The High Moral Ground of Gridlocking the Government
The American political establishment usually operates in terms of bipartisan cooperation between the political parties. The goal of the political parties is essentially identical: expand the power of the federal government.
This has been true since approximately 1789. This is not some new development. Politicians want to expand the degree of control they have over people's budgets and lives.
There is a myth about American libertarian history, but anybody who looks carefully at the history of this country finds that only one President has been committed to shrinking the federal government: Grover Cleveland. Jefferson and Madison, once in office, assumed powers vastly beyond anything claimed by King George III in 1775. The authors of the Virginia and Kentucky Resolves in 1798 "went Federalist." Jefferson imposed an export embargo. Madison voted for war after the British government had officially met his demands about the kidnapping of American seamen. The word of this surrender did not reach Washington in time. His first act of war was to invade Canada.
Martin Van Buren had the reputation of being a libertarian. But Van Buren oversaw the infamous Trail of Tears. That was a massive theft of privately owned land, pure and simple. It was not quite genocide, but it was close: sending the civilized tribes to Oklahoma. Then, a century later, when oil was discovered in Oklahoma, the whites stole the land back from the heirs of the Trail of Tears.
Grover Cleveland was the real deal, but he was the only real deal in the history of the American presidency.
If we are to date the rise of the present political establishment, I choose the presidency of Benjamin Harrison, Cleveland's rival. Cleveland lost to Harrison in 1888, but then came back to defeat him in 1892. (They were both Presbyterians.)
Harrison's Secretary of State in 1892 was John W. Foster, the co-founder of the Dulles family, which dominated American foreign-policy from Foster's day until Kennedy's early administration, when Allen Dulles ran the CIA. Dulles gave us the Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961.
BIPARTISANSHIP VS. GRIDLOCK
Bipartisanship is the preferred form of government by those who control both political parties in the United States. This is why the Council on Foreign Relations and Goldman Sachs provide so many high level advisers to every President. The various special-interest groups choose which party to pressure, in order to gain maximum economic returns through government power. There is competition within the overall framework. This framework excludes those special interests that want to shrink the federal government. Of course, there are not many such special interest groups.
This is why the gridlock that has now overwhelmed the House of Representatives is resented so deeply by the political establishment. It is hampering bipartisanship. In other words, it is reducing the ability of the federal government to expand its operations.
People who favor smaller government have little to cheer about today. Nobody is seriously attempting to shrink the federal government. But at least gridlock is keeping the government from adopting new programs of political control. The establishment wants a constant increase in the amount of regulation, spending, and favors. It wants new victims. Gridlock is reducing the supply of new victims.
David Brooks, the token neoconservative columnist for the New York Times, is a defender of big government. He favors the Hamiltonian tradition. He bewails the present situation.
The House Republican caucus is close to ungovernable these days. How did this situation come about? This was not just the work of the Freedom Caucus or Ted Cruz or one month's activity. The Republican Party's capacity for effective self-governance degraded slowly, over the course of a long chain of rhetorical excesses, mental corruptions and philosophical betrayals. Basically, the party abandoned traditional conservatism for right-wing radicalism. Republicans came to see themselves as insurgents and revolutionaries, and every revolution tends toward anarchy and ends up devouring its own.By traditional definitions, conservatism stands for intellectual humility, a belief in steady, incremental change, a preference for reform rather than revolution, a respect for hierarchy, precedence, balance and order, and a tone of voice that is prudent, measured and responsible. Conservatives of this disposition can be dull, but they know how to nurture and run institutions. They also see the nation as one organic whole. Citizens may fall into different classes and political factions, but they are still joined by chains of affection that command ultimate loyalty and love.
All of this has been overturned in dangerous parts of the Republican Party. Over the past 30 years, or at least since Rush Limbaugh came on the scene, the Republican rhetorical tone has grown ever more bombastic, hyperbolic and imbalanced.
This definition of conservatism is correct with respect to the conservatism of Edmund Burke in 1789, but it has never been applied well inside the United States. In the United States, anti-Hamiltonian conservatives have resisted the expansion of the federal government, but they have always been in a minority. Their tactics have been based on a holding action.
This is why it is almost impossible to find American presidents who were really determined on rolling back the expansion of the federal government across the board. This is why the conservative movement has always produced people who are bipartisan when it comes to expanding the Pentagon's power, and who are unwilling to challenge the sacred cows of the federal welfare state.
In other words, the conservatives have bought into the strategy best articulated by Democratic New Dealer, Speaker of the House Sam Rayburn: "To get along, you go along." He uttered those famous words over 50 years ago. Conservatives have gone along.
Today, if you look at the statistics, the welfare state really is going to die. It is going to go over the falls. The present value of the unfunded liabilities of Social Security and Medicare are over $200 trillion. Therefore, those conservatives who go along to get along, such as David Brooks, are siding with the people in the canoe who are paddling furiously in the direction of the sound of the waterfall.
There is an increasingly vocal minority within the House of Representatives that is unwilling to continue paddling quite so enthusiastically. It is not that these people are trying to roll back the welfare state. They are trying to put limits on it, and they are willing to block any go-along politician who wants to take over the office of Speaker of the House. They have finally decided that they have enough power to disrupt the operations of the good old boys who have run the country for over a century. I said "disrupt," not reverse.
For as long as they keep voting to increase the budget deficit, there is no serious challenge to the growth of the welfare state. For as long as there is no challenge to Social Security and Medicare, there is no serious challenge to the growth of the welfare state. But there is a symbolic challenge. The naysayers are in a position to keep any Republican from becoming Speaker of the House. I don't think this is going to be a permanent situation. I think it will probably be over in a few weeks, but at least it is a symbolic gesture. It is a crude gesture. But it is a well-deserved gesture.
Establishment spokesmen like David Brooks cannot tolerate gridlock. Gridlock keeps the welfare state and the American empire from expanding even faster. The fact that we really are going to run out of taxable resources does not bother these people. They think taxation is forever. They don't really believe that the imbalanced budget cannot go on forever. They make noises as though they do, but they really don't. They never say this: "We have to stop it now, and we have to do it on principle."
We're told that politics is the art of compromise. Nonsense. Politics is just as much the art of gridlock: to thwart the establishment. In this sense, it is the ability of a vocal minority to stop compromising, as symbolized by electing a Speaker of the House.
William F. Buckley articulated this back in 1955. "A conservative is someone who stands athwart history, yelling Stop, at a time when no one is inclined to do so, or to have much patience with those who so urge it." He was unwilling to do this in the area of the American empire, but at least he said it. He denied the legitimacy of David Brooks' definition of conservatism as the art of going along to get along.
Brooks cries out in rhetorical agony:
Really, have we ever seen bumbling on this scale, people at once so cynical and so naïve, so willfully ignorant in using levers of power to produce some tangible if incremental good? These insurgents can't even acknowledge democracy's legitimacy -- if you can't persuade a majority of your colleagues, maybe you should accept their position. You might be wrong!People who don't accept democracy will be bad at conversation. They won't respect tradition, institutions or precedent. These figures are masters at destruction but incompetent at construction.
These insurgents are incompetent at governing and unwilling to be governed. But they are not a spontaneous growth. It took a thousand small betrayals of conservatism to get to the dysfunction we see all around.
Who says that democracy has some kind of religious commitment to cooperation and compromise? Democracy is an electoral procedure. If you can get your group into office, and your group can block any further compromise by tossing a shoe into the works (sabotage), then that is democratic. But democrats want to vest an electoral procedure with religious significance: an affirmation of cooperation.
The good old boys of the establishment want us to believe that democracy is a means of moving the country down prescribed pathways that have been designed in the back rooms of the establishment. Somehow, democracy requires that voters elect politicians who will continue to go along in order to get along. But today, symbolically at least, a minority in the House of Representatives is crying "Stop!"
When the checks finally bounce, the engine of Empire and welfare state redistribution is going to stop. That is inevitable. The good old boys do not want to face this, but it is going to happen.
FIRST STOP, THEN REVERSE COURSE
The goal of serious critics of the modern welfare state should be to articulate the philosophical and moral foundations for sabotaging the system.
Sabotage is not a permanent program. It delays the expansion of the state, but the ultimate trend is built into the process. It is the commitment of politicians to promise more than can possibly be delivered. That is the inherent nature of modern government, and it has been the inherent nature of government since at least 1500.
It is taking a long time to get us to the point of no return. It may take another decade or two, or maybe a little longer, to get to the great default. But it is going to come, statistically speaking, and there's nothing the good old boys can do about it.
It is our job to provide a philosophical and moral justification for this word: "Stop."
Then we must articulate the justification for reversing course. Our arguments will not persuade Congress. Only one thing will persuade Congress: bankruptcy.
Patience. It is coming.