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I Just Can't Pretend Liberalism
09/26/2003

I'm reluctant to admit this, but I sometimes hate being conservative. I hate having to bite my lip in just about every group with which I interact based on non-political interests, listening to the anti-Bush slights and left-wing pieties, stated almost unaware. I hate feeling left out of the forming community of New England bloggers, or (at best) included in discussion as an interloper. I hate that I didn't get into grad school because of what I believe, that the local media ignores me no matter what I do, that I have to find ways to form local friendships almost explicitly in spite of my convictions.

And so sometimes, when I'm tired of living in a shack, when I'm tired of contemplating my debts, when I lose the energy to assert a difference between disliking a social policy and hating a class of people, when I shy away from arranging events and promotions because I realize that nobody would come, when liberal James at Aces Full of Links introduces me to a fantastic beer, I think that perhaps I'll open my mind to hearing their arguments. Take a look. See if maybe I could blend into my overwhelmingly blue state by forcing my writing and conversation into some shade or other of purple.

I can't do it.

It's probably an unfair place to start, but Barbara Streisand's "The Myth of 'Big Government'" online statement points to the reason:

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), the agency Bush extolled in the Southeast this week, is designed to help Americans in crises - be they victims of natural disasters, or victims of extreme poverty. Agencies such as FEMA are what make our country able to bounce back from tragedy and unforeseen events, just as schools educate our children, firefighters fight fires, police officers keep our streets orderly, a decent highway system allows us to move freely, national parks maintain our incredible natural resources, our military protects us from outside threats, the Center for Disease Control protects us from epidemics, and Social Security and Medicare programs insure that our seniors aren't thrust into poverty after so many years of hard work. These are just some of the basics of government. These are not entitlement programs. These are not excesses. These are not "special interests." This is what the government is supposed to do for you, the people. ...

We also have to understand the connection between taxes and spending. It is our taxes that pay for these services, so Bush's two big tax cuts for the wealthy will, eventually, result in a cut in the services that all Americans depend on everyday, unless the tax cuts are repealed. So far, Bush has been more or less coasting on a policy of tax cuts and spending increases, such as the additional $87 billion he now is asking Americans to shoulder for Iraq. Meanwhile, he has cut spending for state-administered programs - plunging state governments into crisis, and has created unfunded mandates with catchy titles, such as the No Child Left Behind Act. Bush is dangerously betting against the future... turning an enormous surplus into an enormous deficit that future generations will have to grapple with. Eventually, we will be forced to have a national discussion about either repealing the cuts or asking the question: What everyday government spending programs are we really ready to do without?

How does one even begin to fairly and amicably address such mind-numbing asininity? The government is good — necessary, even — for emergencies and self defense, and this means it must be good for everything, even services at which it has proven inefficient in the U.S. and elsewhere? There is no distance, for Ms. Streisand, between believing that the government should offer some services and should offer all services. I couldn't help laughing at the way that she added Social Security and Medicare to that list; if I were parodying such people I couldn't have done so more effectively. And for whom are untouchable national parks protecting natural resources (e.g., oil, coal, timber, fur)? (Of course, by "natural resources" Ms. B.S. doesn't mean to imply utility, but scenery.)

Moving on to "the point," Babs doesn't even deign to address the suggestion that — historically — cut taxes lead to increased revenue. I'll agree with her that the spending increases are out of control, but then I wonder how that point can be made if we're seeing Big Government as a myth. I also wonder if I'm the only one who remembers that "deficit for future generations" from a little over a decade ago — you know, back before an economic boom erased that deficit with which my great grandchildren were supposedly saddled.

Apparently, also, part of what the federal government "is supposed to do" is to run the state governments, because Bush's tax cuts, not profligate spending throughout the '90s, are responsible for "plunging state governments into crisis." And then I recalled that this sounded familiar. Oh yeah. The aforementioned liberal James recently linked to a map of the "red states" showing that 22 of the 29 states that went to Mr. Bush in the 2000 election receive more from the federal government than they contribute (the map doesn't bother showing the same for Gore). So, here we have the President responsible for a state-level fiscal crisis because he's giving them too much money... huh?

It hardly matters, in this strange leftward world, that the legislature has control of the purse strings and that the Democrat to Republican ratio of the Senators among the top 10 "taker" states is 12 to 8. How could such a thing be relevant when the title of the post in which James introduced that map is "Conservatives Against Bush" and begins thus: "Say it with me now: Bush is only conservative when it comes to his use of honest communication." (That's sarcasm) Am I to believe that James, self avowed fan of Michael Moore and credulous quoter of Al Franken, would prefer that the President were more conservative?

Sorry. I don't believe such things. It's all too clear that it is only an unreasoned political calculus that has Barbara Streisand criticizing Big Government educational programs. As comfortable as I might find it to switch teams, I would have no lip left for all the biting.

Posted by Justin Katz @ 02:22 PM EST