Wednesday, March 13, 2002
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Wednesday, March 13, 2002 |
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Call me anything just call me for supper By DAVE HAMRICK People who have cast their eyes on this space only on an occasional basis often accuse me of being a Republican. Sorry for using the word "accuse" in that context, but if you claim not to be a partisan, then saying you are one does amount to an accusation, i.e., that you are lying. Just to set the record straight, I am not a Republican, and the only label I've been able to come up with that makes any sense is right wing radical. My name is Dave, and I'll be our RWR today. But even that isn't a perfect label, because on many topics I also have a strong libertarian leaning, and on a few issues I could even be emblazoned with a scarlet L. Our current president has given me several reasons to part company with the Republican Party, including his recent push to spend a bunch of million dollars of my tax money encouraging young people to get hitched. I've spent 90 percent of my adult life stamping my feet and hollering at the top of my lungs that the government is doing hundreds of things it was never intended to do, and now if Dubya's proposal goes through I'll have one more to add to the list. If this were a Democrat, every Republican reading my words right now would be screaming about social engineering, and you would be right, because that's exactly what it is. There's nothing wrong with social engineering if it's done by social institutions, but it is not the government's job. In this case, it is the church's job, the family's job, perhaps the mental health community's job. But it most definitely is not the government's job. And if Mr. Bush wants to use his bully pulpit to rain hell fire on our churches, families and mental health professionals for not doing their job, then I will applaud him, and I might even contribute some of my hard-earned dollars to institutions that are doing a better job of it than others. But do not, Mr. President, put your hands into my pocket, backed by the government's power to take away my liberty, and use my money to embark on a program of social engineering. Whether it is conservative values you are preaching or liberal makes no difference. Use your own money to do it. What galls me about this sort of thing is that, much as I might personally warm to the idea of encouraging the institution of marriage, when conservatives use the government to get people to behave the way they want them to, they legitimize Democrats when they use the power of government to encourage or even force people to behave in ways that Democrats want them to. That's one of the reasons the tax code has become the most onerous burden a supposedly freedom-loving government has ever placed on its citizens. Democrats get into office and put in dozens of little deductions and credits to encourage people to be environmentally responsible, help the poor, use the Internet ... you name it. Then Republicans get in and put in more dozens of gimmicks to encourage people to buy American, have children and, to show that they're not as heartless as Democrats claim they are, to help the poor. Follow that scenario for a hundred years and what do you get? You get what we have. Read it sometime if you're afraid your blood pressure is getting too low. So why do I so often argue in sympathy with Republicans and against Democrats? Well, if you're going to be stuck with people who insist on messing around in places the government has no business messing around in, it's better to have people who will mess around in ways that are more palatable to your way of thinking. At least a socially engineered society with lower taxes is more palatable than a socially engineered society with higher taxes. On the national level, Republicans tend to tax and spend marginally less than Democrats. We gave Republicans the House and Senate for four years and they reversed 50 years of taxing and spending and balanced the budget. That's not too shabby, and I have to wonder how much more they could improve the budget and tax situation if they had a truly strong majority in Congress along with the backing of the White House. Maybe after two years of that I'd be screaming just as maniacally about their policies as I did about the Democrats' when they had the whole enchilada, but I would at least like to give them a shot at it. Some of you are thinking, "Why doesn't this guy support a third party, maybe the Libertarian Party?" I would also be willing to give Libertarians a shot at making the kinds of radical changes that are needed now that our government is so completely fouled up, but I'm not wasting my vote on them until they come up with a presidential candidate who has a personality, some funding and a snowball's chance.
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