Conservatives and Big Government

Taking up Paul Weyrich’s challenge to create a New Conservatism (or as Paul calls it the Next Conservatism) for a New Century, I suppose the first thing we must do is diagnose what’s wrong with present-day Conservatism.
One of the worst features of Modern Conservatism is the extent to which conservatives have fallen in love with Big Government and worse even Big Bureaucracy. Sadly enough, many Conservatives have become almost indistinguishable from Liberals in their support for Big Government and efforts to expand its scope and power.
The Bush II Administration and the Republican Congress have presided over the biggest expansion of American government since Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society. In the past four and a half years of Republican dominance in Washington, we’ve seen the creation of a massive new Homeland Security bureaucracy and a Homeland Security Department, an unprecedented expansion in Federal authority over education (No Child Left Behind), a new prescription drug benefit to pay for Medicare, out of control federal spending, incredible growth in the deficit, a vast increase in federal law enforcement powers and a foreign policy based on military intervention and foreign aid. Sadly enough there seems to be no end in sight, Congress displays no fiscal restraint whatsoever and not a week goes bye in which the Bush Administration doesn’t seem to be suggesting an expensive new government program.
This situation is made worse by the Republicans’ inability to face fiscal and economic realities. Instead of cutting existing government to keep the budget in limits or creating new streams of revenue to pay for growth (such as a national sales tax). All the Republicans seem to do is keep spending and hope that future revenues will cover the costs. America faces a fiscal crisis that could rival the Great Depression if the deficit and budget aren’t brought under control.
The saddest part of this is that it didn’t have to happen, had Conservatives simply stuck to their beliefs and kept spending under control this fiscal crisis could have been prevented. Unfortunately Conservatives ignored their beliefs and listened to the liberal media, they adopted the liberal proposals for a Department of Homeland Security and Transportation Security Administration (even though there’s no evidence these things will keep us safe from terrorism). They enacted liberal proposals for school testing and a prescription drug benefit. Conservatives are so unsure of their beliefs they abandon them whenever the pressure increases.
The lack of faith in Conservatism is combined with a moronic faith in the power of Big Government on the part of many Conservatives. Take Homeland Security, the belief that a massive new bureaucracy can stop terrorism. Since terrorists are outlaws who use unconventional tactics and violate all the rules this seems to be a delusion. A far better strategy would be to set up small elite teams of law enforcement, intelligence and military personnel who would counter the terrorists with unconventional covert tactics. Unfortunately this wouldn’t cost much money and wouldn’t give Congress much pork to distribute to the voters so we get Homeland Security, a massive waste of money that tramples the rights of average citizens.
Or foreign policy, the 2001 war in Afghanistan proved that America could defeat its enemies abroad with clever covert operations, airpower and elite teams of special forces. In Afghanistan this worked great, yes Bin Laden got away but his power base was destroyed and his enemies the Taliban driven from power probably permanently. An effective if limited Afghan government with a military capable of defeating both the Taliban and Al Qaeda seems to be developing.
Unfortunately the Neoconservatives in the White House and their apologists in the media didn’t learn a thing from Afghanistan. When it came time to deal with Saddam Hussein, all they could think of was to mount a massive World War II style invasion of Iraq. Yes, we won easily, our forces annihilated a Third World Army equipped with 1950s weaponry. A victory that made us look like a cheap bully in the eyes of the world. Sadly enough, this invasion was carried out largely to prove the worth of Big Government’s massive military bureaucracy in the Pentagon rather than spread Democracy.
The invasion was followed by an extended occupation of Iraq that led to guerrilla warfare and the needless deaths of hundreds of American military personnel. The Big Government solution to Iraq was followed by more Big Government, massive foreign aid and the establishment of a massive American bureaucracy in Iraq. A bureaucracy that predictably has done a worse job of running Iraq than Saddam’s gangster regime, gangsters at least have to make money. Iraq’s economy is a mess, law and order are nonexistent, government no longer functions and oil production is lower than before the 2003 war.
Big Government has failed miserably in Iraq as any true conservative should have said it would. Instead of a limited military campaign to remove Saddam and replace him with a more reasonable Iraqi leadership. Say American special forces and air power backing a Kurdish Army in a campaign to over run Baghdad and overthrow Saddam. We have the worst American military and foreign policy debacle since Vietnam.
Closer to home we have other looming Big Government debacles. President Bush has entrusted NASA, which hasn’t made any major progress in space launch technology since the early 1980s, with developing a new initiative to return men to the Moon and explore Mars. The best NASA can come up with is to utilize adapted Saturn Five Rockets (a forty-year old technology) and Space Shuttle (a thirty-five year old technology) components. This at a time when Spaceship One, a privately built rocket was able to fly into space and return. I wonder in a few years will we see NASA wasting billions of tax dollars on giant rockets while millionaires are flying to the new lunar Club Med in their private space planes?
Or the response to Hurricane Katrina, we avoided a humanitarian disaster in Louisiana and Mississippi because churches, private charities and Big Business stepped in to help with all manner of aid. The Federal Emergency Management Agency couldn’t get aid to the victims while Wal-Mart, the Salvation Army, the Red Cross and others were distributing supplies to the victims within hours of the hurricane. Their efforts combined with the military effectively aided the victims and prevented true catastrophe while Big Government’s emergency management efforts predictably failed miserably. Yet we now have demands for more money for Emergency Management and rebuilding efforts. The result of course will be more wasteful government spending on aid and relief efforts that won’t reach the victims.
Obviously this means that one of the basic tenets of the New Conservatism must be a renewed commitment to limited government. Government must be kept small and limited in scope and confined to those things it does best such as national defense and law enforcement. We need a renewed effort to reduce the power, size and scope of government.
Massive bureaucracies must be trimmed or eliminated and spending reduced. This means both liberal social programs and conservative sacred cows like the military. Do we really a massive surface Navy when no other power has a large Navy? What about the giant bureaucracy in the Pentagon does it really defend us from things like terrorism?
Limited government is something we need desperately unfortunately Conservatives seem to have forgotten that.