"Leave us alone" updated — Grover
Norquist defines his political goal as increasing individual liberty by limiting
the size of government. He has tried to stitch together a "leave us alone
coalition" consisting of investors, entrepreneurs, gun owners, and religious
people.
How do you square that with support of George W. Bush? By ignoring the
war.
In the March issue of The American Spectator, Norquist, the president of
Americans for Tax Reform, makes his case that Bush should be re-elected.
Tellingly, it is entirely domestic.
Norquist begins his essay by asking, "Has the Republican Party turned
liberal?" Absolutely not, he says. And, of course, he can point to things that by
current doctrine are Republican and not liberal — cutting taxes, rejecting
the Anti-Ballistic Missile and Kyoto treaties, outlawing partial birth abortion.
He concludes, "There isn't a liberal bone in this Republican administration."
Well, there is No Child Left Behind. That is a liberal bone, and not a finger
bone, either. There is the Medicare bill, and the shameful business of how
Congress was not told how much it was going to cost. That is a femur, or maybe a
pelvis. There is the farm bill, which is a liberal fossil that dates back to
Herbert Hoover. There is the money for AIDS in Africa. Bones, bones, bones. Lots
of liberal bones.
Then there is the spending. Bush has cut our taxes, but he has also forced the
U.S. Treasury to borrow a half-trillion dollars a year. The Democrats have raised
the cry of "deficit!" — and what can the Republicans say to them? Norquist
frames the question as "spending" rather than "deficits," to fix people's
attention on "how much the government spends and how much it takes by force."
Fine, but it would be a lot easier to switch people's attention away from
deficits if they weren't so big.
All this is prelude to his main argument, which is: "Bush's reelection is also
the key to real reductions in government spending." That is a leap of faith,
considering that government spending shrank from 21% to 19% of GDP under Clinton
and has gone back to 21% under Bush.
Norquist acknowledges this, and does not like it, but he lists six Republican
policies that will shrink government in the second term. These are his reasons to
vote for Bush:
- Efforts to increase the contracting out of federal work.
- Efforts to close domestic military bases.
- Efforts to allow private accounts in Social Security
- Efforts for a WTO agreement restricting farm subsidies, including U.S. ones.
- Efforts to expand and institutionalize health savings accounts.
- Efforts for parental choice in education.
What to make of this? I am skeptical that private contracting is going to
happen, and anyway, it doesn't shrink what the government does. I am in favor of
it but not excited about it. Closing domestic bases is good, but I am more
concerned about opening ones overseas. Partial privatization of Social Security
is one of the reasons I voted for Bush in 2000. A tolerable WTO agreement is more
likely under Bush than Kerry, but it would have to roll back the bad things Bush
has already done. Health savings accounts already exist. School vouchers are not
a federal matter except in the District of Columbia.
There is some substance there, but hardly an overwhelming case.
What is not on the list is Bush's "war on terror." And don't forget, war is a
government program. Historically, war has swelled government spending, increased
the debt, debased the currency, increased the prerogatives of the police, shut
down dissent within the media, and generally worked to centralize state power,
regiment the nation, and jeopardize those private rights that Norquist is so much
in favor of. The Iraq war has done a bit of all these things. As wars go, it is
relatively mild on the home front — no draft, no tax increase, no direct
censorship, no mass internment of racial groups — but even this short little
war gave us the Patriot Act, preventive detention on military bases, and other
bits of nastiness. If America were defending against attack, all this might be
worth bearing, but Iraq did not threaten us.
In his five-page article in The American Spectator, Norquist has one
sentence on all this. "In the war on terror," it says, "the Taliban
government of Afghanistan has been removed for supporting al Qaeda and Saddam
Hussein's regime in Iraq is ended."
I saw Norquist at the 2004 Liberty Editors' Conference, and asked him why only
one sentence on the war.
"Bush and Kerry are the same on the war," he said. — Bruce Ramsey
| Patrick Quealy
is managing editor of Liberty. |
|
The beam in our own eye —
Allegations of abuse by prison guards. Stories of terrible sexual abuse, like the
man who was raped 30 times over a four-month period and contracted HIV as a
result, or the 17-year-old who committed suicide after being raped repeatedly. By
now you've heard about the prison-abuse scandal.
After all, the abuses have been well-known for years. Liberty even published
an article by Ralph Reiland in November 2003 chronicling some of the abuses in
the American prison system.
Oh — you were thinking of that whole Abu Ghraib affair? Well, yes, that's
terrible, too. It's good that right-thinking people concerned with justice are
crying foul.
But where are the Red Cross inspectors visiting American prisons? Where are
the Senate hearings into why we're putting teenagers in jail and letting them get
sodomized until they kill themselves or die of AIDS, whichever comes first? Why
is no one decrying the horrid conditions of prisons run by private contractors in
America, even as they complain about the part that contractors may have played in
abuses in Iraq? Where is the public outrage over terrible abuses of nonviolent
offenders perpetrated by American prison guards?
I never stop being amazed at what people will care about, and what they won't
care about, when they've got their marching orders from the media. — Patrick
Quealy
| Norman Ball is a
Virginia-based writer, musician, and businessman.
|
|
| The Night Someone Spiked Candidate Brown's Rubber
Chicken with Sodium Pentathol
Good evening, ladies and gentlemen . . .
First of all, let me say that you and the loved ones accompanying you here
tonight look, on the whole, rather bedraggled and distracted, in marked contrast
to the beaming family unit that stands behind me on this podium. Clearly my image
means a lot to me. And it should. I have spent a lifetime simulating its rigorous
demands.
I'd like to use this moment — and all who are here with me tonight —
to register my vociferous opposition to family values in all their permutations.
It's time we faced squarely the growing scourge of attaching value to those who
are attached to us merely by marriage, blood, or adoption. The nuclear family is
a cancer eating at the heart of the body politic. I say, eat out America! We must
rise up and expose families for the Rockwellian charade they are. America can do
better! Should you support me in this cause, my devoted and comely legislative
aide, Cindy Tandem, will be eternally in your debt. Cindy, why don't you stand up
and wave to the crowd? Isn't she a looker, ladies and gentlemen?
Let me add that the Stepford wife and improbably happy teenagers who join me
on this dais tonight owe their sunny dispositions largely to the wondrous effects
of Valium and Ritalin, respectively. Yes, the pharmaceutical industry has been
indispensable to this campaign, infusing my message with an eerie serenity that
would not have been possible through organic means alone. So I attribute my
success in no small measure to good, sound FDA-approved drugs.
As for the citizenry of this land, well, your trust never ceases to amaze me.
I would laugh but I've been trained by some of the best media advisors in the
business to maintain a posture of unflappable dignity except on those occasions
when I'm beating my wife. In fact, it's my periodic bouts of spousal abuse that
have left me rather ambivalent on the whole law and order thing. I swear there
are some days you could tip me either way with a feather on that issue.
I am the first to concede that my dear wife Miriam is trapped in a loveless
marriage. If truth be told — and strangely it seems to be this evening
— my punishing schedule has rendered us virtual strangers for decades. Some
of you may have noticed that my second-oldest son, Josh, bears little resemblance
either to myself or to his mother. However he is a dead ringer for my long-time
friend and campaign manager, Richard Gotlieb. Richard, perhaps you could stand up
and let everyone make their own informed decision. There he is, ladies and
gentlemen! He's been giving me the off-message signal all evening. Hey Rich, get
off my wife first, okay? Hah! Just kidding. He's doing a great job, ladies and
gentlemen.
Vote for me this November and I promise I will do everything in my power to
enlarge my power, addressing you at all times in an unctuous, patronizing manner.
I will also strive to maintain the facade that your inconsequential dreams hold a
snowball's chance in this roiling furnace of ambition we call politics!
God Help America and good night! — Norman Ball |
| |
