Friday editorial: Bizarro-world
Lately we have had an opportunity to reread, sometimes as many as five and even six times an evening, Margaret Wise Brown and Garth Williams’ classic 1952 children’s book, “Mr. Dog.”
The plot, such as it is, concerns a pipe-smoking dog named (because he belongs to himself) Crispin’s Crispian. He runs into a boy who also belongs to himself, and boy and dog live together happily ever after. At one point, Ms. Brown’s text explains:
“Crispin’s Crispian was a conservative. He liked everything at the right time. Dinner at dinnertime, lunch at lunchtime, breakfast in time for breakfast, and sunrise at sunrise and sunset at sunset.”
As an explanation of “conservative,” this leaves a lot to be desired, but maybe it’s enough for small children. More accurate would be Barry Goldwater’s definition, given in his book “The Conscience of a Conservative”:
“I have little interest in streamlining government or in making it more efficient, for I mean to reduce its size. I do not undertake to promote welfare, for I propose to extend freedom. My aim is not to pass laws, but to repeal them. It is not to inaugurate new programs, but to cancel old ones that do violence to the Constitution, or that have failed in their purpose, or that impose on the people an unwarranted financial burden.”
Watching Wall Street tycoons beg for government money and watching a Republican administration bend over backward to try to give it to them has been disconcerting. It’s the sort of thing we expect from Democrats. As Rep. Kenny Hulshof of Columbia, the Republican candidate for Missouri governor, told us the other day, it’s “Bizarro-world.”
The very nature of “conservative” has been shape-shifting all year. In January, as New Hampshire’s Republican primary approached, Sen. John McCain of Arizona, who had a 100 percent positive rating from the conservative Club for Growth in 2007, was deemed not conservative enough.
The Club for Growth is for economic conservatives, and Mr. McCain’s campaign nearly foundered over his suspect voting record on immigration, stem cell research, campaign finance reform and other social issues.
Mike Huckabee, the former governor of Arkansas, was the last GOP primary hope for social conservatives, but Club for Growth types viewed him as suspiciously populist. Although Mr. McCain won the nomination, he didn’t win the support of social conservatives until he named Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate.
Having run toward social conservatives, Mr. McCain now is forced by the Wall Street crisis to run away from his 26-year congressional record as an economic conservative. It must be terribly wrenching to wake up every morning and have to decide which hat to wear.
You find few conservatives today with the philosophical purity of Barry Goldwater or William F. Buckley, whose views on individual liberty gave them an almost libertarian stance on some social issues. The crisis on Wall Street is a real gut check for those who might be called “cafeteria conservatives” — some of this, a little of that, none of the rest.
Cafeteria conservatism was the mark of the Bush administration: a muscular foreign policy, to be sure, along with lower taxes, less regulation and judicial appointees who considered the Constitution as written in 1787 as perfectly adequate in all respects to the problems of the 21st century. But there also were deep government incursions into private behavior and civil liberties, huge deficits and expanded entitlement programs, all anathema to traditional conservatives.
Government intervention was not ended, but rather re-directed to private ends: to enrich lumber interests and utility companies, oil companies and military contractors. The interests of the few were placed above those of the many.
History teaches us that government, whatever form it takes and whatever philosophy it espouses, invariably overreaches, usually because of an excess of greed. That’s why there are revolutions, and why we have elections: to restore order, at least for a while, and perhaps even some predictability.
Dinner at dinnertime, lunch at lunchtime, breakfast in time for breakfast, and sunrise at sunrise and sunset at sunset.
Congratulations to the PD editorial board. Josef Goebbels would be proud of you. You put in just enough truth to make it a good propaganda. Not good propaganda, but adequate.
While you were reading dog stories, I was reading about Hussein errr Robin Hood who store from the rich to give to the poor. Why did he steal from the rich? The answer is …..”the poor didn’t have any money.
Then I read the communist Manifesto…Hussen must have read it, too. He is operating right out of it. While, McCain may be getting up mornings worrying about his past record, as you alleged. Hussin, obviously has the communist manifesto with a paper clip on the page where he is reading. When he gets up in the morning he reads and new page and has his aides explain it to him. He is making remarkable progress!!!