You mentioned trying to convince people to feed the poor. Well, Christianity has tried this for 2,000 years (and did feed a bunch) but the poor still starved. We have to be realistic about what people will actually do. Why is regulation needed? Because it is in the short term interests of people to do things (like offer and takeout subprime mortgages you can’t afford) that in the long term will screw society. Look at Alan Greenspan, being shocked that Wall Street execs would be greedy.
There are some conservatives who are conservative out of greed, but there are plenty who are conservative because they have a starry-eyed view of people and society, a view that if you just let people be free they will do the right thing - feed the poor, only ask for as much healthcare as absolutely necessary, not pollute. Yeah, and if people took only what they needed true communism would work also.
It’s not the most trivial part at all, and nor am i merely interested in “You do it too!”
It’s not trivial precisely because his whole critique is based on the idea that liberal support of government is somehow endemic to liberals alone, that it is only liberals who suffer from a penchant for government intervention, and only liberals who fail to see the inconsistencies in their position.
The OP makes the following statement:
It seems to me that this position, rather typically of unreflective small-government mantras, has a pretty large excluded middle. The OP thinks it’s a choice between bad government and much less government. Nowhere in his formulation is there room for better government. And that is why, contrary to the OP’s position, the liberal position is not somehow inherently contradictory or unworkable—precisely because liberals believe that government, while not always a perfect solution, is often a better solution than laissez faire free-for-all, and that even if the way government currently operates is imperfect, it can be improved.
For this reason, given his admitted libertarian bent, i’m not sure why the OP is more interested in taking liberals to task for trying to make their vision work than he is in taking conservatives to task for making rhetorial claims about small government but actually implementing big government.
But don’t you understand?
Liberals recognize that, even when Republicans are in power, the effect of countervailing interests means that government can, and does, continue to implement programs that redound to the benefit of Americans. Even the worst hypocrite in the world, a guy like George Bush, who did his best to expand government in some areas while trying to completely eviscerate it in others, was not able to bring down whole edifice of useful programs and functions that the federal government oversees. The American government is an ongoing institution, and if even a jackass like George Bush can’t ruin the country completely, that says something for the stability of its institutions and policies.
Those policies are not always good. Plenty are downright awful. But, as the situation stands, in a large and complex society like the United States, the government is the least-worst option for many things. Removing government would, in many areas, replace public tyranny with private tyrannies, and at least government is legally and nominally responsible to the American people.
The problem is that you are both right. Each side wants the government doing more to enforce their ideologies in our daily lives. Each seems to want to take away people’s rights to make decisions based on what’s best for them and instead have it legislated to them.
Considering that the alternative is to have huge numbers of people with no education at all, or worse than no education it’s doing well. People often talk as if the alternative to public school is that everyone gets enrolled in a top flight private school. And not just left ignorant, or some “school” run by scam artists that take the parent’s money and run. Or some Christian fundie school that teaches nothing except religion.
In other words, we should go back in the direction that led to the Civil War. No thanks. And I don’t think that we have become “more divided by federal actions” anyway.
Not only does it need to continue, it needs to increase. If we went your way, you’d see large scale starvation. People have plenty of awareness of social issues; they simply don’t care all that much.
Wrong; the government is how people have collectively chosen to do so. And it’s more efficient and effective that way.
The government is the solution that works; letting people starve by the millions in a doomed attempt to shame their neighbors into becoming more altruistic is unethical and unnecessary.
A lack of a superior universal alternative does not mean that it’s done well, and many Christian schools are head and shoulders above your average public school in terms of academics.
Right, he pointed out in his OP that Republicans do it too, so why the need to keep talking about it? This thread isn’t about problems with Conservatism, it’s about problems with liberalism.
Speaking as a liberal, the government in a liberal democratic society isn’t some disembodied alien entity. It’s us, acting together. When we say we want the government to do something, we’re saying that this is a problem big enough that we should all get together to do something about.
And we don’t want “more government involvement in our lives.” We want more government action on public issues. We want less government involvement “in our lives.”
You can say the same thing about non-government action. That’s no reason not to try to do something.
I think the real reason we get big government under Republican administrations is that no matter how much they rant about it, their constituents tell them that getting money from Washington works pretty well for them. A Congressman who turns down money for his district isn’t going to be there very long. Most of the Republican governors who made a big show of rejecting stimulus money knew quite well that their legislatures would overrule them.
This is yet another case where conservatism is unrealistic.
And some are much worse. Eliminate public schools, and it’s the latter - the ones that care about making you memorize religious slogans, bigotry, and teaching you how to be good at pushing Christianity, and little else - which I would expect to expand and take over “education”.
He pointed out in the OP that Republicans do it too? I just went back and re-read the OP. I must have missed that bit. Could you point it out for me?
And the main premise of the OP, regarding liberalism, is factually incorrect, to wit:
This is wrong on a number of levels.
Liberals don’t simply want more for the sake of more. Hell, some liberals don’t even want more. What many liberals want is better government that addresses the needs of the American people, and many liberals believe that, with the right will and the right people, this is an achievable goal. Furthermore, i, and many liberals i know, would be quite happy to have government take less of a role in certain areas, IF it could be reasonably demonstrated that this would be for the general benefit. And while there are some liberals who will apparently accept any half-assed policy as long as it issues from the lips of a Democratic lawmaker, there are also many who are just as critical of Democratic politicians, and who are happy to criticize any and all government perfidy. Plenty of liberals have opposed some of the recent government bailouts, even the ones backed by Barack Obama and Democratic members of Congress.
Finally, the fact is that there are some areas where government is always going to be involved (for example, defense, foreign policy, etc.), and where the differences between the two major parties are significant enough that there are real consequences. The fact that liberals choose Democrats over Republicans in such situations is not evidence of some failure of imagination, or some blindness to the overall problems of government. It’s simply a reflection of the fact that liberals, like conservatives, vote their interests.
Take a look at the thread on the recent California initiative now in the Pit. California is going down the crapper because we have a lot more control by the people (through initiatives) than most states. The people are doing a much worse job than the career politicians did. The people hate taxes, but they love prisons, education, and health care, the three biggest budget items. Almost all the growth in spending above inflation in the past decade have come from initiatives.
Yes. So, were you in favor of the patriot act, invading Iraq, torture? I guess what i am saying is that government supposedly speaks for all of us, but the country is so close to a 50/50 split that in reality it barely speaks for 1/2 of us 1/2 of the time. Not to mention people like myself who would rather see less government involvement…we have no consideration because there is no way the government is ceding power that it has already grabbed.
I have a problem with the whole liberal/conservative labelling. If you are one or the other, for some unknown reason you are expected to keep to the “party line” on all of it. Why? This makes no sense. There’s no sin in adhering to the parts from either side that you believe in and discarding the rest. Neither side is necessarily completely right or completely wrong (if and when both sides throw off the loonies and extremists).
I hear ya, but they are also going down the crapper in the context of the Federal system we have now. For example, if CA citizens could vote to legalize marijuana, the state would need less money for prisons and could make money from taxes on weed to help pay for education.
Is the average Christian school better than the average public school, given the same conditions? (i.e., can’t Christian schools kick people out for any reason or some shit like that?)
That’s an example of the big government in the restrictive rules sense. Annoying, but relatively cheap. Along this line, the DoJ has now announced it is going to stop spending money harassing the sellers of medical marijuana, which is legal under state law. If California passes a decriminalization bill, which is getting some support, we’ll see what happens.