My Only Post About the Shutdown

I tweeted this yesterday and the more I thought about it, I figured I’d extend things a bit. Ross Douthat penned a very nice article explaining what I think has to be considered the source of right wing anger. In it, he summarizes the “ascendant” conservative movement which began with President Reagan and supposedly continued until President George W. Bush supposedly ruined everything.

What Douthat basically states is that there was never a conservative takeover of politics in this country. Perhaps in the sense that more conservative politicians were elected, but not in the sense of governing and policy. He points out that even during Reagan’s hay day, the federal government never, not once, got smaller in absolute terms. No departments were closed, nothing lost funding. In fact, it was well nigh impossible to actually reduce funding to anything because even a reduction in the growth of a program was painted as a “Draconian cut” that would put Grandma in the poor house while some opulent businessman smoked 100 dollar bills in a hot tub while sucking down martini’s.

In fact, the only “success” that conservatives ever achieved was on taxes and welfare reform.

As a result, the very term “conservative” is now awash in confusion. Is a conservative someone that wants to preserve the status quo? Someone that wants to reduce the size and reach of government? Someone that wants to keep progressives from running amok? Someone to vote for other than another Democrat? Someone who wants to blowup the US government? Someone that wants to return to the days of Jim Crow?

I’ve seen all of these definitions applied to the “conservatives” since I started reading blogs and generally became more politically aware. It always depends on whose doing the arguing and what they are arguing about. In general, the more left we go on the political axis, the cruder and meaner the implied definition of “conservative” becomes.

So at this point, I’ve come to the only reasonable conclusion about my own politics: I am a radical. I want to reduce the absolute size of government. I’d like to see whole departments shuttered or dramatically scaled back.

The reasons for this are difficult to put into a blog post that won’t become a book. I’ll start with this: it is not because I am a racist homophobe that wants elderly people to suffer. It is not because I am a mean-spirited jackass that doesn’t want people to get health care or help when they don’t have a job. It is not because I want to see taxes eliminated, the federal government abolished or any of the other caricatures of “conservatives” that are routinely deployed.

It is because, speaking in broad strokes, I believe that less government is better for the country. I think less control and rules leads to more flexibility and robustness in the population which translates into a healthier overall country. I think less government means the people of the country will be better able to weather downturns of all sorts because they will by definition be more resourceful. Will people all make the same choices that policy makers would prefer? No, and that’s a feature not a bug in my opinion.

Based on my observations of politics over the past decade-and-a-half, I’ve concluded that we are on a path to the politicization of everything. And I do mean everything. We are slowly watching the attempted conversion of our economy from a free-market model to a “command-and-control” model. Lawmakers routinely pass tax breaks, refunds, incentives and laws benefiting preferred interest groups or campaign supporters. We are constantly talking about “what the government should do” to improve the economy: infrastructure programs? helicopter dumps of cash? implementing large healthcare policies? student loans? business loans? business grants? state funds? more taxes? less taxes? I think many of the current fights regarding healthcare are a foreshadowing of healthcare arguments to come when talking about what should and should not be covered and who should and should not qualify and who should and should not pay.

We are at the point where the assumption anymore is that the government needs to do something, somewhere, all the time. The thought that a given problem should be allowed to resolve itself or that people should be allowed to resolve the problem or situation is never broached anymore. More succinctly, government involvement is never questioned anymore, only assumed. It is my opinion that this is a completely unhealthy attitude. It stunts initiative, free-thinking and problem-solving because who wants to do something when it’s a certainty that the government will step in?

All of these thoughts are incomplete, but I wanted to try and keep this post a manageable length. So I’ll wrap things up by circling back to the shutdown. I understand all the arguments against it and the wisdom of the approach and in my more politically congenial moods I agree with them. I’ll even grant that I don’t really know what the endgame is. But I can’t help but feel that having the government shutdown and having people experience that life continues without it is worth something. So from that perspective, I’d like to consider it a good thing.