Mainstream conservatives oppose Obama's healthcare plan. Yet few of them advocate terminating government involvement in healthcare altogether.
Conservatives are against Obama's tax-and-spend policies. Yet they don't support abolishing all taxes completely.
Conservatives criticize the Fed's unprecedented monetary expansion. However few of them want the Fed to be abolished and state interference in the financial sector to be ended altogether.
This list can go on forever. The point is that conservatives' criticism of the Obama administration is rendered null and void by their rejection of principle. They don't want to be "too extreme" and go "too far." They castigate Obama's expansion of big government while at the same time conceding that some degree of statism is necessary. They want to deal a blow to the authoritarian hydra while at the same time exposing their backs to the onslaught of the authoritarian principle. Just like liberals, they yield to pragmatism and betray principle.
If state involvement in healthcare is necessary, why not expand it? Isn't it absurd to argue that the current involvement is enough? It's like saying that a person must "be good" but not "too good." Admitting that the government needs to lay its paws on healthcare makes any opposition to the Obama plan meaningless. Only a principled and extreme stand - the position that the government must get out of healthcare altogether - can have a chance against Obama.
Moreover, admitting that the government has a right to some of your money while opposing Obama's taxation policies is like criticizing large-scale theft while granting that a thief is entitled to some of your revenues. "No taxation without representation", though beneficial in some contexts, is a flawed principle. The right principle is "no taxation." Period. Robbery is wrong, whatever its form and whether perpetrated by one person, several persons or a majority of the country's population. No whim or wish can change the way things are and alter the nature of reality. Robbery is robbery. A is A.
A critique of the Fed's current inflationary policies is also unviable unless combined with a complete rejection of central banking, state-promoted paper money and state-protected money in general. Saying that the Fed's policies have become irresponsible implies that they can sometimes be responsible. In fact, they cannot. Once on the irrational course of central banking and paper money, a financial system can never be responsible. It can be more or less irresponsible, to be sure, but once the virus of state-backed paper money infects it, it can never become sound. The only way out is to kill the virus.
To sum up, only firm allegiance to principle can stop the advance of unreason and tyranny. Pragmatism and moderation are a breeding ground for evil and authoritarianism.
4 comments:
There is much truth in what you write, ReaganX. But what of taxation for providing defense and law & order - which are legitimate functions of a State? Is a flat Tax or FAIR tax morally acceptable, to protect people's lives and property?
I'd say a flat tax and a fair tax are pretty lousy options. Among all forms of taxation, a strongly regressive tax is the least evil.
That is, a regressive tax imposes EQUAL RATES IN ABSOLUTE TERMS, which is fairer than equal rates in PERCENTAGE TERMS.
If I go the route of libertarianism and assume the only legitimate taxing is for military and police and courts, then how does one divide the tax revenues to pay for all the secondary workers indirectly supporting these functions plus all the indirect infrastructure necessary for maintaining military,police, and courts?
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