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THE LESSON OF RAND PAUL
05/24/2010
During the disastrous eight years that we called The Bush Administration, I often logged onto libertarian websites like Lew Rockwell and Antiwar. I enjoyed reading the arguments and I agreed with some of the positions. Writers argued brilliantly against the Iraq War, and all wars, and I liked their insistence that government ought to stay out of people’s bedrooms. And while there were many libertarian views with which I disagreed, I always admired their consistency. If libertarians were anything, they were certainly not hypocrites.
Unlike conservative Republicans, who want the government to keep its hands off guns, money and corporations but welcome it’s meddling in the bedroom and the gynecologist’s office, libertarians want the federal government out of everything: the bedroom, the boardroom, the gun show, the cannabis closet, and other countries. And unlike many Republicans who dream of a day when the president is not just the secular leader of government but the head of the Christian church, libertarians want religion out of government and government out of religion.
With the nomination of Rand Paul as a Senate candidate in Kentucky, however, we see how impossible it is for a libertarian to be a good legislator. Already, Paul’s ideology is getting him in trouble with fellow Republicans and causing democrats to condemn him. And even more important than the political ramifications of holding to a libertarian ideology is the reality that governing by ideology—any ideology—does not work for one simple reason. Government is not about promoting ideology. It’s about solving problems, and ideology does not solve problems.
The four evangelists of the conservative movement—Sean, Glen, Rush and Bill—know that ideology doesn’t work (even as they preach their own), and that is why they are trying desperately to portray democrats as being tied to dangerous ideologies. Of course, what’s particularly amusing is that they can’t decide which ideology that is. One day it’s socialism. The next day it’s fascism. Then it’s secularism. Then it’s communism. This shifting of accusations is not only silly. It is evidence of how little they know about history as well as political philosophy.
The reality is that democrats are not very ideological. What they are is practical. Democrats don’t want to govern so they can create a communist or fascist society. They reject both of these ideologies. They simply want to govern so they can solve problems. That’s how the democrats have always operated. If you doubt that, look at the recent bills they have passed. By and large, they are moderate attempts to solve problems. Let’s take a look.
The health care bill: If democrats were ideological, and that ideology was one of socialism, they would have insisted on a single payer system. But they didn’t. Though some democrats wanted a single payer system, because they believed it would be more cost effective and cover everyone, they never wanted a socialist state. And the leaders of the democratic party, starting with President Obama, never endorsed a single payer system. The farthest they went in promoting government involvement was to consider a public option that would have helped a small number of people. Ultimately, however, they opted for a continuation of the private insurance system, with government oversight and regulations so that more people could be covered. That is hardly socialism. It’s an attempt to solve the problem of 45 million uninsured Americans whose medical care is actually paid for by the rest of us through higher premiums and higher medical bills as hospitals and doctors try to cover the losses they incur by treating the uninsured.
The bank reform bill: Again, the democrats did not dissolve the banks and the government did not take them over. We still, unfortunately, have banks that are too big to fail, and the private banking system continues with regulations now in place to prevent at least some—though not all—of the abuses that nearly destroyed our economy. As for TARP, it wasn’t a government takeover of the banks. Even though many Americans hated it, it wasn’t socialism. It was a government loan to banks, and most of those loans have now been paid back, with interest.
With issue after issue, democrats are interested in solving problems. The’ve attempted to solve the problem of poverty with unemployment insurance and minimum wage guarantees. They’ve worked on the problem of racial discrimination with civil rights legislation. The problem of global warming (and yes, it does exist) will hopefully be tackled by new mileage standards, protection of vital wetlands and forests, and caps on carbon emissions. These are not based on ideology, they are based on the effort to solve problems. Yes, the democrats are different from conservative republicans and from libertarians in their view that government can be part of the solution to our problems—that’s why they run for office. Republicans and libertarians, on the other hand, appear to run for office so they can limit the federal government and destroy its ability to solve problems.
In fact, many of the problems that we are facing as a country today are the result of republican and libertarian efforts to limit government, including the financial meltdown of 2008, that continues to have an impact on the economy, and the ongoing oil catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico. Lack of government oversight and the laissez faire policies of conservative government towards both banks and oil companies are largely responsible for these twin disasters. Now we hear Louisiana republicans like Bobby Jindal screaming for help from the federal government, demanding that the president do something, rather than wait for BP to fix what they broke.
However, it is probably too late for the federal government to do anything, thanks to anti-government policies. There should have been better oversight of drilling, or perhaps a total ban on drilling, as this kind of irresponsible “accident” was inevitable, according to environmentalists who have been warning us for decades. The reality is that the federal government does not have the resources or the equipment they would need to do much in the Gulf. It’s not like Katrina when at least the government could have sent in the National Guard to rescue people. This clean-up requires expertise and equipment that only the oil companies have, and apparently, even they don’t have what they need because they weren’t honest about the chances for such a calamity, and thus they weren’t prepared to respond effectively.
So republicans and libertarians, and the tea partiers they march out with their hostile and often racist signs, can continue to scream about how much they hate big government, but they are the very ones who are the most critical of government when it doesn’t help them. Weren’t the tea partiers the ones who screamed “keep the government’s hands off my Medicare,” apparently oblivious to the fact that Medicare is the government? Haven’t they been hollering about the deficit and debt, when it was the republican president who turned a surplus (from his democratic predecessor) into a deficit with tax cuts for the wealthy and wars that were unnecessary? Again, when republicans are in office they elevate ideology over problem solving. Tax cuts and militarism are more important than fiscal sanity, more important than solving problems like massive number of uninsured, increasing poverty rates, corporate dominance over the American economy and environment, and the shrinking of the middle class.
Rand Paul’s libertarian views may win in Kentucky. But they are wrong for America. Libertarianism may have worked in the 1700’s when we had a largely agrarian society, and corporations did not have the power they have today. It may have worked in a simpler time, before globalization, before the advent of mass media and the internet, but it doesn’t work today. The world is too complex and corporations too powerful to allow them to run unchecked, focused only on providing wealth for a handful of people—while the vast majority of ordinary Americans struggle to make ends meet.
A government managed by those who hate government, and whose ideology allows corporations to run amok, robbing us of our retirement savings and fouling our environment, is not good government. Paul and his like should be roundly defeated, and they would be if people stopped listening to the four evangelists of “I hate government,” and started thinking for themselves. But I’m not holding my breath.
All content © 2005 outragedcitizen.com
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