GEORGE TEMPLETON
COMMENTARY
By George Templeton
Gazette Columnist
Midterm Madness
I
used to be a Republican, a RINO. Barry Goldwater and John McCain were
my favorites. I voted for Nixon, Reagan, both Bushes, and didn’t vote
for Clinton or President Obama. My first hint that something was wrong
was when the RNC sent me one of those surveys with leading questions. I
could not say yes without adding a "but" and there was nowhere to
express those all-important qualifications. A deepening concern came
when fellow Republicans angrily expressed that they would do everything
possible to stand in the way of and confound our president’s every
initiative so they could make him fail. His policies would not matter.
The clincher was our Governor moving crimes across the border into
America to incite the hostility and consequent racial prejudice that
elected her to office.
The recent
Republican primary ads reveal quite an imagination. You would think
that the Small Business Administration, an organization that encouraged
and helped business start-ups, was a communist conspiracy and that
bankruptcy should be replaced with debtor’s prisons and workhouses. You
would think that their plans to “undo” would be more important to
people in need than what they would do. You would think that teamwork,
that creeping socialistic collective, prevented competition, abolished
private property, and enslaved people.
The
sociologist Orlando Patterson saw a more nuanced freedom than
Libertarians do. He described it like a musical chord made up of three
notes.
Freedom
The
first note is personal or individual freedom. It is the absence of
constraint on our desire to do whatever we please. Its virtue of
selfishness sees the social support network, not as charity and
compassion, but as coercion. It maintains that, “… egalitarian policies
designed to promote welfare not only do not work, but cannot and will
not work”.
The second note is
civic freedom which is the capacity to participate in the governance of
the community, measured by the degree that we share in the collective
power of the state that governs us. The state requires laws and
regulations if it is to exist. Libertarians see this as the personal
“I” that refuses to let them live their lives as they see fit.
They
point out that human evolution was not based on a code of coercion, but
I saw a dozen crows chasing a hawk across the sky. They were no match
for the much larger hawk, but together they dive bombed the hawk, and it
flew to escape their wrath. The force of evolution includes the
cooperative collective.
Libertarians argue that government and welfare violate nature’s laws. We are reminded by Jack London’s novel, The Law of Life.
He tells the story of Old Koskoosh, who was left behind by Alaskan
nomads. Old Koskoosh waits helplessly by his fire as the wolves circle
in. He reflects that nature “… had no concern for that concrete thing
called the individual. Her interest lay in the species, the race.”
The
third note is sovereign liberty which measures freedom by the degree
that we exercise power over others and ourselves by self-ownership and
empowerment. This is what Libertarians disparagingly call the “royal
we”. It is what the Constitution acknowledges as the existence of
undefined powers belonging to the people of the whole country. Our Bill
of Rights would be meaningless without government support.
Libertarians
claim that social engineering and welfare entitlement programs are
contrary to human nature, but the Ken Burns documentary on the Roosevelt
area relates what was accomplished by the New Deal, through the
leadership of the “royal we”, trying new things, taking risks, and
making adjustments.
Regulations
Voluntary
business deals are ethical, but not when the customer is deceived or a
product is misrepresented. There is more to fairness than consenting
relationships. The foundation that “more choice” is built upon came
from looking at the world as a whole system instead of a collection of
disagreeing individuals who would weaken the very thing that choosing is
built upon.
Complexity is not
regulation. Technology, interdependence, and free choice increase
complexity while ignorance empowers the unscrupulous requiring
regulations and laws. Libertarians argue that human ingenuity works
hard at defending life and property and will always find loopholes in
every law, so why have laws?
Republicans
frequently explain how they want to reduce or eliminate regulations
that allegedly rob your individual freedom, hurt business, and take away
your job. Why do you suppose they don’t explain exactly what those
regulations are? Is it because they lack the courage to commit to
measurable objectives? Is it because they think that you will read your
frustration into what they said and vote for them?
I quote a 2008 book, rated five stars on Amazon.
The
author wrote that self-righteous do-gooders have “ … license to
prescribe for others how to live their lives; run their businesses; who
they may hire; what wages they may pay; what prices they may charge;
what, where, when, and how much they may buy or sell; what they may
teach; what and where they may smoke, drink, and eat; what they may
plant; what medicines they may take; what houses they may build and
where they may build them; what they may say; how and where they may
practice their religion (even what religion); where they may go; where
they may live; how they may die; with whom and how they may engage in
sex; whom they may marry and with whom they may associate.” Those
inclined to liberty will “… find ways to offer goods and services that
are prohibited by law. Violators risk being caught and fined or
incarcerated; however, the sheer abundance of the regulations, coupled
with the abundance of violators, reduces the likelihood of any one of
them being caught… Any act used to enforce compliance remains
inconsistent with human liberty, since that compliance involves a master
and a subject.”
Most people have
had some experience with laws, regulations, and bureaucracy that they
feel was unfair. Republican group psychology legitimizes our darkest
side while Christian anti-intellectualism and cultural relativity have
made altruism incompatible with faith.
Annoying
There
are some regulations that are annoying, but their absence would be more
so. These include traffic laws and safe industrial practices. This
gets mixed up with irresponsible denial of man-caused global warming and
unsustainable practices that are irreparably damaging the earth.
Innumeracy, scientific ignorance, fundamentalist religion, and political
ideology have been spun to insinuate uncertainty and manufacture doubt.
What does science and history tell us? Consider episode 7, “The Clean Room” of Neil deGrasse Tyson’s Cosmos.
History describes industry claims that lead, in high-octane gasoline,
water pipes, paint, and children’s toys were argued to be good for you.
Consider
tobacco and cancer. Scientists knew that tobacco use was hazardous at
the beginning of the twentieth century, but when it started to gain
public attention the industry mounted a campaign that testified to their
willingness to sell death. There were numerous ads featuring doctors
citing bogus medical statistics, doctors that smoked, and claims that
tobacco smoke was soothing to the lungs and throat.
Muddled thinking
Libertarians
proudly say that virtually everyone can be sufficiently productive to
earn the necessities of life, and that famine is caused by political
policies that restrict free human interaction. They ignore 1876
America’s historical documentation of the plight of the poor who, if
they were lucky enough to have jobs, were able to work for nothing and
live upon less. The unions did not come from government oppression,
they came from the expendable common man who united and cooperated to
ask for his fair share of the profits that an explosively expanding
united industrial force was creating. It was typical, not exceptional,
and led to President Grant’s ignored 1869 National Eight Hour Law.
In
today’s America, should we be concerned mainly with the typical?
Should we instead focus on deviations? Remember the mathematician who
drowned in a river that was on the average only one foot deep. He
forgot about the deep pools. Likewise, we should not forget about the
starving minority.
The focus needs
to turn to the exceptions to the rule. We should ask, why? It can be
evaluated by examining if our system can eliminate weaknesses. If it
were an industrial process we would input known defects to see if the
process finds them. But here we speak of human beings that are in a jam
and we should ask, “What is the problem and how can we help them”?
Immigration
Republicans
claim that government’s illegal and inhumane actions allow an unlimited
stream of foreign nationals to come into our state, take our jobs,
overflow emergency rooms, threaten public safety and health, create
traffic jams, and obtain free benefits. Their conservative militia
lines-up at the border when the weather is good, carrying binoculars and
assault rifles, to temporarily retard these invading legions. Prisons
become more important than charity for undeserving, poor immigrants.
But most immigrants are working, paying taxes, and making a contribution
to society. They have no path to citizenship and remain illegal, stuck
in hiding, with no redemption to atone for their crime.
We
should ask immigrants to say whether they agree or disagree with the
Republican view and have them justify their opinion. If there are
illiterate, unemployed, diseased, and drug addicted immigrants from
broken families, how do we detect and help them? The real issue
concerns what one means by assimilation. When will politicians run on a
platform of facilitating assimilation?
Wealth Redistribution
Yesterday,
my job involved moving good paying American Jobs overseas, which
conservatives speak enviously of as “wealth redistribution”. I was
proud to see the developing middle class in foreign countries that
America was contributing to and I knew that they appreciated Americans
and that it would make products cheaper here. I was sad to see the job
loss in America. Neither government nor business had adequately
considered what it would mean.
Wealth
redistribution isn’t about one man’s need becoming another man’s
obligation. It is not about everyone becoming identical. It is more
about giving subsidies to well-organized business and industry than the
poor. Are we hurting society by providing a free ride to loafers? We
should ask Medicaid recipients if they feel they have been enticed into a
dependency trap.
Pope Francis has
called for the legitimate redistribution of economic benefits, arguing
that the Bible demands an economic system that cares for the poorest,
not a politics that would ostracize and accuse the needy for living at
the expense of others. The spirit of sharing and justice should be at
the beginning and end of all political and economic activity. It is not
a zero sum game where someone has to lose for another to win. A Good
Samaritan is more than the impersonal free market.
References
This
opinion is based upon the recent Arizona Voter Education Guide and on a
popular book written by the CEO of a rare metals investment company
whose business has a history of legal difficulty, pyramid schemes,
misrepresentation, and tax evasion. We must not let his problem,
letting what he thinks he knows get in the way of what has not yet taken
shape, become ours.
By Andy Borowitz
