Liberty on Tap since 1984

Tea Party Fights an Old Battle

My father, who died at age 97 in 2005, was a lifelong Republican but more importantly, a lifelong conservative. As such he constantly complained about moderate Republicans ("country clubbers," "Rockefeller Republicans," "RINO's") because their actions never matched their rhetoric.

In 1952 he supported "Mr. Republican," Senator Robert Taft of Ohio. A genuine conservative Taft opposed the New Deal; a non interventionist, he also opposed US entry into World War II, a position now anathema to the neoconservative war party that has taken control of the Republican Party and much of the conservative commentariat, not to mention think tanks such as Heritage. I don't know where Heartland is on intervention but would not be surprised to see them supportive of the current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and a future war against Iran when the war drums begin to beat for military action there. I hope I'm wrong. As it now stands the neoconservatives appear willing to support any action to make the Middle East safe for Israel, no matter how many Iowa farm boys will need to lose their lives, to paraphrase Pat Buchanan.

I'm often amazed that conservatives who condemn social engineering domestically are quite willing to engage in international military social engineering in the name of establishing freedom, democracy, and American virtue around the world. And I wonder how that came to be. It seems to me that non intervention should be the conservative position and that a smaller, streamlined military one of its policy goals. The way contemporary conservatives talk about small government, one would think that the Department of Defense inhabits one planet while "big government" lives on another. None seems to worry in the least about billions spent on the hundreds of US military activities, the thousands of troops (not including those in Iraq and Afghanistan), and the hundreds naval ships deployed around the world. All these billions are spent while US borders remain unsecured. What, pray tell, is conservative about that?

Robert Taft would strongly disapprove.

But back to my father. When Eisenhower took office in 1953, rank and file conservatives hoped to see the New Deal dismantled or at least scaled down. It never happened. For 60 years government has grown under both parties. To my father the only good thing about Republicans was that they weren't Democrats. Beyond that, he saw little difference.

And now we have the wonderful Tea Party movement. I love the participants, mostly because they annoy the liberal establishment and also because they have the prettiest girls, Sarah Palin and Michelle Bachman, for example. They also make liberal TV commentators sputter and spit in exasperation. I love to see the ruling class made uncomfortable. But I'm not optimistic. Government and politics are inherently corrupt and no one is likely to change that. Too many people benefit from the current arrangements.

I look for it all to collapse because the current level of spending and borrowing cannot be maintained and no Republican or Democrat has the courage to do anything about it.

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Comment by Rick Henderson on September 22, 2010 at 6:26pm: Marcotte,

I'm absolutely open to letting Japan provide for its own defense. And I'd be happy to largely get away from Korea if the Norks would become sane. I'm also not really sure why we have such a large permanent presence in Europe.

But the isolationists suggest we can go a lot further than that. That we should essentially have a handful of forces defending the borders, a few ships protecting domestic ports, and otherwise relying on state volunteer militias (at least, if you really take their arguments seriously). We're not Switzerland. Nor should we be. If it were actually possible to expect that a multinational organization like the U.N. could keep aggressors at bay, then I'd favor a larger role for those outfits at the expense of the U.S. military. They have a lot of work to do to become credible "defense' institutions. (NATO has its place, but if I'm not mistaken, it depends on member nations providing members of their own military for personnel.)

Comment by Joel Mathis on September 22, 2010 at 12:31pm: No, Rick, I know you're not a neocon.

I'm not certain what the right approach to a post-Cold War world is. I think it involves taking terrorism seriously, but not letting terrorists bait us into unsustainably asymetrical time/money/blood commitments. It takes seriously the fact that we do have trade with the rest of the world, as you say Rick. But it probably doesn't involve invasions of Iraq.

Comment by Rick Henderson on September 22, 2010 at 12:18pm: Joel, I may have to read one or both. I'm hardly a neocon (during the '80s, I was rather fond of the Reagan Doctrine -- arm the locals so we don't have to fight the bad guys on our soil), but for one thing, if you believe that free trade is a worthy objective, then you have to be willing -- at a minimum -- to have a sufficient military force to defend ships at sea. That's the minimum.

Comment by Marcotte Anderson on September 22, 2010 at 12:17pm: Source for the data used in my graph.

Comment by Marcotte Anderson on September 22, 2010 at 12:16pm: Besides, military spending as a percentage of the federal budget peaked in the mid-1950s and has been dropping ever since.
It's still too high. Why should we spend more money on defense [sic] than the next, what is it, 14 countries?

Also, spending as a percent of both the budget and GDP increased under both Reagan and GW Bush, further supporting Phillip's charge of hypocrisy among the Republicans on this issue.

Comment by Joel Mathis on September 22, 2010 at 11:59am: I'm reading Peter Beinart's "The Icarus Syndrome" right now, and just read Andrew Bacevich's "Washington Rules." I'm trying to figure out how best to use American power abroad, in a way that accepts that there are limits to American resources and abilities, without retreating into pure isolationism. I think the country and world look very different if we did that, and maybe not *always* for the better.

Comment by Rick Henderson on September 22, 2010 at 11:58am: Besides, military spending as a percentage of the federal budget peaked in the mid-1950s and has been dropping ever since.

Comment by Rick Henderson on September 22, 2010 at 11:53am: The thread has gotten away from the point of Phillip's original post, and that is a call for an isolationist America.

Do you truly believe that America should not have entered World War II? (The European Theater, anyway.) I'm delighted the Republicans rejected that ideology. Had Taft's view of conservatism prevailed, not only would the Nazis and Soviets have established spheres of domination in Europe, Japan would have controlled Asia, and there would have been no countervailing force to prevent the spread of either Nazism or Communism in Africa and South America. We would have been isolated, all right. And not in a way that any person who claims to love liberty would appreciate.

Comment by Marcotte Anderson on September 21, 2010 at 9:32pm: Republican establishment, which is not the same as the conservative establishment
I guess that depends on your definition of "establishment." To me, the conservative establishment is the Republican establishment because they are the only ones with institutional power. In my mind, the power of the Tea Party is grass roots in nature, which is decidedly non-establishment.

I think you missed my point about the Democrats though. My prediction is that extremists such as Christine O'Donnell will alienate enough moderates that the Democrats will win those seats where the Tea Party has upset the more widely supported (by the establishment and moderates) Republican. I respect the passion of the Tea Party movement, but I think they are making some strategic errors in the name of their idealism (like liberals who voted for Nadar).

Comment by Rick Henderson on September 21, 2010 at 8:50pm: The "professional left" has exorcised the vast majority of what used to be called the New Democrats from the party. This election may well get rid of the rest of them.

Tea Party Fights an Old Battle

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