{"id":10773,"date":"2011-04-12T14:42:46","date_gmt":"2011-04-12T14:42:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2011\/04\/12\/are-the-republicans-exploiting-the-fiscal-crisis-for-ideological-ends\/"},"modified":"2011-04-12T14:42:46","modified_gmt":"2011-04-12T14:42:46","slug":"are-the-republicans-exploiting-the-fiscal-crisis-for-ideological-ends","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2011\/04\/12\/are-the-republicans-exploiting-the-fiscal-crisis-for-ideological-ends\/","title":{"rendered":"Are the Republicans Exploiting the Fiscal Crisis for Ideological Ends?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Many Democrats are arguing that the Republicans are using the current fiscal crisis to further their ideological agenda.  The suggestion is that their stated fiscal concerns hide their real motivations which are ideological.<\/span><\/p>\n

This fiscal vs. ideological distinction is as bogus as John Kerry's war of necessity vs. war of choice distinction.  Obviously no war is a war of necessity, and every war is a war of choice.  Consider the so-called Civil War of the USA which began on this day 150 years ago.  (So-called because it is better described as a war of secession.  The war was not about the control of the central government in Washington; the war was one of secession: the southern states wanted to secede from the union and achieve independence similarly as the the thirteen colonies wanted to secede from the Crown and be independent of British domination.)  Now the Civil War was certainly not necessary: the North could have let the South secede.  Was U.S. involvement in WWI or WWII necessary?  Obviously not.  And so on.  No war, strictly speaking, is necessary.  You can refuse to get involved in foreign conflicts; you can refuse to defend yourself if attacked.  You can accept dhimmitude.  So every war is a war of choice.   Kerry's distinction is therefore bogus.  <\/span><\/p>\n

The same is true of the fiscal vs. ideological distinction.  Every fiscal decision reflects underlying ideological commitments, and no ideological commitment is such that its implementation does not cost money.  Obviously, the fiscal policies of both the Republicans and the Democrats are ideologically driven.  It makes no sense to speak of 'politicizing' fiscal decisions since every such decision is already political in nature.   <\/span><\/p>\n

For example, both the funding and the defunding of NPR, NEH, NEA, Planned Parenthood, etc. are both fiscal and political and reflect different notions  of what  government is for:  what it must do, must not do, and may do.  Imagine  a conservative and a liberal arguing about National Public Radio.<\/span><\/p>\n

Conservative:<\/strong>  We need government, but "That government governs best that governs least." (Thomas Jefferson).  We need government to do certain jobs that we cannot do ourselves.  But the essential functions of government are limited, and public broadcasting is not one of them.  Public broadcasting may under certain circumstances be a legitimate function of government, but it is obviously not an essential function of government.  There must be limits on governmental power since "Power tends to corrupt, etc."  So, given that we are in dire fiscal straits, and cuts have to be made, and since public broadcasting is not an essential function of government — though it may perhaps be a legitimate nonessential  function of government under financially rosy conditions –  one of the things that must be done to save money is to zero-out the NPR and PBS budgets.  But there is a further reason to defund these agencies, and that is that they are not fair and balanced: they take a liberal-left stance in their programming.  That would be no problem if they were wholly in the private sector.  But surely it is morally wrong to use taxpayers' dollars to promote partisan sociopolitical views, thereby violating the convictions of the vast number of libertarians and conservatives who hold, rightly or wrongly, that liberal-left politicies are pernicious.<\/span><\/p>\n

Liberal:<\/strong>  I don't buy any of that.  You conservatives and libertarians think of government as a necessary evil when in fact it is a force for untold good that cannot be achieved in any other way.  We need more government, not less.  A just society is a fair society, and a fair society is one in which wealth and other goods are distributed equally.   A severely progressive tax code may infringe the liberties of certain individuals but it helps in the achievement of material equality which is surely a much higher value than the liberty of the individual.  The wealth of the nation belongs to all of us, and it it legitimate for government to spread that wealth around in an equitable manner.  "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need," as a very great man once said. Everyone has a right to adequate health care, for example, and it could easily be provided for all if the rich were taxed at appropriately high levels.  As for NPR, its programming is of high quality precisely because it doesn't have to kow-tow to mass demands of hoi polloi.<\/em>  It helps enlighten the dumb denizens of fly-over country who cling to their guns and bibles.  Sure it tilts to the Left, but leftism is true.  Public broadcasting, contrary to why you conservatives think, is an essential function of government.  Without it, the masses cannot be properly enlightend and educated.<\/span><\/p>\n

The point here is that both the conservative and liberal positions are rife with ideological commitments.  So it is asinine and contemptible when Dems claim that Republicans are driven by ideology, or that they are exploiting the fiscal crisis for ideological ends.<\/span><\/p>\n

I wouldn't be so contemptuous of the Dems if they weren't so bloody mendacious and so blind to their double standards.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Many Democrats are arguing that the Republicans are using the current fiscal crisis to further their ideological agenda.  The suggestion is that their stated fiscal concerns hide their real motivations which are ideological. This fiscal vs. ideological distinction is as bogus as John Kerry's war of necessity vs. war of choice distinction.  Obviously no war … Continue reading “Are the Republicans Exploiting the Fiscal Crisis for Ideological Ends?”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32,56],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10773","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-current-affairs","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10773","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10773"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10773\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10773"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10773"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10773"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}