Conservatives and Ideas
James Joyner throws down the gauntlet to conservative intellectuals, arguing that conservatives lack ideas with regards to at least two critical issues: global warming and income inequality. I would argue that while Joyner’s challenge to conservatives is provocative, it is fundamentally based on sand.
I would first call attention to the rhetorical trick Joyner is playing here. He insists that conservatives (and everyone else, for that matter) must accept the premise of his issues as assumed or else stand convicted of being intellectually bankrupt. Apparently, arguing that global warming is exaggerated (and there is growing evidence of exaggeration and even outright fabrication by global warming activists) or that perfect income equality is not economically or socially desirable is just out-of-bounds. In a sense, Joyner’s argument reduces to the trivial truism that conservatives are failing to proactively make intrinsically liberal arguments. Well, duh.
Second, I would note that conservatives are not totally silent on the broader issues within which global warming and income inequality are embedded as liberal foci. Contrary to breezy and self-righteous liberal stereotypes about conservatives, conservatives are not in fact reflexively hostile to the environment. While they resist government and international mandates as ineffective and even counter-productive, conservatives often promote private conservation and stewardship as moral issues and encourage market-based mechanisms for additional environmental protections, such as purchasing Brazilian rain forest tracts to protect these essential carbon sinks and biodiversity reservoirs from slash-and-burn agricultural use. If — IF — global warming advocates would stop exaggerating their “consensus” and holding witch-hunts against skeptics long to actually do the work of building a persuasive (rather than coercive) case that global warming was both real and man-made, many if not most conservatives would probably be willing to explore ways to create market incentives for reducing CO2 outputs and speeding transitions to cleaner energy forms. Because Al Gore’s disingenuous demagoguery on the issue has made many conservatives leery of the potential for government action on global warming to take away with one hand while giving corrupt handouts to certain friends of the activists themselves (e.g. the companies who claim, often deceptively, to counteract a “carbon footprint” by using contributions to plant trees), advocates of government-based global action still have a lot of persuading to do, but conservatives hardly bear sole blame for their credibility deficit.
A similar problem holds with regards to income inequality. Aside from their highly questionable premise that income equality is either economically efficient or socially desirable, liberals who hold conservatives responsible for inaction in this area presume too much moral and intellectual authority on their own side. Leftist philosopher Peter Singer wrote over 30 years ago arguing for a moral obligation to spend oneself into near poverty in order to alleviate others’ suffering, but many of the liberals who want to use the government to force others to give seem to be living quite well themselves. In fact, when it comes to actually taking personal action instead of just advocating for government action, studies have shown that conservatives are more giving than liberals, even controlling for income levels. Joyner seems to be just trying to conservatives responsible for not joining liberals’ hypocrisy on helping the poor.
Even in regards to government policy towards the poor, Joyner gives short shrift to conservative thinking on the issue. He characterizes conservative responses as being limited to “education”, but that is just not true. Conservatives argue that private-sector employment is a better solution to low income than dependency on government handouts or government make-work jobs. And the proven conservative method for creating such jobs is to reduce whenever possible the tax load that the government places on those who do the investing and the hiring. The fact that Joyner or other liberals don’t like this solution for emotional reasons (it is often characterized deceptively as a “handout to the rich”) doesn’t mean conservatives are avoiding the issue. If anyone is avoiding substantive discussion in favor of easy pejorative labels and changes of subject, it is liberals, not conservatives.
Now, is there room for conservatives to refresh and improve their commitment to serious policy ideas? Of course there is. The fixation among many conservatives for social issues like abortion, religious purity, and cultural objections to immigration is poorly suited to the critically important economic issues that confront the country today. Conservatives need to step back from their sweeping electoral defeats and their Pyrrhic gay marriage victories and reassess which issues are important and, more to the point, amenable to practical action.
But Joyner’s attempt to skew the ground for that debate by smuggling in assumed conclusions and misrepresenting conservative contributions is, quite frankly, just self-serving and petty.
“Conservatives argue that private-sector employment is a better solution to low income than dependency on government handouts or government make-work jobs. And the proven conservative method for creating such jobs is to reduce whenever possible the tax load that the government places on those who do the investing and the hiring.”
I’d add that in this recessionary period, “real conservative” (not Bush era) ideas are needed more than ever. Given that President-elect Barack Obama affirmed his commitment to an economic recovery plan that will mean 2.5 million more jobs by January of 2011, and that this spending will line items in OUR 700 billion package price tag. Every new spending proposal should be rooted in real cost-benefit analysis, not justified solely as anti-recessionary spending. If Americans are being asked to spend tens of billions of dollars building schools, then we need evidence on why incentive pay for teachers will do more for our children than equivalent spending on school structures. If Americans are being asked to spend billions on roads, then we need to know how much traveler time will be saved by pouring all that new asphalt. What assumptions are needed for those wind farms and solar panels to cover their costs? Will the bidding on jobs be open, and are the contracts going to go to the lowest bidder and not to someone’s buddy?
Increasing public employment is not a panacea for these tough economic times. “Make-work” jobs waste human time. Every worker put on a public salary is one less person who could be innovating in the private sector. Increasing public employment now may make sense, but those new public workers need to be producing something worthy of their time. Perhaps the right way to proceed is for Congress to pass conditional spending targets, indicating the size of available funds in different areas, like energy, education and transportation. After that, the relevant departments would need to come up with a list of projects, backed up by detailed estimates of costs and benefits, which would give taxpaying voters some assurance that their money is being well-targeted. Funds can then be re-allocated to departments that have produced plans with more value per dollar and away from departments that offers expensive boondoggles. All these steps should be transparent to the taxpayer (I assume they will be, since Obama promised more transparency in government…Hopefully he can live up to his promise there)… However, I get the sneaking suspicion that if these steps aren’t taken, and the American people cry foul, the powers that be will simply state that Americans are “awash in cynicism”.
I agree completely with your counterarguments, Jason, although I didn’t think Joyner’s positions were very far from yours (it seems more that you are rebutting Drum, as Joyner did, but you’re doing so more forcefully than Joyner.)
JayC- Isn’t it amazing that those commonsense steps you list should even be up for debate, and that experience shows that they probably won’t be taken? I just hope that Americans are paying attention and that the politicians take the oversight seriously, as our very future really does depend on using ’stimulus’ money wisely. There’s just no room for graft, bureaucratic inefficiency, and vote buying pork in our current situation. Even a small percentage of the huge sums being allocated would amount to massive waste that we just can’t afford.
As a moderate and a pragmatist, I would argue for a mixed approach to the current economic crisis that adds elements of both the conservative and liberal approach. My reason is that this crisis is too large and complex to be countered sufficiently by either of the ideologically “pure” sets of ideas. Conservative preferences for stimulating investments are a necessary part of the solution long-term, but they lack rapidity and do nothing to deal with the mixture of short-term economic and psychological factors that are dramatically suppressing demand. (The resulting deflationary pressures are “How To Kill Your Economy The Fast Way”, copyright 1929, by Herbert Hoover.) Liberal prescriptions for government bailouts and employment programs help increase demand and provide short-term economic and psychological stability (they address the weakness in the purely conservative approach), but are unsustainable without the addition of long-term conservative investment incentives that stimulate private-sector demand and relieve the employment and financial loads on the Fed.
Like with energy, DO BOTH. Ideological purism is the enemy of pragmatism, especially in a crisis. And if ever a situation called for throwing everything including the kitchen sink at a problem, the current financial crisis does. Even graft and pork have positive side effects, given the current situation.
P.S. In economic and foreign policy terms, President Bush is properly described in a non-pejorative way as a liberal. I say “non-pejorative” because this description does not rely on ideological differences, but only upon an assessment of the intellectual history of the assumptions he uses. For example, “neoconservatism” in foreign policy is a term without meaning. The proper name for the idea that spreading democracy would create peace is “Wilsonian liberalism”.
There is ballance.. Liberal principles gave us the money, now Conservaitive principles are needed to spend it. Look what the rapidity did with the last bailout monies. …We will use the money for buying illiquid bad mortgages, no wait, we wont, oh wait, yes we will again… this did not instill confidence, it squashed it.
Yes, I agree that a decent plan was very poorly executed and that the inconsistency displayed by Paulson undermined the upside potential. But that isn’t a reason to ditch the whole thing, that’s my point. The government temporarily (3-5 years) buying up bad debt is still the right prescription. Paulson needs to stick to it this time and not send the market inconsistent signals.
Bottom line: Paulson is a disaster, but the underlying ideas are the best available.
We can agree on Paulson, that is for sure.
Although, I have to say that if Obama is going to cut waste, like he says here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/26/us/politics/25cnd-transition.html?_r=1&hp
That ties my point of need for conservative principles in spending (and his apparent agreement with conservative principles in spending) even further. Iam arguing that Obama needs to stick to his guns on this… Not from an ideological point, but from a (That is our “true north” so to speak…one of his ultimate goals in spending this money..”Don’t veer to far off course”.) “Too much” will be determined by the people and the history books…He should choose his words carefully (and I have to say he has shown that he does), because if in a few years we look back on this statement, it will be a broken promise.