"A time came when the only people who had ever been free began to ask: What is freedom?"
So begins Garet Garrett's incisive essay on the New Deal, The Revolution Was, published in 1938. He also writes:
Who wrote its articles -- the strong or the weak?Was it an absolute good?
Could there be such a thing as unconditional freedom, short of anarchy?
Given the answer to be no, then was freedom an eternal truth or a political formula?
Since it was clear to reason that freedom must be conditioned, as by self-discipline, individual responsibility and many necessary laws of restraint; and since there was never in the world an absolute good, why should people not be free to say they would have less freedom in order to have more of some other good?
What other good?
Security.
What else?
Stability.
And beyond that?
Beyond that, many political conservatives (and politicians of all stripes) would say, why, Decency.
I first heard of Garrett in the mid-1970s, back when a lot of us thought we'd soon see the decriminalization of marijuana use, the pardoning of the Vietnam draft dodgers, and a thoroughgoing rejection of Republican politicians in time for the nation's Bicentennial. Well, we only got two out of three, but in the meantime conservative journals such as National Review were printing articles in favor of drug decriminalization, the libertarian journal Reason at one point sang the praises of Felix Morley and interviewed Milton Friedman and Ronald Reagan; the scholarly and readable history by George H. Nash, The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America since 1945, identified the three main strands of the conservative coalition as traditionalists, libertarians, and anti-communists.
Writers of each of those three labels were featured in National Review. Rising Republican politicians included Philip Crane, Jack Kemp, and Ronald Reagan. The Conservative Book Club featured David Friedman's The Machinery of Freedom: A Guide to Radical Capitalism, and the first three volumes of Murray Rothbard's history of colonial America, Conceived in Liberty. In fact, that's where I got my copies of those books, and it certainly seemed to...well, to me, anyway, that there was plenty of possibility for a fruitful conservative-libertarian coalition. The subsequent election of Ronald Reagan, whose cabinet included Jack Kemp and Paul Craig Roberts, seemed to verify that that assumption was valid.
In fact, that very Reagan administration served to clarify the fissures which had always existed between conservatives and libertarians, what with supporting increased taxation and regulation, a more vigorous drug "war," and arms to the thuggishly theocratic regime in Iran (and those arms, let us not forget, weren't rifles and pistols, folks, but spare parts for the Iranians' HAWK missile system, available nowhere else but from the US). As well as two presidents named George Bush, for what is now known as the Religious Right, which arguably voted for Jimmy Carter in 1976, threw its support to Ronald Reagan in 1980 and has remained loyal to the Republican Party ever since.
To the detriment of American liberty, as can be seen in last week's vote on H.R. 310 in the House of Representatives.
Am I a free-speech absolutist? Of course I am. Alarmist? I don't think so, but read on, then you tell me.
Pejman Yousefzadeh, for example, claims that the libertarian-conservative marriage can actually be saved, and should be. He includes three links, and seems to think that this is important.
Mr. Yousefzadeh writes a great blog (one of my favorites, in fact) and makes a lot of sense. He is smart, well-intentioned, and articulate. He is also wrong. In order to think that preserving the conservative-libertarian "marriage" is valuable, you'd have to think that Bernie Sanders is a public defender of the Constitution.
For if conservatives (and, although it is inexact, I'll use Republican politicians as a proxy for the conservative breed) cannot muster public support for the Constitution, then the "conservative-libertarian marriage" as such is doomed, and should be put to death or at least divorce. If, that is, such a marriage of convenience makes any difference. It doesn't. There are no defenders of liberty or sound principle, neither on the conservative nor the libertarian side of this marriage, so whether said "marriage" remains in effect or becomes subject to divorce means nothing at all.
Why do I make such a claim? Do you remember what happened in the House of Representatives just this past week? Thirty-eight of them voted in favor of the First Amendment. That's right: when the issue was put as "broadcast decency," only thirty-eight out of 435 voted to uphold the First Amendment to the US Constitution, even though all of them have sworn to do just that. Courtesy of Jeff Jarvis, I present to you a list of those thirty-eight, and I invite you to count the Republicans:
: Here are the good people who voted for the First Amendment:
Abercrombie
Ackerman
Baird
Berman
Clay
Conyers
Delahunt
Farr
Fattah
Frank (MA)
Grijalva
Harman
Hastings (FL)
Hinchey
Honda
Kucinich
Lee
Lewis (GA)
Lofgren, Zoe
McDermott
Nadler
Owens
Paul
Payne
Sabo
Sánchez, Linda T.
Sanders
Schakowsky
Scott (VA)
Serrano
Sherman
Stark
Velázquez
Wasserman Schultz
Waters
Watson
Waxman
Woolsey
That's one Republican, one independent, and 36 Democrats.
Okay, so Jeff did the math for you. But let me go ahead and ask you anyway: who was the Republican? Well, it wasn't the Speaker of the House, because we don't find the name Hastert on this list; nor was it the House Majority Leader, because that's Tom DeLay, and his name's not on the list, either. So it wasn't the top Republican leadership.
And let's spread the joy to the other side of the aisle, shall we? For those libertarians who opined, in post-election November, that a Democratic-libertarian coalition might be just the next nifty thing in order to combat those wicked proto-Brown Shirt Republicans, look for these names: Pelosi and Hoyer. Both are no-shows: in other words, the House Minority Leader and the House Democratic Whip, the leaders of the Democratic Party in the House, both voted against adhering to the First Amendment (and don't worry, the House Republican Whip, Roy Blunt, did too).
Where are the Republican defenders of liberty? Where are the Democrat defenders of liberty? At this level, they are nowhere to be found -- and, when I write, "this level," keep in mind that someone is voting for each one of them.
Everyone occupying the top positions of leadership in both major parties in the House of Representatives voted to abstain from abiding by the Constitution in favor of some perceived vision of "broadcast decency."
You want traditional American values, conservatives? How about this one, going back to 1791?
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or
prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or
of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition
the Government for a redress of grievances.
"No law," got that? No law abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press.
Let's be explicit about what happened: openly socialist barking moonbat Bernie Sanders voted pro-First Amendment--and he's not the only kook on this list, either. The entire leadership of the House, including those putative representatives of conservatism, the Republicans, did not.
Nor is it any better, writes Ryan Sager, over in the Senate:
The war on free speech continues in Congress. The crew that did its darndest to repeal the First Amendment back in 2002 -- Sens. John McCain and Russ Feingold and Reps. Chris Shays and Marty Meehan - is back, and now its looking to clean up the mess left by the Bipartisan Campaign Finance Reform Act.That mess: insidious "527" groups, like MoveOn.org's Media Fund and the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, of course.
The problem, it seems, is that there are still just too darn many independent groups allowed to go shooting their mouths off about any darn thing any darn time they want -- and they can accept pretty much any amount of money from pretty much anyone.
There should be a law.
And no doubt, there will be.
So am I some dour libertarian-hating Objectivist, casting a scornful eye on all and sundry who fail to worship at the Church of Ayn Rand? Why, no...I don't recognize such a church, and I find decent writers and thinkers among conservatives, liberals, and libertarians alike. But when I see no movement afoot in any pro-liberty direction, why should I care about whether any political marriage of convenience survives? Especially when Republicans-conservatives use the language of liberty while consistently acting to destroy it, no, I don't care.
I should say, also, that, of the 38 Congressmen mentioned by Jarvis, many of those 36 Democratic nay-sayers undoubtedly voted no for the wrong reasons. They are Democrats, after all. They probably understand things, things such as political principles, no better than do Republicans, or large and small-L libertarians. So I'd have to answer Garet Garrett that no, freedom is not, after all, an absolute good, although it is definitely required by the nature of reasoning, acting man -- and I'd admit to him that very few people, especially politicians and pundits, seem willing to accept this.
I no longer see much mention of Garet Garrett these days. Neither conservatives nor libertarians seem to have much use for him any more, scourge of the New Deal that he was. His three essays, "The Revolution Was," "Ex America," and "Rise of Empire," are collected into a book, The People's Pottage, which I recommend to all readers of The Anger of Compassion. Read it, and ask yourself how many of today's "conservatives" would agree with it today. Indeed, see if those same conservatives don't occupy the same positions occupied by the New Dealers Garrett attacks.
In fact, why don't I give Garrett the last word? This is from his Conclusion to "The Revolution Was," and, in reading it, see if you can't realistically substitute today's administration for the New Deal, and today's President for FDR:
So it was that a revolution took place within the form. Like the hagfish, the New Deal entered the old form and devoured its meaning from within. The revolutionaries were inside; the defenders were outside. A government that had been supported by the people and so controlled by the people became one that supported the people and so controlled them. Much of it is irreversible. That is true because habits of dependence are much easier to form than to break. Once the government, on ground of public policy, has assumed the responsibility to provide people with buying power when they are in want of it, or when they are unable to provide themselves with enough of it, according to a minimum proclaimed by government, it will never be the same again.All of this is said by one who believes that people have an absolute right to any form of government they like, even to an American Welfare State, with status in place of freedom, if that is what they want. The first of all objections to the New Deal is neither political nor economic. It is moral.
Revolution by scientific technique is above morality. It makes no distinction between means that are legal and means that are illegal. There was a legal and honest way to bring about a revolution, even to tear up the Constitution, abolish it, or write a new one in its place: Its own words and promises meant as little to the New Deal as its oath to support the Constitution. In a letter to the House Ways and Means Committee, urging a new law he wanted, the President said: "I hope your committee will not permit doubt as to Constitutionality, however reasonable, to block the suggested legislation." Its cruel and cynical suspicion of any motive but its own was a reflection of something it knew about itself. Its voice was the voice of righteousness; its methods therefore were more dishonest than the simple ways of corruption.
You want to support decency, conservatives, and traditional American values? How about tar and feathers?