Cognitive Dissonance and Conservative Politics in America

Modern liberals in America are not what they used to be in the 19th century--namely, defenders of free markets and individualism, i.e., freedom from government.  Instead, this new(ish) breed believes in an "enlightened" government that is charged with providing for its citizens and with improving on society by the careful application of social engineering.  While pre-Roosevelt liberals generally believed in the rule of law and saw the importance of decentralization--and of the Constitution as a means to attain such goals--modern liberals would struggle to understand how a two-centuries-old booklet of a document could try to interpose itself between citizens and such lofty goals as those made possible by government-sponsored charity.  Any reasonable person will recognize the central planning efforts proposed by liberals as socialism, but to dare suggest it these days is to be viewed as bitter, name-calling ignoramuses.  But I digress; the title of this post is not "Cognitive Dissonance and Liberal Politics…"

What is Conservatism?

Conservatism as a label denotes a desire to prevent change.  Quite meaningless a descriptor, really.  In practice it generally means a few things:

• A strong desire to impose their views of tradition on others (see drug war and opposition to same-sex marriage, to name two issues).
• A strong belief in individual rights, as long as said rights are not used to consume drugs, have gay sex or to allow an unsanctioned religion to build a YMCA equivalent anywhere near Ground Zero.
• Government should be allowed great leeway in searching for terrorists at home, since good people have nothing to hide--except when it comes to TSA pat downs, which are plainly evil.
• A strong desire to curb government spending, as long as said spending does not affect free medical care for seniors, or the military and security budgets.

And so on.  The list above could very well be seen as a symptom of psychosis--at a social scale.  Modern liberals are bad, but at least not as clearly psychotic in their form of pathological stupidity.

Pathologically Unconstitutional

Modern conservatism's breakdown with reality has been clear for everyone to see in the many GOP Primary debates.  All candidates have a platform mostly consisting of a minimum set of planks:

• Reducing the size of the federal governement.
• Reducing taxes.
• Promoting economic growth.
• A constitutional approach to government (the fact that this is a campaign platform as opposed to getting you jail time for governing in any other way is disheartening in and of itself).

Things get incoherent when you look at the other planks of some of the GOP candidates.  Take Romney on the Constitution, for example.  From his website:

"Mitt Romney’s view of the Constitution is straightforward: its words have meaning. The founding generation adopted a written constitution for a reason. They intended to limit the powers of government according to enduring principles. The job of the judge is to enforce the Constitution’s restraints on government and, where the Constitution does not speak, to leave the governance of the nation to elected representatives." [Emphasis mine; correct understanding of the constitution would cause that to read "the issues to the states."]

But on immigration Romney's main proposal is the use of a so called E-Verify system, by which employers will check prospective employees' identities and immigration status.  This means that legal immigrants will be given some form of centrally maintained ID card, containing, among other info, biometric data.  Illegal immigrants will not have such cards and therefore be unable to find legal jobs.  The quite obvious problem with this approach is that citizens will also need to have such cards, otherwise there would be nothing to distinguish illegal immigrants from citizens--this is not really brought up by Romney during debates, but, perhaps more surprisingly, by any of his opponents either.  Meanwhile, the federal government's power to issue federal IDs is nowhere to be found in the powers enumerated by the Constitution.  Incidentally, Gingrich is another supporter of these biometric-based federal ID cards.

The subject of constitutionalism is a rich one.  Romney's, Santorum's and Gingrich's positions on Iran are to use military force if they build or are perceived to attempt to build nuclear weapons.  Again, the problem is obvious:  The President cannot declare wars, only Congress can do so.  That simple fact seems to escape most of the candidates.

Most reproductive law rhetoric spewed by the candidates--which includes even the prohibition of certain types of contraceptives--also fall well outside of the scope of the constitution, except for the repeal of Roe v. Wade, which can reasonably be argued on constitutional grounds.

And then there is the War on Drugs.

These are people that, should any of them win the election, will have to swear an oath of office that states, as per Article II, Section I, Clause 8 of the U.S. Constitution

"I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."

I believe three of the GOP nominees would be at serious risk of perjury if they were to take that oath.

Coherence Wars

Reducing the size of the federal budget is another mine field of ideological inconsistencies for most of the GOP candidates.  For instance, the yearly expenditures of the U.S. Government break down as such (for 2011):

• Medicare & Medicaid: 24% or $835 B
• Social Security: 20% or $725 B
• Defense and Security Spending: 26% or $929 B*
• Debt interest: 6% or $227 B
• All other spending: 23% or $922 B

* Note that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are funded by separately handled appropriations bills, and do not figure in the numbers above.

World's top military spenders in 2010.  Source: Wikipedia.

Defense and security spending are the thickest slice of the budget, and by extension a natural candidate for spending cuts consideration.  The United States military expenditures represent 43% of the world's combined military budget.  China is at a distant second place with 7.3% of the world's budget.  We overspend the next 23 countries (21 of which enjoy very friendly relations with us) in the world's hierarchy of military budgets.  It should be easy to reduce our military expenditures by half and still enjoy the peace of mind of "only" overspending the next 5 countries in that list (three of which are strong allies).

And yet all but one of the GOP candidates vocally and proudly state that not a single, solitary dime will be cut from defense spending.  (Incidentally, the role of world police is also nowhere to be found in the list of enumerated powers.)

The GOP answer to budget reduction**?  Platitudes such as Made in America, bring the jobs back home, get the illegals out, impose tariffs on China, and other proposals that seem to be tailored to have little effect at best to catastrophic effects at worst.  They seem to be content in rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.

**I should say, 3/4 of the GOP's answer.

The Culture Wars and Reason's No Man's Land

I make no secret about favoring Ron Paul for this election cycle (I'll presume to go as far as saying that the same applies to my editorial colleague in this blog).  The Congressman has consistently upheld his principled belief in the rule of law and his defense of the Constitution.  He is the only candidate to put forward a clear, concise, measurable proposal for reducing the federal debt and the presence of government in our lives.

Sadly, in the political environment we find ourselves, populism has taken the lead in ideas, and we the people are engaged in a cultural loud mouth competition where the impact of politics and central government is continuously amplified.  Conservatism is reduced to seeking moral affirmation at the detriment of the rule of law.  "Liberals" are so ideologically lost and self-conflicted that they cannot even comprehend the principles behind their own social-economic policies, and have instead opted out of critical thinking altogether.  The end result of this stupidity arms race is that nothing will likely change after this election cycle, and politics will continue to be an intelligent life's no man's land.

References

http://www.ricksantorum.com/issues
http://mittromney.com/issues
http://www.newt.org/answers
http://www.ronpaul2012.com/the-issues
http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/ticket/arizona-shows-pitfalls-romney-proposed-national-e-verify-142419836.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_expenditures
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_federal_budget