CONSERVATISM vs. LIBERALISM

" Every new generation constitutes a wave of savages who must be civilized by their familes, schools, and churches."  – Robert Bork, Slouching Toward Gomorrah

FREEDOM WITH ACCOUNTABILITY

“Freedom with accountability” is my policy mantra.  Nearly every social issue – from abortion to gambling, from Sunday liquor sales to pornography – requires an analysis of the classic interplay of individual liberties and the social impact that often accompanies the unfettered exercise thereof.  Generally speaking, your right to swing your first ends where your neighbor’s chin begins.  The challenge, then, is foreseeing the consequences associated with an individual’s conduct and measuring the right of the individual against the right of society to guard its collective interest.  Indeed, some of humanity’s earliest laws are limitations on individuals’ actions:  Don’t kill, steal, commit adultery, etc.  Nonetheless, we all recognize the legitimacy of society’s interest in enforcing these restrictions.

So, for example, the tremendous individual impact on the unborn child, compared to the rights of the mother, and then viewed in light of the social costs of abortion (e.g., because of abortion the U.S. is “missing” 40 million workers necessary to support the Social Security system; the option of abortion has yielded a measured increase in teenage promiscuity, etc.) mandates my support for restrictions on the practice of abortion.  With regard to the issue of gambling, however, the analysis yields a somewhat different result.  The social costs associated with gaming are enormous – larger than most people imagine.  An elderly gambler’s loss of retirement creates a new dependent for taxpayers to provide for.  The elevated bankruptcy rate due to gambling creates higher interest rates charged to the rest of us by lenders who must recoup their losses.  And so forth.  These social costs, however, are not sufficient to totally overcome your individual right to spend your money as you wish.  My challenge, then, is to weigh proposed legislation regarding gambling and find the right balancing point.  These analyses are replicated for every social issue, and I hope you’ll trust my attempt at principled judgment!

THE ROLE OF GOVERNMENT AND THE ECONOMY:  COMPETING VISIONS

Frederic Bastiat's (19th-century classical-liberal economist) parable of the "broken window" describes the most persistent fallacy in the history of economics.  So what is the broken-window fallacy?  Bastiat tells the story of a youth who breaks a window. In response someone says, in effect, "Well that's too bad but such accidents are good for industry because it will create work for the glass workers." "What would become of the glaziers if no one ever broke a window?" asks an allegorical fool in Bastiat's tale.  The larger moral of the story is that economists and policymakers must take into account the unseen as well as the seen when spending money, especially other peoples' money. A state-wide program of needless ditch-digging may create jobs (seen benefits), but the money we take out of the economy will doubtlessly cost jobs elsewhere (the unseen detriments). You can start to see why Bastiat denounced this as such a simultaneously widespread and dumb way to look at economics.  After all, politicians have a tendency to care only about seen benefits because it is the seen benefits that accrue real constituencies … real constituencies who vote, mind you.  An unnecessary government-spending project creates real jobs for people who vote for a real legislator. If the spending program closes, the resources that went into the program will probably be redistributed to better purposes, but neither in the eyes of the people who lost their enjoyment of that program nor in the eyes of the legislators who lost their votes.

The conclusion to this parable, then, is simple:  "When politicians promise to give you something, just remember that the only money they have is what they take from the people.  If you want someone to pick your pockets and then give you a handout, there are plenty of politicians around who will do that for you.  In fact, a lot of politicians have been around a long time just by using such tactics." --Thomas Sowell

BIG GOVERNMENT

Big government by its very nature is government that intrudes in people's lives, usurps their rights and responsibilities and confiscates their money.  Regardless of how benevolent and well-meaning its intentions are, government expands almost entirely for the purpose of controlling and regulating the lives of its citizens.  Each act of government, each law passed, each regulation written is a step toward limiting the freedom of some one or some group or some organization or some business or industry.

COMPETING NOTIONS OF “EQUALITY”

Modern liberalism typically displays a key characteristic:  An emphasis on radical egalitarianism.  Radical egalitarianism manifests itself in an insistence on an equality of outcomes, rather than an equality of opportunities.  Thus, years of education and hard work do not, in the mind of the modern liberal, justify a better lifestyle than that of someone who has squandered their opportunities and failed to demonstrate a work ethic.  For the modern liberal, taxation and an array of entitlements are the solution to this supposedly “unjust” outcome.  Radical egalitarian is attained at the behest of liberals and with the complicity of unprincipled legislators.  Regardless, modern liberals’ emphasis on radical egalitarianism, coupled with weak politicians’ impulse to spend our collective wealth on vague governmental initiatives, poisons the well for the next generation of hard-working, motivated persons who will soon be called-upon to sustain our State’s whetted and growing appetite for tax monies.  At the same time, suggested improvements in school curriculums, a shift of educational power away from Topeka and towards local school districts, and right-sized entitlement spending and taxes are fought with all of the liberals’ fervent zeal.

SOCIETAL ILLS

The social deterioration afflicting our great nation is not limited to the East or West coasts – it even touches us here in the “fly-over states.”  The decline seen on the coasts is a harbinger of things to come in Kansas.  Indeed, the plagues appear to already be upon us:  Homicide, rape, and other violent crime; high levels of recidivism among parolees; and the overall failure of our criminal justice system to punish despicable persons adequately or – at the very least – to remove drug dealers, pedophiles, drunk drivers, and violent criminals from our streets, neighborhoods, and playgrounds.

QUOTES

"I have little interest in streamlining government or in making it more efficient, for I mean to reduce its size.  I do not undertake to promote welfare, for I propose to extend freedom.  My aim is not to pass laws, but to repeal them.  It is not to inaugurate new programs, but to cancel old ones that do violence to the Constitution, or that have failed in their purpose, or that impose on the people an unwarranted financial burden.  I will not attempt to discover whether legislation is 'needed' before I have first determined whether it is constitutionally permissible.  And if I should later be attacked for neglecting my constituents' interests, I shall reply that I was informed their main interest is liberty and that in that cause I am doing the very best I can." – fmr. Sen. Barry Goldwater

"Step by step, American liberty is disappearing.  Americans are being ruled, regulated, restricted, licensed, registered, directed, checked, inspected, measured, numbered, counted, rated, stamped, censured, authorized, admonished, refused, prevented, drilled, indoctrinated, monopolized, extorted, robbed, hoaxed, fined, harassed, disarmed, dishonored, fleeced, exploited, assessed, and taxed to the point of suffocation and desperation." – Tom DeWeese

"We live in an age of practiced hypersensitivity -- a time when entire squadrons of political operatives get rich by exploding with theatrical rage anytime anybody runs afoul of our increasingly intricate rules governing public expression. But the fascinating thing is that this practiced anger tends to operate only in one direction -- against traditional values and conservative political views. ...[O]ur cult of correctness not only is highly selective in its choice of targets; it's also nothing but cowardice dressed up as good manners -- an attempt to silence important ideas, rather than taking the time to grapple with them." – Tony Snow

HUMOR

TO BE A LIBERAL, you have to believe that:

·         The AIDS virus is spread by a lack of funding.

·         Trial lawyers are selfless heroes and that doctors are overpaid.

·         Guns in the hands of law-abiding Americans are more of a threat than nuclear, chemical and biological weapons in the hands of terrorists.

·         Businesses create oppression and government creates prosperity.

·         Self-esteem is more important than doing anything to earn it.

·         There was no art before federal funding.

·         The NRA is a bad organization because it stands up for certain parts of the Constitution, but the ACLU is a good organization because it stands up for certain parts of the Constitution.

·         Taxes are too low but ATM fees are too high.

·         Standardized tests are racist, but racial quotas are not.

·         National wealth is determined by what we consume, not by what we produce.

·         The only wars in which America should become involved are those in which our national security is not at risk.

·         Perjury and obstruction of justice are impeachable if a Republican president commits them but a harmless, private matter if a Democrat president commits them.

·         America can have a strong military without spending money on it.

·         Hunters and fishermen do not care about the environment.

·         A bureaucrat living in Topeka or Washington, D.C. can make better decisions about how to spend the money that you earn than you can.

·         Being a movie or television star qualifies you to speak out on public policy.

·         A handful of religious whackos living in rural Texas are more of a threat to public safety than Islamic terrorists who wish to plant bombs in major American cities.

·         Passing new laws are a much better way to curb crime than enforcing the existing ones.

·         Tax cuts are for people who don't work, but not for those who actually pay income taxes.

"If you're not a liberal by the time you're twenty you have no heart. If you're not a conservative by the time you're forty you have no brain." – Winston Churchill

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