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If a neo-conservative is a liberal who has been
mugged, then a Keynesian is a conservative who has gone to war!
MG
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Wednesday, September 26, 2001 3:26 PM
Subject: Crisis Challenges Conservatism
Crisis Challenges Conservatism
By James Hall <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
(Orlando,
Florida) The terrorist danger to our nation quickly changed conventional
perceptions, turning our comfortable lives and opinions upside down.
Therefore it's not unlikely that after the attacks on the United States'
chief symbols of economic and military power that values would be questioned
and reexamined. What is ironic is that the present crisis calls into
question many of the conservative values touted since the Reagan
Revolution--and by a conservative Bush administration.
In the midst of
a new war on terror, a conservative Bush administration and conservative
Republicans in the House and Senate have performed about-faces on many
conservative issues, their actions fostering a new respect for the ability of
government to create the secure environment freedom needs to succeed and their
words honoring the virtues of public service in a way that's rare for
conservatives. Though there are concerns, particularly with civil
rights, liberals can take heart that in a time of crisis, conservatives and
liberals alike are fighting for more government oversight of the nation's
economy and security, not less.
Government and Privatization
After the terrorist attacks, the nation sees a greater role for
government in general, and the federal government in particular to play in
securing our public life. To combat the threat of future attacks,
we'll need more government involvement, not less--more government to increase
security on our borders, more government to shadow and identify terrorists
abroad and at home, more government to track terrorist finances, more
government to guard public health against chemical and biological attacks, and
more government to increase security around the vulnerable targets of our
society--aircraft, water reservoirs, refineries, pipelines, nuclear power
plants, transportation hubs, public buildings, stadiums, major economic and
military targets.
The Bush administration, despite its conservative
roots, has quickly moved to supply that government oversight. It created
the cabinet-level Office of Homeland Security, activated reserves to defend
the borders and the air overhead in Operation Noble Eagle, sent bills to
Congress to restrict civil rights, particularly those of legal aliens, and
created an executive order that forces foreign banks doing business in the US
to open their files to scrutiny, turn over intelligence on members' accounts,
and freeze terrorist assets.
September 11 has shown the privatization
of airport security to be a disaster. Somehow minimum wage workers from
private security companies operating equipment they barely understood didn't
work out as well as airport security in the rest of the world, where foreign
government agencies provide trained airport and airline security. For
years US airlines fought security enhancements like air marshals, better
detection machines, and solid cockpit doors because they were more expensive
than meeting minimal requirements. Now these airlines face bankruptcy
because the traveling public has no confidence in their cheap security.
Government's Role in the Economy
September 11 also marked a
change in the free market economic thinking that marked the Clinton Years,
giving way to a liberal, Keynesian approach, with the Bush administration
supporting and propping up the key elements of the economy. Government
has taken up the role of economic cheerleader with President Bush and his
cabinet urging Americans to return to work and to support US companies by
buying their stock and urging Americans to travel by air. There's now an
unusual blend of patriotism and traditional market self-interest with
President Bush urging stockholders not to abandon American companies.
This "Buy American" confluence of patriotism and free market economics
would have been ridiculed by most free market ideologues before September 11.
Not now.
The Keynesian approach offers support for the airline
industry, the insurance industry, the financial industry. A $15 billion
revenue bill to bail out the airlines have already been passed, despite the
airlines' own mistakes in fighting rational security measures. The
insurance and financial industries, also hit hard by terrorism, are meeting
with the president and asking for additional assistance. Likely they
will get something, too. In addition, a $40 billion bill to rebuild New
York's World Trade Center and the Pentagon and pay for Noble Eagle was quickly
passed and hailed as a way of pumping government spending into an ailing
economy.
The new Keynesian approach means that both Republicans and
Democrats have abandoned the Social Security lockbox to spend money to rebuild
and prosecute the war against terrorism. This means deficit spending on
a scale not seen since the last Bush administration--Keynesian spending
designed to help pull the economy out of its doldrums. This creates a
larger role for government in the economy--hardly a conservative notion.
Unilateralism in Foreign Policy
A month ago conservatives
envisioned an impregnable Fortress America squatting securely behind a wall of
antiballistic missiles and space defenses and leaving the rest of the world to
its petty squabbles. The Bush administration pulled out of a half-dozen
treaties on everything from land mines to global warming to nuclear tests, but
now finds itself dependent on maintaining relationships with a host of new
allies--Pakistan, Indonesia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and more--and mending
fences with India, Russia, and China in order to prosecute a significant war
against terrorism. After months of inactivity, it worked out a quick
cease fire between Israel and the Palestinians to calm the Arab world.
Now even rapprochement with hostile nations like Syria, Libya, and Iran
isn't out of the question.
September 11 taught everyone, but
especially isolationist conservatives, that America must remain attached to
the world and engaged with it. If we turn our backs to it, our enemies
simply stab us there, using the tools that our open society allows them.
The attack taught us that its not rogue missiles we have to fear now,
but rogue airliners, rogue crop-dusters, car bombs, chemical and biological
weapons, all hard to trace and respond to. All of these "low tech,
high-concept" forms of attack make much more sense for an enemy to use than
lobbing a missile that the US can quickly track and retaliate against.
Isolationism has been an American trait since George Washington warned
against "foreign entanglements" upon leaving office over two hundred years
ago. But a foreign policy that was useful in the 18th Century is no
longer possible in the 21st. September 11 taught us that the best shield
is not a passive defense but an active offense, seeking out and engaging our
enemies before they can strike, not relying on walls that can be penetrated by
a skillful foe given time and opportunity.
Free Trade and Immigration
There must now be a security component to any free trade agreement.
The ease with which terrorists were able to pass through the Canadian
and Mexican borders and fly into the country on international flights will
change the America's emphasis from pure, unencumbered trade to trade with
security. We'll have to spend more money to increase government's role
in checking immigration and goods coming into the country, and require our
trading partners to do their part in keeping terrorism in check in their own
countries.
Immigration will take on more costly restrictions.
Many of the terrorist hijackers, it turns out, were in the country
illegally with false identification, expired visas, or evaded a watch list.
Improved identification methods and shared information can stop those
mistakes. With the terrorist attack and today's declining economy,
Bush's proposed guest worker program and the changes that Mexican President
Vincente Fox wanted to push through by the end of the year for Mexican workers
seem all but finished.
Civil Liberties
It's not unusual for
civil liberties to be strained during a time of war and terrorist attacks, and
already the calls are going out to tighten the laws and make it more difficult
for terrorists to move around and act. The Bush administration is
pushing for wider phone-tapping capability, the right to suspend habeas corpus
for non-citizens for up a year, the right to examine computer and financial
records and a broad definition of terrorism. It may not get everything
it wants, but count on more government intrusion into our lives based on
security considerations.
Especially surprising this week was the sight
of FBI Director Mueller standing next to Attorney-General Ashcroft and
promising to prosecute to the fullest extent of the law "hate crimes" against
Muslim-Americans. For Ashcroft and President Bush, who have toed the
conservative line that a "hate crime" is simply an ordinary crime to be
emphasizing the need to enforce laws against hate crimes, is nothing short of
amazing. Perhaps it has taken a terror attack and the corresponding
unfocused acts of revenge against the Arab and Muslim community for President
Bush to see that hate crimes are indeed crimes against an entire community and
not ordinary criminal activity.
Public change in values
Last
month everyone wanted to start their own business, become a CEO, or enter a
career track that makes lots of money. The average policeman and
fireman, if they were thought of at all, were frequently looked down on as
working stiffs incapable of achieving wealth and prosperity on their own.
America's soldiers and sailors faced similar scrutiny--why not leave
your military career and make some money?--being a frequently asked question
of skilled officers and enlisted men. Now these people, who dedicate
their lives to saving and protecting ours, are rightfully seen as heroes.
It's quite refreshing to see the tradition of public service
now admired and honored. Some people are publicly questioning their
fixation on money that has kept them apart from friends and family.
September 11 has made us realize that there are more values that make a
people great than the pursuit of self-interest. Perhaps this new regard
for public service will lead to more nurses and teachers and Americans serving
a volunteers in service fields that are now lacking recruits. It may
even restore the dignity of public service in state and federal government,
which would be a revolution indeed.
Before September 11 "sacrifice,"
was hardly a word heard in the American vocabulary. Now it's a word and
an act that we're all familiar with, from the greatest sacrifices made by New
York City's cops and firemen responding to save their fellow citizens, to the
potential sacrifice today's soldiers and sailors may have to make to protect
us all from future attacks, to the individual sacrifice each of us may have to
make if war is followed by a recession.
Actions do speak louder than
words. The Bush administration may have started out trumpeting
conservative ideas, but the events of September 11 have altered the political
and social landscape completely. Challenged by a war on terrorism, the
administration responded by growing government and limiting civil rights to
increase our nation's security; by re-involving itself in world affairs, and
by adopting Keynesian economics to keep the country's economic engine from
stalling. Will conservatism ever be the same?
James Hall is a regular
columnist for The American Partisan. http://www.american-partisan.com
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