What Conservatives Do Not Like to Discuss

The only interesting articles in The New Republic last week were book reviews both of which prompted the Headline.

1st, the Constitutional backdrop to Tea Party thought was discussed in a review of The Classical Liberal Constitution:  The Uncertain Quest for Limited Government by Richard Epstein.  Epstein is not a Constitutional Lawyer but rather an expert on Torts, Property and Contracts who developed an interest in the 5th Amendment's Taking Clause, which forbids the federal government from taking people's property except for public use for which proper compensation must be paid.

Now Epstein is no slouch intellectually.  He is professor at my Alama Mater, the University of Chicago.  But the U of C encourage intellectual thought without requiring a basis in reality or consequences in the belief that reality and consequences should only be brought into a discussion once a concept is being vetted.  In other words, it should not preclude the development of a thought.

Epstein believes that the principles of common law should be honored.  This includes respect for contracts, protection of private property and an individual right, but no collective right, for compensation for injuries.  When in doubt, the law should uphold the sanctity of contracts and privateness.  This is the basis of the Tea Party's constitutionalism.

What it ignores is the harm that such respect places on society and how society has evolved to protect both itself and the rights of individuals who are harmed by other's exercising their individual right.  When conflict between basic rights occurs, the law (both legislative and judicial) has the Constitutional basis to resolve such conflicts.  That is why the Constitution is allowed to change and be interpreted.  We cannot live simply with the laws of 1789.

If you had a government of the Tea Party, we would still have dirty air and water because there would be no right to inhibit private business for uncompensated pollution control equipment.  But it is compensated because these regulations are passed onto the public in pricing.  There is a non-legal basis for compensation and the EPA has a constitutional right and a practical societal role to play in keeping our environment as clean as possible.  The GOP hates the EPA.

Laissez-faire government would be one where there are few rules, discrimination against anyone would be legal and anarchy because of the lack of rules which inhibit individual freedom.  No safety net because Ayn Rand thinks that makes people lazy.  No inhibition on any drugs.  No standards for anything.

But of course, Conservatives stand for the status quo.  The other book review examines The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Emancipation by David Brion Davis.  Slavery was thought of as normal even in Judeo-Christian thought until there was a sea change in cultural values and moral perception.  "The slave had to be seen as fellow human being no longer subject to animalization."  Most conservatives of the 1st half 19th century in the U.S.A. did not want to rock the boat on slavery because that would be bad for business.  Given the view that slaves were property, for which no compensation would be paid, the same principles that the Tea Party believes in were used by the South as justification to continue slavery and start the Civil War.

So when the Tea Party and other conservative GOP factions support various things to suppress voters against whom the GOP practices economic discrimination by refusing to support a livable minimum wage; by refusing to support affordable access to routing health care; by refusing to acknowledge science is a fact based analysis of our universe; they are continuing to practice the principles that supported slavery in a different time and place.

But all this is complicated and the GOP does not need to discuss such things with most voters.  They just need to get them riled up about something.  So they focus on anything they can that makes the Democrats look bad, and ignore anything that might improve the lives of Americans and make our government truly more efficient.

Fox News and other GOP media outlets will raise hell over a $15 muffin paid for by government budgets for breakfast meetings, but ignore Northrup Grumman, overcharging the Defense Department over $100 mm for improper charges.  They ignore the fact that the Defense Department lost $6.6 bn of cash in Iraq.  No wonder there is so much killing going on in Iraq.  There is literally billions of dollars in play for nefarious activities.

The GOP is not interested in consistent government, they are only interested in gotcha government and only when it suits them.  I don't think they are particularly interested in competent government as they only want to shrink the government in some belief that if government is run incompetently people will want less in government services.  That will never happen.

People like their rules, they don't like anarchy.  They like to be safe and they like their entitlements.  The GOP cannot win if they advocate what they really believe in so they don't talk about it.