Conservative George Will Genius or Overrated Moron
If Will and Voegeli are to be believed, Franklin Roosevelt and "Lyndon Johnson, an FDR protégé," both "repudiated the Founders' idea that government is instituted to protect pre-existing and timeless natural rights, promising 'the re-definition of these rights in terms of a changing and growing social order ...'" The result of this repudiation of natural rights by American liberals, Voegeli writes, is a welfare state "blanketing the skies with crisscrossing dollars." According to Voegeli, "Lacking a limiting principle, progressives cannot say how big the welfare state should be but must always say that it should be bigger than it is."The only way conservative can appear to win the debate against liberalism - the political philosophy on which the United States was founded - is to maliciously misstate what liberalism means and what liberals stand for. Since will must resort to this straw man tactic that means he is no genius.
Will and Voegeli repeat two now-familiar claims of Straussian propaganda. First, FDR, LBJ and modern liberals have rejected the idea of "pre-existing and timeless natural rights." Second, they have favored putting as many people as possible on the dole. The historical record makes it clear that both accusations are libels.
It is true that Woodrow Wilson, like many other political scientists in the early 1900s, was influenced by German scholarship that emphasized cultural and social evolution and rejected the Lockean tradition of natural rights liberalism as outmoded and "Newtonian." But as Derek Webb points out in an important essay titled "The Natural Rights Liberalism of Franklin Delano Roosevelt: Economic Rights and the American Political Tradition" (2007): "Roosevelt, unlike many of his Progressive predecessors, self-consciously grounded his defence of economic rights in the philosophical, historical, and constitutional principles of early American liberalism."
Was Roosevelt repudiating the American Founding when he told Democrats in Philadelphia in 1936: "This is fitting ground on which to reaffirm the faith of our fathers; to pledge ourselves to restore to the people a wider freedom; to give to 1936 as the founders gave to 1776 -- an American way of life." The goal of the New Deal, he explained, was "to preserve to the United States the political and economic freedom for which Washington and Jefferson planned and fought." What do George Will and William Voegeli think that FDR meant by "reaffirm," "restore" and "preserve"?
The Tea Party's Toxic Take on History
The muddled Tea Party version of history is more than wrong and fraudulent. It's offensive. Calling Obama a tyrant, a communist, or a fascist is deeply offensive to all the real victims of tyranny, the real victims of communism and fascism. The tens of millions murdered. It trivializes such suffering inexcusably for the T.P.ers to claim that they are suffering from similar oppression because they might have their taxes raised or be subject to demonic "federal regulation."
The media for the most part has shown itself afraid to challenge the insidious distortions of language and history Tea Partiers promote. In the last few weeks, several news outlets have been propagating the meme that Tea Partiers are "just regular folks." And certainly some are. But if you examined the ideology that shows its face, the one that is apparent in sign carriers and blog commenters and cable spokespersons, you find something disturbing.
Consider this CNN report, which attempts to give a smiley face to the Tea Party's underlying ideology. Even Fox News recognizes Tea Party dogma as a seething cauldron of deranged and vicious lies about history. Look at the guy in the photo in this report and how proud he is of his illiterate swastika sign.
These swastika nuts look ridiculous. But words matter, sometimes in a life-and-death way. Take for instance the Tea Party demonization of "federal regulation" as the instrument of the tyranny that's been imposed on them. I would like every Tea Partier who has denounced federal regulation to write a letter to the widows and children of the coalminers in West Virginia who died because of the failure of "federal regulation" of mine safety.
Tell the weeping survivors that such regulation is tyranny, that their husbands and fathers had to die, but for a good cause: lowering federal spending so the T.P.ers could save a few pennies on taxes. That's worth 29 lives snuffed out in a mine blast, isn't it? They either don't see the connection or don't care.
Indeed the demonization of "federal regulation" could prevent cowardly legislators from strengthening protections for miners and other workers imperiled by unsafe conditions. But the happy T.P.ers will still go out with their swastika and Hitler-mustache signs, whining about tyranny. Wouldn't it be great if there were a liberal politician who, in the wake of the mining catastrophe, had the courage to stand up and say that federal regulations are often a very good thing? Don't hold your breath.
