Know Your Enemy

There are two conservative critiques of liberalism. The predominant view is that which animated James Burnham's book "Suicide of the West", published in 1964, which deals with the ideology of liberalism. We have traditionally viewed liberals as being the sincere, although naive,adherents of a utopian ideology, which they believe to be in the interest of society as a whole. Let us call this the Naive Ideology Critique of liberalism.

When Burnham published his book, this view of liberalism as a sincere but naive ideology was valid, but a lot has happened since then. It is ironic that Burnham published his book just a year before the political revolution which made it obsolete. This came in 1965, with the initiation of Lyndon Johnson's "Great Society", which enormously expanded the federal bureaucracy. Whether one judges this event to be beneficial or deleterious to America, it must be acknowledged as a pivotal development. It was the most sweeping change in the political and social landscape of America since the Civil War. Moreover, it fundamentally changed the nature of the liberal movement.

At the beginning of the Great Society, the primary motivation of liberals really was their belief that social problems could be cured by activist government, and that larger and more active bureaucracies, at the state and especially at the federal level, were means to that end. But as government bureaucracies expanded, these became a more influential part of the liberal movement, and eventually changed liberalism itself. They became ends in themselves, and the tail really began to wag the dog.

1) The liberal position on almost any issue is that which leads to expansion of government, i.e., that which maximizes the money and power flowing into Big Government. "Big Government" refers to the portion of the Executive Branch devoted to functions not sanctioned by the Constitution, and never imagined by the Founding Fathers. (Note that, to put it mildly, the liberals are not in favor of higher defense spending.) The post-Great Society liberals justify their inflation of the wealth and power of government by openly stating that their purpose is to remake society, from the top down.

2) It is clear to everyone, even liberals, that liberal social engineering has been a failure. But liberals insist on pushing the same old "solutions" anyway. Since the mid-Sixties, liberals have insisted that punishment of criminals won't work, and is immoral, since criminals are simply victims of an unjust society, and are driven to their antisocial actions by their social environment. Therefore the liberals have systematically reduced the punishment for crime. The result was a 500% increase in crime from 1965 to 1995. In the last few years there has been a reaction to this - the public has demanded a return to punishment for criminals, and the rate of crime has begun to drop sharply as a result. But in the face of all evidence, the liberals continue to insist that punishment does not work, and the answer is more social work. The liberal "solution" to poverty is to give the poor cash and cash equivalents - food stamps, subsidized housing, subsidized daycare, subsidized medical care, and payments for each illegitimate child a woman has.

To the academics recruited for the Great Society, the problem of the poor, and the reason they engage in pathological behaviors such as drugs, alcoholism, unemployment, crime, childbearing out of wedlock, and welfare dependency, is that they have no money. Give them the financial resources of middle class people, and they will behave like middle class people. It didn't work that way. The expanded welfare state created a permanent welfare underclass, characterized by all those behaviors that liberals claimed they were trying to extinguish, but were actually reinforcing: payments for nonwork created a refusal to work; payments for babies born out of wedlock created a pattern of illegitimate motherhood that extended down to teenage girls - liberal policies actually encouraged teenage girls to become pregnant, and family structure essentially disappeared. With no father to provide discipline and a positive example, young men born illegitimate grew up to be criminals.

The "solution" to the housing needs of the poor was to create massive government-run public housing projects - but because the government managers had no incentive to maintain efficiency, order, or even the most minimal sanitary standards, these quickly became vandalized, filthy, stinking, crime-ridden hovels.

Liberal "solutions" exacerbated crime, poverty, urban decay, the breakdown of the family - and indeed of the very social order. Liberals try to deny this; one of their favorite arguments is that we are not devoting enough "resources" to fighting social problems. This is the More of the Same argument - just spend some more money, establish more social programs, and hire more social workers and other bureaucrats, and all our problems will disappear. But deep down they know that their own actions have caused many of the ills of society. The crucial point is that they still champion exactly the same actions. And the crucial question is: why? The Naive Ideology Critique does not explain it.

3) Every social movement can be roughly divided into two groups: a core of activists, the real movers and shakers, who generate the ideas and provide the direction; and a larger group of followers. The core of theliberal movement is comprised of exactly those groups that get their livelihoods, and for most of them, their very identities as social classes, from big, socially activist government, and stand to profit from the growth of government. These are the social workers and their academic allies, the social "scientists"; government bureaucrats;lawyers; public school teachers (all government employees); college and university professors (nearly all government employees, or at least dependent upon federal grants for their salaries); organized labor,(several big unions get numerous federal grants) especially the government employees unions; and finally, the staffs of the very large and heterogeneous collection of private, semi-private and public corporations that work for Big Government. These Core Liberals, because they work for government, benefit from the growth of government. Bigger government means that there are more federal grants, and more excuses for lawyers to litigate. There are more job opportunities within the social activist government agencies, and as the number of middle level managers increases, everyone has a chance to move up in the pyramid.

The conclusion from these facts is that liberalism is really driven not by ideology but by self-interest. Let us call this the Self-Interest Critique of Liberalism. It has been mentioned only occasionally by conservatives, and then usually only by implication. The Naive Ideology Critique does not explain why liberals have continued to espouse their old, tired big-government "solutions" to social problems long after even liberals themselves recognize these are abysmal failures, but the Self Interest Critique does. Liberals continue to advocate bigger government as the cure for all ills because they benefit financially from it.

The Self Interest Critique does not say that sincere belief is not present in the liberal movement - it is, especially among the many followers within the movement, but that the real insiders of the liberal movement, the Core Liberals, are motivated primarily by their financial interest. Yes, ideas have consequences, but so do material interests. The Core Liberals are perhaps not all aware that this is their true motivation. The human capacity for denial, for rationalization, for self-deception is practically infinite. Everyone is always swayed at least unconsciously by personal benefit. The Core Liberals genuinely believe that their policies are good for the country - but they have convinced themselves of this to alleviate the cognitive dissonance between the suspicion that liberalism is in fact bad for the country, and their drive to magnify their self-interest.

Or, to sum it up, their ideology is merely an epiphenomenon of their material interests. In accepting the Naive Ideology Critique for so long, we have made a classical error - that of analyzing your enemy by your own standards. Never assume the enemy has the same motivations and goals that you would have in his place. Conservatives, of whatever stripe, are motivated by strongly held beliefs: Social conservatives want to restore traditional morality; libertarians wish to maximize individual freedom; and economic conservatives want to promote rational economic policies. Populists are hostile to internationalism in all its guises - free trade, military interventionism, the UN, the IMF, multinational corporations, etc. These are all motivated by sincere beliefs about the good of society - that is, they are all basically altruistic ideologies. Because we care about ideas, and we are motivated by concepts of what is good for America, we assume that the liberals are as well.

The adherence of conservatives to the Naive Ideology Critique for so long has lead conservatives to focus on the battles over specific political ideas. This in turn has lead to the fragmentation of conservatism. One of the striking features of the conservative movement over the last couple of decades is the way we have divided ourselves into dozens of little organizations, most of which pursue a single issue, all too often an issue of lesser importance. We have dispersed our forces, and frittered away our resources on little issues, when by concentrating on a few big ones, we could have accomplished far more.

The Self Interest Critique suggests that we reduce our concentration upon the battle for ideas. We have been too focused on abstract issues of political philosophy - a worthwhile study to be sure, but not to the exclusion of all else, and not when pursued to the point that we cannot recognize the nature of our enemy. We are at war with a political faction for whom ideological arguments are just a smokescreen to conceal naked self-interest, and for whom any tactics at all are justified - lies, corruption, savage slanders - as long as they win.

The liberals no longer even try to win the battle of ideas, they go for the jugular. They simply attack us personally, claiming we are consciously evil; we wish to inflict misery upon the downtrodden, wage war upon the poor, starve children, drive women out of the workforce, throw Granny out in the street, persecute gays, revive Jim Crow, burn black churches, and so on, and on. The Naive Ideology Critique fails to explain the venomously personal nature of liberal rhetoric. The Self Interest Critique does - for liberals, political disagreements really are personal - the conservative movement threatens their hold over money and power, hence the corrosive hatred they have for us.

At the end of the Twentieth Century, politics is not about ideology, politics is about money and power. There is one big issue - the drive of the Liberal Coalition for more money and more power, and the effects this has on America - the undermining of constitutional government and the rule of law.

There is yet another fact the Naive Ideology Critique does not explain. The two largest components of the Welfare State, HUD and HHS, each have an administrative overhead of about three quarters. This is without parallel in private industry; there is no honest way an organization can have an overhead that high. Furthermore, the liberals have done nothing to cut it down. If they really cared about the poor and downtrodden, they would struggle to reduce the overhead; if they could cut it from three quarters down to one half, they would double the amount of money available to help the subjects of the welfare state. Their failure to do so is inexplicable by the Naive Ideology Critique, but not by the Self Interest Critique. All that overhead is the real purpose of social spending; it goes into the pockets of the Core Liberals, and this is what cements the Liberal Coalition. When the liberals say that the purpose of the welfare state is to direct money to the unfortunate, and that the large administrative overhead is just an inescapable byproduct of this, they reverse ends and means. In reality, the end is the money that goes to the Core Liberals themselves, and the one quarter that goes to the common folk is a byproduct, the means by which the whole process is justified.

Once we have recognized that the real enemy is not the liberal ideology but the Liberal Coalition, this will determine our strategy. Our overall strategic objective must be to break the power of the Liberal Coalition, and the tactics we select must be those that advance this goal, even if issues dear to our hearts must be left aside temporarily. If we can break the power of the enemy, the minor positions will fall of themselves.

The two major means by which the Left has advanced its agenda are by litigation in federal courts and regulations issued by the federal bureaucracy. These give us two more paths we must pursue, to strike directly at the Left itself. The first is to clip the wings of the federal judiciary. The Left has been enormously successful in advancing their agenda by transferring matters which are properly the concern of the legislature into the judicial arena. Such judicial imperialism is,in and of itself, a mortal danger to democracy, since we the American people no longer rule ourselves if any enactment of our elected representatives may be overturned at the whim of unelected federal justices.

It has been pointed out ("Rule by Law", R.P. George and R. Ponnuru,pp. 54-55, 68, in Nat. Rev., Feb. 26, 1996) that Article III, Section 2 of the Constitution gives Congress the power to regulate the appellate jurisdiction of the Supreme Court. The lesser federal courts, being established under authority of Congress can also be similarly limited. Without needing to pass a constitutional amendment, Congress can and should forbid federal courts from banning any practice or overruling any law that does not involve a violation of the exact letter of the Constitution or the common law as it existed at the time of the establishment of the Constitution. By this one act judicial imperialism can be eliminated - and without the long and difficult process of constitutional amendment - if only our representatives in Congress have enough spine to act. It also advances the goal of many conservatives - it cuts the ground out from under Row v. Wade, the prime example of judicial imperialism.

The second course of action is admittedly far more difficult. It was once an accepted premise of constitutional law that the legislative authority of Congress cannot be delegated. But as the liberals grew in influence during this century, they persuaded America to accept just that - the delegation of legislative authority to the federal bureaucracy. It has become accepted practice for Congress to pass laws that establish general goals, and leave it up to federal departments to write regulations to implement these. In fact, unelected bureaucrats use this as a loophole to write new laws that have little to do with the original legislation passed by Congress. It is acceptable for federal departments to write regulations that govern internal practices and procedures of those departments, but it is totally unacceptable, and unconstitutional, for American citizens to be prosecuted, convicted and imprisoned for violating these regulations. While conservatives have long recognized that if unelected bureaucrats and unelected judges make laws we no longer rule ourselves, nothing has been done another consequence of conservatism being divided into small groups that pursue small issues.

Conservatives must fight to re-establish the principle that American citizens can only be prosecuted at the federal level for violating the letter of laws passed by Congress; or to state it the other way, that no one can be prosecuted for violating a federal regulation, even if it was made pursuant to enabling legislation. This is a radical step, since it contradicts the entire trend in American government for the last seventy years. Most of the tax code would be abolished, along with most of the rules under which the BATF, the EPA and numerous other federal agencies operate, and this will take several years to implement.

It will also take a lot of work to get it accepted even by many conservatives. When you bring up the subject of enabling legislation and the regulations created by this excuse, many conservatives will argue that this is simply necessary - a modern welfare state has a governing system so complex and with so many issues to deal with that it would be impossible for any legislature to administer it. To which the answer is: just so, and this is an argument, not for the bureaucratic state, but for the dismantling of it, since it says in effect that the welfare state and democracy are incompatible.

The final major task for conservatives involves public relations. Conservatives have traditionally been remiss in this area. Liberals fight the battle for public opinion, and fight hard, every day of every year, and will stoop to any means to defeat and destroy their enemies in the court of public opinion. But conservatives gear up every two years to publicize their ideas in the four months or so before a biennial election. And our efforts have even then been inadequate. We have persisted in trying to convince the public that we are more practical than the liberals. The liberals counter with the claim that they are compassionate, and we are callous. Unfortunately, compassion trumps pragmatism every time. Much of the public says "The Democrats may be somewhat naive, but at least they care." Once again we are betrayed by the Naive Ideology Critique.

Instead of trying to play their game, we can cut across the compassion argument entirely, by publicizing the Self Interest Critique. It is a sad fact that at the close of the Twentieth Century, the arguments that appeal most strongly to the public are those that are expressed in the second person - i.e., those that tell you the listener how you will be better off if a given course of action is followed, or how a particular political faction is dedicated to helping you personally. The public morality has been so debased by decades of liberal dominance that appeals to patriotism or the common good fall flat. You must now promise people what is good for them individually. The Self Interest Critique does this - in addition to being true. When the liberals say "We need bigger government, and higher taxes, to cure social ills and help the poor and downtrodden", we must reply "The liberals only want higher taxes because they pocket most of that money, and all their talk of compassion is just a ploy to pick your pockets." In the era of Me First, this speaks to the self interest of every listener. And in particular, it appeals strongly to those portions of the electorate the GOP has had most difficulty reaching. It is not in the interest of blacks, hispanics and the rank and file union members that they be plundered for the primary benefit of well-to-do white people who have never done real manual labor in their lives. Each group has a leadership that has been coopted by federal grants, money which does not benefit the ordinary members. If we make the Self Interest Critique the center piece of a public relations effort that begins today, we can capture the allegiance of those groups, and turn them against the aggressively leftist leaders who betray the real interests of their followers.

There is nothing naive about liberalism.

Liberals want power. To get power they need votes.

It's quite simple really. First they get 51% of the public dependent on some type of "goodies".

Then all they need to do is to convince 51% of the public that they must vote for the liberal (Dem) or their goodies will be taken away.

Terribly simple.

Your friend needs to actually read James Burnham's "Suicide of the West." Nothing idealistic or naive about the liberalism portrayed in his book.

Essentially, Burnham contends the function of liberalism is to be a painkiller while the Western world is destroyed by three forces: criminality/terrorism within, Communist aggression without and Third World radicalization within and without.

Liberalism's function is to enable its believer to say with a straight face that it does not matter that control of the Suez canal was grabbed by Egypt from England or that crime is rampant or that some country is threatened by a communist takeover or in a modern context that Palestinian suicide bombers are attacking Israel daily. Every loss is explained as essentially being the Western world's fault for supporting colonialism, racism, oppression, reactionary regimes, etc., etc.

Still worth a read, though in the modern context the Communist nations seem to have simply become Third World radicals.

One of the greatest sources of liberal strength is the infusion of money from the taxpayer. The federal grant process is used to divert money to organizations that are nothing but leftwing advocacy groups, and at last report the Left was getting $400 million of your money every year. The very first goal of the conservative movement must be to eliminate,completely, down to the very last penny, all public funds going to the Left. This will decrease the strength of the Left, and make subsequent moves easier.

Newt had the opportunity to do this, and correct me if I'm wrong, the attempts raised howls of pain and protest from the Left. I guess when the nation descended into anarchy (i.e., the Federal government shut down), the attempts were abandoned.

I suspect that $400 million is underestimating it.

It has been pointed out ("Rule by Law", R.P. George and R. Ponnuru,pp. 54-55, 68, in Nat. Rev., Feb. 26, 1996) that Article III, Section 2 of the Constitution gives Congress the power to regulate the appellate jurisdiction of the Supreme Court. The lesser federal courts, being established under authority of Congress can also be similarly limited. Without needing to pass a constitutional amendment, Congress can and should forbid federal courts from banning any practice or overruling any law that does not involve a violation of the exact letter of the Constitution or the common law as it existed at the time of the establishment of the Constitution. By this one act judicial imperialism can be eliminated - and without the long and difficult process of constitutional amendment - if only our representatives in Congress have enough spine to act. It also advances the goal of many conservatives - it cuts the ground out from under Row v. Wade, the prime example of judicial imperialism.
The second course of action is admittedly far more difficult. It was once an accepted premise of constitutional law that the legislative authority of Congress cannot be delegated. But as the liberals grew in influence during this century, they persuaded America to accept just that - the delegation of legislative authority to the federal bureaucracy. It has become accepted practice for Congress to pass laws that establish general goals, and leave it up to federal departments to write regulations to implement these. In fact, unelected bureaucrats use this as a loophole to write new laws that have little to do with the original legislation passed by Congress. It is acceptable for federal departments to write regulations that govern internal practices and procedures of those departments, but it is totally unacceptable, and unconstitutional, for American citizens to be prosecuted, convicted and imprisoned for violating these regulations. While conservatives have long recognized that if unelected bureaucrats and unelected judges make laws we no longer rule ourselves, nothing has been done another consequence of conservatism being divided into small groups that pursue small issues.

This seems to address some of our discussion on the Supreme Court's power grab.

They only keep maybe one or two short recent pieces coming on their front page, the last such one I saw was a kind of wrapup on the Harry Browne controversy in the Libertarian Party (in fact, it was Browne's coopting of the party's national office into his personal campaign arm - in direct violation of the party's rules which prohibit party workers from working explicitly for any candidate until the candidate is the actual party nominee - and the leadership's apparent indifference, if not abetting, of that coopting, that prompted me to withdraw from the LP myself). It's a shame, too - they ran one hell of a dead-on series of articles on the Elian Gonzalez contretemps after the boy's kidnapping by Janet Reno and her designated hitters...

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