The
Myth of the Kerry Calamity
by Llewellyn H.
Rockwell, Jr. by Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.
In
the weeks before the election, with the usual partisan hysteria
becoming ever more intense, public intellectuals are ripping off the
mask of principle to come out in favor of one or the other
candidate. Typically, many libertarians are throwing their support
behind Bush, and on the usual grounds that he is better than a
hypothetical alternative.
It's
a strange argument. First, there is always a worse hypothetical
alternative to even the worst hell on earth. Even in a solitary,
dark, 5'x5' prison cell there is something worse: the wardens could
stop delivery of porridge once a day. But that is no argument for
believing in the system, or ceasing to try to find a way out of it.
To love one's captors and appreciate their favors is a psychosis,
but one that gains a mass following in the weeks before a
presidential election.
Second, there is something gravely perverse about
libertarians who arrive to convince us that the present calamity
caused by the existing regime isn't so bad after all; indeed we
should support it in order to forestall a worse fate. The only
result of such a position is to diminish one's own intellectual
credibility. One thinks of all the great philosophers, scientists,
and artists who have thrown their support behind a terrible despot.
They had a million reasons for doing so. But it always ends up
diminishing them.
Third, there is no reason to believe that a Kerry victory
would necessarily result in something worse than a Bush victory. One
reason many supported Bush the first time was because he would
supposedly stop the great catastrophe of a Gore victory. In fact, we
can have no idea what Gore would have done while in office. With a
Republican Congress, and a stock market deeply suspicious of an
anti-industry president, it might have ended in four years of
blessed gridlock instead of the wild ride of the lunatics who
currently hold office.
With
a track record going back some 35 years, we do know that Democrats
have tended to expand the budget less, deregulate more, pass fewer
new government programs, care for certain fiscal responsibilities,
protect civil liberties a bit more, bring about fewer wars, avoid
aggressive protectionism, and do a better job of cleaning up the
public sector. Conversely, we also know that Republicans bust the
budget, create new agencies, expand the federal payroll, zoom debts
and deficits, start wars, and protect favored industries with trade
tricks. Yes, they do cut taxes but for the same reason that
Democrats try to raise the minimum wage: sops for friends.
These are generalizations, and I grant that they are
counterintuitive. It seems that the parties perform largely opposite
of their platforms (for more, see the research of Frankel,
Westley,
and Thornton),
which is not to say that either party deserves support. But it does
seem that we can discount extreme claims of total collapse on the
occasion of a Democratic victory. In retrospect, Clinton and Carter
were better for the liberties of Americans than Bush 2, Bush 1,
Reagan, and Nixon.
Again, this might be due to the peculiar dynamics of American
politics. It could be that the Republicans are better at playing a
defensive than an offensive role. The Democrats are easier to
steamroll, and so the Republicans in power are able to get away with
more. Either party with full power is a terrible danger, but with
two parties battling it out, we stand a greater chance of victory
for the individual. Somehow the mix seems more advantageous to our
long-run interests when the Democrats hold executive power and the
Republicans hold legislative.
There is nothing a priori great about such arrangements. This
observation comes about by observing history, and it could change.
And yet there is a core rationale behind the reality that Democrats
make better executives and Republicans better legislators.
The
Democrats are the party of government, with the owners consisting of
mostly public sector employees and their dependents. These are some
of the most loathsome characters in American politics.
Paradoxically, however, they have the strongest interest in keeping
government functioning well, which implies balancing the budget,
cleaning house, stamping out corruption, maintaining some semblance
of order and peace, not doing things that utterly discredit
bureaucracies, finding fixes to make things work a bit better for
themselves and their friends, etc. As the most direct owners of the
state, they have the strongest interest in its health and
well-being.
The
Republicans in contrast are the party of the private sector and the
government contractors. Their primary interest is in getting their
hands in the pot that belongs to the government. They are
anti-government alright, so much so that they are willing to loot
for themselves just about everything that is not nailed down. They
arrive in town with the desire to grab as much for themselves and
their friends as possible, and do it before their time is up.
Remember the scenes in the first weeks after the Iraq invasion when
American soldiers were stealing and abusing everything in sight?
That's Republicans when they capture the executive branch.
So a
pattern has been established. The Democrats arrive with two agendas:
clean up the public sector and make it work better (because they own
it and they believe in it) and pass gobs of new programs. The
Republicans and Wall Street (remember Clinton's fear of the bond
market?) stop them from doing the second one, so they are left with
the little fixes that conform to the civics-text ideal.
Under Democrats, despite an ambitious agenda, we get a host
of small fixes designed to shore up the status quo: more balanced
budgets, Clinton's welfare reform, Gore's "Reinventing Government,"
Carter's deregulation, and the like. After this, the Republicans
arrive in town and work to unbalance the budget, pass out cash to
the military and corporate world, reconfigure the tax system to
benefit Republican voters, and pass edicts to help old-line
industrialists and banking interests.
So
it goes. There is no way to know with any certainty that this is
what a Kerry victory would amount to, but the historical record in
the post-LBJ era would lead us to believe that the end of the world
would not be nigh. The Republicans are best out of power. That's
when they put on their libertarian cloak and strut around like
principled Jeffersonians. Actually, it's a sickening sight, but not
as bad as Republicans exercising power and pretending as if they
alone stand between us and total calamity.
Finally there is the fear of bad judges. Actually, Republican
judges can be as bad as Democratic ones. In the last several years,
with many cases of federal and civil liberties on the docket, the
Democrat-appointed judges have been better on libertarian issues
than the Republican-appointed ones. This whole Supreme Court bogey,
dragged out by GOP consultants just before every election, is just a
shameless attempt to manipulate the gullible.
Many
bad things would happen under a President Kerry. But many horrible
things have happened under the Bush presidency. This is a regime
that has exploded government power at a pace I hoped we would never
see again. Just once I would like to see one of the Bush supporters
write something like:
It
is true that he has expanded the budget at twice the rate of
Clinton, that he has created the largest and most powerful new
federal bureaucracy since the WW2, that he has imposed costly
protectionist legislation, that he keeps prisoners of war in
violation of international law, that he lied about Iraq, that he is
personally responsible for the deaths of 1,100 US soldiers, and
15,000+ Iraqi civilians, that his war has inspired terrorism around
the world, and that another four years of this can only mean more
loss of liberty and more bloodshed. And yet, I support his
reelection for fear of Kerry.
But the Bush
supporters don't say that. Instead they liken him to God. They
consider him savior. They trust him with leadership. They really
credit him with securing the country. They say that he is ruling in
the name of liberty. It is remarkable, even demonic. The Bush regime
isn't just a group of leaders vying for our affections. It is the
world's leading example of the cult of power itself. Kerry may be
dangerous but he heads no cult and commands no army of deluded
religious fanatics willing to celebrate him as he leads the country
into a totalitarian hell of endless war and central administration.
Nonetheless, this is
not an endorsement. It is an anti-endorsement. Until the day of real
freedom arrives, we need both parties so that they might fight among
themselves. Better that they point their guns at each other than at
us.
October 26, 2004
Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.
[send him mail] is
president of the Ludwig von Mises
Institute in Auburn, Alabama, editor of LewRockwell.com, and author
of Speaking
of Liberty.
Copyright © 2004 LewRockwell.com
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