Posted by
Andrews on Monday, February 23, 2009 11:58:01 AM
With economic hard times upon us, I have
written several times about those
supposed conservatives who have jumped ship and started arguing "Well,
of course we need
some regulation, just not as many regulations as the Democrats want." While it is obvious their dedication to conservative principles, in most cases*, was a matter of expediency rather than true belief, I would argue that even from a purely pragmatic viewpoint, they are making the wrong choice.
First, and most simply, to end up "me too"ing the Democrats is to guarantee a Democrat win. Just as the Republicans now promising to bring home pork from the stimulus bill are shooting themselves in the foot**. You see, the Democrats are the party of regulation, if you admit regulation is good, then why shouldn't voters support the Democrats? After all, they promise more of the same thing, and so seem a better choice. Which means, saying "me too" is to concede your opponent's strongest argument. And that is never a good idea.
The second argument is simply that you can't argue for less. The old Ayn Rand favorite about compromises between poison and food comes to mind, but I will skip that as it is terribly overused. Instead let us look at it as a variation of the "slippery slope" argument. I know many dismiss this, but think about it in practical terms. If you find a thief in your home, and agree he can steal, but only in the kitchen, how long do you think it will be before he is in another room? Once you grant legitimacy to a policy, you cannot stop that progressing to its conclusion. Just as banning smoking on airplanes "only" has led to our near total ban, or "common sense" regulation on interstate commerce only led to our near omnipresent regulatory apparatus, there is simply no stopping a principle from reaching its logical conclusion.
And the admission that the government must regulate the economy "a little" is such an admission. As I wrote elsewhere, any such regulation is based on the idea that
man is incompetent. Oh, you may word it differently and say "the market failed", but that is still just a way of rewording the basic belief that,
left to their own devices, common men will manage to create a dangerously defective situation. And once you admit that, how can you argue against any intrusion? If we need to regulate "a little" to keep the "defective market" form breaking, why not more? Why not intervene whenever anything is less than perfect? What is the argument against such interventions?
And that is the problem with these fair weather conservatives. Not only do they give the impression that small government solutions failed and are being abandoned, but their own gains are short lived, as their own admissions argue for replacing them with ever more interventionist politicians. And so, not only does such a change of position harm those who remain true to small government, but it hurts those who changed as well.
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* It is possible, I suppose, that bad economic times have somehow converted some former advocates of small government to belief in massive government intrusion. Then again, the valid arguments for small government also argue that our current problems are the result of that very intrusion, so, unless their original beliefs were founded on a bad understanding of small government, I don't see this happening.
** Here the argument is a little different. My problem is, if a Republican promises pork, he is saying, in essence, that the stimulus is harmless, and now we must settle in and scramble for money. But if that is the purpose of government, wouldn't a Democrat get better results? So why wouldn't the voters elect a Democrat in order to get the maximum pork? And thus the Republican scramble for pork ends up arguing for replacing them with Democrats.