Michael King and the Center for Public Policy Priorities on Anti-Government Zealots, Democracy, Taxes, and the State

Austin Chronicle: What Works

Who Needs Government?

There's been plenty of ink spilled in the last week on the incompetence and negligence of the federal emergency authorities - even from sources more reflexively given to apologetics - and there will be time for plenty more of that. So I'll refrain from piling on at the moment. But one can only hope that, among other things, the Katrina disaster will become the high-water mark of the anti-government zealots who have been driving state and national policy for the last decade or so (indeed, the current federal mob dates back to the Reagan administration). It's important to understand that what they've done is not simply inattention or even negligence; it's been a calculated, ideologically driven campaign to weaken every community-based function of government.

When I was in my teens, my knowledge of politics and differing ideologies was limited the most crude concept of Democrat = Big Government Socialist, Republican = Small Government Capitalist. It took years of curiosity, argument, and observation to realize how inadequate those labels are, particularly the latter. There have been tiny - tiny - moves towards the Reaganite ideal, but they've been swamped by federal growth elsewhere.

Reagan had some good anti-government rhetoric, but hardly anything good came of it from this anti-government zealot's perspective.

Last week, as the disaster worsened, the Center for Public Policy Priorities released a brief statement on the inevitable results of that campaign that is as good a summary as I've seen. The veiled reference to "a leading proponent of tax cuts" refers to Grover Norquist, nominally director of Americans for Tax Reform and a Rick Perry crony but more generally an ideological cheerleader and PR bully for the GOP's anti-government juggernaut. Most recently, whenever the Legislature considered an actual revenue solution to the radically underfunded Texas school system, Norquist would issue from D.C. a peremptory warning to any legislator daring to violate his or her ATR "pledge" for "no new taxes."

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That CPPP statement is here if you care to read it.

Does Mr. King think holding a legislator to his or her word is a bad thing? Is it wrong to send a reminder of your promise to take a firm stand on an issue that can be very difficult stand to take in the face of, oh, people like Mr. King who are constantly calling for more government expenditure and services?

The CPPP commented, "We believe Americans must adequately support their government, which is after all merely the agent of our democracy. Those who oppose all tax increases on 'principle' and call for tax cut after tax cut are disserving our country.

The CCCP CPPP thinks the state is just a representative agent. If this was the case, then I could fire the motherfuckers and get another agent. But, note the slight of hand at play here: the state isn't our or my agent...it's the agent of "our democracy."

An abstract political concept cannot contract with an abstract social concept. That's an action only an individual can perform. An idea cannot act. But the CCCP CPPP wants us to believe the cumulative process and effect of voting for politicians and referendums has a will and mind of its own and has not only the characteristics of an rational being, but also has the right and authority to leash actual rational beings to the state to serve Democracy's purposes.

Cries that "our will" is the nature of Democracy and it is therefore nonsense to assert as I have that Democracy is tyranny refuse to understand that the existence of a single hold-out or dissident subject to the state's authority shatters their illusion of legitimate agency. All it takes is one, but it isn't hard to find millions. Those weeped-after "apathetic" non-voters didn't lend their positive consent in the elections they skipped, did they? Those furious progressives who voted for John Kerry didn't get their "agency," did they?

Democratic agency distills to one thing: the bigger group telling the smaller group how to live, even riding roughshod over those vaunted "checks and balances" when the impetus is great enough.

Dig those scare quotes around the word principle. Is it unprincipled to oppose all tax increases, regardless of the uses for that stolen wealth and the method of it's collection?

If anyone is annoyed I've been writing "the CCCP CPPP" they just need to ponder the reasons why its leaders published that last line. Further confirmation can be found prior to that statement when they wrote, "In addition, when we talk about rebuilding New Orleans, we should not talk merely about the structure of levees to hold back the water, but the structure of society to raise up the people."

They quite obviously think you and I ought to be serving the community rather than ourselves. In principle, there is no difference between that and the motive moral code of communists and socialists all over the world.

"In America today there are highly influential anti-government, anti-tax groups working to benefit the few at the expense of the many. One leading proponent of tax cuts [Grover Norquist] has remarked that he wants government to be so small that he can drown it in a bathtub. As the tragedy of Hurricane Katrina teaches us, however, when government is so small that we can drown it in a bathtub, it is not government that drowns, it is us."

Oh, how some morons* have had fun with that juxtaposition lately.

There is no doubt in my mind that influential groups exist to siphon wealth from some groups of people and hand it to others. For example, those who propose taxation as a way to fund welfare and those who demand preferential treatment for their businesses at the expense of competitors. It is also true that an across-the-board tax income cut is going to benefit the wealthy more than the poor...but this is due in no small part to the "progressive" nature of the income tax system. It is also due to one of those unspoken but widely accepted maxims: You loot where the money's at.

And it ain't in the hands of a single mother with two children living in a small apartment on the shitty side of town.

The leaders of the CCCP CPPP sum up their position explicitly in the last sentence. Never mind that the society we saw on display in the week after Hurricane Katrina was hardly a cut-and-dried lab test of limited government republicanism versus welfare state social democracy.

No, they are not very coy about where they stand. Without the state, we die. Without a significant government, we suffer. In order to everyone to survive and be successfull, we have to be pre-emptively shackled by laws against actions that violate no rights; more and more decisions must be made for us, in our name; an increasing proportion of the fruits of our labor must be taken from us to fund the failures and misery of others; and we'll administer and coordinate it all through a fucking popularity contest that no reality-based observer could possibly describe as "the will of the people."

Michael King thinks this is "as good a summary" as he's seen of the outcome generated when you tack towards the reduction of government in our affairs.

I think both he and the CPPP are cracked.

*I'm coming back to Ernest Partridge's bullshit in a separate post.

Posted by Drizzten at September 13, 2005 11:06 AM