Soundings, June 2003

Club for Growth president Stephen Moore asks: "Whatever happened to the GOP's crusade against bloated government? President Bush's $2.25 trillion budget released this week is almost one-third larger than the budget Bush inherited three years ago. Since the Republicans took over Congress in 1995, the budget has grown by 50 percent." "Budget Bloat," National Review Online, February 5, 2003.

Oh, if only President Bush's leftist critics were right! In the April issue of Navigator, we noted that an article in the New York Times Magazine set down the administration's goals as follows: "markets unleashed, resources exploited. A progressive tax system leveled, a country unashamed of wealth. Government entitlements gradually replaced by thrift, self-reliance, and private good-will."

Now comes the Nation's William Greider with an article entitled "Rolling Back the 20th Century." "Bush's governing strength," he writes, "is anchored in the long, hard-driving movement of the Right that now owns all three branches of the federal government." And what does the Right propose to do with the federal government it owns? "Reduce its scale and powers to a level well below what it was before the New Deal's centralization. With that accomplished, movement conservatives envision a restored society in which the prevailing values and power relationships resemble the America that existed around 1900, when William McKinley was president. Governing authority and resources are dispersed from Washington, returned to local levels and also to individuals and private institutions, most notably corporations and religious organizations. The primacy of private property is re-established over the shared public priorities expressed in government regulation. Above all, private wealth—both enterprises and individuals with higher incomes—are permanently insulated from the progressive claims of the graduated income tax."

For an idea of how far President Bush must go to return the federal government to the days of President William McKinley, see the graphic below.

Nevertheless, though William Greider is getting a little ahead of himself when discussing the Bush administration's goals, one must admire him for not attributing pro-capitalist policies to corporate greed backed by corporate lobbying. He admits that such policies spring from sincere ideals: "Hard-right conservatives see themselves as liberating reformers, not destroyers, who are rescuing old American virtues of self-reliance and individual autonomy from the clutches of collective action and 'statist' left-wingers." Even if Greider's policy analysis bears no resemblance to anything sought by the Bush administration, his article suggests that we may soon be able to have principled arguments with our ideological opponents about the ethical merits of capitalism.

Design bar-graph as follows. Chart is labeled "Federal expenditures as a percentage of GDP". Vertical line on left has marks at 5%, 10%, 15%, 20%, and 25%. Bottom line is not labeled. On the left side, under the bottom line, is "McKinley administration, 1900". On the right side is "Bush administration, 2003". Above the McKinley administration, the bar reaches up to 5%. Above the Bush administration, the bar reaches up to 21.4%.

Another "Soundings" in the April issue asked why we never read stories about people seeking justice for the victims of Soviet oppression, as we read stories about people seeking justice for the victims of Nazi oppression or the victims of racist crimes in the American South. On May 3, New York Times senior writer Bill Keller, who won a Pulitzer Prize in 1989 for his coverage of the Soviet Union, wrote just such a story on the newspaper's op-ed page.

According to Keller: Aleksandr Yakovlev "has spent the last dozen years excavating abominations in the archives of the Soviet Union. . . . So far, his digging has produced 33 volumes of declassified documents, a searing book translated recently into English as 'A Century of Violence in Soviet Russia,' and an angry conviction that the whole Soviet experience was a crime against humanity.

"Mr. Yakovlev. . . is admired on the Western right for documenting beyond any refutation that every monstrosity Stalin carried out—from the imprisonment of children to the deliberate starving of peasants, from the extermination of clergy members to the monumental crime of the forced labor camps—was inspired, if not invented, by Lenin. That is, the depravity was not an aberration—it pervaded the whole Communist project."

Unfortunately, Keller exploits Yakovlev's work to argue that any trial of Saddam's top henchmen must carry the "moral weight" of the United Nations, which is rather like bringing in a bunch of New Agers for their scientific expertise. Never mind. One must be grateful to Keller for publicizing Yakovlev's work. And one must again regret that in 2001 Keller lost out in the competition to become NYT executive editor to Howell Raines, the man who has brought us one hundred (and counting) stories on the alleged evil of the Augusta National Golf Club.

It had to happen. For some decades now, environmentalists have been one of the few groups in our society allowed to speak of moral absolutes without facing derision. Now, they have come under fire from postmodern relativists. Paul Wapner's "Leftist Criticism of 'Nature'" (Dissent, Winter 2003) explains what has happened. "Postmodernists expose the constructed quality of those things we take for granted. They unmask the given and show that 'what is' is not necessarily 'meant to be,' but rather is a consequence of particular decisions and socio-historical conditions. . . . Leftist critiques of environmentalism start from this same premise. They point out that our notions of nature—the nonhuman world that environmentalists care so much about—are themselves social constructions and thus subject to various interpretations, none of which can provide absolute guidance for environmental policy. We never experience nature directly but always through the lenses of our own values and assumptions."

What are the implications? "The postmodern account . . . poses challenges for anyone concerned with environmental protection. Environmentalism is fundamentally about conserving and preserving nature. Whether one worries about climate change, loss of biological diversity, dwindling resources, or overall degradation of the earth's air, water, soil, and species, the nonhuman world is the backdrop of concern. What happens when critics call this backdrop into question? What happens when they claim that one understanding of 'nature' is at odds with another and that there is no definitive way to judge which one is better? How can a movement dedicated to protecting nature operate if the very identity of its concern is in doubt?"

How indeed? We await the news story: "President George W. Bush announced today that the United States would not ratify the Kyoto climate treaty so long as its metaphysical assumptions are being undermined by French philosophers."