Big government is big government
A couple of paragraphs from a local newspaper in La Crosse, Wisconsin. Not tremendously far from where I grew up, and a really nice piece of phrasing touching on one of the reasons I’m so incredulous that small-government conservatives are still sticking with this Republican party.
There are two types of big government. There’s big-government liberalism, in which the government administers broad-based entitlements (Social Security, Medicaid) and provides services collectively that individuals can’t purchase on their own (police protection, roads, public parks, etc.). Has this vision suffered from excess and waste? Of course. But it has raised the standard of living for most Americans. The elderly can’t buy affordable health insurance on the private market, and most individuals can’t purchase their own personal police or fire protection. At the very least, big-government liberalism’s heart is in the right place.
There’s nothing good about big-government conservatism. It’s an iron triangle of politicians, lobbyists and industry wallowing in the spoils of government contracting and favoritism linked to campaign contributions. The recipient of big-government liberalism is likely to be a 90-year-old who can’t get out of bed, or a pregnant teen in need of pre-natal care. The recipient of big-government conservatism is a Halliburton executive or someone who lobbies on Halliburton’s behalf.
September 13th, 2005 at 7:51 am
While I tend to agree with such commentary, I also think it’s entirely unhelpful to characterize things this way. Saying “there’s nothing good about big-government conservatism” only fosters more of the same head-butting, “us vs. them” attitude between conservatives and liberals.
The apparently liberal author of your quoted paragraphs should consider a different strategy. Liberals are losing the head-on battle with conservatives. Subtler tactics are needed. I think the answer lies in the middle, the moderates. This is where most people are. I think most people are tired of this kind of liberal/conservative bickering. My hope is for the next trend to be a centrist one. We need people, a leader perhaps, to find common ground.
For example, instead of calling it “big-government conservatism” (which is clearly a turn-of-phrase designed to attack conservatives). Why not recognize that government growth under conservative leaders shows that government bloat is a problem that both conservatives and liberals face?
Instead of cowardly finger pointing from Democrats and liberals, how about some frank talk about how to address the problems of the day? How about talk of how to bring both sides to the table to compromise and solve social problems we face?
September 13th, 2005 at 2:35 pm
Bill Marrs wrote:
> While I tend to agree with such commentary, I also think it’s entirely
> unhelpful to characterize things this way. Saying “there’s nothing good
> about big-government conservatism” only fosters more of the same
> head-butting, “us vs. them” attitude between conservatives and liberals.
I agree that the language of the piece is somewhat polarizing. That said,
I’ve seen far worse from both ends of the political spectrum, as I suspect
you have, too. The piece I excerpted these paragraphs from is discussing
the ridiculous aspects of seeing billions of dollars of government excess
committed by a party which trumpets itself as being the only party of
fiscal responsibility.
Put another way, Jon Stewart once talked about how his audiences
occasionally get cranky when he pokes at Democrats or liberals, and he
makes a point of saying that he pokes fun at hypocrisy and mendaciousness
wherever he finds them, under whatever administration.
A party which publicly prides itself on being “hard working” and able to be
“trusted with your money, not like the other guys” who then goes and
oversees the biggest expansion of the federal government and federal
spending in many, many decades is ridiculous and hypocritical.
> The apparently liberal author of your quoted paragraphs should consider a
> different strategy. Liberals are losing the head-on battle with
> conservatives.
I’m not sure I agree with you on this, since I don’t think the elections
are the final word on where the country is going. Some states are
explicitly denying same-sex marriage rights… but several have moved ahead
with them. Governors in the northeast are starting to trade pollution
credits, with an eye towards reducing pollution and acid rain, even without
help from Washington. I just don’t think it’s as cut and dried as you
imply.
> Subtler tactics are needed. I think the answer lies in the middle, the
> moderates. This is where most people are. I think most people are tired
> of this kind of liberal/conservative bickering. My hope is for the next
> trend to be a centrist one. We need people, a leader perhaps, to find
> common ground.
Hear hear. This is why I’ve been really bummed that the grassroots
enthusiasm for centrist candidates like Colin Powell, John McCain, Bill
Weld, Bill Bradley, etc has gotten overrulled by the ingrained power and
money wielded by the older party establishment. I’d be psyched beyond
belief to see a cross-platform ticket run for president sometime, just
because it would highlight for people that politics is about what the
candidates believe in and do, not which party they’re in. (And I’d bet you
anything that a lot of Republicans who either blithely assume that the
president must really need to be spending all this money or simply aren’t
aware of the scale of the spending and the trends in the last 10 years of
federal budgets would be screaming bloody murder if this was being done by
a Democrat. Hardline party loyalists of any stripe really chafe me.)
But, let’s be fair, people like arguments that they can take sides on.
It’s very easy to argue about “Do you like green olives?” It’s a lot
harder to present someone with the Federal budget and say, “Hey, what would
you change?”
> For example, instead of calling it “big-government conservatism” (which
> is clearly a turn-of-phrase designed to attack conservatives). Why not
> recognize that government growth under conservative leaders shows that
> government bloat is a problem that both conservatives and liberals face?
Here I actually disagree. I know and respect a good number of
small-government conservatives — very interested in only having the
government do the things that government does best (civil defense, military
defense, commerce regulation), rather than having its fingers in every pie
– and their approach to fiscal, moral, and governmental responsibilities
are ones that make sense to me, even about the points with which I
disagree.
Using the phrase “big-government conservatism” doesn’t attack
“conservatives,” as near as I can tell; it attacks the idea that one can
shout loudly about cutting taxes and then spend hundreds of billions of
dollars more than one’s predecessors on programs which don’t actually seem
to do any good.
And maybe the problem is in our terms. For me, the terms “conservative”
and “liberal” map to social policies, not financial ones.
> Instead of cowardly finger pointing from Democrats and liberals, how
> about some frank talk about how to address the problems of the day? How
> about talk of how to bring both sides to the table to compromise and
> solve social problems we face?
I don’t think that pointing out the spending excesses of a sitting
government is “cowardly finger pointing,” and I think talking about
balancing our books is emphatically one of, if not the most worrisome
“problem of the day” that I can see.
There are absolutely conversations that we need to be having, and I agree
with you that sophomoric name-calling solves none of them and makes people
less willing to engage about them. I’d like someone to calmly articulate
the conversation that I think the current political parties are really
arguing about, to wit: What role should government play in our lives? Was
the New Deal, where the federal government assumed a more active (and more
expensive) role by establishing a social safety net to help the poorest
sections of society get a firm foothold worth it? Is a huge bureacracy the
best way to get money spent helping people? If the feds don’t make sure
that every state in the union has certain baseline standards, what happens
to poor states like Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana when their schools
disintegrate?
They’re hard conversations, and the ones worth having are full of shades of
grey.
Adam
September 14th, 2005 at 12:06 pm
Since I’m not good at hard conversations, I choose to bicker about a less important topic:
Tomah is about an hour away from La Crosse. And La Crosse has its own newspaper — the La Crosse Tribune, not the Tomah Journal.
:)