“It’s On the Role of Government”

Rachel Held Evans has posted her “Ask a Christian Progressive” post, which features Progressive Tim King, of Sojourners.  I especially appreciated Tim’s response to the question “What myth about progressives would you like to debunk?”  He says:

“It’s on the role of government. Now, I believe that government can and should play a positive, active and limited role in society. But, sometimes I get the impression that others think I’m so in love with government that I spend my free time standing around in long lines at the Department of Motor Vehicles or figuring out ways to pay more taxes.

“For example, I think it is absolutely essential that the government play an active role in making sure our food is safe. But, that doesn’t mean there aren’t also problems with the regulatory system. Here’s a story about a local farm that was hosting a ‘farm to fork’ dinner when a state health inspector came by and shut the whole thing down for a series of ridiculous reasons.

“As someone who has grown up on a farm, situations like that really frustrate me. Why are they picking on the little guy? Especially when environmentally detrimental practices of large agri-business aren’t reigned in.

“Our current regulatory system is weighted to benefit big businesses that have the resources and the staff to figure it all out and it leaves a lot of small businesses with unnecessary extra costs.”

I agree with Tim.  Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem to me that Republicans do enough to roll back that sort of regulation, as much as they like to blab on about how regulations kill jobs.  When it comes to deregulating big banks that cause financial crises, sure, they’re willing to do that (as when they joined Bill Clinton and many Democrats in tearing down Glass-Steagall).  But, even when the Republicans are in power, I still hear stories about regulations stifling and hindering innovation among the middle class.  Do the Republicans do anything about that?

Tertullian the (Semi-)Arian?

Johannes Quasten, Patrology, vol. II: The Ante-Nicene Literature After Irenaeus (Westminster: Christian Classics, 1990) 326-327.

…Tertullian could not shake off entirely the influence of subordinationism. The old distinction between the Logos endiathetos and the Logos prophorikos, the Word internal or immanent in God and the Word emitted or uttered by God…made him regard the divine generation as taking place gradually. Although Wisdom and Word are identical names for the second person in the Trinity, Tertullian distinguishes between a prior birth as Wisdom before the creation, and a nativitas perfecta at the moment of creation, when the Logos was sent forth and Wisdom became the Word: ‘Hence it was then that the Word itself received its manifestation and its completion, namely sound and voice, when God said: Let there be light. This is the perfect birth of the Word, when it proceeds from God. It was first produced by Him for thought under the name of Wisdom, The Lord established me as the beginning of his ways (Prov. 8, 22). Then he is generated for action: When he made the heavens, I was near Him (Prov. 8, 27). Consequently, making the one of whom He is the Son to be His Father by his procession, He became the first-born, as generated before all, as only Son, as solely generated by God’ (Adv. Prax. 7). Thus the Son as such is not eternal (Hermog. 3 EP 321)…The Father is the whole substance…while the Son is only an outflow and a portion of the whole[,] as He Himself professes, Because my Father is greater than I (John 14, 28). The analogies by which Tertullian tries to explain the Godhead also indicate his subordinationist tendencies, especially when he states that the Son goes out from the Father as the beam from the sun…(Adv. Prax. 8 ANF).

Here’s how I read Quasten’s summary of Tertullian (ca.160 – ca.220 C.E.), and I welcome correction from those who are more familiar with Tertullian’s writings:

Before the creation of the world, Wisdom was born within God. But Wisdom became a “Word” (Greek, “logos”) when God said “Let there be light” (Genesis 1:3). This Word was generated from God at that point. He shared the same substance with God, and yet (in some sense) he was also a separate entity. The Word was like a ray extending from the sun, which represents God in Tertullian’s analogy. This is the Word who later became Jesus Christ. For Tertullian (as I understand him), the Word has been God since his generation, yet he is still inferior to God the Father.

Here are some thoughts:

1. Is Tertullian saying that the Word had an origin at a specific point in time? In the fourth century C.E., Arius claimed that the Word was a created being, and his slogan was “There was a time when the Word was not.” The church rejected his position as heretical, affirming instead that the Word was begotten, not made, and proceeded from the Father for all eternity. My understanding is that Arius did not believe that the Father and the Son shared the same substance, so he and Tertullian would disagree on that point. Unlike Arius (perhaps), Tertullian viewed the Word as God, for Tertullian was the first to use the term “trinitas,” plus he affirmed that Jesus Christ was both divine and human in his incarnation. But would Arius and Tertullian agree that “There was a time when the Word was not”?

2. When I was at DePauw University, I struggled with my faith, as undergraduates are expected to do, I guess. During that time, I had good conversations with my supervisor at a nursing home, where I did community service to receive a scholarship. She was an evangelical Christian who attended a mainline Protestant church. I once asked her how she viewed Genesis 1, having in my mind the theory of evolution. Her response was, “In light of John 1.”

Her point was that the creative “word” that God spoke in Genesis 1 was the Word of John 1 who became Jesus Christ. I often wondered about this. I knew that my supervisor was not an Arian, but didn’t the word of Genesis 1 have an origin? One moment, God was not speaking. The next moment, he said “Let there be light.” For Tertullian (if I am understanding him correctly), the Word came to exist as the Word once God said “Let there be light.” (Before then, he was wisdom inside of God.)

This logic may fall apart when we remember that God said a lot of other words after that point. Was God generating a new Logos-being each time he spoke? When God said “Let there be a firmament” et al., was God begetting Logos number 2? That may be why Garner Ted Armstrong translates “logos” in John 1:1 as “spokesman,” meaning that the Logos spoke for God at creation and was the one who said “Let there be light,” and God’s other words after that point.

3. In my post, Good Nimrod, Justin the Arian?, Projecting, I struggle with Proverbs 8:22-31, which states that God created or established wisdom at the beginning of his works. Arius supposedly alluded to this passage to argue that the Logos was a created being, since Arius equated the “wisdom” who was a “master worker” with God at creation with the Logos of John 1. I state in my post:

“What was God like before he made wisdom? Was he unwise? Or maybe Proverbs is saying that wisdom was an emanation from God, who already is wise. The rabbis [in Genesis Rabbah 1:1] treat wisdom as God’s plan for the universe: when an architect designs a house, he draws up a plan, and that’s what wisdom was for God. God was already wise when he drew up the plan, but the plan (wisdom) was a concrete expression of God’s intended order for the universe.”

The rabbis equated wisdom, God’s blueprint for the universe, with the Torah. Tertullian and other Christians, however, identify it as the Word who became Jesus Christ. I still wonder what the ramifications of that are. Was the Logos an expression of the order that came to underlie the universe? We know there are biblical passages (John 1; Colossians 1; Hebrews 1) affirming that Jesus was the creator of the heavens and the earth. Maybe Tertullian would say that God came up with a blueprint inside of himself for the universe, then God begot that blueprint as a divine being, the Word. The Word, an embodiment of the blueprint, then proceeded to create everything according to the rationality that was inside of him.

But would the Word always have that blueprint inside of him? Would John say that? A professor of mine once said that Jesus didn’t know calculus when he was a human being, so who knows?!

It’s My Party Too, by Christine Todd Whitman

Last night, I finished Christine Todd Whitman’s It’s My Party Too: The Battle for the Heart of the GOP and the Future of America (New York: Penguin, 2005).

I liked Christine Todd Whitman ever since she gave the Republican response to President Clinton’s 1995 State of the Union address. She was the governor of New Jersey at the time, and she did a much better job than Bobby Jindal in 2009! Although I’d be hesitant to vote for her because she is pro-choice, I admire her intelligence, her warmth, and her clear and bold articulation of Republican principles.

The thesis of her book is that the Republican Party is too divisive because of its extreme conservatism: on abortion, guns, regulation, etc. Here are some comments on parts of her book:

1. I enjoyed her discussion of her family background. Her dad was an old-style conservative who hated Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal, and her mom was more of a Rockefeller Republican, who thought the government should have a social conscience. Actually, both of her parents knew Nelson Rockefeller, since they were heavily connected in the Republican Party. And, sure enough, her dad didn’t like him on a personal level, whereas her mom did. But the point of Christine’s discussion here is that Republicans should be united regardless of their differences, since they all need one another. Before Lee Atwater popularized the phrase “big tent,” her father likened the diversity of the Republican Party to a big umbrella, which has one center but many rungs. Christine doesn’t understand those who place conservatism ahead of the Republican Party, for she thinks all Republicans should all be united behind their party and the principle of less government (the center of the umbrella).

2. Christine herself was a Rockefeller Republican, and she traces a lot of the Republican Party’s problems to Barry Goldwater’s 1964 campaign for President, which brought a lot of rude right-wing extremists into the party. She thought his carping apocalypticism was a marked contrast to Nelson Rockefeller’s sunny disposition. Eventually, Goldwater kind of grew on her, since she came to like his 1964 platform of less government better than what the religious right had to offer (e.g., anti-abortion, anti-homosexuality, etc.). Plus, she found him to be a charming guy when she met him later in life. From what Goldwater says in his autobiography, With No Apologies, I doubt he and his supporters were the only rude ones in 1964, since Rockefeller made some pretty unfounded accusations! But I enjoyed Christine’s tour through Republican history.

3. My impression is that Christine believes the GOP should drop its pro-life stance. Ironically, she cites a 2005 Gallup Poll affirming that 55 percent believe abortion “should be legal only under certain circumstances,” and 19 percent “believe it should be illegal in all circumstances” (76-77). The American public is roughly pro-life, so why does she believe abortion is a losing issue for the Republicans, especially when she thinks the GOP should base its global warming stance on polls (194)?

4. Interestingly, I found that Christine could be pretty pragmatic on the abortion issue. For example, as governor of New Jersey, she supported a ban on partial-birth abortion with an exception for the life and physical health of the mother. The part about “physical health” is important, since pro-lifers argue that a health exception can encompass just about anything and render the ban meaningless: a mother can abort her baby because she’d feel depressed giving birth, for example. I wouldn’t support a general exception for “health” on this basis, but a physical health exception strikes me as reasonable, since I wouldn’t want a woman to be paralyzed for the rest of her life on account of childbirth. According to Christine, Pat Robertson actually agrees with her on this! But the pro-life community in her state were unwilling to compromise, since they wanted either an absolute ban, or nothing at all. The result was that they got nothing, and partial-birth abortion continued in their state. But they could still exploit the issue for political purposes, which (according to Christine) was their real interest in the first place.

5. Christine does an excellent job detailing the Republicans’ positive accomplishments on race and the environment. Although she criticizes George W. Bush for reversing his plan to reduce carbon emissions, she presents his environmental record as positive and effective, better than that of his predecessors. She also refutes environmental critics who claimed she wanted to add arsenic to drinking water when she was head of the EPA. Overall, I appreciated her balanced approach to the environment, as she steered a middle ground between conservatives who oppose regulation and liberals who grade environmental records by how much the government is spending and regulating. For her, we should evaluate environmental records according to whether or not the air and water are cleaner, not by how many government bureaucrats there are. (Imagine that!) She also states that businesses should be allowed to meet environmental standards using any means that they see fit, provided they actually meet them. According to Christine, this kind of flexible approach worked in New Jersey when she was governor.

6. I enjoyed her criticism of Democratic Senator Bill Bradley. When she worked in the Ford Administration under Donald Rumsfeld, Bradley came to intern there, and he asked her to bring him some coffee when they first met. She bit her lip and politely told him where the coffee was so he could get it himself. She also thought he was a condescending jerk years later, when she ran against him for his U.S. Senate seat. Everyone thought he was unbeatable, so even the Republican National Committee didn’t help Christine’s campaign financially. But she shocked everyone when she came close to beating him.

While she portrays Bradley as a sexist, her picture of Donald Rumsfeld is different. When she was at a meeting and someone cussed, another person rebuked him for being so crass in front of a lady. Rumsfeld then said, “Oh, don’t worry about Christine. She’s one of the guys!”

7. Her discussion of women and family was interesting. She said that, when she was on the county board of freeholders, she told her colleagues she’d have to miss a meeting to attend her daughter’s soccer game. While they were initially judgmental, her act encouraged them to spend more time with their own families. All it takes is one trend-setter!

8. Christine also compares how women govern as opposed to how men govern. According to her, men tend to compete and obsess over who gets the credit, whereas women cooperate to accomplish the tasks at hand. Maybe she’s right, or maybe her picture is idealized. But maybe men should imitate her depiction of women by working together.

9. I liked her discussion of her female support network in the Bush Administration, which included Interior Secretary Gail Norton. I appreciated her giving us a glance of Gail’s human side, especially since she was so demonized by the left!

I expected this book to be a critique of pro-life conservatives, but it’s much more than that. There’s autobiography, wisdom, apologetics for the Bush Administration, reflective critiques of the Bush record, and history, all rolled up into one. It’s a good book!

Hoover and FDR: Liberal or Conservative?

I just watched This Week with George Stephanopoulos (click here to see it). In the second half of the program (for which I cannot find a transcript), people were claiming that Herbert Hoover was the liberal whereas Franklin Roosevelt was the conservative. Someone asserted that Franklin Roosevelt dramatically cut government spending when he came into office, and George Will then pointed out that Herbert Hoover had increased it by over 40 per cent when he was President. George apparently heard Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner agree with this particular scenario of history, for he referred to Geithner’s claim in the first half of the program that FDR “put the brakes on too early” in the early years of his Presidency, thereby worsening the Great Depression (see Transcript).

Many deem the late 1920′s and early 1930′s to be relevant for today, for people look to the past for guidance on what (or what not) to do about our current economic crisis. Conservatives and liberals alike offer different narratives, with conflicting portrayals of Herbert Hoover and Franklin Roosevelt.

Here are two liberal narratives:

1. Herbert Hoover believed in free markets and less government, an ideology that ultimately led to the Great Depression. The Depression only got worse under his watch, and his callous Administration did nothing to assist those who were suffering. The economy only got better when FDR became President and instituted programs to help people. You hear this point of view today, as many blame laissez-faire for our current economic mess and propose massive government intervention (e.g., regulation, spending) to ameliorate it.

2. FDR was actually a conservative, whose draconian budget cuts only made the Great Depression worse. Communists, socialists, Huey Long, Father Coughlin, etc., asserted that Roosevelt’s New Deal did not go far enough, and that FDR was in bed with big business interests rather than the American people. The “FDR was too conservative” approach was what Timothy Geithner promulgated on This Week. However, neither Obama nor Geithner want to go as far as communists, socialists, or extreme leftists desire.

Here are three conservative narratives:

1. The economy was actually getting better near the end of Hoover’s Presidency, but FDR’s New Deal prolonged the Depression and made it worse, as unemployment climbed during FDR’s first two terms. In this narrative, what ended the Great Depression was America’s involvement in World War II, not the New Deal. John Stormer presents this view in his landmark 1964 classic, None Dare Call It Treason. On pages 262-265, he offers documentation for these claims.

Today, many conservatives make this argument in response to Liberal Narrative # 1 (see above). As Obama is portrayed as the second FDR, conservatives are ready to respond that the first FDR wasn’t that hot, and that a laissez-faire approach (a la Hoover) is the best way to get the economy moving again.

2. Hoover was a liberal and FDR was a conservative. Hoover increased taxes, government spending, and tariffs, causing America to sink deeper into the Great Depression. FDR, by contrast, reduced government spending and embraced free trade. And, sure enough, America recovered on his watch.

John McCain made this argument in the second 2008 Presidential debate, as he argued that Herbert Hoover’s taxes and protectionism made the Great Depression worse. He made this claim to undermine Obama, who had tax increases and protectionist ideas as part of his platform. And, although Ronald Reagan once quoted a historian who said that FDR got his New Deal idea from Fascism, he also appealed to the conservative FDR. Reagan often said that he did not leave the Democratic Party, but the Democratic Party left him. In part of his mind, FDR was actually an advocate for less government.

3. Both Hoover and FDR were big government liberals. Hoover increased taxes and government spending, and FDR continued that trend, in violation of his 1932 campaign promises. Moreover, FDR’s taxes, spending, and regulations hindered the economy and prolonged the Great Depression, which only ended because of American involvement in World War II. For documentation of these claims, see William P. Hoar’s article, A Bad Deal Revisited — Obama and FDR. William P. Hoar is a John Bircher, but he quotes historians who maintain that FDR increased government spending and that unemployment worsened on his watch.

Who’s right? Can all of them be right, in some way, shape, or form? Maybe FDR cut and increased government spending at various points of his Presidency. Perhaps Hoover embraced laissez-faire in some areas but not in others. As far as the Great Depression is concerned, most agree that it lasted for a long time, but we eventually got out of it. Should we celebrate FDR for getting us out of the Depression, or should we castigate him for its length?

I’ve encountered these questions often in my life, largely in the eccentric things that I’ve read (e.g., the Communist Party Platform of 1936, John Birch books, a biography of Huey Long, etc.). Now these questions are part of America’s political mainstream, as leaders ponder how to get America out of its current economic crisis.

Frum and the Relevance of Less Government

In the waiting room a few days ago (to see my therapist), I read David Frum’s Newsweek article against Rush Limbaugh, Why Rush is Wrong.

Frum argues that the conservative message of less government will not mobilize voters as it did in the 1970′s:

The conservatism we know evolved in the 1970s to meet a very specific set of dangers and challenges: inflation, slow growth, energy shortages, unemployment, rising welfare dependency. In every one of those problems, big government was the direct and immediate culprit. Roll back government, and you solved the problem. Government is implicated in many of today’s top domestic concerns as well…But the connection between big government and today’s most pressing problems is not as close or as pressing as it was 27 years ago. So, unsurprisingly, the anti-big-government message does not mobilize the public the way it once did.

To my surprise, however, Frum is still somewhat of a conservative. He laments: Decisions that will haunt American taxpayers for generations have been made with hardly a debate. The federal government will pay more of the cost for Medicaid, it will expand the SCHIP program for young children, it will borrow trillions of dollars to expand the national debt to levels unseen since WWII. And, while he maintains that Republicans should focus on the high cost of health care rather than tax cuts, he is firm that their proposed solution should be “free market health-care reform,” not socialism.

I think Frum has a lot of good ideas, but I’d hardly call a commitment to less government politically irrelevant. There are still people who believe that big government suppresses the economy and liberty. I recently checked out a 2006 book, Size Matters: How Big Government Puts the Squeeze on America’s Families, Finances, and Freedom (and Limits the Pursuit of Happiness, by Joel Miller. In some cases, oppressive government intervention is obvious to Americans, for I still hear middle-class people complain about taxes and regulations they deem unreasonable.

In other cases, many don’t seem to realize that the problems the government claims it wants to solve may be caused by government in the first place. How many Americans know that the Community Reinvestment Act pressured lenders to make high-risk loans, which resulted in our current economic crisis?

Joel Miller argues that big government drives up the cost of health care, and, while I haven’t gotten to that part of the book yet, I’ve heard from others how that could be the case. Under Ben Witherington’s posts ‘Sicko’– It’s Enough to make you ill and Canadian Nurses love ‘Sicko’: Hand out free tickets to help prevent the Canadian system going the American way, there were commenters who showed how government over-regulation limits the supply of hospitals in America, driving up the cost of health care. Michael Tanner documents in Leviathan on the Right that the Republicans in Congress under Newt Gingrich sought to restrict hospital competition. And, on the radio a few nights ago, conservative conspiracy theorist Dr. Stanley Monteith (a physician) said that the feds really clamped down on county clinics, which provided inexpensive health care. Frum assumes that government intervention is no longer a problem, when it very well may be.

I also think that a message of fiscal responsibility can be popular with a lot of Americans. During the election, I heard Obama supporters lament that the Bush-deficits would have to be paid by our children. And one criticized Governor Sarah Palin for taking out a bond, which future generations of Alaskans would have to pay.

One thing Frum’s article brought to my attention is that Obama’s S-CHIP expansion can easily become another entitlement. To be honest, I don’t give a flying flip about most conservative critiques of the expansion. It covers the middle class? Heck, the middle class can use help with their high premiums and health care costs! People would leave private insurers for the government program? Oh well! The private insurers will have to compete for once. Poor babies! But another entitlement? That’s something that concerns me, especially since the cost of our current entitlements continues to go up, leading many to forecast a significantly higher tax burden for future generations.

Maybe less government can be a powerful message, if Republicans articulate it well and actually practice what they preach.

Regulation: How Big Business Suppresses Competition

I need to return some books to the library, so I’ll be posting a few of their thoughts that I found insightful. In Impostor (New York: Random House, 2006), Bruce Bartlett cites the following examples of big businesses lobbying for regulation so they can suppress competition. Remember that big businesses can support the costs of regulation, whereas small businesses have a harder time doing so.

“After a federal regulation on pool slides drove all its competitors out of business, the Aquaslide ‘N’ Dive Corporation heavily lobbied the Consumer Product Safety Commission to retain the regulation when the commission decided it was no longer justified.

“California cement producers lobbied to protect the endangered brown pelican in order to prevent construction of a new terminal in Redwood City for the importation of foreign cement.

“Package delivery companies UPS and FedEx are normally fierce competitors, but when threatened by delivery of Deutsche Post into the U.S. market they immediately joined forces to get the Department of Transportation to bar it from doing business here.

“Telecommunications companies frequently use government regulations to prevent potential competitors from getting into the business. Currently they are fighting companies that offer phone services over the Internet.

“Liquor wholesalers are fighting efforts to allow consumers to buy wine over the Internet–for no other reason except to maintain their legal monopoly on wine distribution and prevent consumers from having more choice at lower cost” (104-105).

This doesn’t exactly fit your typical leftist narrative: in which evil businesses oppress people until our savior, big government, swoops down to save the day. I was going to post this for a while, but it’s appropriate especially now, when “deregulation” is becoming a dirty word.

John Cox

Our featured Presidential candidate for today is John Cox, a Republican.

“John who?” you’re probably asking. That’s what went through my mind when I saw his name on a candidate compatibility survey. Incidentally, I’ve gotten a variety of results on these surveys. One matched me with McCain (what?!), another with Huckabee (better), and another with Duncan Hunter (fine, that makes me as conservative as Ann Coulter, but, alas, he doesn’t stand a chance).

So who is John Cox? According to the wikipedia article, he is a “United States lawyer, accountant, businessman, broadcaster, and aspiring politician.” An article about him in the Weekly Standard calls him a millionaire (see The Sane Fringe Candidate). According to the article, he has a rags to riches story. He was born “poor on Chicago’s South Side to a mother who was raped by a father who split shortly thereafter (he points to his very existence as the reason he’s adamantly against abortion)[.]” He put himself through college in two and a half years, after which he started and bought several successful businesses.

The highest government position he has ever held was on a board of education. He’s been barred from most debates because he doesn’t have much support, but he has participated in a few debates and forums (such as the Value Voters Debate, in which Phyllis Schlafly, Donald Wildmon, and Paul Weyrich asked probing questions). According to the Weekly Standard article, he “won a straw poll in South Carolina, and got more votes in other straw polls than many of the better-known candidates.” And he boasts about a letter of praise that he got from Arthur Laffer, one of the founders of supply-side economics (who once explained it on a napkin).

Why am I writing about him? For one, I try to cover as many candidates as possible. This guy has spent a lot of time in Iowa, and he has also appeared in debates and forums (however few their number), so I feel that he deserves some coverage, at least for the audience of James’ Thoughts and Musings (which includes James’ family, friends, some colleagues, and whoever happens to stumble on the blog while doing a Google search). Second, I like what he says on his web site, for he explains why government often makes matters worse. He could go into more detail, but he does a better job than a lot of conservatives I have read.

Essentially, Cox argues that government “solutions” are mere band aids rather than actual cures. According to Cox, poor and middle-income people cannot afford various goods and services because the price is too high (go figure!), so having the government pay for them doesn’t address the underlying problem. And government plays a role in high prices. Sugar supports escalate the price of sugar. When government tax policy favors some industries over others (usually for political purposes), competition is restricted, which means higher prices. When the government gives money to students for higher education (and I am one of those beneficiaries, since I’ve needed to pay for my education somehow), the result is greater demand than supply, which leads to higher tuition rates (Cox wants to increase the supply of education, but he doesn’t specify how). And Cox lists factors that inhibit competition in the field of health care:

“Health care is rising so much in price because there is huge demand and not enough competition or supply. Tort lawyers drive doctors, insurance companies and hospitals out of business or into the practice of defensive medicine. Doctors tell nurses they can’t compete in certain procedures or services; hospitals tell clinics and other hospitals they cannot compete in certain areas; states tell insurance companies and other providers of insurance they cannot compete across state lines or in certain markets.” I wonder how much the government backs this restriction of competition.

Cox is clear that legal enforcement mechanisms are necessary to punish fraud and abuse, so he’s not for giving businesses a free ride. He criticizes over-regulation, but he believes in common-sense rules. And regarding one of the most pressing issues of today, the current housing crisis, Cox states the following:

“The current housing and financial crisis is another example of a failure of enforcement. The solution is to enforce standards of credit, standards of investment review and the prosecution of fraud. What are not necessary are government bailouts of imprudent investors, consumers or banks. The markets have already self-corrected; most of the executives responsible for supervising these markets have lost their jobs; many imprudent loan processors and originators are out of business or merged out of a job.”

I’m not sure if I agree with Cox totally on this, since I’m uncomfortable with telling the victims “tough luck.” But I hope he’s right about the loan sharks going out of business. Not only do they deserve it, but their downfall would also attest to the justice of the free market. Free and informed consumers will not be fooled.

One more thing to add: Cox is a compassionate conservative. I don’t mean by this that he is a “conservative” who supports big government policies, but that he has compassion for the poor. According to the wikipedia article:

“Cox created a chapter of Rebuilding Together, a nationwide charitable organization that is dedicated to renovating homes for low-income, elderly, and disabled persons and families with children. Seeing the need for the program in his community, Cox recruited a board and formed the ‘Christmas in April’ North Suburban Chicago Chapter. He has served on the boards of charities such as the American Cancer Society, Boy’s Hope/Girls Hope, and United Charities.”

Cox is concerned for the poor, and he has used some of his own money to help them. But, as liberals point out when they dismiss the sufficiency of private charities, there are systemic problems. For Cox, the biggest of them is big government.

So will I vote for Cox? I’m not even sure if he’ll be on my ballot, and I probably won’t write him in. But he is a good teacher, for he effectively explains how the solution to many problems is not more government, but a recognition of the principles of supply and demand.

Bush and Mining Regulation

When the Sago mine disaster occurred in 2006, liberals were quick to blame President George W. Bush. According to liberal mythology, Bush rolled back safety regulations on the mining industry to appease his corporate backers. For liberals, this resulted in a lack of government oversight that contributed to the Sago tragedy, which took the lives of 12 people. Another mining disaster occurred in August 2007, in Utah. What is the liberal solution? Vote Democrat, since the Democratic Party favors more regulations. I have three responses to the liberal narrative.

1. The number of injuries and fatalities at coal mines has decreased under President Bush, according to statistics of the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) (see Coal Mine Injuries and Fatalities, 1930 – 2006). During the Clinton Administration (1993-2000), the average number of injuries each year was 8,671. Under President Bush (2001-2006), the number has been 5,511. During the Clinton years, the average number of fatalities per year was 38.75. Under Bush, it’s been 32.67.

A liberal blogger points out that mining activity is at an all time low in the U.S., so the percentage of injuries and fatalities has not necessarily declined. Okay, then, let’s look at their rates. Under Clinton, the average annual rate of injuries at coal mines was 7.18 per cent. Under Bush, it’s been 5.25 per cent. During the Clinton years, the average annual fatality rate was .035 per cent. Under Bush, it’s been .032 per cent. So the number and the rate of injuries and fatalities at coal mines are lower under President Bush.

I say this because I am sick of the Clintons and their smug arrogance. Bill acts as if things were perfect under his Administration, and he expects us to swoon at his every word. The Clintons and the media continually tell us how brilliant Bill Clinton is, while they portray President Bush as a dunce. And Hillary has the audacity to criticize Bush’s record on mining regulation, when her own husband presided over higher rates of injuries and fatalities at coal mines. The Clintons have no moral authority to criticize anyone, especially on mining policy.

2. On the August 24, 2007 Real Time with Bill Maher, Bill Maher was criticizing Bush’s recess MSHA appointment, Dick Stickler, a former coal executive. Michel Martin of ABC and NPR (hardly a conservative) replied that Stickler has actually been tougher on coal companies than many expected him to be, since he has cited a number of them for safety violations. Many liberals assume that the Bush Administration is giving coal companies a free ride, but that is hardly the case.

The AFL-CIO asserts that Bush has sought to cut MSHA’s budget, and it states that the number of MSHA staff has declined under his Administration (see here). Well, didn’t that one liberal blogger say that coal mining activity is at an all time low (which seems to be true, according to MSHA’s statistics–see PDF)? Maybe that’s why Bush reduced MSHA’s staff for certain years (aside from the fact that some MSHA employees passed away and were not immediately replaced). Overall, Bush seems to have roughly the same amount of inspectors per coal mine as Clinton did, if not more.

3. Who is to say that regulations are the only way to create mine safety? According to C. Gregory Ruffennach’s article about mining regulations for the Cato Institute, the number of mining fatalities was actually declining before the 1969 Coal Act, which instituted federal regulations on coal mining. For Ruffennach, the 1969 regulations slowed down the decrease in fatalities because they valued rules over results, made coal miners feel less responsible for their own safety, and fostered antagonism rather than cooperation between the coal industry and the federal government.

Ruffennach offers some interesting documentation for his argument that regulations emphasize rules rather than results. He states that companies that come up with innovative methods for mine safety have to go through a lot of hassle before the government finally approves their proposals (if it approves them at all). Like most libertarians, Ruffennach trusts the free market to safeguard mine safety, since mine owners profit when their mines and miners are intact; when they are not, they lose economically. For Ruffennach, regulations cost mines a lot in terms of litigation, productivity, and paperwork, a cost that they pass on to consumers. While Ruffennach may be an idealistic libertarian, he raises good questions about the effectiveness of federal regulation in protecting miners.

At least Bush hasn’t gone as far as Ruffennach would like!

Crunchy Cons: Big Government and Meat

For the next few weeks, I’ll be reading a book called Crunchy Cons. It has an interesting subtitle, but I’ll share that with the reader on another day. The author is Rod Dreher, a writer for National Review and The Washington Times. The book is about counter-cultural conservatives who value tradition, community, small businesses, the environment, healthy diet (e.g., organic food), and aesthetics. For Dreher, the opposite of Crunchy Cons are conservatives who see the free market as the most important institution on the face of the earth.

Although Dreher is critical of libertarianism, his chapter on “Food” highlights how big government does not always stand by the little guy. You’ve probably heard the usual liberal narrative: There was predatory big business, getting rich as it exploited the little guy, got rid of competitors, ravaged the environment, and sold dangerous products. Then, heroic big government stepped in and instituted some regulations that solved those problems. Now, the evil Republicans want to eliminate those regulations, which do a good job protecting the American people.

According to Dreher, reality is not exactly that simple. Let’s introduce two characters. On one hand, you have large meat companies, which pump their animals with hormones, allow them to graze in feces, reduce their nutritional value, and sell meat that is not always safe (remember the Mad Cow epidemic?). On the other hand, there are small, organic meat farmers, who respect the environment and sell healthy, better tasting meat.

Guess which one big government favors? Not only do the subsidies go to the big corporations, but the regulations favor them too. Dreher talked to some organic farmers and found out about the ridiculous regulations that the government was trying to impose on them. Jenny Drake, “a former state health inspector turned organic livestock farmer,” was told that she had to build a $150,000 processing facility before she could sell her chickens. The government also required her to install handicapped-accessible restrooms and a paved parking lot. I’m not against these things, but why should someone have to install them if they will never be used? Another farmer, Joel Salatin, said that “the government wanted him to build changing-room lockers for his employees, even though he had no employees on his family-run farm.”

So how do these regulations favor the big corporations? Salatin says that they “protect big agribusiness from rural independent competition.” Or, if you want the words of an educated economist, Edward Hudgins told Dreher that “it’s often the case that big companies willingly absorb the cost of extra regulation because those rules ‘have the effect of killing off the competition.’” So much for government regulation being for the little guy!

Ironically, I once had a liberal poli sci professor who told me the exact same thing. We had to read an article about how the American government tends to favor the wealthy and influential, while it ignores the needs of the poor and marginalized. Seeing this as an attack on the American way of life, I wrote a paper that called this claim “absurd.” After all, I asked, hasn’t the government passed all these welfare programs and regulations that help the little guy? My professor wrote on my paper, “But what if big business actually supports these regulations?” I expected such a comment from a John Birch Society publication, but not from my New Deal-loving professor! I admire his open-mindedness to this day.

Governor Reagan and the Environment

I promised in a previous post to write about Reagan’s environmental policies as Governor of California, and I like to keep my promises. In that post, I discussed Newt Gingrich’s new book, Contract with the Earth. In an interview with NPR, Gingrich cited Reagan as a Governor who supported private solutions for environmental problems, rather than big government approaches like taxes, regulation, and litigation. He referred to Lou Cannon’s Governor Reagan as his source. In that post, I expressed reservations about Gingrich’s reading of Lou Cannon, but the book was not fresh in my mind, since I hadn’t read it in a couple of years. This morning, however, I read Lou Cannon’s chapter on Reagan the “Conservationist.”

I didn’t see anything about Reagan advocating new technology, which is a central component of Gingrich’s green conservatism. Moreover, Reagan did not shy away from supporting government solutions to environmental problems. He supported air pollution standards that were tougher than the federal ones, and he helped grant the California Air Resources Board the authority “to prohibit the sale or registration of vehicles in California that failed to meet state auto emissions standards” (in Cannon’s words). He signed a stiff water pollution bill that imposed a $6,000-a-day fine on polluters. Under his administration, “California added 145,000 acres of land and two underwater Pacific Ocean reserves to the state park systems,” surpassing the achievements of most other modern California Governors, according to Cannon.

At the same time, not suprisingly, Reagan had a strong conservative streak that influenced his environmental policies. He was sympathetic to loggers, for he said, “A tree is a tree–how many more do you need to look at?” But, under the influence of his resources secreatary, Ike Livermore, Jr., Reagan crafted a measure that preserved acres of redwoods while saving jobs. Even more interestingly, his opposition to big government actually put him in the environmental camp on several occasions. He opposed the construction of a federally-supported dam, which would have destroyed an environmental treasure along with the land of a Native American tribe. The land belonged to the tribe by treaty, and Reagan said in a heroic moment, “We’ve broken too many damn treaties.” He also opposed a federally-backed highway that would have destroyed beautiful scenery, with little economic gain in return. I like this one quote by Cannon: “It did not occur to the road builders and the state’s powerful water establishment–an interlocking directorate of big farmers, water boards, state agencies, and supportive legislators–that Reagan’s desire to rein in government might apply to them.”

I liked this chapter because it offered a different kind of narrative. You see movies or read books about the environment, and they usually pit the evil polluting corporations against a heroic savior, big government, who consistently stands for the little guy. In this chapter, however, government was the problem, and the little guy was a victim of its intrusive policies. The hero of this story was Ronald Reagan. At the same time, contrary to Gingrich’s thesis, Governor Reagan was not adverse to government regulation, as President Reagan would be.