All Things Michael Miles

William F. Buckley called. He rolled over in his grave and can’t light his smoke.

Dennis Prager, a syndicated radio talk-show host and columnist for the National Review Online, wrote a piece that was published on the NPR website November 2nd. It explains his reasoning for straight-ticket voting, and the argument deserves a response.

I’m not going to argue against Mr. Prager’s opinions, although it’s tempting. That is for another venue, and since I’m not a foreign policy expert or economist, it would provide you nothing except a “he said, he said” tussle. Nor is it necessary, for there are plenty of problems with the presuppositions Prager relies upon to make his argument; they are my focus.

Let’s begin with the statement, “With only two parties competing in American elections, each party has had to encompass a much wider spectrum of ideologies.” In order for this to be true, the majority of viewpoints in American society would have to be represented, and there is no evidence this is the case. Nor is the statement intuitive: the GOP experienced ideological purges after 1964, 1992 and 2004. Independent voters, which now make up a majority of the electorate, move back and forth between the parties (the antithesis of Prager’s op-ed), demonstrating their ideology is represented by neither party. I could easily design a party platform which perfectly reflects my views, instead of being forced to compromise and support an existing political party. However, the assertion is convenient for those who want to claim the Democratic Party represents socialists and Marxists, but that is no more valid than claiming all Republicans are fascists. No genuine, intellectual analysis would claim that. If you doubt me, go find an authentic socialist and ask them if they agree with the Obama administration’s economic plan.

And quickly, before I move on, the Republican Party is not – “at long last” – the party of small government. Movement leaders, as recently as last week, are on record supporting Social Security, Medicare and ever-expanding military involvement throughout the world. Even Prager advocates military intervention in Iran, in his own op-ed. George W. Bush refuses to repudiate his use of torture or indefinite detention, and it is uncertain whether the GOP is willing to investigate or prosecute him. The PATRIOT Act is still alive and well. These are not the hallmarks of small government. As I have argued in the past, the GOP – even with its infusion of Tea Party energy – does not behave in a conservative fashion. The mistake made by Prager and others is confusing positions adopted by conservatives as being conservative positions.

He also asserts that small government is required for liberty. I’ve never really understood this. Don’t get me wrong, I’m fluent in Hayek’s economic argument about centralized planning. And my knowledge of American and Modern European history equals or bests the next guy. Maybe that’s where I miss the point: liberalism was a movement to provide more liberty to citizens. It didn’t reject government, it simply decentralized power. Dethrone the monarch and allow the subjects participation and responsibility. The Boston Tea Party wasn’t about taxes, it was about a lack of representation in Parliament. So I have to ask Mr. Prager, do you think taxes are tyrannical, or are you an anarchist?

But my favorite has to be the contemporary trap of political philosophy: equating American exceptionalism with conservative values. Exceptionalism – the assertion of moral superiority and projection of might around the world – gained considerable momentum after World War II, and has advanced unimpeded. It has roots in Natural Law (see Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s A Discourse Upon the Origin and the Foundation of Inequality) and bears a striking resemblance to the Jacobinism that early conservatives and our forefathers were so afraid of. It is a radical belief that we can remake the world in our political image, with little regard for the “cultural gravity” of other societies. By laying claim to it, the American Right betrays its heritage and history in the conservatism of Burke and Adams.

Now, Prager and those of a similar mind are free to believe what they wish, which kind of neuters the argument that Democrats are opposed to liberty. If he wishes to assert that George W. Bush’s knowledge of foreign policy is more impressive than Joe Biden’s, so be it: people can judge that statement on their own. But let’s be clear: when he champions “Sarah Palin [confronting] Iran rather than [placing] her faith in negotiations and in the United Nations” he makes an assertion that has no basis in conservative philosophy. And yet he uses conservatism to provide credibility to his argument, asking people to believe that his path is traditional, reasoned and proven, when it is not. Instead, the contemporary American Right seeks to refashion society in a form that hasn’t existed in over 150 years, if ever. It’s goal is to start over, rejecting almost all of the progress this country has achieved, and discarding the tradition and incrementalism that is the hallmark of conservative principles.

There is a reason that right-of-center thinkers like myself have a problem with the GOP. It’s the same reason that Russell Kirk, who wrote the definitive tome on modern conservative thought, “The Conservative Mind,” broke with them. It is the same reason that Reagan Republicans like Orrin Hatch, Richard Lugar, John McCain and Olympia Snowe are in the crosshairs of the Tea Party: the American Right has radically transformed itself over the past three decades. In the process, it has dragged the rest of the political apparatus along with it. And while I realize the advantage of modifying the frame of debate to cast the Right as defenders of liberty, that does nothing to advance civil discourse. For there is nothing inherently free about small government, or inherently oppressive about big government. It is the reach of government and it’s openness to participation that is important.

I can think of a lot of words to describe the Democratic Party: cowardly, corporate, spineless, disinterested, but radical would not be one of them. Over the next few months, as Mitch McConnell and John Boehner refuse to legislate in order to disgrace the President of the United States, we need to stay focused on what is really the radical agenda. Is it a barely-left-of-center President attempting to meet in the middle, or a Republican leadership wanting to turn back the clock to the Gilded Age? Prager eschews the prospect of European progress; let him honestly argue for third-world economic isolation.

We live in interesting times. It is a testament to the amount of change we face that there is so much cultural reaction: the Tea Party being just one manifestation. While the politics and shouting are certainly colorful, they cause me to reflect on the reasons why our society struggles to incorporate cultural knowledge from generation to generation. Before I speculate on these reasons, I’d like to select a couple of contemporary, critical issues and illustrate the failure to leverage historical knowledge in their resolution.

America faces legitimate policy debates, regardless of whether the standards are born by political parties or others. Our country is still submerged in a deep economic morass, brought about by deregulation and a laissez-faire attitude. After nearly a decade of war in Central Asia and the Persian Gulf, a profound military restructuring is occurring before our eyes, with an almost sexy, rebranding program. And, as one of those conflicts winds down, the bellicosity of many politicians towards Iran, North Korea (video via ThinkProgress) and Venezuela increases. While these issues all have history to inform the debate, policy makers are repeating a number of mistakes without much notice on the part of the press or citizenry.

Global Transformation

I’m going to start here because this seems like the easiest item (although I’m sure that many pundits will disagree.) Since the beginning of World War II, there has been an unbroken belief in the ability of America to transform other countries in the world with its military power. Whether through covert action, such as the 1953 overthrow of Iranian Prime Minister Mossadegh, and tinkering throughout Latin America, or full-scale warfare in Vietnam, this belief evolved to its pinnacle with the Bush Doctrine, when our country asserted that we were the sole arbiters of deciding whose values were aligned with our own, and who needed to be deposed. If a political regime is not allied with us, then military force is a desirable transformation tool.

Historically, the United States’ track record on ‘regime change’ is poor. While we did maintain influence in Iran for a quarter-century after the Mossadegh coup, the backlash which led to the Iranian revolution has caused headaches for us in the Persian Gulf for over three decades. The overthrow of Prime Minister Diem in Vietnam was allowed in order to assert more American authority, but we were unable to fill the consequent power vacuum and eventually failed to achieve our objectives in southeast Asia. And then there’s Iraq. George Bush and the neocons opened up a huge vacuum in one of the most unstable parts of the world, and acted surprised when their “reverse domino theory” failed to spread democracy across the region.

Power vacuums behave unpredictably, and are inherently dangerous. This is especially true when authoritarian leaders are overthrown, because nothing has had the opportunity to develop and fill the vacuum in an orderly fashion. Now, I don’t want to sound snarky, but that was one of the first things I learned in International Relations class – Political Science 102 with Dr. Cindy Kaplan. It requires a tremendous amount of hubris to engage in this kind of behavior.

Counterinsurgency (COIN)

I could rant about this for hours, and others have given it serious treatment. However, my only purpose is to outline the issue and illustrate how it applies to my thesis that America has a cultural knowledge problem.

The policy of counterinsurgency is sexy-hot right now, and General David Petraeus – the head of the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan – has more celebrity cache than Brad Pitt. But is our collective memory that short? Most of us think of the military as a brute-force tool to be used as a last resort when lots of people need to be killed in order to force a nation-state to submit. After all, that’s exactly what it was through World War II. For a number of reasons beyond the scope of this post, that all changed with Vietnam. After realizing that the Vietnamese could not be decisively defeated, the tactic of counterinsurgency was introduced. It was an abject failure, and the Army Officer Corps repented. In fact, the tactic was so unpopular through the 70′s and 80′s that David Petraeus actually divorced himself from the idea in his Ph.D. dissertation.

The Powell Doctrine wiped away the bitter taste of Vietnam when it was applied during the first Gulf War. It was used again for the invasion of Iraq, and the American public was treated to “shock and awe.” However, after the Iraq war went off the rails, and the Bush Administration was handed its head on a pike in the 2006 mid-term elections, something new was needed. In stepped General Petraeus with his counterinsurgency manual. It was a political lifeline for George W. Bush, and the “surge” allowed him to extend the Iraq war as well as redefine the measure of success. As the idea of decisive victory is jettisoned in Iraq and Afghanistan, we are being prepared for “the Long War” – decades of low-grade deployment and indecisiveness – right before our very eyes, and without public debate.

Regulation of Industry

At this writing, the Deepwater Horizon disaster is not quite four months old. The well has been temporarily capped, but not before an estimated 4.9 million barrels of oil spilled into a fishery that supplies 25% of the domestic catch. In 2008, the American financial sector completed a decade-long bender by placing its head between its knees and puking all over its feet, and ours. Just two weeks ago, a half-billion eggs from two factory farms were recalled for salmonella contamination, affecting fourteen states. Asserting that the interests of consumers are not being adequately protected would be a gross understatement.

And yet, the public debate has deteriorated into an uncivil shouting match, with an entire political party doubling-down on the idea that we already have too much regulation. Despite my pleasant, carefree day-to-day life, I am being told that I live under the yoke of tyranny. This hyperbole is now the center of the debate, as opposed to fringe background noise. While it is easy for many people to dismiss, it exerts influence on the parameters of the debate. Our country continues to move towards the fringe, albeit slowly. I wonder what Sir Francis Galton would say about that?

For those ideologues on the right, it is pertinent to point out that even two ‘godfathers’ of libertarian economics – Adam Smith and Friedrich Hayek – recognized the importance of regulation to optimize markets. For if a consumer in the market can’t be assured of the contents of a product, it is impossible to assign an accurate value to it. Nicolas Gruen wrote an interesting piece on Smith’s treatment of regulations in the banking industry, but you can also go straight to the horse’s mouth and find passages in The Wealth of Nations. Hayek devotes quite a bit of space to this topic in his seminal piece, The Road to Serfdom. He notes that, in order for free markets to thrive, barriers to entry must be low, and consumers must have adequate information to make decisions. These things and others require an appropriate amount of government regulation, as well as developed legal statutes and an efficient court system with integrity. Laissez-faire is a phrase that is never given consideration.

Preserving Cultural Knowledge

It’s not that I don’t believe in experimentation. But Americans have a tendency to over-apply the notion of sui generis. By seeing each situation as unique and undiscovered, we relieve ourselves of the need to make tough and unpopular decisions. How do we explain the detachment from reality? It’s easy to blame things on ignorance, but that doesn’t explain much. And the cultural knowledge itself – preserved in our literature, oral and written histories, cinema and video – is certainly available to anyone who looks for it. In fact, it requires a concerted effort to weave an alternate mythology, an effort that should be more visible to informed Americans. The process is intense and expensive, so it should come as no surprise that its purpose is to gain power, which illustrates the high value of holding power in this country. That so many of our politicians – people we trust to lead our country – would forego knowledge and accomplishment to the benefit of the nation, for the purpose of gaining power, is beyond disappointing (remember ‘Country First‘?)

The inefficient transfer of cultural knowledge does more than simply vindicate the adage of repeating mistakes, it wastes tremendous societal resources and hinders achievement. If Thomas Jefferson’s vision for the United States included progress through the application of Enlightenment reasoning, then anything less than the preservation and reliance on cultural knowledge will fail to achieve that goal. But beyond the references to Hayek and Smith, conservatism demands pragmatism as well. Edmund Burke, the modern father of conservatism (now called paleo-conservatism to give the neo-conservative radicals a pass) strongly believed that dogma impeded progress, and was anathema to good public policy (see Russell Kirk’s conservative bible, ‘The Conservative Mind’ for a wonderful treatment of many conservative thinkers.) In other words, storing and utilizing cultural knowledge isn’t a political issue, it is – obviously – a societal one. We can strive to move forward and achieve excellence in our public discourse, or we can remain uncivilized.