Tag Archives: morality

Progressivism, Conservatism, and Moral Equivalence

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Herb Croly, a founder of the Progressive movement, had this to say about the advantages of Progressivism:

To be sure, any increase in centralized power and responsibility, expedient or inexpedient, is injurious to certain aspects of traditional American democracy.  But the fault in that case lies with the democratic tradition; and the erroneous and misleading tradition must yield before the march of a constructive national democracy.  …the average American individual is morally and intellectually inadequate to a serious and consistent conception of his responsibilities as a democrat.

Theodore Roosevelt, another founder of the movement, spent much of his New Nationalism speech touting the virtues of the Federal government in nationalizing American businesses and of government guidance for individual prosperity.  There’re these, for example:

It has become entirely clear that we must have government supervision of the capitalization, not only of public-service corporations, including, particularly, railways, but of all corporations doing an interstate business.
…
It is my personal belief that the same kind and degree of control and supervision which should be exercised over public-service corporations should be extended also to combinations which control necessaries of life, such as meat, oil, or coal, or which deal in them on an important scale.  I have no doubt that the ordinary man who has control of them is much like ourselves.  I have no doubt he would like to do well, but I want to have enough supervision to help him realize that desire to do well.

And

We grudge no man a fortune in civil life if it is honorably obtained and well used.  It is not even enough that it should have been gained without doing damage to the community.  We should permit it to be gained only so long as the gaining represents benefit to the community.  This, I know, implies a policy of a far more active governmental interference with social and economic conditions in this country than we have yet had, but I think we have got to face the fact that such an increase in governmental control is now necessary.

FDR imposed wage and (farm) price controls because he didn’t believe businesses or Americans who ran them or worked for them were smart enough or honest enough to make their own decisions.

President Barack Obama is working to nationalize one-sixth of our nation’s economy, and he is on record as saying

I think at a certain point, you’ve made enough money.

And

I think when you spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody.

On the other hand, our Declaration of Independence has this:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed….

Thomas Jefferson had this on wealth redistribution and personal responsibility, in particular:

To take from one, because it is thought his own industry and that of his fathers has acquired too much, in order to spare to others, who, or whose fathers, have not exercised equal industry and skill, is to violate arbitrarily the first principle of association, the guarantee to everyone the free exercise of his industry and the fruits acquired by it.

Jim DeMint, late of the US Senate and current President of The Heritage Foundation:

Well, one of the most important things for Americans to be reminded of is that a lot of the exceptional nature of our country is founded in Judeo-Christian values that promotes individualism, personal responsibility, a strong work ethic, and a commitment to family, charity.

Mitt Romney had this during the 2012 Presidential election campaign:

We [conservative Republicans] believe in individual initiative, personal responsibility, opportunity, freedom, small government, the Constitution.  These principles, these American principles, are key to getting our economy back to being successful and leading the world.

It’s clear that Progressives subscribe to the view that Big Government is a better arbiter of what an individual should do with his prosperity or his business than is that individual, and that Big Government is the proper repository of moral obligation toward men and not men themselves.  The inevitable outcome of Progressivism, though, is failure.

It is a dependency on government (which can only benefit the men in government and not at all those dependents).  It is all men being equally poor, rather than all able to increase their individual and family prosperity, albeit some will be more successful than others.  It is all men being equally amoral, having surrendered their moral obligations (if not the duties themselves, as these are as inalienable as the rights that flow from them) to government to handle in their place.

Conservatives, on the other hand, subscribe to the view that government is legitimate only when it works for the people—the people consent to its behavior and governance.  To that end, government is best when it’s kept small and controllable.  Moreover, Conservatives hold to the primacy of the man over the state.  They also believe that not only are individuals better suited than government to determine the disposition of their own efforts and assets, they are obligated to make those decisions for themselves.  And to help those less fortunate, whether that poorer fortune comes through poorer decision-making, lesser ability, or just bad luck.

The inevitable outcome of Conservatism is quite different than that of Progressivism.

It is the opportunity—and the ability—of every man to show the best that there is in him.  It is the ability of every man and his family to climb the economic ladder, to leave poverty behind.  It is the ability for every man to satisfy his own moral obligations: his obligation to be the first to take care of his family, his obligation to do his best to not be a burden on others’ charity (and to stop being a burden as soon as may be should circumstances force him onto that charity), his obligation to help those less fortunate than himself, no matter his own present circumstance.  It is a recognition that government does, indeed, have a role to play in charity when more local resources are exhausted or otherwise unequal to the task—but as a last resort, not a first.

It is moral and economic prosperity and innovation for each of us, for all of us together, and through that, for our nation—and so for our safety.

There is no moral equivalence between these two ideologies; one world view plainly is superior to the other.  (In truth, the present dichotomy isn’t unique concerning the premise of moral equivalence; that’s just a tool with which Progressives attempt to legitimize their Big Government Knows Better meme.)

Obama’s Syrian Timidity

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From The Wall Street Journal:

President Barack Obama said the White House needed further proof that Syria’s security forces gassed civilians and rebels to change his “calculus….”

And

[T]he president walked a fine line by defending his insistence that he would not tolerate the use of chemical weapons, but also by saying he would not be pressured into quick military action in Syria.

Of course, it’s not possible to help the 70,000 Syrians already butchered by al Assad.  I’m sure, though, the surviving Syrians, including those who will be killed by al Assad’s repudiated government in the coming days and weeks will by heartened by Obama’s…studiousness.

Bill Murray, ex of the CIA and experienced in the area had this (I’m at a loss to know whether he offered this as an excuse or a description):

Lebanon was like a tar baby.  It sticks to your fingers, and you can’t get away from it.  Syria is the same way.  There’s not going to be a happy outcome no matter what you do.

Granted.  Stop worrying, then, about consequences, and do the right thing.  No more stalling, no more looking for excuses not to act.

Benghazi and Clinton

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From the House GOP Interim Progress Report…on the Terrorist Attacks in Benghazi Libya:

During 2012, in numerous communications with the State Department, officials from the U.S. Mission in Libya stress both the inadequacy of security as well as the need for additional personnel. Two critical cables warrant specific mention:

March 28, 2012, Ambassador Cretz sends a cable to Secretary Clinton requesting additional security assets.

April 19, 2012, the response cable from the Department of State to Embassy Tripoli, bearing Secretary Clinton’s signature, acknowledges Ambassador Cretz’s request for additional security but instead articulates a plan to scale back security assets for the U.S. Mission in Libya, including the Benghazi Mission.

In her testimony before Congress in January, Clinton said,

With specific security requests they didn’t come to me.  I had no knowledge of them.

It’s true enough that the boss’ signature is routinely added to correspondence that has been prepared by subordinates and then sent out.  This, of course, does not absolve the boss of responsibility for the content or outcome of that correspondence.  The addition of the boss’ signature is solely at the discretion of that boss.  Secretary of State Clinton had, to coin a phrase, constructive knowledge of her cable acknowledging the deteriorating security conditions at her Benghazi Consulate, and she ordered the continued withdrawal of security from that Consulate, anyway.  Furthermore, by her position and her decision to delegate the application of her signature to her correspondence, she had imputed knowledge of the situation and of her decision to proceed with her security drawdown.  She simply lied in her testimony before Congress.

The Interim Report can be seen here and here.

Remember this in 2016.

The President’s Powers of Persuasion

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Peter Nicholas and Kristina Peterson have an article on this in The Wall Street Journal.

Democratic strategists, lobbyists and some Capitol Hill aides see last week’s defeat of the gun-bill amendments as a worrisome sign that Mr Obama hasn’t found a way to bridge the partisan divide in Congress….

Except for the part about he hasn’t tried.  Instead, he’s worked hard to exacerbate a natural difference between the two parties.  He routinely insults and denigrates those who disagree with him: those bitter clingers to guns and religion, for instance.  His DHS, at the start of Obama’s administration characterizing returning veterans as right wing extremists.  During his sequester “negotiations” he said

[Republicans] will not collect a ransom in exchange for not crashing the American economy.

That they were not arguing for any such thing is beside the point.  And in response to his gun control legislation being defeated in his Democrat-controlled Senate,

The gun lobby and its allies willfully lied about the bill[.]

Nicholas and Peterson also write, rather naively in my opinion,

While the White House is renewing its outreach to lawmakers, including Republicans, some believe the overtures feel thin—driven by pressing legislative deadlines.

And they quote a carefully unnamed “White House official” as saying that Obama

has used every tool in his toolbox to try to advance his agenda. And that includes meeting with, talking with, dining with and negotiating with lawmakers of both parties[]

while carefully ignoring two things: this “outreach” has only begun in the last few months of his now five-year-old administration.  Up to now—and continuing coincident with this…outreach—he’s only been willing to talk about how evil Republicans are.

The other thing being ignored is Obama’s fundamental dishonesty: on “balanced” spending and tax reform, Obama got from the fiscal cliff negotiations $600 billion in tax increases and $60 billion in spending cuts.  Some balance.  His budget proposal extends this: he demands another trillion in tax increases in the name of “balance.”  The sequester, which he proposed and now denies proposing, would bring economic Armageddon according to the campaign he ran in lieu of actual negotiation—it didn’t.  This is coupled with Republican legislative proposals to give him the authority to spread the cuts according to his priorities and so lessen his predicted pain, but which he threatened to veto.  And there’s that dishonesty of calling those who disagree with him liars.

It’s no wonder his overtures “feel thin.”  They are; they’re for show only.  If Obama has used every tool in his toolbox, it’s because respect for the views of others, a willingness to negotiate or to compromise, are not tools in that box.

Some Remarks on Terrorism

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Congressman Tom Cotton (R, AR) had some on the House floor earlier this week.

I rise today to express grave doubts about the Obama Administration’s counterterrorism policies and programs.  Counterterrorism is often shrouded in secrecy, as it should be, so let us judge by the results.  In barely four years in office, five jihadists have reached their targets in the United States under Barack Obama: the Boston Marathon bomber, the underwear bomber, the Times Square Bomber, the Fort Hood shooter, and in my own state—the Little Rock recruiting office shooter.  In the over seven years after 9/11 under George W Bush, how many terrorists reached their target in the United States?  Zero!  We need to ask, “Why is the Obama Administration failing in its mission to stop terrorism before it reaches its targets in the United States?”

Indeed.

Now couple this with Obama’s decision on Thursday, through his Attorney General, Eric Holder, to intervene in an FBI terrorist investigation by marching a Federal Magistrate into the surviving Boston Marathon terrorist’s hospital room, mid-questioning by the FBI, to Mirandize that terrorist.  Which terminated the FBI’s questioning of the terrorist.