'Free to Lose' Isn't Good Philosophy for the Right Wing (Mark Steyn)

Chicago Sun-Times ^ | November 19, 2006 | Mark Steyn

[Tom D.]

'Free to lose' isn't good philosophy for the right wing

November 19, 2006 BY MARK STEYN Sun-Times Columnist If Milton Friedman had to die, then a week after the defeat of a Republican Congress that had apparently forgotten every lesson Friedman taught in Free To Choose is eerily apt timing. As it happens, had ill health not intervened, Professor Friedman would have been disembarking round about now from a National Review post-election cruise with yours truly and various other pundits and commentators.

Instead, we were obliged to sail without him, and in the days that followed I found myself wondering what the great man would have made of the most salient feature of our deliberations: On the one hand, there are those conservatives for whom the war trumps everything and peripheral piffle like "No Child Left Behind" can be argued over when the jihad's been seen off. On the other, there are those conservatives for whom the war is peripheral and, insofar as it exists, it doesn't begin to mitigate the abandonment of Friedmanite principles on public spending, education and much else. There is a huge gulf between these two forces, to the point where the War Party and the Small Government Party seem as mutually hostile as the Sunni and Shia on their worst days. If the Republicans can't reunite these two wings before 2008, they'll lose again and keep on losing.

Take, for example, Ward Connerly, whose Michigan ballot proposition against racial quotas was one of the few victories conservatives won on Election Day. (Needless to say, most GOP bigwigs, including washed-up gubernatorial loser Dick DeVos, opposed it.) In a discussion of conservative core values, Connerly suggested it wasn't the role of the federal government to impose democracy on the entire planet. And put like that, he has a point. However, I support the Bush Doctrine on two grounds -- first, for "utopian" reasons: If the Middle East becomes a region of free states, it will have been the right thing to do and the option most consistent with American values (unlike the stability fetishists' preference for sticking with Mubarak, the House of Saud and the other thugs and autocrats). But, second, it also makes sense from a cynical realpolitik perspective: Promoting liberty and democracy, even if they ultimately fail, is still a good way of messing with the thugs' heads. It's one of the few real points of pressure America and its allies can bring to bear against rogue nations, and in the case of Iran, the one with the clearest shot at being effective. In other words, even if it ultimately flops, seriously promoting liberty and democracy could cause all kinds of headaches for the mullahs, Assad, Mubarak and the rest of the gang. However it turns out, it's the "realist" option.

The president doesn't frame it like that, alas. Instead, he says stuff like: "Freedom is the desire of every human heart." Really? It's unclear whether that's the case in Gaza and the Sunni Triangle. But it's absolutely certain that it's not the case in Berlin and Paris, Stockholm and London, Toronto and New Orleans. The story of the Western world since 1945 is that, invited to choose between freedom and government "security," large numbers of people vote to dump freedom -- the freedom to make your own decisions about health care, education, property rights, seat belts and a ton of other stuff. I would welcome the president using "Freedom is the desire of every human heart" in Chicago and Dallas, and, if it catches on there, then applying it to Ramadi and Tikrit.

Meanwhile, from the War Party's point of view, the Bush Doctrine is beginning to accumulate way too many opt-outs. For example, a couple of weeks back, U.S. forces in Baghdad captured a death squad commander of Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army only to be forced to release him on the orders of the prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki. When I had the honor of discussing the war with the president recently, he was at pains to emphasize that Iraq was "sovereign." That may be. But, at a time when a gazillion free-lance militias are running around the joint ignoring the sovereign government, it seems a mite pedantic to insist that the sole militia in the country that has to obey every last memo from Prime Minister Maliki is the U.S. armed forces. Muqtada al-Sadr is an emblem not of democracy's flowering but of the arid soil in which it's expected to grow. America would have been better off capturing and executing him two years ago.

That's not the worst mistake, alas. The crucial missed opportunity (as some of us pointed out at the time) occurred five years ago, back when the president still had his post-9/11 approval ratings. You can't hold them forever, obviously, but, while he had them, George W. Bush could have used them for a "teaching moment." As we can see in Europe every day of the week, Big Government is a national security issue -- for all the reasons Milton Friedman understood: In diminishing individual liberty, it transforms free-born citizens into nanny-state charges to the point where it imperils the existence of the nation. If ever there was a time for not introducing a new prescription drug entitlement, wartime is it. Yet the president and Congress apparently decided that they could fight a long existential struggle abroad while Big Government continued to swell and bloat at home.

It has been strange for me in these days since the election to spend so much time with so many figures I admire and to find that each group barely recognizes each other's concerns. The War Party is the War Party, the Small Government Party is the Small Government Party, and ne'er the twain shall meet, apparently. That way lies disaster: You can't be in favor of assertive American foreign policy overseas and increasing Europeanization domestically; likewise, you can't take a reductively libertarian view while the rest of the planet goes to pieces. Someone in the GOP needs to do what Ronald Reagan did so brilliantly a quarter-century ago:reconcile the big challenges abroad with a small-government philosophy at home. The House and the Senate will not return to Republican hands until they do.

©Mark Steyn 2006

[OldFriend]

Perhaps if he champions the President his cronies on the cruise will crucify him?

[freeangel]

Knowing right from wrong has nothing to do with being a "Fundivangelist Social Con."

[ExGeeEye]

those conservatives for whom the war trumps everything and peripheral piffle like "No Child Left Behind" can be argued over when the jihad's been seen off

That's me.

[brothers4thID]

As usual, Steyn is right on. I really wish the Congress, the REPUBLICAN Congress, had used Bush's stellar post 9/11 "numbers" to get themselves elected or re-elected, instead of thinking that passing Prescription drug "reform", forming a Department of Homeland Security, and continuing the same old "pork for me = votes in the bank" philosophy of governance.

There are enough old warriors in the Senate and House who should have known that fighting a war is expensive and that pet projects had to be cut back in order to keep the government checkbook somewhere close to balance.

I'm a big supporter of the President but I don't like how "compassionate conservatism" has become "Conservatives giving away money to liberal causes in order to appear more likeable". That's not what I signed on for.

[ExGeeEye]

the war is peripheral and, insofar as it exists, it doesn't begin to mitigate the abandonment of Friedmanite principles on public spending, education and much else

If we don't win the war, we won't be pleased with the public spending, education, or much else.

Not to worry, though; we'll be too busy paying the dhimmi tax and watching the beheadings of infidels and apostates and prostitutes (i.e. women who dared go outside without their masters) to care.

[Traditional Vet]

We cooperate on FR

Most of the time and on some issues. However, like our leader, peole and attitudes change.

Many who supported him have grown distant and not because of our (Conservative) position, philosophies or principles have changed, but "his" has.

I want the George Bush (BACK) I was so proud of on this day and made me wish I was 30 years younger again so I could have rushed to the recruiting station and reenlisted in the AF (which I spent 8 years, including 18 months in Nam)such was I moved when I saw and listened to him here:

"We heard you and listened to you Mr. President. You made us proud to be Americans and we realized that with your leadership, we would exact revenge on those who dared attack our Homeland and you made us want to follow you anywhere.

WHAT HAPPENED IN THESE PAST 5 YEARS??

WHY won't you hear our voices and listen to us, the Conservatives who help elect you and now are (apparently) without ANY leadership, ANYWHERE???"

PLEASE, please, don't succumb, cave, and give into the libs on anything and everything they want and PLEASE, reconsider your position on Border Security and Amnesty."

[livius]

I don't think it's your imagination. I've noticed a change in tone, too. And as you say, with good reason.

This was an interesting analysis of an aspect I hadn't thought of before, that is, a division of the GOP into those particular two camps, the War Party and the Small Government Party. But I'd say that it is not new but has actually always been a constant in the GOP (people attracted by the idea of a strong national defense and people attracted by the idea of small government), although there have been different issues around which it has coalesced.

One of the features of the Small Government Party is a certain isolationist tendency, which, while it may sound good, is completely unrealistic for the US in today's world or any other. The War Party, having no concern for small government issues because it thinks small government might limit defense, attempts to conciliate the SGP by limiting wars so that it cannot be called imperialist or be accused of trying to spread US values beyond our borders. This leads to a tendency to fight half-hearted wars.

Practically as soon as we were a nation, we had to fight the Muslims (Barbary Coast pirates). But even in that case, we did what we are doing here: we didn't entirely defeat them. We knocked them back enough to get them to leave us alone.

The only people we thoroughly defeated were the Germans, and that was under a Democrat president. Curious issues to ponder.

[RKBA Democrat]

I think Mr. Steyn's article is interesting, but I think he misses a few key points.

First, he implicitly assumes that the GOP is all that interested in conservatism. I disagree. The GOP, like the Democratic party, exists to get it's members elected to political office. Hard stop. Ideology is a secondary concern. To the extent that it's even considered.

The recent GOP leadership votes in both the U.S. House and the Senate underline this in bright red. Particularly in the House. GOP representatives had the opportunity to embark on a fresh start and elect a bona fide conservative as their majority leader. They instead picked a defensive strategy and business as usual. And the margin by which they picked that course of action speaks volumes.

Second, Mr. Steyn didn't consider the structural problems that the GOP is facing at the ballot box by way of immigration. I found it interesting that hispanics broke 7-3 for Democrats in this last election. Given that some sort of amnesty deal and future citizenship is a pretty good bet at this point, that spells a structural disadvantage that GOP will be hard pressed to counter. Regardless of whether the GOP is able to pull various disparate factions together.

I don't think the GOP has a very good chance of regaining a majority in either the House of the Senate in 2008. The Presidency is very much in play, but that's about it. And after 2008, the structural advantages that the Democratic party has will really begin to kick in. Now of course the Democrats could always mess things up like they did in the early 90's with socialized medicine. But I don't think that likely. And waiting for the opposition to mess up is not exactly a strategy.

Lest you think I'm bearish on conservatism, I'm really not. I'm very optimistic about the future of conservatism. But not because of partisan politics.

[George W. Bush]

On the one hand, there are those conservatives for whom the war trumps everything and peripheral piffle like "No Child Left Behind" can be argued over when the jihad's been seen off.

The problem the War Party has is that many of those whose votes they need don't feel threatened by the jihadis. Lots of Blue state liberals will bite it long before they try to come for our well-armed butts. Long before they get to us, the libs will grow a pair or two and go on the offensive. So our conservative agenda for smaller government and national security remains intact anyway.

Someone in the GOP needs to do what Ronald Reagan did so brilliantly a quarter-century ago:reconcile the big challenges abroad with a small-government philosophy at home. The House and the Senate will not return to Republican hands until they do.

It's clear he doesn't see Bush in this role. Nor does he mention any comers for '08. This is the reason for his pessimism.

[Gritty]

I think Steyn is becoming increasingly frustrated with eloquently pointing out the looming crevasses, only to be patently ignored as the West continues to "Mush!" the same old blind sled dogs and plung headlong into the open abysses.

Life is so much simpler when all one thinks deeply about is Brittany Spears.

[gotribe]

Promoting liberty and democracy, even if they ultimately fail, is still a good way of messing with the thugs' heads.

Hey Steyn, how about sending your sons and daughters over to die just to mess with thugs' heads? Fight for utopia? Fight for mind games? How glib. Fortunately, Americans are naturally averse to sending ground troops anywhere just because the whim strikes a president. The burden is high for those who want wars, as it should be.

[maryz]

Life is so much simpler when all one thinks deeply about is Brittany Spears.

LOL! I'll have to try it sometime! (Well, maybe Tom Selleck . . .)

[Tax-chick]

There is a huge gulf between these two forces, to the point where the War Party and the Small Government Party seem as mutually hostile as the Sunni and Shia on their worst days. If the Republicans can't reunite these two wings before 2008, they'll lose again and keep on losing.

This is an excellent point.

[maryz]

The only people we thoroughly defeated were the Germans, and that was under a Democrat president.

Well, Japan too. But I take your point. The thing is (as I never learned in American history in high school or college) that in WWII, the left was more or less on America's side (fancy that!) because we were against Hitler, who committed the unforgivable sin of betraying the sainted "Uncle Joe."

[Hawk1976]

You would be surprised how many people will look at you like youjust grew horns when you say something like that.

[Wilhelm Tell]

GOP representatives had the opportunity to embark on a fresh start and elect a bona fide conservative as their majority leader. They instead picked a defensive strategy and business as usual.

I believe the GOP leadership does not expect to win and probably does not want to win. They don't want to change so they have contented themselves to a minority party status. That is why they have a defensive stance and have signalled they will folow the Democrats' lead.

[Hawk1976]

I've got a foot in both of these "camps". Though I tend to wonder, why couldn't isolationism work? After all we tended isolationist from 1848 - 1898 and then from 1899 - 1940. Of course we would need to boost some technology development a bit.

Steyn is right, with so many people not believing in value such as individual right to self-determination and such at home, it ispointless to pursue it abroad.

[thinking]

You are correct...I sense that he, can see the "black hole" of socialism, quickly approaching...something like a tornado on the horizon....IMHO, as we move in a (more) feminist society, we will see big government, attempting to be a nanny to all....of course, if you disagree with the supreme nanny you will be subject to brain-washing...a nanny is always correct

[Fairview]

...why couldn't isolationism work? After all we tended isolationist from 1848 - 1898 and then from 1899 - 1940.

With more than a million Muslims here, many of whom would like to forcibly impose Islam on us, and 15-or-so million Hispanic immigrants, it's a bit late for isolationism. We imported trouble and now we have to fight the root causes of it.

If we had truly remained isolationist and had retreated to our side of the planet after World War II, Communism would have taken over much of the world. We would be entirely outnumbered and surrounded by Communist aggressor nations, people who were as hypnotized by their ideology as the Islamists are by theirs, and almost as determined to install it here.

[goldstategop]

9/11 ended the neo-isolationist fantasy. We may vote ourselves off the island metaphorically speaking but the natives will come all the way here. If we don't want to fight over there we will have to fight over here.

"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." -Manuel II Paleologus