by John M. Crisp
Strange things have been happening in the Republican Party. Our understanding of them might be served by a brief review of the traditional meanings of the terms “conservative” and “liberal.”
The story of American politics has always been about the tension among citizens with different opinions about how big the federal government should be. Founders such as Alexander Hamilton and John Adams were on strong-central-government side of this tug of war; Thomas Jefferson and James Madison were on the states’-rights side. Their adherents coalesced into parties.
As much as the founders detested the idea of political parties, in retrospect they were probably, on the one hand, not such a bad idea and, on the other, inevitable.
This has always worked to the advantage of conservatives. Every politician wants to run on a platform of “small government” and “low taxes.” Few politicians have the courage to run on a platform of “big government” and “high taxes.” And even fewer have the naiveté to run on “no government” and “no taxes” at one extreme or “communism” at the other.
Thus American politics is about finding the sweet spot that everyone can, more or less, live with. Terms like “high taxes” and “low taxes” are meaningless to the point of irrelevance. Nearly everyone recognizes that the definition of a society includes the notion that citizens have to contribute something toward the common enterprise. How we view taxation is a question of how much we get back from what we put in.
Full disclosure: I tend to side with Hamilton and Adams. I believe that some things are done best by government and that some things can be done only by a strong central government. The quintessential example is the abolition of slavery, which required the most extravagant employment of federal power.
But who knows how long segregation and legalized discrimination against minorities and women would have persisted if strong federal action had not forced all states to provide for every citizen the rights guaranteed in the U.S. Constitution?
Further, we tend to undervalue the benefits that we derive from government, both local and federal. I’m a strong believer in a powerful national military. I’m glad that I can have reasonable confidence that the food I buy at the grocery store won’t make me sick. I like to be able to arrive in practically any town in the nation and drink the tap water with confidence.
I like the fact that if my house catches fire, I’ve already paid taxes that will ensure that someone will come and put it out. And even though I have no children of my own, I don’t mind paying taxes so that yours can go to a public school.
Am I overpaying or underpaying in taxes for all of this? If you’re a liberal, you might agree that the cost is reasonable. If you’re a conservative, you might think it’s overpriced. Politics is about finding the middle ground. It’s a question of balance. Liberals need conservatives just as much as conservatives need liberals.
But this traditional narrative has little to do with what’s currently happening in the Republican Party. The conservatives who take this traditional view are overwhelmed by the “conservatives” who have abused the beguiling message of low taxes and small government.
Even this is disingenuous. The upstarts in the Republican Party have little regard for fiscal responsibility (the Trump tax cuts), and they are happy to use big government when it serves their purposes (abolishing the constitutional right of reproductive choice).
Further, they have perfected the politics of grievance and complaint. The Republican representatives who last week refused to honor House rules regarding mask-wearing appear to believe that they’re striking a blow for freedom comparable to Rosa Parks’ stand.
But Jefferson and Madison would be appalled by their petulant, election-denying, cultish deviancy, which falls far outside traditional political discourse.
This is unfortunate. Their perversity is threatening to eliminate the sort of rational conservative force that is essential to the health of the nation. Once they destroy it, we may never get it back.
John M. Crisp, an op-ed columnist for Tribune News Service, lives in Georgetown, Texas, and can be reached at jcrispcolumns@gmail.com.
