Tyranny is always whimsical.
--Mark Steyn
So Dad made me read this article by Mark Steyn, a Canadian emigre who has an excellent grasp on political issues and who will, incidentally, make you laugh your butt off. (It's ok--it reattaches fairly easily.) In the article, "Live Free or Die!", Steyn argues that America has entered the first of five stages in the death of a free democracy. Stage One, in his view, is when we start accepting governmental "help" with things that have never been the government's true responsibility--things like childcare, care of elders, and housing. Steyn sees this progression as something like what happens when you give a middle-schooler cigarettes: at first it seems so harmless, but then you're hooked and the outlook is not so good.
Anyhow it's a great article and you should read it, but what it got me thinking about was politicians one can compare PBO to. Steyn makes the point that the changes we've been making lately are much larger than the past presidents we can compare PBO too--they're bigger than the New Society, the New Deal, or Carter's attempts at sweatering the nation. So I got to comparing and contrasting PBO with some presidents of the past whose reach might have exceeded their grasp.
(Apologies if any of ya'll voted for him; I'm not trying to be disrespectful. Take what I say with a grain of salt, but just think about it for a bit.)
The most obvious comparison, in that it even occurred to the dudes at Time Magazine, is with FDR, whose campaign slogan should have been "As Different from Teddy Roosevelt as You Can Get While Having the Same Last Name." Roosevelt, of course, is the one that some folks who were not paying attention in high school economics think saved us from the Great Depression. Sadly it is likely his fiddling and Hoover's actually prolonged it, but Hoover was usefully out of office and thus could be blamed for many things while Roosevelt got accolades for anything good that accidentally happened. The media felt it was their duty to report things as encouraging, to get people to spend money and not riot in the street demanding bread and so forth. In this way, PBO is like Roosevelt. Things are still President Bush's fault.
He can be forgiven; blaming your predecessor has a long and noble history in politics, although the blame is usually not done this crudely (i.e., hopping up and down and pointing one's finger and shouting, "he started it!"). PBO also resembles Roosevelt with the whole fiddling with the economy bit, although he has far out-fiddled Roosevelt, who could only dream of nationalizing entire industries and the country's banks.
(Incidentally, the fifth amendment to the Constitution forbids nationalizing the country's banks. Nobody seems to have noticed this.)
PBO resembles Wilson, Carter, LBJ, and a number of other political figures to a greater or lesser extent. What troubles me, however, is less how the man himself performs his duties than the characteristics of events lately.
It ought to always make us prick up our ears when people say things like, "we need to dispense with this piddly check or balance because we are in a great emergency, and the government needs powers it doesn't have". The argument wasn't good when it applied to the Patriot Act, and it still wasn't good when it came to the Stimulus. It becomes far less believable when, months later, we are still being asked to dispense with checks, balances, and even good business sense in order to bail out various chunks of the private sector. Anyone with a nose should be able to get why you need to obey checks and balances even more in an emergency. Nobody ever says, "Sure, I don't have any problems right now, but I have some extra freedom and money laying around--why don't you guys take it." There always has to be at least an attempt at an excuse, because most people will resist brute force at first.
Today I was bothered by the proclamation on the morning news that the recession is lifting--oh, and they also expect unemployment and foreclosures to rise, but not to worry, the administration says the recession is definitely on the way out. Getting rid of problems by re-naming them (anyone remember how we've re-branded "The War On Terror" as "overseas contingency operation"?) is troubling because it's only one step away from getting rid of problems by blaming a handy scapegoat group. Then you have to go after the scapegoat group, and then when you still have problems and no group, you have to say that the group is somehow still managing to affect you and build up even more rhetoric against it (those dang bourgeoisie/Jews/immigrants/Irish/rich people/poor people/fill in the blank). Not helpful in actually solving problems and involves a lot more expense, usually, what with having to build camps and whatnot.
Then there is the fact that everybody that this administration has been associated with in Illinois politics seems to be doing things the old-school Chicago way. It's possible that the administration can have a bunch of corrupt friends who forget to pay their taxes and yet be pure as the driven snow, but the fact that no one is even given pause by these associations is a bit weird, don't you think?
The Husband and I were talking, and the Husband jokingly said that If These Trends Continue to their logical conclusion we are on the road to communism. I responded that no we weren't, technically, headed toward communism, since communism is the centrality of the collective. In other words, the government has to be totalitarian in communism ostensibly to make sure everybody has equal stuff. When you have a totalitarian government that does not pretend to enforce equal stuff, what you have is not communism but fascism. The unfortunate tendency to equate fascism with National Socialism confuses people. The Nazis were only a particular breed of fascist, but fascism itself is just centrality of the state, unvarnished with anything except possibly a twisted patriotism. (Therefore, the idea the political beliefs are a spectrum, with fascism at the extreme right and communism at the extreme left, is false. For one thing, Republican principles {if not actions} espouse small government with limited power.)
This should make us stop. Americans still remember the Soviet Union too well to be wooed by overt promises of Making Us All Just As Good As Anybody Else, but we are easily swayed by promises that we will be kept safe and out of wars--that the name of America will be respected abroad--that the economy will be fixed--that only the really bad people will be hurt by innovations in our basic principles.
I'm not comparing PBO to Hitler, ok? That would be silly and melodramatic and anyway you would stop listening to me. But put it this way-- I can't think of a time in history when the current political strategies were used that led to MORE freedom and peace. I'm just sayin'.
Cheers,
Breanna
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