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Tuesday, 22 August 2006 18:51 |
 | | Mark West |
The conservative movement, in its early years, did not argue that welfare payments to the poor, or progressive tax policies, were in themselves bad, as they do now.
There was, back in the early 1980s, a general consensus that the goal of a just government was to make more equal the rich and the poor, to bring up the needy by asking the richest to contribute a greater share of their wealth.
So
the nascent conservative movement didnët make a frontal assault on that
national consensus on fairness; rather, they argued that attempts to
balance things out, no matter how well meant, often had unforseen
consequences.
Strategically,
this was a stroke of genius on the part of the Republicans; arguing
Gordon Geckoës "greed is good" creed would have at that point been
counterproductive. And, at the same time, the Republicans were
beginning their long grass-roots effort to link fundamentalism with
their party, with the results we now see ÇƒÓ a confused and divided
Democratic Party, and a Republican apparat that wins elections even
with astonishingly weak candidates.
But the notion
of unforseen consequences was, in its day, very influential. It was
difficult, say, to argue that the welfare system had not led to
perverse outcomes. By increasing payments to single mothers, the system
increased the level of illegitimate births among single mothers in
inner cities. By capping payments, and instituting means tests, the
welfare system inadvertently led to a sort of "permanent underclass" ǃÓ
not the entire group of people on welfare, as the Republicans later
came to insist, but some of them.
Thus, what
happened, I suspect, is that a goodly number of people signed on with
the Republicans because they understood that the law of unforseen
consequences was real, and that the government ought to curtail
programs and projects unless there was some certainty that they would
not have perverse consequences.
Thereës a story
of how one may boil a frog in a container without a lid; you just turn
up the heat slowly, and if there isnët a sudden jump in temperature,
the frog never jumps out. He just cooks.
I think the same
thing happened in the case of many people who are now doctrinaire
Republicans, people who are calling for bans on abortion and cheering
on the hopelesss war in Iraq and offering endless support for whatever
Israel might choose to do. They signed on for something sensible, and
then the Republican Party revealed, slowly, more and more of its true
agenda over time. And rather than cut their losses, these people stayed
around, hoping to ǃÚchange the Republicans from within.ë
Be that as it
may, we are seeing the law of unintended consequences, come home to
roost with the Republican Party. Theyëve moved from a minimalist to an
imperialist stance on government, and financial thrift has turned to
profligacy. In sum, theyëve fallen prey to all the ills that the
Contract on America was intended to correct ÇƒÓ and the law of unintended
consequences is catching up with them.
Nowhere is this
more evident than in Iraq. Our adventurism in Iraq provided a fig leaf
behind which Israel could hide when it chose to invade Lebanon; Israel
could say with some justification that it was just defending itself
pre-emptively, as the U.S. had in Iraq. And the disaster at Abu Ghraib
has provided cover for all manner of despots; they can ignore the
Geneva conventions at will, because the U.S. did it first. U.S.
prestige and influence in the the world is at a low ebb; and, oddly,
the winner in this debacle may be France, a nation whose diplomats are
showing up in all sorts of places as the voice of Western reason.
But the big
winners in all this are Iran and Hezbollah. Iran has won because the
cause of Shia Islam has been strengthened throughout the Middle East,
and because Iraq ÇƒÓ the main check upon its power ÇƒÓ has been eliminated.
Israel felt emboldened to invade Lebanon, and then was surprised when
Hezbollah proved a more potent foe than anyone would have expected. The
unexpected outcome of that conflict is that Hezbollah is now the only
Middle Eastern power to have faced down Israel, and is receiving honor,
support, and recognition well beyond what it would have otherwise
enjoyed.
Perhaps it is
just a truism of politics that parties forget the principles that
placed them in power. Regardless, the Republicans have certainly
forgotten the principles of limited government and an avoidance of
nation-building adventurism that brought them to power in the first
place. And that forgetfulness has led to unexpected, and dire,
consequences.
Letës hope the voters donët forget all this in the upcoming election.
ï
Mark West is a professor of mass communications at the University of North Carolina at Asheville.
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