The Trouble With Heroic Conservatism, Cont.

I think these remarks from Yuval Levin (in an EPPC discussion of Heroic Conservatism with Michael Gerson and David Brooks) nail the problem as well as anything I said. I'll quote at length:

I think it has to be said that the book is terribly unfair to fiscal conservatives. It treats them as essentially devoid of principle and idealism and lacking concern for the poor. Mike calls them at one point “small minded, cold, and uninspired.” I think ... this dismissive attitude is really a consequence of something more general that’s missing in the vision that’s laid out in Heroic Conservatism ...

For me, this was crystallized most fully in the last chapter of Mike’s book ... where Mike really lays out, more than anywhere else, what he really means by “heroic conservatism.” He begins the chapter…the first sentence of the chapter is, “At various stages in my life, like many idealists of a serious turn of mind, I have dabbled in despair.” And Mike lays out the ways that he’s seen the partial appeal of a kind of conservatism of deep pessimism – of beauty in the twilight. And I think we all have an idea of what he means and of the kind of appeal that [it] sometimes does have. But he writes that in the end, “My skepticism and pessimism have been confounded by my heroes.” And he describes the heroic deeds and the struggles against slavery and tyranny and on behalf of the weak and the needy that make up so much of the rest of this book.

But here I think is the choice that’s presented to us by Mike most clearly: it’s despair or nobility, it’s the lowest or the highest. And I think that this arrangement of the options lays out a profoundly tragic view of life, that even where it’s hopeful, it’s an other-worldly kind of hope, a hope for the suffering and wretched to be redeemed by dramatic acts of heroism. It’s noble and it’s very inspiring, and I think it has to have a place in our politics, but I think that is can’t be the foundation of our politics.

I think what’s missing here is the middle. I don’t mean the ideological middle, but the middle way between despair and sainthood; the middle time between disaster and triumph, and the middle class between the suffering and their saviors. I think that overlooking the middle creates a vocabulary of tragedy and deliverance, a politics that speaks to the lowest and the most needy and the downtrodden, but that says nothing to the democratic middle, to the democratic mass. And I think that that’s a terribly large oversight.

Speaking to the middle, it seems to me is the crucial task of any serious American political program, conservative or not. And speaking to the middle is not a necessary evil in the politics of a democracy. It’s crucial not just because that’s where voters are, and not just because that’s where political pressure comes from, it’s crucial because that’s where our great strength is – in the great and stable and usually pretty sensible middle. That’s where the culture lives, it’s where economic strength is grounded, it’s where our families are, it’s where idealism comes from, too, and what it depends on. I think it’s where we’re strong and why we’re strong. And Conservatives know that first and foremost, our politics have to sustain the sources of our strength, and to grow from there.

This means, I think, that our politics has to be fundamentally oriented to the middle class; to its needs and to its aims and to its hopes and to its ideals – to its aspirations. That’s not where the goals of politics end – they have to include the kind of goals Mike lists here – but it is, I think, where the work of politics has to start. Humanitarianism is, I think, not an adequate foundation for political life. It’s a worthy and a necessary end, but it can’t do in itself. And it relies on other foundations – on a society that values freedom and family, that encourages self-reliance and entrepreneurial energy and industrious virtues and civic virtues – and all of these depend on a politics that speaks to the middle class in a constructive way about their present and future concerns; that approaches the task of governing in a responsible way, including a fiscally responsible way.

You can't read the whole thing, but you can listen to it. Reihan comments here.

Comments

This is a bunch of junk of which Daid Broder would be proud. Gerson's heroism is about action here and now - it's not some form of messianism or sainthood but about expecting more from one another. in the face of this, the middle is just the muddle.

Posted by berger | November 28, 2007 10:17 AM

I really hate to defend Gerson, who is obviously a publicity hound. But there is a quite valid criticism of American fiscal conservatives as not caring that much about the poor.

The test is Reagan budget director David Stockman's-- do they go after weak claims or weak clients?

In other words, I don't think a fiscal conservative who targets spending for the poor along with defense spending, corporate welfare, etc., can be said to not care about the poor; rather, that person is simply very concerned about government spending.

But most American fiscal conservatives flunk that test. Rather, they pay, at most, lip service to cutting spending with powerful Republican constituencies. (Indeed, many of them don't want to cut such spending at all or want to increase it, which is part of the reason that alleged fiscal conservatives run up such big deficits.) And if cutting Medicare, Medicaid, and S-CHIP and privatizing Social Security comprises the bulk of one's fiscal conservativism, the claim that one doesn't care about the poor is justified.

Posted by Dilan Esper | November 28, 2007 12:08 PM

Dilan,

That's plausible, but only if you don't take into account two points:

1. POLITICS IS THE ART OF THE POSSIBLE. Politicians who ran on across-the-board cutting would neither receive many votes nor many contributions. They would not be elected, and thus would have no effect on political reality. This is a fundamental problem with democracy, really.

In other words, the motivations for cutting X and Y but not Z may be that cutting Z would mean you're never in the position to cut anything.

2. Some programs that are more wasteful may have less of an effect of creating the Tocqueville problem of "what happens when a majority realizes it can vote itself a share of a minority's money" or the more basic problem of government dependence undermining the familial, friendly, civic, and religious bonds that ought to provide for neighbors, and without which the entire enterprise of civil society (and, I suspect, democratic government) is eventually doomed. Programs may be prioritized for cutting on this basis, in which case those that "help people" most might be plausible first targets.

...

Now, of course, in many ways I suspect that the middle class programs few conservatives attack (for reasons both crass and practical, such as point #1) do as much or more to undermine the bonds in #2 as programs more commonly targeted. Moreover, the programs are not merely solvent dissolving bonds, but also a reaction to the more "lifestyle" and economic changes that have already destroyed those bonds (e.g., in my case -- I made career choices that make it difficult for me to live near my family or my wife's family, at least if we want to be able to give our children more than a crummy apartment).

And the lifestyle freedom that Dilan seems especially interested in further dissolves those bonds to the point of nullity, making the government's intervention "necessary". But some of oppose both the dissolution and (many of) the solutions, without "opposing the poor." Indeed, modern capitalism + the welfare state seems to have left the Western poor quite well off in material terms, measuring absolutely, compared to the poor of any previous age, but quite impoverished in many cases in terms of those essential bonds and structures. The solution to this has in some ways (but not all) increased the problem.

Moreover, on S=CHIP the real problem is not that the program helps the poor, but that it's partly a backdoor to making health care for children something the state provides (in an inefficient way) for even the middle class. The current health insurance approach does nothing (or hurts) the things conservatives of my reactionary brand care about, but a state-run approach may in some ways do even more to dissolve us all in a sea of atoms bouncing off of each other, without care or love, only our tax dollars to perform compassion-by-proxy. This seems to be the empty society, optimized for high-intelligence, low-loyalty individuals, that Dilan prefers. I do not like it much at all.

Posted by The Marquis of Carabas | November 28, 2007 1:30 PM

Marquis, to be clear, I am not deying that there are plausible arguments against all of the programs I identified.

But if 99 percent of one's fire is directed at those programs and 1 percent at programs with big-time Republican constituencies, at some point I am not likely to believe that the arguments are being asserted in good faith.

And your point about politics being the art of the possible doesn't really answer that. Again, the fact that it is possible to achieve some modicum of fiscal conservativism by going after only those programs which have poor constituencies doesn't mean that it is right to do it, and it certainly doesn't mean that the person who takes that approach is immune from criticism as being against the poor.

The truth is, there are all sorts of justifications that one can come up with for ensuring that the brunt of spending cuts is born by people who don't contribute money to your movement to ensure that their government largesse is not cut off. That doesn't make them valid, however.

Posted by Dilan Esper | November 28, 2007 2:30 PM

Dilan,

But if you are in favor of ALL the spending cuts, and don't think some of the programs for the poor are MORALLY justified, how does cutting those programs one can cut, but not those one cannot cut, amount to "not caring about the poor," precisely? I'm not saying this is the whole explanation, but the "conservatives in general don't like the poor" seems as hostile as observing the actual effects of, say, the Great Society and urban renewal and concluding that, for reasons not quite obvious (perhaps to shore up bureaucracies and government power, which they are enamored of), liberals undertook an assault on the poor, out of sheer malice.

Posted by The Marquis of Carabas | November 28, 2007 2:37 PM

Dilan,

And if cutting Medicare, Medicaid, and S-CHIP and privatizing Social Security comprises the bulk of one's fiscal conservativism, the claim that one doesn't care about the poor is justified.

A shorter version of what The Marquis said is, where is it written that spending money on federal programs is equivalent to "caring about the poor"? One can attempt to help the least well off in a variety of ways, through a variety of venues, but in the liberal worldview the only acceptable solution is to spend more federal dollars. I've yet to see this assumption justified in any coherent way.

A further issue is that you are entirely begging the question, even on your own terms. What is the evidence that spending more on existing federal programs actually does help the poor? One would have to define what metrics one is going to use, but the implicit metric that liberals use is "dollars spent": the more dollars spent, the more you've helped the poor. The fact that we've spent trillions of dollars since the Great Society initiatives without substantially changing the proportion of poor people*, and which in many cases has exacerbated the problems with caused the poverty in the first place (such as the numbers of unwed mothers) is an indication that the metric of dollars spent is at best insufficient, and may actually be harmful. What metrics for helping the poor to you think ought to be used?

*Another point is that the absolute state of the poor in 2007 is quite different from the state of the poor in 1955. Large fractions of the individuals below the federal poverty line are much better off materially than they were in 1955 - they have refrigerators, air conditioning, more than sufficient food, microwaves, car, televisions, cell phones, etc. But these advances were not provided by the federal programs, they were provided by the free market. And this again raises the question of whether simply giving them more dollars is really helping in any meaningful sense.

Posted by Mike S. | November 28, 2007 2:42 PM

But if 99 percent of one's fire is directed at those programs and 1 percent at programs with big-time Republican constituencies, at some point I am not likely to believe that the arguments are being asserted in good faith.

What is the world coming to, when politicians pander to particular constituencies? Why is the reverse scenario, where politicians promise poor (or "poor" in the case of S-CHIP expansion) people federal dollars morally exemplary, but promising taxpayers that their dollars aren't going to be spent on ineffective and/or harmful social welfare programs is immorally callous?

Posted by Mike S. | November 28, 2007 2:47 PM

Yeah, Mike has the real heart of it here -- Dilan assumes that it is axiomatic that more spending is always beneficial to the poor. More dollars helps more, period. Most conservatives think this is, to be polite, mostly a crock of bull.

Posted by The Marquis of Carabas | November 28, 2007 3:02 PM

Why is the "liberal" or heroic soultion presented here as _merely_ throwing more money at the problems of poverty?? Mike and the Marquis are acting like Gerson is against welfare reform! What liberal even argues that we should "just" throw money at the problem? This is silly.

The idea that Gerson is simply advocating humanitarianism alone. as Levin writes, is just ridiculous.

It's obvious that there needs to be a lot done, and money is only part of it - though it's a big part of it, esp in regard to healthcare. (I'll happily take compassion by proxy if its the only form of compassion to be had!) Gerson obviously argues that culture, family, and religion all need to be involved...but the key is that they need to be involved together or else nothing will get done.

Listening to the "conservative" critique of Gerson you'd think he wanted to abolish private property rights. It reminds me of how liberals bring up theocracy whenever someone mentions faith based initiatives.

Posted by berger | November 28, 2007 4:19 PM

A shorter version of what The Marquis said is, where is it written that spending money on federal programs is equivalent to "caring about the poor"?

So, I guess the reason that many Republicans favor continuing funding for their wealthy constituents while cutting funding for programs with poor recipients is because they don't care about the rich and big business?

Come on, when you make arguments like that, it's ALL after-the-fact justification for paying off the people who write the checks.

Posted by Dilan Esper | November 28, 2007 5:26 PM

It's obvious that there needs to be a lot done, and money is only part of it - though it's a big part of it, esp in regard to healthcare.

berger, you're eliding the point: does "money" refer to the cost of healthcare, or the payment for it? Regarding the former, one reason that healthcare costs have gone up so fast is precisely because individuals aren't paying for it directly - a third party is. This means that they have no incentives to cut down on costs. So expanding the role of the federal government as the third-party payer is not likely to help control costs. Regarding the latter, who should receive federal funding for their healthcare? What should be covered? The conservative critique is that these decisions are poorly made by federal bureacracies, and that doing things like expanding S-CHIP will do little to help the poor while exacerbating unhealthy aspects of the healthcare market. Saying "money is a big part.. of healthcare" isn't very informative.

So, I guess the reason that many Republicans favor continuing funding for their wealthy constituents while cutting funding for programs with poor recipients is because they don't care about the rich and big business?

Of course not. They care about campaign donations. Corporations that receive welfare are very focused and effective at protecting their "golden goose". Which is why the various ag subsidies continue even though most people are against them. The politicians keep handing them out because they get money & perks back from the companies, not because they "care" about how well the company does. Likewise, many Democrats don't care about whether the black community is able to overcome the pathologies that afflict it - they just want to keep receiving 80+% of the black vote. That doesn't make them morally superior to Republicans.

Posted by Mike S. | November 28, 2007 5:53 PM

Of course not. They care about campaign donations. Corporations that receive welfare are very focused and effective at protecting their "golden goose". Which is why the various ag subsidies continue even though most people are against them. The politicians keep handing them out because they get money & perks back from the companies, not because they "care" about how well the company does. Likewise, many Democrats don't care about whether the black community is able to overcome the pathologies that afflict it - they just want to keep receiving 80+% of the black vote. That doesn't make them morally superior to Republicans.

That's for the voters for decide. But it does mean that it is completely accurate to say that Republicans don't care about funding for the poor as opposed to funding for big corporations and fat-cats, which is exactly the point.

Again, if a Republican wants to show us how we can create better incentives and programs to address the alleged pathologies that "afflict" the black community (which in truth afflict poor white communities as well and do not afflict middle class black communities), that's one thing. But that's a lot different from simply proposing a bunch of budget cuts.

Posted by Dilan Esper | November 28, 2007 6:16 PM

Esper,

Do you know some of the pathologies that afflict the poor? It's Welfare, Minimum Wage, Monopolistic Public School Systems, etc. all of which Democrats support. It's precisely the policies that Democrats claim will help these poor people that keep them down in the dumps.

We don't want to create better incentives and programs. Incentives and programs are ineffective when applied wholesale to the population. We want private charities and private schools. Those kinds of organizations really do care about the poor and will work to help them out of it.

We want to close down all the awful public schools and under-performing social programs which wouldn't pass the muster of competition from charities and private organizations. Sometimes the bureaucrats in these programs intentionally under-perform and suck at their job just so they can demand more money from the government for their cause. It's inefficient and accomplished the exact opposite of your noble intentions.

Posted by TanGeng | November 28, 2007 7:28 PM

Tan:

There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

Posted by Dilan Esper | November 28, 2007 7:43 PM

It's not that fiscal conservatives don't care about the poor, since many fiscal conservatives might have been, or actually are on their way out of being poor. I think this notion that FC's are hard-hearted against the poor is a mischaracterization of conservatism in general. Envision the Scrooge type of mentality as being attributed to conservatives.

Conservatives by-in-large and in general support the poor through charitable organizations or through religious institutions. They also want to see the poor pull themselves out of being poor, by themselves of their own free will. Not remain mired in either a victim mentality or ruminate in a welfarist state of mind (that being that once you are on the public dole, it's easier to stay there).

Conservatives want to see people succeed, to become more than what they are and in doing so makes the entirety of the nation and the general public a better place to live. Because in doing so it does a couple of things. The first is that if you are poor and you find yourself leading yourself out of poverty, you are less likely to rely on government anymore and instead have sought to use self-reliance as your basis for improving your life financially and hopefully in turn improve yourself mentally, physically, and spiritually. How many rags to riches to rags to riches stories have you any of you heard about. I'm one of them. I've been poor and I've been rich only to find myself completely destitute and then to crawl my way back out of that pit. But the whole time in becoming better and not relying on government to bail me out as tempting as the thought of going that easy route was.

Fiscal conservatives (I am one) want the poor to improve their lot not because it's good for the fiscal conservative, but because it good for not being poor anymore. Being poor sucks, ask anyone who is poor.

Dilan Esper asks "Again, if a Republican wants to show us how we can create better incentives and programs to address the alleged pathologies that "afflict" the black community (which in truth afflict poor white communities as well and do not afflict middle class black communities), that's one thing. But that's a lot different from simply proposing a bunch of budget cuts." This is short sighted and naive and it also relies on one main principle, that government policies should be instituted by republicans in order for republicans and namely conservative republican to gain some sort of credibility amongst the poor as looking out for them. It's still government involvement to trying to eradicate or alleviate being poor and how many trillions of dollars have been spent on doing that. Even the cost of the war on drugs pales in comparison to the cost of the war on poverty. It's a lost cause that requires a complete rethink.

To address the afflictions of poverty on blacks and the black community is beyond the scope of what I'm trying to illustrate. But it is worthy to note that, at least in my opinion, that white America in the 60's gave blacks and opportunity to rise and shine and for the most blacks have instead fallen and wilted. Nearly 50 years later, blacks are dealing with nearly a 2 million black man incarceration rate, a 75% illegitimacy rate, a nearly 50% high school drop out rate which goes hand in hand with an illiteracy rate that is quite high as well. Drug use is sky high, fatherless homes are rampant, just recently reported that blacks are still the largest sufferers from HIV/AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases. Black culture is really at an all time low and the outlook for blacks can be described as bleak. Whites can't save them and neither can Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton. Only blacks and can save blacks and bring themselves out of this systematic slump and I have every faith they can do it, but not with the help of government because government has failed them.

That rethink is self-reliance and that is something that conservatives of every stripe of been wanting for the poor for the longest time. Shine the light of self-reliance on a poor man or woman and let them see that they are worthy of greater things and they may be motivated enough to seek out betterness. Heroic conservatism is a noble idea, but it treads to closely to the left side of ideological politics and Leftism as far as I've studied it for the last 30 years is a detriment and a dead end politically and culturally for our country and our world.

Posted by Asmodeus | November 28, 2007 8:02 PM

But it does mean that it is completely accurate to say that Republicans don't care about funding for the poor as opposed to funding for big corporations and fat-cats, which is exactly the point.

The point is that Republicans are not less morally virtuous than Democrats because they have different constituencies that they favor with promises of federal dollars.

Posted by Mike S. | November 28, 2007 8:25 PM

Esper,

That's precisely why government's inflexibility doesn't work. It doesn't react to changing conditions. Government can't take into account the unforeseen.

The same thing applies to subsidy for corporations, fat-cats, and the such. The government is dumb and corrupt, Democrat or Republican. Democrats just get on their high horse and lecture about their "good intentions."

Posted by TanGeng | November 28, 2007 8:46 PM

I would say that part of the problem with poor blacks are the drug war and the inner city schools.

The drug war has created a profitable drug trafficking trade based on violence and preying on cheap unemployed black teens. Why are these these teens unemployed? They are unemployed because their school system and because their skill set doesn't qualify them for a minimum wage job.

They are stuck with the poor school system, because they can't afford to move away to another community that has a better school. Since the school doesn't lose any students even though it's horribly managed, there is no incentive to improve the quality of education. These kids are stuck.

They are unemployed because the quality of their education doesn't give them enough skills to get a minimum wage job. One of the best ways to improve your life outside of school is to get a job. Yet the minimum wage laws deny them just that option.

And now they are pushed towards loitering and eventually gangs, violence, and jail time. Welfare is yet another evil promoting idleness. The way welfare ramps, some have found it better to be idle than to do real work.

Posted by Mike S. | November 28, 2007 8:58 PM

Oops, that last post was mine. I made a cut/paste error.

Posted by TanGeng | November 28, 2007 8:59 PM

The drug war has created a profitable drug trafficking trade based on violence and preying on cheap unemployed black teens. Why are these these teens unemployed? They are unemployed because their school system and because their skill set doesn't qualify them for a minimum wage job.

Look, there are very good arguments against the drug war, and conservative intellectuals often make them. But again, when it comes time to cut spending, I haven't seen ANY movement conservative contend that we need to cut funding for the drug war (much less end it).

More generally, what you are seeing above is a bunch of arguments, some serious (e.g., criticizing the drug war; limiting S-CHIP eligibility to the poor) and some unserious (private charities ought to provide for the poor; the minimum wage leads to social pathologies), but none of which has any relationship to the blind logic of budget cutting proposed by the conservative movement, which does not differentiate between good and bad programs or good and bad incentives and pays no attention to powerful financiers of the conservative movement.

In other words, there are plenty of intellectual conservatives who care about poor people, and I agree that one can care about poor people without endorsing everything liberals do. But the conservative MOVEMENT, the organizations that fund modern conservativism, get people elected, pay for think tanks and talk shows, etc., doesn't adhere to any principle other than making sure that whatever budget cuts occur hit the poor and not the people who write their checks.

Posted by Dilan Esper | November 28, 2007 9:29 PM

Esper,

Right, the Drug War is a big perverter. The existence of a drug cartel is the one bad egg that can spoil a whole inner city neighborhood. The other polices, welfare, inner city school system, and minimum wage have a way of setting the table by providing a large number of young men without anything to do. Before the minimum wage, young people used to be well employed doing odds and ends as a way to prep them them for more serious employment. That step is all but gone. Now it's really only available in the rich suburbs.

But if we're talking about cutting the federal budget, we shouldn't even discuss welfare, school subsidies. All those social programs barely ever show up. They should still go because they do more harm than good, but they barely matter. The big money will be defense and entitlement spending. Fairly dangerous political terrain to be treading, but defense and entitlements should be cut. The medium size areas are farm subsidies, energy subsidies, and environmental subsidies. We'll encourage more responsibility by shifting the highway fund and gasoline tax from federal to the states.

Fiscal responsibility comes from eliminating the big ticket items not the small ones. Aid for the poor comes by eliminating programs that have good intentions but bad outcomes and giving people school choice. By the way, TANF and EITC are the most effective programs for helping the poor without all the bad side effects.

Posted by TanGeng | November 28, 2007 10:11 PM

Esper,

One other suggestion would be to eliminate the payroll tax for a small rise in the income tax. For the social security portion, the employee effectively pays both his and the employer share of the SS tax for a 12% tax on wages.

12% tax on wages!!! This doesn't apply at all to your millionaires who make money on capital appreciation and investment returns.

The other portion is Medicare taxes. Get rid of that too. I know it'd complicate accounting for the SS Trust and Medicare Trust, but fund SS and Medicare with a portion of income taxes instead. If Democrats were to propose that, I'd be your loudest cheerleader.

Posted by TanGeng | November 28, 2007 10:24 PM

Re: The current health insurance approach does nothing (or hurts) the things conservatives of my reactionary brand care about, but a state-run approach may in some ways do even more to dissolve us all in a sea of atoms bouncing off of each other, without care or love, only our tax dollars to perform compassion-by-proxy.

Marquis, I simply find it impossible to imagine how the above may be true. To me it's like asserting that sanitary reglations or schooling requirements or police protection are destroying the family or making people strangers to one another. Come on, we are talking about healthcare-- that's always been a third-party-outside-the-family matter since since the ancient Egyptians sought help from healers in their temples.
On the larger question too I find the whole argument largely bogus, an excuse for class warfare against the poor in the interest of the overclass. Government spending on social welfare is quite trivial among the causes of social breakdown. The biggest culprit by far is modern technology, which enables us to become pseudo-sovereign individualists with only weak attachments to others. Consider divorce: It's true of course that tough divorce laws prevented divorces, but that's only the most proximate cause, because those laws existed only so long as the people wanted them on the books. If Americans in 1800 had wanted no-fault divorce they would have had it. The reason why they didn't is because in those days it was very difficult for an individual to live on his own, before labor saving devices made the daily chores of life a fairly minor matter and before mass entertainment gave us diversions outside our immediate circle of loved ones. Also, technology changed the nature of work, separating work from family with men and women becoming "employees" outside the home, creating a huge sphere of life that had nothing to do with family. That change of course was already beginning when this country was founded and the 19th century made it general. My message on this: we need to deal with the world the way it is today, not delude ourselves with bucolic daydreams of how things used to be. Those days are never coming back, no more than you can un-age yourself back into childhood. And if dealing with today's problems requires a degree of public welfare spending then so be it. Obviously ineffective programs shoudld be dropped and inefficient ones need to be reformed. But the effort itself should not be opposed. Just as agriculture made organzied government necessary several millennia ago, so too industrialization and globalization make the welfare state necessary.

Posted by JonF | November 29, 2007 8:37 AM

Re: one reason that healthcare costs have gone up so fast is precisely because individuals aren't paying for it directly - a third party is. This means that they have no incentives to cut down on costs.

This doesn't really work, because individuals have only a very imperfect ability to control their healthcare needs and spending. For one thing healthcare lacks "inferior goods", meaning that there are few or no cheap substitutes that will serve as well as more opulent options in the way that there is cheap food and pricey food (ramen noodles vs filet mignon) and both will equally sate hunger and nourish the body. A person who needs an appendectomy or chemo for cancer needs precisely that service: there's no "ramen noodles" option to take instead for those with limited budgets. Moreover the biggest chunk of healthcare spending by far occurs during the end of life phase when an individual may not be competent to make such determinations, and his loved ones may be too emotionally distressed to do so rationally. But even lesser illnesses can preclude rational decision making. Have you ever had a series of medical tests done and gotten bills from people you did not expect to bill you? How can you make decisions about expenses you have no idea you are even incurring? Like it or not healthcare decisions are generally made by medical personnel, and to a large extent that's quite justifiable.

Posted by JonF | November 29, 2007 8:39 AM

Dilan,

But again, when it comes time to cut spending, I haven't seen ANY movement conservative contend that we need to cut funding for the drug war (much less end it).

So Bill Buckley is not a movement conservative?

But the conservative MOVEMENT, the organizations that fund modern conservativism, get people elected, pay for think tanks and talk shows, etc., doesn't adhere to any principle other than making sure that whatever budget cuts occur hit the poor and not the people who write their checks.

You are still just making assertions about motivations without addressing any actual persons, actions, or arguments. One could rewrite your statement and substitute liberalism for conservativism (a neologism, I think), federal spending for budget cuts, and "are targeted to" for "hit" and "vote for them" for "write their checks". (Alternatively, one could focus on the extent to which Democrats talk about supporting the agenda of George Soros and the Netroots, because they want their money and/or support.) So what? The point you are making only rises above the banal to the extent you impute higher motives to one group of politicians or activists than another. That's the premise that I reject, and that you refuse to address.

Posted by Mike S. | November 29, 2007 10:19 AM

JonF, you are ignoring competition. The majority of people are locked into health insurance programs that are selected by their employer, and which in many cases have a lot of state-imposed regulation. If people were able to purchase insurance across state lines, like they do with car insurance, there would be more incentives for states to reduce cost-raising regulations and for companies to offer cheaper and more flexible plans.

Likewise, you are assuming that there is some sort of fixed cost for an appendectomy or MRI which is immutable. This is partially true in the sense that medical technology and services are expensive - but in a relative sense it isn't true. We're talking about ways to make health care reasonably priced, not to make it fit into some absolute category of cost. The problem with health care is that the costs have outpaced inflation. There are many reasons for that, but one of them is that in many respects the market is not allowed to operate efficiently in ways that will bring down costs, or keep them from rising as quickly.

Regarding your example of billing, I think it precisely illustrates my point. If you go to the auto mechanic and get billed for things that you didn't expect to pay for, you go and dispute the bill. But the way health care is set up, you've inserted a third party into the negotiation which distorts the incentives and the lines of communication. If people were simply dealing directly with the hospital, instead of the three-way transaction between patient, hospital, and third-party payer (whether an insurance company or the government), there would be fewer such examples, because the incentives for the hospital to clarify their billing practices would be more immediate.

Posted by Mike S. | November 29, 2007 10:29 AM

So Bill Buckley is not a movement conservative?

He is, but his and his magazine's advocacy against the drug war is quite minimal. They don't trash Republican candidates for supporting it; as far as I know they have never criticized President Bush over it once.

It is true some movement conservatives will say "personally, I am against the drug war". But that's different from putting any of the movement's resources to work to oppose it. And that has never been done, because the point is to make sure that those resources are directed towards making sure the budget cuts hit the poor and not the donors.

Posted by Dilan Esper | November 29, 2007 1:30 PM

Dilan,

I'd guess the reason NR doesn't spend a lot of time/effort going after the drug war is (1) it's not a uniform policy preference -- some NR authors are moderately in favor of (parts of, at least) the drug war and (2) it's a hopeless and quixotic cause. The constituency for, say, legalizing marijuana (not medical marijuana, but ending that bit of the drug war) is not large enough to have any impact on American politics. Name a national-stature politician, Republican or Democrat, who endorses the idea -- can you? I can't. Maybe I'm missing someone, but that pretty much means spending too much time on the idea is pointless, because it can't go anywhere at all, for a long time to come.

Posted by The Marquis of Carabas | November 29, 2007 3:05 PM

it's a hopeless and quixotic cause

NR advocates for these all the time. Kathryn Lopez promoted a Dick Cheney presidential run. They have editorialized in favor of interpreting the 14th Amendment to protect fetuses as a form of "life" and therefore to CONSTITUTIONALLY bar all abortions.

On spending, NR favors abolishing several cabinet departments including the Department of Education and implementing a national school voucher system. It also has editorialized in favor of a flat tax and a zero capital gains rate.

None of those things are happening. They are all quixotic.

Look, my broader point stands. I wonder if you guys are really in the dark and believe all that crap about how spending money never impacts poverty (I know that money can be misspent, but MANY people really have been HELPED by government anti-poverty programs too) or whether you guys know, deep in your hearts, that the conservative movement pushes its energies towards protecting the government programs that benefit its financiers but just don't want to admit it.

Posted by Dilan Esper | November 29, 2007 4:46 PM

Dilan,

But all of the quixotic things you note have at least one nationally prominent politician willing to give lip service (ignore Lopez, who may be a nice person, but is of no real interest here). Even the smallest step of drug war elimination --- legalizing marijuana --- doesn't. To my knowledge, at any rate (ok, I imagine Ron Paul is in favor, but that would make the Return Of The Gold Standard a plausible cause).

Of course I know in my hearts that the movement pushes its energies to attacking programs that aren't the ones beloved by its voters or its financial backers. Well, gee, officer, I guess politicians DO sometimes tell lies. Let's all go to jail now!

Posted by The Marquis of Carabas | November 29, 2007 4:59 PM

Of course I know in my hearts that the movement pushes its energies to attacking programs that aren't the ones beloved by its voters or its financial backers. Well, gee, officer, I guess politicians DO sometimes tell lies. Let's all go to jail now!

Marquis, I understand that everyone does that. But the whole point of this is that IF conservatives want to convince voters that they really care about the poor, then it seems to me that either you have to go in Gerson's direction or you have to start being willing to take on corporate welfare and wasteful defense spending and targeted windfalls for the super-rich and the other things that philosophically, conservativism is supposed to be opposed to but in practice it never does anything about.

The other alternative is that the label that at least movement conservatives don't care about the poor is going to be true.

It's conservatives' choice. What I don't buy is the same old targeting of only those programs that don't affect the financiers of the movement, meanwhile SWEARING that conservatives have nothing against poor people.

Posted by Dilan Esper | November 29, 2007 6:45 PM

So, er, to not be guilty of hating the poor (by default) conservatives have to either:

1) do something politically unrealistic, in that it wouldn't get them that many votes, and would lose them contributions -- in other words, it would gain purity at the cost of pretty much demolishing all small-government conservative influence on politics

or

2) adopt Gerson's approach, which is neither very good at helping people (in many cases) nor, er, actually, conservative.

I guess it's like saying "Look, I'll think your racist if you won't date a black woman. Yes, I know you're married, but you can get divorced and give her a chance. Hey, it's your choice! If you don't do it, I'll know what it means."

Posted by The Marquis of Carabas | November 29, 2007 7:36 PM

Dilan, you are being remarkably obtuse. What about the phrase "conservatives don't think that spending more money on the poor is equivalent to 'caring' about the poor; in fact, they think that it is frequently counterproductive as it has been carried out by the federal government over the last 40 years" do you not understand? If you were so inclined you could at least try to argue against the proposition, but to simply keep repeating "conservatives don't care about the poor because they want to cut social welfare programs" is like saying "la la la la I can't hear you la la la".

Gerson is arguing for exactly the same kinds of things that liberals have been arguing for for the past 60 years: spending more money on vast, grandiose projects that will remake society. And you're not allowed to question the efficacy of the program - just like you say, the question is only whether it helps "some" people, not whether it is a net benefit.

Posted by Mike S. | November 29, 2007 8:48 PM

Bad analogy, Marquis, because what you are overlooking is that these budgetary priorities actually affect real people.

Had, for instance, Newt Gingrich succeeded in slashing Medicaid funding in the 1990's as he proposed, many poor people would have been unable to go to the doctor. Some of them would have gotten sick. Others would have been unable to treat traumatic injuries. Some might have died. Others might have been forced to go into debt and ended up in bankruptcy.

So if your defense is "we are bowing to political realities and not going to cut the programs of the people who finance it", but you are QUITE willing to cut poor people's medical care, what are we supposed to conclude?

In contrast, if you ARE willing to go after corporate welfare and benefits and boondoggles for corporations and the rich, then you can say the applicable principle is budget cutting and shared sacrifice, not the fact that the poor don't fund your movement and the rich do.

Look, politics is a matter of priorities. And if the priorities are that spending for the fat-cats gets protected and spending for the poor gets cut, the shoe is going to fit, and liberals are quite justifiably going to make you wear it. If you don't want to wear it, grow a political spine and take on your financiers for once.

Posted by Dilan Esper | November 29, 2007 8:54 PM

What about the phrase "conservatives don't think that spending more money on the poor is equivalent to 'caring' about the poor; in fact, they think that it is frequently counterproductive as it has been carried out by the federal government over the last 40 years" do you not understand?

I understand it, Mike S. I just think it is a flat, baldfaced, flaming lie. Why? Because your movement doesn't take the same attitude about spending on rich people and corporations. Indeed, your movement manifests its "caring" for those interests in the exact manner that it contends is actually NOT caring when it is applied to the poor.

Posted by Dilan Esper | November 29, 2007 8:57 PM

Hold up. Dilan's just making things up to suit his purposes now. REPUBLICAN POLITICIANS (who are not, generally, "movement conservatives" with some exceptions) do client-service for contributors plenty. That's politics, and I don't like it -- and to the extent the state more resembled what I'd probably like to see it resemble, it'd be less of an issue, because taxes and regulation and subsidies wouldn't be common enough that favors are buried in the noise.

But movement conservatives seldom laud these things, and often grumble about them. They don't push against them in a large-scale systematic way because it's futile. If Dilan can't get this -- can't understand that probably Ross or Ramesh Ponnuru would be MORE LIKELY, given Dictator Power to blow up all the corporate handouts than to abolish every single social program, he's just not arguing in good faith. Endless wrangling with someone who, for his own purposes, wants you to commit suicide in pursuit of HIS vision of purity is a lose-lose game. I quit playing, as of now.

Posted by The Marquis of Carabas | November 30, 2007 12:03 PM

Marquis, people grumble about many things in private. But they don't do anything about them.

Let's put it another way-- a person who GENUINELY cared about the poor would probably spend a fair amount of effort trying to push the movement NOT to support budget cutting that leaves subsidies for the fat-cats and big corporate interests in place. GRUMBLING isn't enough here.

Remember what the accusation is. The accusation is that conservatives don't care about the poor. "Don't care" can include simple neglect, or treating them as not a priority.

You are telling me that for pragmatic political reasons, ensuring that budget cuts are fair to the poor ISN'T a priority, that this IS something conservatives neglect even though they are aware of the issue.

My point is proven.

Posted by Dilan Esper | November 30, 2007 4:29 PM