Apparatchiks With Shovels

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Here’s a seriously disturbing story from TPM Café. Vali Nasr writes,

It now looks like the administration has adopted the surge strategy as its mantra. Simply put it means no new political road map for Iraq in place of the “national unity government” formula that has so far failed (has not delivered on the insurgency but has managed to alienated the Shias, and has actually caused more rather than less sectarian violence since the U.S. adopted it); going it alone (ignoring ISG’s recommendation to talk to the neighbors); and putting more boots on the ground. This last item deserves special attention. The language of the administration suggests that the surge will be used to fight radical groups and sectarian militias—Sunni ones and especially Shia militias and death squads associated with Muqtada al-Sadr. But listen closely; what they mean is that surge is in fact meant to finish off Sadr. And there lies the danger.

This is stunning. This means that the war will escalate, and our troops will be taking on multiple sides of a civil war at the same time. And by taking on Shia militias, Nasr says, we run the risk of inciting a Shia insurgency, which is about the only sort of violence Iraq hadn’t seen already.

The generals (who, we’ve been told until now, were making “decisions on the ground”) are opposed to the surge. But as if on cue, today several news outlets have reported that soldiers in Iraq support the surge. David Cloud of the New York Times writes,

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, talking to enlisted soldiers on his second day in Iraq, heard broad support today for a proposal to send more American forces to Iraq, an idea that has emerged as a leading option as the Bush administration considers a strategy shift.

“I really think we need more troops here,” said Specialist Jason T. Glenn, one of several soldiers at a breakfast meeting with Mr. Gates who backed the idea. “With more presence here,” he said, security might improve to a point that “we can get the Iraqi Army trained up.”

You can read essentially the same story from the Associated Press. Thomas E. Ricks and Howard Schneider report for the Washington Post,

Bush said this week he is waiting to hear from Gates after the new defense secretary returns from Iraq before making a final decision on the issue.

In a breakfast earlier in the day with more than a dozen enlisted soldiers, however, Gates got an earful about the need for more personnel.

“I really think we need more troops here, with more presence on the ground. More troops might hold [the insurgents] off long enough to where we can get the Iraq army trained up,” said Spec. Jason Glenn, a member of an intelligence unit in the first infantry division.

“I think we do need more troops over here,” agreed PFC Cassandra Wallace, a support soldier in the Tenth Mountain Division. “More troops would help us integrate the Iraqi army into patrols here.”

You don’t have to wait for the White House speechwriters to put this together for you, do you? You know that sometime soon President Bush is going to announce that soldiers are asking for more troops in Iraq, so we have to send them.

I guess now we’re bypassing the generals and are asking the soldiers to make decisions on the ground.

Secretary Gates is, in fact, doing a heck of a job hearing what Bush wants to hear. According to Ricks and Schneider, not only is Iraq Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki declaring stoutly that Iraq will “take the lead role in solving the country’s security problems,” (translation: See? Iraqification is working!) but Gates is saying that both Iran and Syria are playing “a very negative role” in Iraq. Iran especially (translation: Just forget about discussions with Syria and Iran).

You know that Bush has already decided what the Great Leap Forward to Victory will be, and that it will look remarkably like the old plan on meth. What we’re seeing now is just the pre-leap ceremony.

It’s a Joke

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Stop me if you’ve heard this one:

There was an old man in France who used to get up at the crack of dawn every day and sprinkle white powder all around his house. When his neighbor asked him what he was sprinkling, he replied that it was elephant repellant. The neighbor exclaimed “There are no elephants in France!” to which he answered “I guess it must be working then!”

It’s an old joke. I’ve heard it told better. But now there’s an updated version, as reported by Melinda Henneberger:

I like dreamers, so I was really trying to follow what Bill Kristol had to say on the Daily Show last night. The gist of it was that though the war in Iraq had been mismanaged, yes, it had also kept us from being attacked here at home since 9/11, so Bush should get some credit for that.

I didn’t see this segment, so I can’t judge how well Kristol told the joke. I’m guessing it went something like this:

    STEWART: The Iraq War isn’t going so well. What are we trying to accomplish?

    KRISTOL: It’s to keep away al Qaeda.

    STEWART: How is it keeping away al Qaeda?

    KRISTOL: Have there been any al Qaeda attacks in America lately?

    STEWART: No.

    KRISTOL: See? It must be working.

I like the elephant version better.

Update: C&L has the video.

Republic or Empire?

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This morning I read the first paragraph of this article by Peter Baker in today’s Washington Post:

President Bush acknowledged for the first time yesterday that the United States is not winning the war in Iraq and said he plans to expand the overall size of the “stressed” U.S. armed forces to meet the challenges of a long-term global struggle against terrorists.

After which enough alarm bells went off in my head to wake the dead.

The January 2007 issue of Harper’s (the cover art is a photograph of a rubber duckie) has an article by Chalmers Johnson titled “Republic or Empire: A National Intelligence Estimate on the United States.” It’s not online and won’t be for awhile (once again, Harper’s policy about not putting articles online until they’re a couple of months old makes me crazy), but reading the article in light of Baker’s news story is guaranteed to scare the living bleep out of you.

In the article, Chalmers discusses “military Keynesianism,” in which “the flow of the nation’s wealth — from taxpayers and (increasingly) foreign lenders through the government to military contractors and (decreasingly) back to the taxpayers.” As a result, “the domestic economy requires sustained military ambition in order to avoid recession or collapse.” Then, he ties military Keynesianism to the “unitary executive” theory and Bush’s increasingly unchecked power. Meanwhile, citizens and media dutifully “abet their government in maintaining a facade of constitutional democracy until the nation drifts into bankruptcy.”

Note that Chalmers is a serious guy with sterling Establishment credentials. Among other things, from 1967 until 1973, Chalmers was was a consultant to the Office of National Estimates (O.N.E.) within the CIA. In that capacity he mostly dealt with issues involving communist China and Maoism. There’s more about Chalmers and his work here.

In 2004 Chalmers told an interviewer he wasn’t always so concerned about military adventurism:

Johnson thought antiwar demonstrators during the Vietnam were naive. He voted for Ronald Reagan. In retrospect, Johnson told John Wilkens of the San Diego Union-Tribune, he was “a spear carrier for the empire.” …

… “I fear that we will lose our country,” Johnson writes in his latest book, “The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic.”

Bush and the Pentagon are bankrupting the nation, dismantling the Constitution, and leading us down the path to endless war. America is afflicted with the same “economic sclerosis of the former USSR,” Chalmers explains in a ZNet interview. But at least Mikhail Gorbachev tried to reform the Soviet Union before it imploded. No such luck with Bush and the neocons. “The United States is not even trying to reform, but it is certain that vested interests here would be as great or greater an obstacle. It is nowhere written that the United States, in its guise as an empire dominating the world, must go on forever. The blowback from the second half of the twentieth century has only just begun.”

In this TomDispatch interview, Chalmers explains how he evolved from being a loyal, spear carrying Cold Warrior to a being a prophet of doom howling in the wilderness. Max B. Sawicky of MaxSpeak wrote of Chalmers,

Johnson remains a conservative, staunchly pro-capitalist, limited government. No goofy Buchanan-type xenophobia. There’s a fair amount of overlap with Chomsky. People type the latter as “left” but I would argue that both of their approaches to U.S. foreign policy are empiricist and Madisonian. I’m no expert, but neither are the loons running this government.

The Johnson analytical framework harkens back to New Left treatments of “Pentagonal capitalism” and “military Keynesianism.” It emphasizes the brute fact of U.S. military outposts around the world, the breadth of resources devoted to imperial overstretch, and the impacts on the locals. I tend to discount the money aspect — what’s $450 billion in a $13 trillion economy? To me the ideology — the thirst for influence, control, and dominance — is most important.

The part about “limited government” sets some alarm belts off, too, but I respect anyone who’s actually thinking. Unlike some of our recent libertarian commenters.

Marc Cooper interviewed Chalmers in 2004 (emphasis added):

So where does that leave today’s authentic patriots?

The role of the citizen now is to be ever better informed. When Benjamin Franklin was asked, “What have we got, a republic or a monarchy?” he replied: “A republic if you can keep it.” We’ve not been paying attention to what we need to do to keep it. I think we made a disastrous error in the classic strategic sense when in 1991 we concluded that we “had won the Cold War.” No. We simply didn’t lose it as badly as the Soviets did. We were both caught up in imperial overreach, in weapons industries that came to dominate our societies. We allowed ideologues to capture our Department of Defense and lead us off — in a phrase they like — into a New Rome. We are no longer a status quo power respectful of international law. We became a revisionist power, one fundamentally opposed to the world as it is organized, much like Nazi Germany, imperial Japan, Bolshevik Russia or Maoist China.

Indeed, your thesis is that since September 11, the U.S. ceased to be a republic and has become an empire.

It’s an extremely open question if we have crossed our Rubicon and there is no going back. Easily the most important right in our Constitution, according to James Madison, who wrote much of the document, is the one giving the right to go to war exclusively to the elected representatives of the people, to the Congress. Never, Madison continued, should that right be given to a single man. But in October 2002, our Congress gave that power to a single man, to exercise whenever he wanted, and with nuclear weapons if he so chose. And the following March, without any international consultation or legitimacy, he exercised that power by staging a unilateral attack on Iraq.

The Bill of Rights — articles 4 and 6 — are now open to question. Do people really have the right to habeas corpus? Are they still secure in their homes from illegal seizures? The answer for the moment is no. We have to wait and see what the Supreme Court will rule as to the powers of this government that it appointed.

Going back to the Harper’s article — Chalmers writes,

Military Keynesianism … creates a feedback loop: American presidents know that military Keynesianism tends to concentrate power in the executive branch, and so presidents who seek greater power have a natural inducement to encourage further growth of the military-industrial complex. As the phenomena feed on each other, the usual outcome is a real war, based not on the needs of national defense but rather on the domestic political logic of military Keynesianism …

… George W. Bush has taken this natural political phenomenon to an extreme never before experienced by the American electorate. Every president has sought greater authority, but Bush … appears to believe that increasing presidential authority is both a birthright and a central component of his historical legacy. …

… John Yoo, Bush’s deputy assistant attorney general from 2001 to 2003, writes in his book War By Other Means, “We are used to a peacetime system in which Congress enacts laws, the President enforces them, and the courts interpret them. In wartime, the gravity shifts to the executive branch.”

Let’s go back to Peter Baker’s article for a moment:

A substantial military expansion will take years and would not immediately affect the war in Iraq. But it would begin to address the growing alarm among commanders about the state of the armed forces. Although the president offered no specifics, other U.S. officials said the administration is preparing plans to bolster the nation’s permanent active-duty military with as many as 70,000 additional troops.

A force structure expansion would accelerate the already-rising costs of war. The administration is drafting a supplemental request for more than $100 billion in additional funds for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, on top of the $70 billion already approved for this fiscal year, according to U.S. officials. That would be over 50 percent more than originally projected for fiscal 2007, making it by far the costliest year since the 2003 invasion.

Since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Congress has approved more than $500 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as for terrorism-related operations elsewhere. An additional $100 billion would bring overall expenditures to $600 billion, exceeding those for the Vietnam War, which, adjusted for inflation, cost $549 billion, according to the Congressional Research Service.

Now, what will Bush not do to pay for all this expansion? Raise taxes, that’s what. Instead, he’s going to borrow more money from China and Japan and who knows who else. In other words, this is a major expansion of military Keynesianism. Which, once again, is what happens when “the flow of the nation’s wealth — from taxpayers and (increasingly) foreign lenders through the government to military contractors and (decreasingly) back to the taxpayers.” As a result, “the domestic economy requires sustained military ambition in order to avoid recession or collapse.”

And I think Chalmers is right about not losing the Cold War as badly as the Soviets did. We could still lose, however. Although a great many factors contributed to the collapse of the Soviet Union, my understanding is that the collapse came about primarily because the Soviet economy just plain couldn’t support the cost of their military, their secret police, and their subsidies to client states like Cuba. Soviet citizens increasingly depended on a black market economy to survive, and Gorbachev’s reforms came way too late to do any good. Eventually the whole business fell like a house of cards.

Now, our economy might be able to pay for all the stuff Bush wants to spend money on — I honestly don’t know — but the plain fact is that it is not paying for those things because of Bush’s tax cuts. Instead, we are borrowing money from foreign countries and going deeper into debt every time we breathe.

And, frankly, this scares the bleep out of me.

It’s probably the case that the military does need the expansion because of the strain Bush’s War has put upon it. But it’s becoming increasingly clear that we must haul our asses out of Iraq to save ourselves. Yes, that will leave a nasty mess behind, and that’s too damn bad. But Bush’s War is itself the greater danger.

See also: Digby, Robert Scheer, and xan at Corrente.

Update: Via Digby — the Associated Press reports —

The Pentagon is still struggling to get a handle on the unprecedented number of contractors now helping run the nation’s wars, losing millions of dollars because it is unable to monitor industry workers stationed in far-flung locations, according to a congressional report.

The investigation by the Government Accountability Office, which released the report Tuesday, found that the Defense Department’s inability to manage contractors effectively has hurt military operations and unit morale and cost the Pentagon money.

“With limited visibility over contractors, military commanders and other senior leaders cannot develop a complete picture of the extent to which they rely on contractors as an asset to support their operations,” said the GAO, the investigative arm of Congress.

Oh Be Joyful

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E.J. Dionne’s column should give you some holiday cheer.

In 1984 three exit polls pegged Ronald Reagan’s share of the ballots cast by Americans under 30 at between 57 and 60 percent. Reagan-style conservatism seemed fresh, optimistic and innovative. In 2006 voters under 30 gave 60 percent of their votes to Democratic House candidates, according to the shared media exit poll. Conservatism now looks old, tired and ineffectual.

I noticed years ago that the rank-and-file “movement conservative” is younger than I am. Well, OK, most people are younger than I am. But surely you’ve noticed that a disproportionate number of True Believers are people who reached their late teens / early twenties during the Carter or Reagan years at the earliest. They came of age at the same time the right-wing media / think tank infrastructure began to dominate national political discourse, and all their adult lives their brains have been pickled in rightie propaganda.

But now it seems much of the new crop o’ young’uns are looking at the freak show that movement conservatism has become, and saying, holy bleep.

When the right seemed headed to dominance in the early 1990s, the hot political media trend was talk radio and the star was Rush Limbaugh, a smart entrepreneur who spawned imitators around the country and all across the AM dial.

Is it me, or has rightie talk radio become a tad déclassée?

Now the chic medium is televised political comedy and the cool commentators are Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert. Their brilliant ridicule of the Bush administration and conservative bloviators satisfies a political craving at least as great as the one Limbaugh once fed. Stewart and Colbert speak especially to young Americans who rely on their sensible take on the madness that surrounds us. The young helped drive their popularity, and the Droll Duo in turn shaped a new, anti-conservative skepticism.

I like to think that the liberal blogosphere made Stewart and Colbert possible. I remember when the old Media Whores Online site seemed deliciously seditious. Then sedition bloomed on thousands of blogs, broke out of the Internets and into mass media, and became The Daily Show.

Of course, just because the young folks are waking up to the sham of contemporary American conservatism doesn’t mean they’re ready to embrace liberalism. And that may be just as well; it’s not healthy to bounce from one ‘ism” to another. Be skeptical, young folks. Think for yourselves. No one ideology has all the answers. Resist being programmed by anybody.

Since the 1970s, supply-side conservatives have been brilliantly successful in redefining economic thinking. They shifted the popular focus from workers to entrepreneurs, from incomes to wealth, from job creation to share-price increases, and from government policy innovation to private-sector autonomy.

Suddenly economic inequality is a problem even conservatives are taking seriously. Corporate America is looked upon, let us say, in less heroic terms. Economic security is no longer a dirty phrase, and staunch capitalists aren’t quite so eager to preach the virtues of “creative destruction” to displaced industrial workers. Government — with some wariness, to be sure — is being invited back into the economic story to redress grievances and to right imbalances.

Government isn’t the solution to all problems, but it’s actually quite good at addressing some problems. I’m tired of talking heads on television preaching that government can’t be used for anything but making war and protecting embryos.

I mean, all the other industrialized countries have national health care; why can’t we?

At this point I wouldn’t mind placing a moratorium on all ideologies. We need to re-think basic questions, like Why is there government? A smart commenter named Patrick wrote, “A particular kind of libertarian ideology has permeated virtually all levels of public discourse in the US: the notion that Capitalism rather than representative self-government is our founding principle.” I agree. And in recent years I’ve been stunned by the number of people I run into in political forums and on blogs who don’t understand what “representative self-government” means.

The comment thread of a previous post became infested (before I closed it) with libertarians who worship the Constitution as Holy Writ yet dismiss representative self-government as blasphemy. To claim that the Constitution was not created to be an instrument for representative self-government is like claiming a piano isn’t an instrument for playing music. In fact, that’s the point of it.

I hope the young folks are growing weary of being told what they can’t do and what they can’t have because movement conservatism (or libertarianism, or some other ism) says so. Maybe in the years to come they’ll be willing to consider what we can do — for ourselves, and our posterity — if we choose.

And Another Thing

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This sorta kinda ties in to the last couple of posts — “Why Limited Government?” and “Another Rightie Who Can’t Read.”

John Hawkins of Right Wing News objects to something he read at Smirking Chimp.

“American Capitalism is a malignancy that permeates our economic, social, and political systems and institutions. This untreated cancer ravaging the body of civilization is spreading like an unchecked conflagration in a munitions factory. Feudalism didn’t die; it simply evolved. Corporatism, Consumerism, wage slavery, debt slavery, free trade agreements, deregulation, and privatization condemn most of the global population to varying degrees of slavery, serfdom or indentured servitude.” — Jason Miller at the popular liberal blog, The Smirking Chimp

For the record, I don’t think capitalism in itself is to blame for the bad stuff Jason Miller attributes to it. I think any way you choose to run an economy can lead to “slavery, serfdom or indentured servitude” if ordinary people have no protections from powerful people. Sooner or later the wealthy and powerful will find a way to game the system, whatever it is, to their advantage. Capitalism may be a little easier to game than some other systems, but none are foolproof. Certainly communism, which is capitalism’s polar opposite in most respects, has been found to lead to “slavery, serfdom or indentured servitude” wherever it’s been tried.

Anyway, Mr. Hawkins comments,

Because Mr. Miller and his many comrades in the Democratic Party don’t understand human nature, they don’t understand capitalism.

First off, Mr. Miller didn’t say anything about being a comrade of the Democratic Party, and Smirking Chimp (which is not a blog, but which contains many blogs, including Jason Miller’s) is not an instrument of the Democratic Party. Greens and Naderites are free to blog there also, I believe. I’ve met the proprietor of Smirking Chimp, and he doesn’t strike me as the sort who demands loyalty oaths. Hawkins needs to relieve his knee from its tendency to jerk.

Capitalism is designed to take advantage of one of the most basic truths about human beings: people are selfish.

People will work very hard for themselves and their families, but, they are not automations and very few of them are going to work hard to line someone else’s pocket or for “society,” if they don’t think their efforts are being properly rewarded.

With capitalism, that selfishness leads businessmen to hire more workers to increase their profits, to earn more money which they pay taxes on, and to create products and services that the rest of society can use — not out of the goodness of their heart, but because they benefit from it. Take away the benefits that people can earn from themselves, then they won’t go the extra mile and society won’t be able to profit from their efforts.

Let’s take a look back at the Golden Age of Laissez Faire in the United States —

1820-1880: The Seamstress Impoverished

Seamstresses were familiar figures in early 19th-century American cities, filling the needs of an expanding garment industry. Working at home, they stitched bundles of pre-cut fabric into clothing worn by Southern slaves, Western miners, and New England gentlemen. Dressmakers were responsible for producing an entire garment and could earn a decent wage. Seamstresses, however, were poorly compensated for work that was both physically demanding and unpredictable. Paid by the piece, seamstresses worked 16 hours a day during the busiest seasons, but their income rarely exceeding bare subsistence. Making matters worse was, shop owners were notorious for finding fault with the finished garments and withholding payment. Consequently, seamstresses often relied on charity for their own and their families’ survival.

Yeah, capitalism worked like a charm for those women. Oh, wait …

Here’s another little blast from the past:

History In 1888, New York state factory inspectors provided the following description of sweat-shops: “In New York city, in the tenement house districts where clothing is manufactured, there exists a system of labor which is nearly akin to slavery as it is possible to get. The work is done under the eyes of task-masters, who rent a small room or two in the rear part of an upper floor of a high building, put in a few sewing machines, a stove suitable for heating irons, and then hire a number of men and women to work for them.” Explicit in the inspectors’ definition of a sweatshop is the exploitation of garment workers by contractors, who forced their workers to labor for long hours only to be paid insufficient wages. In addition to physically sweating as a result of their toil, workers were also “sweated” in the same manner an animal would be milked or bled.

By the 1880s, for the most part, seamstresses no longer negotiated work on an individual basis but were subsumed into a system of contracting. Contractors received components of garments that they in turn assembled according to designs. These finished products were returned to the manufacturers and marketed under the company’s label. As a result, manufacturers distanced themselves from the hiring and equipping of a labor force, which became the responsibility of the contractor. Manufacturers paid a set price for each finished garment they received from the contractor, which was considerably lower then they would then charge retail. Consequently, contractors, in order to make any profit, forced longer hours and lower wages on their workers.

Capitalism didn’t put a stop to these practices. Free markets didn’t put a stop to these practices. It was government regulation and labor laws that, finally, provided some protection for workers.

The notion that unfettered selfishness and deregulation benefits everybody has been disproved by history time and time again, yet ideologues refuse to learn that lesson. Capitalism needs watchdogs to keep it honest, or it corrupts into plutocracy and, eventually, corporatism. That’s a plain fact. Selfishness may inspire people to better their lives, but it also inspires people to lie, cheat, steal, hoard, and exploit.

One of the biggest atrocities of human history — the death by starvation of more than one million Irish during the Famine — was made worse by “free market” ideology. Free markets didn’t cause the blight, but the ideology prevented the English from providing relief when it easily could have.

In deciding their course of action during the Famine, British government officials and administrators rigidly adhered to the popular theory of the day, known as laissez-faire (meaning let it be), which advocated a hands-off policy in the belief that all problems would eventually be solved on their own through ‘natural means.’

Great efforts were thus made to sidestep social problems and avoid any interference with private enterprise or the rights of property owners. Throughout the entire Famine period, the British government would never provide massive food aid to Ireland under the assumption that English landowners and private businesses would have been unfairly harmed by resulting food price fluctuations.

In adhering to laissez-faire, the British government also did not interfere with the English-controlled export business in Irish-grown grains. Throughout the Famine years, large quantities of native-grown wheat, barley, oats and oatmeal sailed out of places such as Limerick and Waterford for England, even though local Irish were dying of starvation. Irish farmers, desperate for cash, routinely sold the grain to the British in order to pay the rent on their farms and thus avoid eviction.

In the first year of the Hunger, the British Prime Minister arranged for some shipments of corn to Ireland that helped a little. But then the government changed hands, and a new Prime Minister took over.

Once he had firmly taken control, Trevelyan ordered the closing of the food depots in Ireland that had been selling Peel’s Indian corn. He also rejected another boatload of Indian corn already headed for Ireland. His reasoning, as he explained in a letter, was to prevent the Irish from becoming “habitually dependent” on the British government. His openly stated desire was to make “Irish property support Irish poverty.”

As a devout advocate of laissez-faire, Trevelyan also claimed that aiding the Irish brought “the risk of paralyzing all private enterprise.” Thus he ruled out providing any more government food, despite early reports the potato blight had already been spotted amid the next harvest in the west of Ireland. Trevelyan believed Peel’s policy of providing cheap Indian corn meal to the Irish had been a mistake because it undercut market prices and had discouraged private food dealers from importing the needed food. This year, the British government would do nothing. The food depots would be closed on schedule and the Irish fed via the free market, reducing their dependence on the government while at the same time maintaining the rights of private enterprise.

And at least a million Irish starved, and about another million left Ireland on “coffin ships” in which many more died of disease. This is the nonsense that the “free market” devotees want to go back to. Like it worked so well the first time.

Almost a century ago Theodore Roosevelt quoted Abraham Lincoln:

“Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration.

“If that remark was original with me, I should be even more strongly denounced as a communist agitator than I shall be anyhow. It is Lincoln’s. I am only quoting it; and that is one side; that is the side the capitalist should hear. Now, let the workingman hear his side.

“Capital has its rights, which are as worthy of protection as any other rights… Nor should this lead to a war upon the owners of property. Property is the fruit of labor;… property is desirable; is a positive good in the world.”

And then comes a thoroughly Lincolnlike sentence: —

“Let not him who is houseless pull down the house of another, but let him work diligently and build one for himself, thus by example assuring that his own shall be safe from violence when built.”

It seems to me that, in these words, Lincoln took substantially the attitude that we ought to take; he showed the proper sense of proportion in his relative estimates of capital and labor, of human rights and property rights. Above all, in this speech, as in many others, he taught a lesson in wise kindliness and charity; an indispensable lesson to us of today. … The issue is joined, and we must fight or fail.

Do read the whole speech, if you haven’t already. TR laid out the essential foundations of modern American liberalism in this speech and gives “deregulation” of business a resounding bitch slap. “The right to regulate the use of wealth in the public interest is universally admitted,” he said. He said that in 1910. We need to do some universal re-admitting.

Another Rightie Who Can’t Read

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I noticed this trackback to the last post. It proves my point about the general fuzzy-headedness of the “limited government” argument. Even though I specifically (and clearly, I think) wrote that government must be restricted from abusing civil liberties, the blogger wrote,

Does Ms. O’Brien really believe that there shouldn’t be any limits on the will of the people ? If she does, then we’ve got to toss out most of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, because that’s precisely what they do.

I wonder sometimes if these meatheads cannot grasp that, ultimately, “the government” and “the people” are the same thing. In the U.S. the government is an instrument by which We, the People, govern ourselves. The Constitution provides the basic parameters, structures, and divisions of authority of that government. The Bill of Rights enumerates which things the government does not have the power to do, meaning that no government official or political faction can use government to do those enumerated things.

And I think that’s grand. But libertarians want to deprive people of the ability to use government in ways that don’t have a dadblamed thing to do with civil liberties, and which in fact fall under the aegis of matters for which the Constitution was purposed —

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

If We, the People, want to promote the general Welfare by initiating taxpayer funded universal health care, for example, ain’t nothin’ in the Constitution that says we can’t have it. People opposed to it can argue about why they think universal health care is not a good use of taxpayer dollars, and then the voters can decide which way they want to go. But when such a program is nixied purely on some ideological dogmas about “big government,” that’s essentially an argument against republican government, and against democracy itself. It’s an argument that says people may not govern themselves, and it’s a violation of the principles on which this nation was founded.

The blogger I’m snarking about is the one who wants to “toss out most of the Constitution” and replace it with an antigovernment ideology.

It isn’t the size of government that makes it oppressive. I provided an example from history in the post below — in the very decade (the 1870s) that government was “smallest” and least intrusive into matters of business, markets, securities, etc., it was opening peoples’ mail to be sure they weren’t using the postal system to provide information on birth control.

Some years later federal courts ruled that Comstock Law agents could not interfere with dissemination of birth control information and devices. To many at the time, the courts’ rulings were an example of “big government.” Would the libertarians reduce the power of government to protect the civil liberties of people?

The knee-jerk attitude that government is always bad, and “big” government is worse, is not based on either reason or the Constitution.

The simple fact is that people oppress each other. They do this with or without government. Sometimes powerful political factions do use government as an instrument of oppression, but throughout our history government has also been the tool used by citizens to gain relief from oppression.

I say that reducing the size and power of government does not reduce oppression, because oppression takes place by means other than government. Those laissez-faire businessmen of the 1870s oppressed their workers outrageously, for example. Many of the inhuman outrages that were common then are rare today — because of government. We, the People, decided workers should have some protections. Labor unions were behind much of the political organization that brought about the Department of Labor and legislation protecting workers, but labor unions by themselves weren’t having a whole lot of success at protecting workers before that.

I’m old enough to know that much of the hysteria over “big government” that arose after World War II came about because government acted to protect the rights of African Americans and other oppressed minorities. The racist bigots who jeered at the “Little Rock Nine,” for example, thought that “big government” was oppressing them. The Governor of Arkansas had wanted to use National Guard to keep African Americans out of the public high school. A federal judge issued an injunction against this. When Little Rock police feared they could not protect the Nine from mob violence, President Eisenhower sent 1,000 troops from the 101st Airborne Division to protect the students from the mob. Eisenhower also federalized the Arkansas Guard, taking it away from control of the Governor. (Note that Eisenhower acted after the mayor of Little Rock asked for help.)

For years after that, white bigots complained about those armed troops in the streets of Little Rock and whined about how their “rights” were being infringed by “big government.” They were talking about their “rights” to prevent nine teenagers from going to school because of their skin color. They were talking about their “rights” to form a mob and tear nine young people to pieces because of their skin color.

Libertarians want to protect those “rights.” They want to deprive the federal government of the power to protect the civil liberties of citizens.

I’m not saying that all libertarians are bigots. I’m saying they haven’t thought it all through. They see “big government” and think “oppression,” and that’s that. But whether government is “big” or “little” is not the issue; the issue is whether government functions within the parameters of the Constitution, including the Bill of Rights, or whether it doesn’t. The issue is whether our government remains an instrument for self-government as it was intended, or whether it doesn’t.

Update: I’m closing comments on this post, as we’re starting to get an infestation of commenters who don’t know they should be polite to the hostess.

Why Limited Government?

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Michael Gerson’s essay on “The Republican Identity Crisis” makes a fascinating point about “limited government” ideology.

One Republican Party—the Republican Party of movement conservatives on Capitol Hill and in the think-tank world—will argue that the “big government Republicanism” of the Bush era has been a reason for recent defeats. Like all fundamentalists, the antigovernment conservatives preach that greater influence requires a return to purity—the purity of Reaganism.

But the golden age of austerity under Reagan is a myth. During the Reagan years, big government got bigger, with federal spending reaching 23.5 percent of GDP (compared with just over 20 percent under the current president). …

… And the critics believe in a caricature of recent budgets. Well over half of President Bush’s spending increases have gone to a range of unexpected security necessities, including military imminent-danger pay, unmanned aerial vehicles and biological-weapons vaccines. … Why don’t anti-government conservatives mention spending increases on defense and homeland security when they make their critique? Because a minimalist state cannot fight a global war—so it is easier for critics to ignore the global war.

Most rightie rhetoric about “big government” fails to make a distinction between big government that is bad because it costs a lot of money or big government that is bad because it intrudes on personal liberty. And these are two entirely separate types of bad.

“Small government” conservatives tend to focus on economic freedom; they want freedom from taxation and government regulation, for example. But government intrudes in private lives in many ways. The Comstock laws, for example, came into being in the 1870s — exactly the same time that laissez faire reached its apex in the U.S., “during the age of industrialization as American factories operated with a free hand.” So a factory owner in 1874 enjoyed complete freedom to exploit his employees, but at the same time the government would not allow information on birth control to be mailed to him.

Gerson continues,

As antigovernment conservatives seek to purify the Republican Party, it is reasonable to ask if the purest among them are conservatives at all. The combination of disdain for government, a reflexive preference for markets and an unbalanced emphasis on individual choice is usually called libertarianism. The old conservatives had some concerns about that creed, which Russell Kirk called “an ideology of universal selfishness.” Conservatives have generally taught that the health of society is determined by the health of institutions: families, neighborhoods, schools, congregations. Unfettered individualism can loosen those bonds, while government can act to strengthen them. By this standard, good public policies—from incentives to charitable giving, to imposing minimal standards on inner-city schools—are not apostasy; they are a thoroughly orthodox, conservative commitment to the common good.

Campaigning on the size of government in 2008, while opponents talk about health care, education and poverty, will seem, and be, procedural, small-minded, cold and uninspired. The moral stakes are even higher. What does antigovernment conservatism offer to inner-city neighborhoods where violence is common and families are rare? Nothing. What achievement would it contribute to racial healing and the unity of our country? No achievement at all. Anti-government conservatism turns out to be a strange kind of idealism—an idealism that strangles mercy.

I’d say it’s an idealism that strangles self-interest as well. “Small government” ideology is not just opposed to programs for the poor. It is opposed to programs that would help most Americans, like universal health care. It’s essentially an ideology that insists We, the People, should not use government to “form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility … promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity.” Providing for the common defense is OK, however.

Andrew Sullivan took offense at Gerson’s essay.

Gerson, like many big-government and left-wing types

Translation: Gerson was a speechwriter and policy adviser to President G.W. Bush.

seems to believe that all small government conservatives are libertarians and all libertarians are swivel-eyed loons. Sign me up for that then. But a belief in the ineffable goodness and efficiency of government is every bit as ideological an attitude as thinking markets can provide a better way. It’s not just a belief in free markets per se that persuades libertarians, it’s that markets can also lead to better outcomes. In other words, there’s a happy marriage between principle and pragmatism.

If a belief in republican (small r!) government requires “a belief in the ineffable goodness and efficiency of government,” sign me up for that then. But respect for the virtues of self-government as provided by the Constitution does not require blind faith in the “ineffable goodness and efficiency of government.” Quite the opposite, actually. Citizens should understand that government can become corrupt and inefficient, because it’s up to citizens to pay attention to government and make informed choices in the voting booth.

In other words, a respect for republican government is not about trusting government, but about trusting We, the People. It’s true that the people can be fooled into making bad choices, but our form of government provides means for We, the People, to correct our mistakes eventually. Most of ’em, anyway.

But putting your trust in free markets is putting trust in … what, exactly? Chance? Greed? The benevolence of the monied classes? And if those free markets stampede off in a bad direction (as they did in the 1920s, for example), what remedy do We, the People, have?

In fact, the weight of empirical evidence that history provides us reveals that when markets and business and securities are allowed freedom from government regulation, what follows is plutocracy, exploitation of labor, corruption, and economic instability. A “happy marriage between principle and pragmatism” my ass.

The Carpetbagger thinks Gerson isn’t seeing the big picture.

Hasn’t this chasm existed in GOP politics for the better part of a generation? The libertarian wing demands less government, Republican candidates say the right things, they win, they increase the size of government anyway, and libertarians complain and demand less government again. It’s a beautiful little cycle.

What makes now different? We have a few more leading GOP voices than usual suggesting that the party lost its majority status in Congress because it wasn’t libertarian enough to inspire the base, but the facts speak for themselves — the base turned out exactly as it did the last couple of cycles. Frustrated “true” conservatives didn’t stay home in protest on Election Day; they did exactly what they’ve been doing. In 2006, it wasn’t enough, but you don’t hear anyone in leadership positions suggesting that party activists and insiders settle the broader debate “once and for all.” They’ll tinker with the message, turn Pelosi into some kind of money-generating boogeyman, and try again in ‘08. …

… The Republicans’ problems are far broader than an ideological squabble — they have an unpopular and hard-to-defend policy agenda, unpopular and weak leaders, and a record of scandal, incompetence, and mismanagement.

I still say that libertarianism and “limited government” ideology is essentially anti-democratic. It deprives We, the People of the ability to use government in our own interests. Certainly the powers of government must be limited — the power to censor, the power to search and seize property, the power to intrude on citizens’ private lives generally — but placing artificial limits on the size and functions of government doesn’t restrict government as must as it restricts the will of the people. I’m not calling for “big government” for its own sake. I’m just saying that a government should be as big (or as small) as its citizens require.

What we’ve got with the Bushies is the World of All Worlds. They’ve given us a government that violates citizens’ rights but doesn’t respond to their needs. The question should not be whether government is big or small; the question should be who does government serve? The people, or something else?

Update: See also Matt Stoller, “The Bar Fight Primary.”

“Stop the War by Stopping.”

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James Carroll writes in today’s Boston Globe:

Was the first act of war followed by the first act of denial? The story of Cain (“a tiller of the ground”) and Abel (“a keeper of sheep”) is a parable of primordial conflict between settled farmers and nomadic herders, and the lessons are timeless. Each warring group claims to have justice on its side, and believes that the way to peace is through conquest. War is always fought in the name of justice-and-peace. But peace achieved through war inevitably leads not to justice, but to conditions that cause the next war. History is the record of that succession. Victory through violence is the way to further violence.

I don’t think it’s been true throughout human history that war is always fought in the name of justice-and-peace, but I’m not aware of any war of the past century or so in which the justice-and-peace rationale wasn’t waved about by somebody. That’s not to say that justice-and-peace was the aggressors’ motivation behind all modern wars. In fact, I doubt that justice-and-peace is ever the true motivation behind initiating a war, just the excuse. But most of the time the people making that excuse don’t see that it’s just an excuse. They’ve talked themselves into believing their own excuse.

We might call these people “fools.” We might also call them “neocons.”

I agree with Carroll when he writes, “But peace achieved through war inevitably leads not to justice, but to conditions that cause the next war. History is the record of that succession.” If you step back and look at all of human history, time and time again the seeds of war were sown by a previous war. This is not to say that there aren’t other factors, but nearly always those “other factors” were issues that might have been resolved by other means.

Many who read the sentence “Victory through violence is the way to further violence” will bring up World War II. The victory over Japan, for example, was achieved after terrible violence that included two nuclear bombs. Yet that violence did not result in eternal enmity between the U.S. and Japan. Doesn’t that prove Carroll is wrong? No; it proves that this is one of the greatest anomalies of world history. A great many factors had to come together very precisely to create this anomaly. These factors, IMO, the manner of the U.S. occupation and the Buddhist-Confucian foundations of Japanese ethics. Needless to say, this happy confluence is not present in Iraq.

The lesson to be taken from Japan is not that a violent victory can have a happy result. The lesson is that, after a war, with hard work and a lot of luck the factors that might lead to another war can be substantially reduced. This is a critical distinction.

Our own Civil War was another such anomaly. Long and dear friendships existed across warring lines; officers on both sides knew and actually liked each other even as they tried to kill each other. At Appomattox Ulysses S. Grant ordered his troops not to celebrate the surrender of Robert E. Lee so as not to hurt the Confederates’ feelings. The rebel leaders were not punished for treason but were released on parole. (The only exceptions I’m aware of were the executions of the Lincoln assassination conspirators and the commanding officer of Andersonville Prison.) Compared to the aftermath of any other civil war on this planet, this behavior was downright peculiar. Even so, even though we haven’t had another civil war, there was another kind of violence — the defeated white southerners took their rage out on African Americans, beginning a reign of racial terrorism that has still not completely dissipated.

The truth that countless generations of fools can’t get into their heads is that military victory doesn’t create peace. Sometimes what victors choose to do with the victory can help establish peace, but that’s rare.

Carroll concludes,

The Bush administration embraced the cult of war when it did not have to. Bush re-legitimized that cult, and sponsored it anew. In this, he was supported by the American people, its press and its political establishment. In the beginning, the nation itself re affirmed war as the way to justice-and-peace. We did this. The first fallacy lived. By now, even Washington’s one self-proclaimed “victory” has led to further defeat. The “good” war in Afghanistan put in place structures of oppression that promised an inevitable resumption of savagery, which has begun. …

… Because of the destructiveness of modern weapons, there will be no distant future unless humans, having seen through the congenital illusion of justice-and-peace through violence, come to the rejection of war. That must begin now. Democrats, take heed: Bush must not be allowed to further the chaos. Having led the world into this moral wilderness, America has a grave responsibility to lead the way out. We have to cease killing other people’s children, which is the way to stop them from killing ours. Stop the war by stopping.