Let this serve as an introductory post to this blog. It's a bit dry, but most mission statements are. I promise to you, dear reader, that things will become markedly more interesting as time goes on. Certainly less academic. So here it is: the New Republican Philosophy in a nutshell:
The principle of Liberty states that the only time it is right for a government to intercede on the lives of its citizens is to the extent that it is the responsibility of any government to protect its citizens from threats both foreign and domestic. In other words, a citizen is free to act as he wishes, within the scope of the law, so long as that citizen is not harming others. This issue is tied closely to the idea of justice: if the government can only intercede when harm is being inflicted, how should it behave in such a situation?
There are several methods by which justice can be implemented. The first, called procedural justice, is a system of creating and implementing procedures which are fair to all parties involved. This system of justice requires some governing body to determine what procedural methods best serve the citizenry, and how to tailor those processes to allow all citizens an equal opportunity to state their claim. This is the basic operating principle behind the modern civil court system, where judges enforce methods and procedures designed specifically to allow all parties an opportunity to achieve some modicum of justice in any property dispute.
The second method of justice is retributive. This method centers around the idea that when a person’s rights are violated (which falls under the heading of “harm” indicated in the principle of Liberty), the violator has given himself an unfair advantage over the person who he has violated. For example, a person who robs a citizen of the money in his wallet has given himself a considerable financial advantage, and has unfairly encumbered that citizen with undue financial loss. Punishment is necessary, per this method, to regain this balance. Retributive justice is characteristic of modern criminal proceedings, where judges are charged with determining what punishment best reestablishes balance.
The third method of justice is distributive. Under this method, a government is charged with distributing all property among its citizens in a way that is fair to all. There are many methods by which this could be done: all property could be distributed to each citizen equally, or according to need, or according to which citizens will make the greatest impact on society with certain goods, etc. This method of justice does not seem to have a readily available example in contemporary American government. It seems as though a strict definition of Liberty precludes this situation from happening: a government has no right to take property away from a citizen or deny property to a citizen in any way if that citizen came to own the property by legal and harmless means.
This plays into the idea of taxes. Again, under a strict definition of Liberty, it is inappropriate for a government to tax its citizens beyond what is necessary to protect them. A more liberal (as opposed to conservative) interpretation of liberty, however, claims that the vast inequalities of wealth – inequalities perhaps best illustrated in John Penn’s Income Parade – have a detrimental effect on some citizens, and that these inequalities must be evened out in order to protect those citizens from further harm. This broader definition suggests that in addition to protecting its citizens, a government also has a duty to protect the concept of justice at all costs, even at the expense of property rights.
This is where the factions in the modern two-party system differ. On the right are the conservatives (generally the Republicans, but also Libertarians and several other smaller factions) who generally believe that the government’s sole charge is to protect its citizens from the threat of physical harm, and to uphold an individual’s right to free enterprise within the scope of the law.
On the left are the liberals (generally the Democrats, but also socialists, communists, the Green Rainbow Party, and others) who generally agree that a government should protect its citizens from physical harm, but who also believe that the government should be involved in protecting citizens from homelessness, joblessness, lack of proper education, lack of medical care, poverty, etc. In other words, modern liberals believe that if left to its own devices, the citizenry is incapable of completely defending itself from intangible harm.
Conservatives respond that government is unnecessary to protect citizens from these admittedly terrible social maladies. While the citizenry as a collection of individuals may not be able to defend itself from joblessness, for example, conservatives say the Free Market has exactly that capability: joblessness leads to a decrease in average household income, which leads to decreased consumer buying power, which leads to a necessary decrease in the price of goods, which increases the occurrence of sales, which drives profits, which leads to corporate expansion, which creates jobs.
The tension among conservatives, a tension which may have contributed to the decline in the popularity of Republicans, is the reconciling of the conservative take on Liberty with the majority moral opinion as it relates to social issues such as homosexuality, abortion, and stem cell research. If, for example, government’s responsibility is to protect its citizens from harm, why do many conservatives wish for the government to create a constitutional ban on gay marriage? An amendment to the Constitution is certainly a form of governmental influence on the lives of its citizens, and one that does not serve to protect its citizens from harm of any kind. Is that not a direct contradiction of the conservative interpretation of Liberty? It seems to be.
The revitalization of the Republican Party must hinge on the resolution of this contradiction. It must concern itself with procedural justice in that it should strive to make laws which protect an individual’s right to earn and keep his income, irrespective of America’s economic state. It must concern itself with retributive justice to act swiftly and terribly against those who would harm its people, and to do so without sacrificing the Liberty of its citizens. Republicans must also wash their hands of hot-button social issues where a so-called moral stance necessarily requires the violation of personal Liberty.
This revitalization must begin now. The ancient Greeks defined a concept called kairos, which is essentially the ability of a rhetor to take advantage of a moment in time which is particularly suited for a certain discussion. The changing of the President and the current economic crisis have both combined in two distinct instances to create the perfect kairotic moment.
The first such instance is the taxation of certain AIG executives of up to 90% of the bonuses entitled to them by contract. The President gave the IRS the authority to target these specific individuals and rob them of the money that they were owed. This is clearly an instance where the government has interceded into the lives of its citizens without providing them protection from harm. It seems as though the government took these bonuses as an act of retributive justice without any regard for procedural justice at all. More importantly, however, this act of government shows a blatant disregard for the right to own property that was legally and harmlessly (if unethically) obtained.
The second instance is the bailout of the auto industry. While the modern liberal may have a point to make in that the collapse of the auto industry would put a lot of people out of work and would drastically affect our economy, it is not the responsibility of government to give aid or advice or to literally restructure any company, regardless of how iconic that company is. The President’s firing of Rick Wagoner, former CEO of General Motors, therefore, flies in the face of the preservation of free enterprise. This governmental tampering does nothing to protect the American people from tangible harm, and instead launches the State to new and inappropriate levels of governmental regulation.
The Utilitarian justification for these is, of course, that taking away the bonuses of AIG executives and the bailout of the auto industry create the most happiness for the greatest number of people. But is that sufficient reason for a government to act in a certain way? I would offer that this Utilitarian view is incompatible in certain situations with the Liberty principle, and I offer the following hypothetical as evidence:
Suppose China was about to launch long-distance missiles at the United States, and the US found out about it. Then suppose that China refused to enter into diplomatic discussions with the US. Then suppose that the US announced plans to launch a preemptive attack on China to disable the missile silos and destroy urban targets in Beijing so that citizens in the US were not harmed. Now suppose the international community objected strongly to this, saying that the bombing of Beijing would severely damage the international economy.
What to do? The Utilitarians say that because not bombing China will make the most people happy, the right thing to do is not to bomb China. In this event, Americans will die, so this philosophy is ineffective as a system of government. Instead, a government must concern itself with the safety and wellbeing of its citizenry above all else, and do only those things which will protect it from harm. A government should do these things irrespective of the impact it would have on those people who are not its citizens, and it should do so without sacrificing personal liberties or the right to free enterprise.
A currently indefinitely-suspended radio pundit, while talking about terrorism, once put it like this: the only way an American President can conduct an effective summit of foreign nations is to walk into the room and say, “The United States of America will take whatever actions necessary to keep its citizens safe. To the extent that your interests parallel ours, welcome aboard. If they do not, we have no business with you.”
So if the hypothetical is applied back to the situations above, we have a weighty objection to the Utilitarian justification of the current administration’s actions. It is not enough to say that a government should do those things that benefit the most people, because there are certain situations that benefit fewer people, but which are the right things to do. Utilitarianism, despite its claim to be able to determine the morally correct action in a given situation, does not universally apply to all situations.
Objections to this stance include the idea that even if a government acts to protect the safety of its citizens, it ignores the welfare of the world at large, and even the long-term welfare of its citizens. In the hypothetical above, attacking China may save American lives, but it also severely impedes the world economy, of which America is very much a part.
But notice that this philosophy does not seek to establish policies which undermine the welfare of the citizens for the sake of constant protection – the idea that a government can protect all of its citizens from harm at all times is naïve in theory and paranoid in practice, and must come at the price of Liberty; that is not the aim of this philosophy. Instead, this philosophy relies on factors such as the Free Market and the so-called right to prosperity in order to sustain the lives of its people.
Of course, the Free Market is not without its drawbacks. For example, large corporations can outsource certain jobs to foreign countries where labor costs are cheaper, or hire immigrant workers and pay them well below market wage. This takes jobs away from American workers. This is a valid objection, and after consideration the only response I can come up with is the value of the American spirit. At a certain point, Americans will realize the value of products that are made domestically, and will buy those products.
In fact, the Utilitarians have a response that is perhaps more appropriate than mine. An objection to the Utilitarian conception of the Pure Free Market is that it minimizes positive externalities (things that citizens get for free and do want) and maximizes negative externalities (things that citizens do not pay for and do not want). Negative externalities like noise and pollution are inherent in the production process; so too is the tendency for outsourcing cheap labor inherent in a Capitalist society. The Utilitarian believes that government regulation is necessary in these situations, because leaving business completely without regulation forces the citizenry to subsidize the company’s profits. In other words, because the citizenry is forced to suffer joblessness so that a company who outsources its labor can make a greater profit, that gain in profit is a dollar value amount which represents the extent to which the citizenry subsidizes the company’s financial gains. If a company profits from a citizen who had no choice but to give that company money (or time, or some other form of capital), then that company has engaged in a form of taxation, has overstepped its bounds, and must be regulated
As for the welfare of the citizenry, having received government aid myself, I can understand and appreciate the value of government programs to support the disadvantaged portions of the American populace. To say, however, that these systems are in dire need of reform is an understatement. So beleaguered are these programs with loopholes and abusers that they have become a tragic punch line. It is true that there is no provision in this philosophy to provide governmentally subsidized programs such as Welfare or Medicaid. This task is left to a side of the Free Market that is little discussed: the right for people to form charities and non-profit organizations to help the less able. Such organizations already exist, and are helping millions of needful recipients nationwide. These organizations could replace the current government programs to similar effect, without mandating funds from individuals. Because these organizations are run on donations from individuals, there is no dispute as to the justification for spending that money, at least not in the same way as there is dispute over how best to spend mandated tax dollars. And because these organizations would be run under a non-intrusive system of governmental regulation, they would be free to flourish the same way that for-profit companies do. Moreover, this philosophy can be applied to almost every government program currently on the books, from environmental protection to healthcare.
The preceding has been a (admittedly brief and incomplete) summation of a philosophy that could revitalize the Republican Party. It consists of a back-to-basics approach to conservative political theory and an elimination of social moral issues from the political discussion. I will grant that this approach is extremist in nature – but as for that, it must be extreme in the current political and economic climate in order to be effective (and affective). It does not discount the value of programs that are popular among the currently powerful Democrats, but it does emphasize the need for citizens to take the reins in their management. Boiled down to a pitch, the philosophy sounds something like this: “Government’s sole charge is to protect its citizens from harm. We cannot and will not regulate corporate affairs; we cannot and will not regulate social policy; and we cannot and will not concern ourselves with subsidizing inefficient and ineffective welfare programs. We can and will keep America safe; we can and will involve ourselves in the lives of Americans only to the extent that their safety from harm is concerned; and we can and will ensure that your income is protected from misappropriation by putting you in control of the programs to which you choose to donate. These are the capabilities and limitations of a just government. These are the new Republican values.”
