Here be Dragons

I just started Michael Tanner’s Leviathan on the Right, which is a 2007 book out of the Cato Institute (google “Cato Institute” when you have the time). I’m irritated with President Bush—who was no conservative, let me tell you.

From the first page of LontR, here is a brief list of what he did in only the first 6 years of his two terms in office:

· Created the prescription drug program for senior citizens ($11.2 billion in coverage we don’t have the money for)

· Increased federal control over local schools

· Increased federal education spending by almost 61%

· Signed a campaign finance bill which further restricts free speech

· Allowed wiretapping and gave new and much broader power to federal law enforcement

· Federalized airport security

· Created the Dept of Homeland Security, which is pointless if the rest of the bloated federal law enforcement folks would do their job

· Spent $1.5 billion to promote marriage

· Suggested we spend $1.7 billion to come up with some sort of hydrogen-powered car

· Imposed tariffs and other restrictions on lumber and steel—thus weakening free trade.

· Expanded the previous administration’s national service program

· Increased farm subsidies

· Put in place new regs on the way corporations are run, and how they keep their books

And the kicker, which happened after this book was written: he abandoned free-market principles to save the free-market system" (his words) when the economy went south in 2008.

Tanner goes on in the following pages, laying out what has come to be know as “big-government conservatism.” Apparently there are conservatives out there who think the government has a responsibility to fix our problems.

In fact (now that I think about it), I know a lot of them. They’re folks who have a soft heart for hard-luck stories, and who want the government to step in and help. Tanner quotes David Brooks, who says these sorts of conservatives want government to encourage good habits in its citizens: “those core values include thrift, hard work, charity, patriotism, and especially traditional sexual and family mores. If a government program advances these goals it is a good program and [is] a proper role for government almost by definition.”

Wow.

We have a lot of work to do, don’t we?