle East as a whole. In general, Wilsonianism is a snare and a delusion as a guide to policy, and far from conservative.
The Republican Party. Conservatives assume that the Republican Party is by and large conservative. But this party has stood for many and various things in its history. The most recent change occurred in 1964, when its center of gravity shifted to the South and the Sunbelt, now the solid base of “Republicanism.” The consequences of that profound shift are evident, especially with respect to prudence, education, intellect and high culture. It is an example of Machiavelli’s observation that institutions can retain the same outward name and aspect while transforming their substance entirely.
The Conservative Mind is a work in progress. Its deviations and lunges to ideology and utopianism have been self-corrected by prudence, reserved judgment as an operative principle, a healthy practical skepticism and the requirement of historical knowledge as a guide to prudent policy. Without a deep knowledge of history, policy analysis is feckless.
And it follows that the teachings of books that have lasted–the Western tradition–are essential to the Conservative Mind, these books lasting because of their agreements, disagreements and creative resolutions. It is not enough for conservatives to repeat formulae or party-line positions. The mind must possess the process that leads to conservative decisions. As a guide, the books, and the results of experience, may be the more difficult way–much more difficult in a given moment than pre-cooked dogma, which is always irresistible to the uneducated. Learning guards against having to reinvent the wheel in political theory from one generation to the next.
For the things of this world, the philosophy of William James, so distinctively American, might be the best guide, a philosophy always open to experience and judging by experience within given conditions–the experience pleasurable or, more often, painful, but utopia always a distant and destructive mirage. Administrations come and go, but the Conservative Mind–this constellation of ideas–is a permanent achievement and assesses them all.
Mr. Hart, professor of English emeritus at Dartmouth, is author of “The American Conservative Mind Today” (ISI, 2005). This is the last in an occasional series. [/i]
[quote]Ken Kaniff wrote:
Headhunter wrote:
My only interest is in the truth. If I thought outright Marxism was better for humanity than capitalism, I’d abandon capitalism at a moment’s notice. If I thought that someone who I thought exemplified my ideals turned out to be a phony, I’d drop them.
I don’t have an open mind, just an active one.
Thats very good. Though i wonder what Reagan has done recently to suddenly become a “phony”…
Now dont tell me you also dont like McCarthy anymore…[/quote]
Like JSBrook has said, spending money you don’t have, selling debt instead of raising taxes, is stupid. So, I thought back about RR and he did just that.
I want my small government, low taxes, low debt country back…like that’ll ever happen…
To me, a neo-con is a former lib who has a change of heart (kind of, anyway) but retains the notion that conservative ideas can best be implemented by government, instead of getting out of the way. A conservative advocates a government that ‘gets out of the way’.
Another name for a neo-con is a ‘stealth lib’. The Republicans have been co-opted by stealth libs.
Great article BB. I’m rethinking alot of things lately, so this piece was well timed.
A foreign policy based on utopian notions. That’s how I’m looking at it lately.
The bit about Conservatives and enviromentalism is also worth considering.
And yeah, I suppose blind faith in free-markets is an ideology. A sort of utopianism of the market.
Gdollars and you talked about the Crunchy con fella (Rod Dreher) not so long ago, and I’ve been checking out his blog since then. He’s seems to follow along the same idea of Conservatism.
Great article BB. I’m rethinking alot of things lately, so this piece was well timed.
A foreign policy based on utopian notions. That’s how I’m looking at it lately.
The bit about Conservatives and enviromentalism is also worth considering.
And yeah, I suppose blind faith in free-markets is an ideology. A sort of utopianism of the market.
Gdollars and you talked about the Crunchy con fella (Rod Dreher) not so long ago, and I’ve been checking out his blog since then. He’s seems to follow along the same idea of Conservatism.
I guess I should read some Kirk.[/quote]
Great article, indeed, Boston - and Sloth, Kirk is a great read. At base, Kirk’s primary argument was to reject Ideology and all of its false promises. That didn’t mean becoming a cynic - just tempering cure-alls and insta-fixits and demagogues selling the One True Way with prudence, a sense of history, and realism.
That was Kirk’s (and other’s) conservatism - and I am glad Boston unearthed that piece and posted it. A good reminder.
Great article BB. I’m rethinking alot of things lately, so this piece was well timed.
A foreign policy based on utopian notions. That’s how I’m looking at it lately.
The bit about Conservatives and enviromentalism is also worth considering.
And yeah, I suppose blind faith in free-markets is an ideology. A sort of utopianism of the market.
Gdollars and you talked about the Crunchy con fella (Rod Dreher) not so long ago, and I’ve been checking out his blog since then. He’s seems to follow along the same idea of Conservatism.
I guess I should read some Kirk.
[/quote]
I highly recommend Dreher’s book, you can pick it up on Amazon for like ten bucks I think, it’s a quick read but very interesting.
This blog also offers the best paleoconservative analysis and opinion I’ve seen, though he writes quite differently from Dreher: http://larison.org/
Yeah, not so much on the “small deficits” for Democrats point.
[i]Rubinomics R.I.P.
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL EUROPE
January 16, 2008
If our Washington, D.C., readers noticed a cortege of blue suits carrying a casket in front of the Brookings Institution last week, be not mournful. You were merely watching the leading economists of the Democratic Party burying the faith once known as Rubinomics. May it rest in peace.
Rubinomics is the concept of “deficit reduction” as growth policy: Lower the federal budget deficit and, as dawn follows night, interest rates will fall and prosperity will break upon the land. Named for former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, and much celebrated in the 1990s, the concept was embraced as gospel by nearly all Democrats as recently as a few weeks ago. But last week those same Democrats reconverted to Keynesian deficit spending in the name of “economic stimulus.”
Mr. Rubin’s successor at Treasury, Larry Summers, started the bidding with a $65 billion tax rebate and spending plan. Hillary Clinton saw that and raised, and now wants $40 billion in tax rebates and $70 billion in new spending for unemployment insurance, housing assistance, home heating subsidies, and green technologies. Barack Obama proposes a $75 billion “stimulus” that would have the the government send millions of Americans a check for $250, plus another $250 in bonus Social Security payments.
But wait, what about those evil Bush deficits? Only weeks ago, Democrats claimed those were the road to perdition, even if they had shrunk to 1.2% of GDP last year thanks to booming revenue growth. Remember the imperative of “pay as you go” budgeting? Ah, that was all before Iraq faded as a political winner and the economy became their favorite issue for regaining the White House. Now, all of a sudden, their motto is tax cut and spend.
No less than the oracle himself, Mr. Rubin, appeared at Brookings last week to declare that a deficit-padding stimulus “can give the economy a timely boost in the face of great uncertainty and concern with the short-term economic outlook.”
As a matter of policy, this passing is just as well. Rubinomics never did have much economic basis, and even casual observation over the last 25 years has exposed its illogic. As deficits rose in the 1980s, interest rates fell. In the current decade, deficits rose and interest rates fell for a time, then later deficits fell but interest rates rose. Even in the 1990s, the facts never matched the theory.
A benefit of this Democratic disavowal of deficits is that we can now have a debate about what really “stimulates” an economy. The born-again Keynesians want to send checks to voters, who will spend or save the cash. Our preference is for an immediate and permanent across the board cut in marginal income tax rates.
Yes, many will fret that these tax cuts would only increase the deficit. But now we have even Robert Rubin and Hillary Clinton instructing us that deficits don’t matter. Somewhere, Dick Cheney is smiling in vindication.[/i]
“Balanced budget” was the Republican mantra before they took Congress in 1994. They forced it on Clinton and they were both happy to take credit for the fake balancing of the budget (taking advantage of a red hot boom economy combined with robbing Social Security).
Headhunter wrote:
To me, a neo-con is a former lib who has a change of heart (kind of, anyway) but retains the notion that conservative ideas can best be implemented by government, instead of getting out of the way. A conservative advocates a government that ‘gets out of the way’.
Another name for a neo-con is a ‘stealth lib’. The Republicans have been co-opted by stealth libs.
[/quote]
I have been called a neocon on these forums before, and asked what that meant. Never really got a good answer. Just a post to the Project for a New American Century. Searching that site I only found a couple of references to neoconservative, and one was not positive.
Another was simply a reference to a book which was simply a collection of conservative articles. And I get the impression that the neoconservaative name for the book may have been a joke, but I can’t determine that.
I have found the definition to neocon or neoconservitive to mean anything and everything. Some of the definitions do define me, and some of them are polar opposites of me.
BB’s links are the best I have found on the subject.
But still since every one has a different definition of the term neocon, either the term should not be used as it is undifined, and therefore may mean nothing, or it should be defined every time it is used.
Now if we are defining neocon as a Republican with strong liberal leanings, the Bush does fit this definition. He does believe in larger government, and that the government does and can help the people. That is how I define a liberal.
A conservative wants smaller government, and a libertarian wants a much smaller government, which I think would put me about middle between the libertarians and the conservatives.
I have noticed the Republicans have moved sharply to the left, while the Democrats have moved even further. A truely moderate Democrat really would feel very comfortable in the Republican party right now. That’s a neocon definition based on HH’s definition.
Although I still would not use the term neocon, just liberal Republican.
“Balanced budget” was the Republican mantra before they took Congress in 1994. They forced it on Clinton and they were both happy to take credit for the fake balancing of the budget (taking advantage of a red hot boom economy combined with robbing Social Security).
[/quote]
While the balanced budget was a farce, there was a definite slow down in spending, and a big jump in revenue as a result of the rules they later abandoned. A big part of the jump was a result in the reduction in capital gains taxes. When Regan eliminated the deduction, the revenue it generated actually dropped in half. Many people who would have sold stocks simply sat on them because they didn’t want the tax hit.
With a reduction in capital gains, people feel a little freer to move money around, and that can boost an economy, as well as increase revenue. I think it was a big part of the boom that resulted afterwards.
But if you don’t want to cut spending, and reduce deficits, you are not a conservative. (Except for certain limited times, i.e. recession.) At least economically speaking.
One of the reasons I do not agree with much of the liberal positions is that their positions could be defined as codependent. While caring about people, which is good, your actions actually make things worse. By blunting the hard reality, people do not learn to deal with life, and learn to become dependent on the system.
And unfortunately the way the system is set up you are actually punished for succeeding. Just today there is an article in our newspaper about Nebraska poverty, (which they never defined,) and mentioned one person who received a 20 cent raise, which pushed her income above the level at which she receives government benefits, and lost everything, resulting in a raise making her less money.
This person could actually ask her employer to cut her back 1 hour a week and regain her benefits. (Technically this is fraud, but it happens all the time.)
And since I went off on a tangent here, let me give you my solution. (An almost socialist solution, but with capitalist overtones.)
Instead of just giving money to people, simply have them work for it. Give a list of jobs they can perform that do in fact benefit the government, and society. (This is for able minded and bodied people.) No restrictions on income. If you find better work, you just quit, or do less. But every dollar is earned. This takes out the fraud, (which is one of the biggest expenses of welfare,) removes the incentive to not work, or find work, and any problems with qualifying for people who need it.
It would truly separate the actual needy cases from the bums, and remove any incentive to stay on the system when a person does not need to.
Like JSBrook has said, spending money you don’t have, selling debt instead of raising taxes, is stupid. So, I thought back about RR and he did just that.
I want my small government, low taxes, low debt country back…like that’ll ever happen…
[/quote]
To be precise, Tip O’Neill, the Speaker of the House of a Democratic party controlled Congress has more to do with debtthan RR does. The only way Ron got anything he asked for was to compromise with big pork spending.
