It must be nice to sit on the sidelines and proclaim conservatism is superior to liberalism without having to back it up in practice. The attacks on liberals are justified. They did abandon Vietnam, and millions were slaughtered as a result. Their welfare state creates dependency and poverty. It's easy to attack failed liberal policies, because they all depend on bigger government, and they all fail.
But what about the polices of conservatives' candidates? Conservatives gave us George Bush and his Republican congress who have exploded the size of government so fast that LBJ is green with envy. They've given us an expensive war of choice with no end in sight. They've given us the no money left behind education boondoggle. They've given us the $1 trillion prescription drug medicare benefit.
How exactly are conservatives better than liberals again? It takes an audacious, or deranged, mind to claim that conservatives have contempt for the federal government in light of the actions of their representatives in office. And if conservatives have such contempt for the UN, why didn't their representatives do something about it after 6 years in control of government? Nice lecture by a hypocrite.
Many will call the Bush administration an aberration, but that's intellectually dishonest. Bush campaigned on his No money Left Behind boondoggle, and conservatives supported him. Bush campaigned on the prescription drug benefit, and conservatives supported him. They can't disavow him now. They put him in office know full well what is policies were.
Others will say that conservatives have learned their lesson. Has Rudy Giuliani vowed to shrink government? John McCain or Mitt Romney? Hell no. Conservatives talk about smaller government, but they put their money behind big government candidates. It's easy to talk about small government and freeing people, but conservatives don't support that.
We keep hearing that conservatives support smaller government. We keep hearing that America is a conservative nation. Yet our government is growing at disastrous rates, and only the Libertarian candidate runs on reducing the size of government. Both those statements cannot be true.
All evidence says this is because conservatives do not support smaller government, despite their lip service to it. All they support is slightly less big government than liberals. Conservatives like their government handouts, called faith based initiatives, too. All this conservative talk of small government is bull. I'll believe conservatives talk when they nominate a candidate who promises to:
1. hold government spending flat for at least 2 years
2. adopt the FairTax and free the nation from the disasterous income tax
3. abolish the department of education so federalism can find great solutions for education
4. get the government completely out of health care so the free market can make it cheap
5. secure our borders
6. win the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and bring our troops home
7. appoint only justices who acknowledge that the Constitution means what it says
8. roll back government interference in the free market
9. get the government out of the entitlement business completely
Until conservatives are willing to put their money and their votes behind all these issues, they should just quit talking about smaller government and freedom, and quit pretending to be better than liberals,or be exposed as hypocrites like Mr. Hawkins.
Michael Tanner at Cato has noticed the same thing and written a book about it.
According to a review:
Today's conservatives are different. They don't aspire to smaller government. In fact, they're happy to increase the size of government as long as it's in the service of promoting such ``traditional'' values as marriage, family, religion, work and ``appropriate'' sexual behavior.
``Big-government conservatives share a common arrogance with contemporary liberalism,'' Tanner writes. ``They are convinced that they know what is best for every American and because they know best they should guide the rest of us in the proper direction.''
No comments:
Post a Comment