Winning Progressive

(By NCrissie B)

Libertarians talk and write about property rights. Clarence Carson argued that property is the basis for all other rights, including life and liberty. Property is, he claimed, a “natural right” that preexists government, and concludes:

The law may be stated in this way. All rights are dependent upon property. They are dependent upon property for their conception, their delineation, and their exercise. It follows from this that the system of property ownership will determine what rights can be effectively established within a society. Since a right cannot be firmly established unless it is tied to a property base, changes in the property system will tend to be reflected in the rights that can be exercised. And, the right of the individual to the ownership of private property is essential to the establishment of individual rights.

Such is the theoretical wellspring for the Libertarian Party’s 2012 Platform statement on Property and Contract:

Property rights are entitled to the same protection as all other human rights. The owners of property have the full right to control, use, dispose of, or in any manner enjoy, their property without interference, until and unless the exercise of their control infringes the valid rights of others. We oppose all controls on wages, prices, rents, profits, production, and interest rates. We advocate the repeal of all laws banning or restricting the advertising of prices, products, or services. We oppose all violations of the right to private property, liberty of contract, and freedom of trade. The right to trade includes the right not to trade – for any reasons whatsoever. Where property, including land, has been taken from its rightful owners by the government or private action in violation of individual rights, we favor restitution to the rightful owners. [Emphasis added.]

The italicized text is the boilerplate libertarian rejection of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Back in January, then-Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul said the Civil Rights Act “undermined the concept of liberty.” In reader comments to that article, many apparent libertarians argue that business owners have a right to discriminate against persons of color, women, or other groups. The business is the owner’s private property, they claim, and government has no right to intervene.

Except, one presumes, if the business owner wants Those People removed from his property. Then, one presumes, government has not only the right but the duty to enforce the owner’s property rights by ordering Those People to leave and arresting them for trespass if they refuse. Or, if the business owner does not order Those People to leave but simply refuses to hire or serve them, government has the duty to resolve any resulting lawsuit in favor of the business owner.

Ponder these two sentences:

* Government may not legitimately restrict property rights, including a business owner’s right to discriminate.

* Government may not legitimately restrict government’s duty to enforce property rights, including a business owner’s right to discriminate.

The first is libertarian property rights doctrine. The second is what that libertarian doctrine means in Realworldia … and the italicized phrase exposes the conceptual fallacy of that doctrine.

In Realworldia, law is not about theory or philosophy. Law is a tool for resolving disputes, and a “right” is a duty of government to resolve This kind of dispute, given These facts, in favor of That party, and by providing Those remedies. To argue that government may not legitimately restrict property rights is to argue that government may not legitimately restrict the duties of government.

The Libertarian Party’s property rights platform is not about what a business owner may do, but about what government officials must do, namely, take the business owner’s side in any dispute over the business owner’s bigotry. They insist that government officials – acting as agents of We the People – may not heed the voice of We the People. In that view, property owners have whatever ‘rights’ they demand, and our only recourse is to refuse to do business with them and hope the “free market” will sort it out.

That is not “government of the people, by the people, for the people.” It is “government of the property owners, by the property owners, for the property owners.” That is … plutocracy.

(Crossposted from Blogistan Polytechnic Institute (BPICampus.com))

Republican voters in South Carolina, a state that still celebrates treason by flying the Confederate flag at the state capitol and having Confederate Memorial Day as a state holiday, further besmirched their state’s reputation by voting for Newt Gingrich in last Saturday’s Republican Presidential primary.  After weeks of the media treating Mitt Romney as a shoo-in for the GOP nomination, Gingrich surged in South Carolina in the past week and ended up winning by a 41% to 28% vote total, with Rick Santorum receiving 17% and Ron Paul receiving 13%.  With this victory behind him, Newt is now looking to catch up to Romney in Florida, which is holding its primary on January 31.

Newt’s victory comes on the 15th anniversary of Gingrich becoming the first Speaker of the House in US history to be reprimanded by his own colleagues.  The reprimand was the result of an ethics investigation stemming from the financing of a course that Newt taught at a local college, and Newt’s persistent misstatements to the investigators.  The reprimand and accompanying $300,000 fine were approved by the House on a 395-28 vote, with 196 House Republicans voting in favor of reprimanding Newt. Now, South Carolina Republicans have decided they want this paragon of ethics to be their party’s standard bearer in 2012.

Exit polling from the election revealed a number of interesting facts. First, it shows the continuing political hypocrisy of so-called conservative Christians.  In particular, 65% of the voters in yesterday’s primary considered themselves to be born-again or evangelical Christians. Those voters supported Gingrich over Romney by 44%-22%.  Newt, of course, is a serial adulterer who divorced his first wife while she was undergoing cancer treatment to marry his younger mistress, then divorced her in order to once again marry a younger mistress.  Despite his personal infidelities, Gingrich has the nerve to lecture others on personal morality, to attack the rights of LGBT Americans and women, and to pledge to advance a wide ranging conservative social agenda.  Winning Progressive typically does not care about the personal lives of politicians because what matters is how they would conduct their public lives.  But when a candidate’s public positions involve forcing others to adopt a particular version of personal morality that the candidate himself or herself does not follow, then it is entirely fair game to call out the hypocrisy.  And hypocrisy is exactly what Gingrich represents, and what “family values” conservatives who supported him in South Carolina demonstrated.

Another interesting bit of data from the exit polling is with regards to the views of South Carolina Republican primary voters on the economy versus the deficit. Republicans voting in a primary in South Carolina can safely be expected to reflect some of the most conservative elements of the GOP. Yet when asked to identify the issue that matters most, 63% of them said the economy as compared to only 22% that said the deficit and 3% that said illegal immigration. Similarly, 43% identified creating jobs even if it increases the deficit as a higher priority than cutting the deficit even if it limits job growth.  These numbers among conservatives in the South suggest a continuing high level of economic insecurity that needs to be addressed and could provide an opening for tamping down support for a GOP Presidential candidate who is more focused on deficits than on job creation.

A final interesting point from the exit polls is that the 45% of South Carolina GOP primary voters who identified the ability to defeat President Obama as the candidate quality that mattered the most voted for Newt Gingrich over Mitt Romney by 51%-37%.  While we think that President Obama can beat either candidate in a general election, we’ll leave it up to our readers to decide whether it is reasonable to think that Newt has a better chance of winning the general election than Mitt does.

As Hurricane Irene approached the East Coast last week, leading conservatives stood up not to fight for a robust federal effort to aid the communities that would be impacted, but instead to challenge the idea that federal disaster relief should be a priority.  For example, House GOP majority leader Eric Cantor said that disaster relief should be provided only if the costs were offset by cuts to other parts of the federal budget and, as the New York Times reported:

Representative Ron Paul, the Texas Republican who is seeking his party’s presidential nomination, has gone beyond that view to argue that the federal government’s role in disaster preparation and relief should be cut substantially. Mr. Paul said he saw little value in the Federal Emergency Management Agency, saying the federal approach has given birth to an intrusive bureaucracy and supplants what should be an area for private insurance.

“The bleeding heart will say, well, we have to take care of them,” Mr. Paul said on “Fox News Sunday,” calling FEMA “a gross distortion of insurance” and saying that workers for the agency “hinder the local people, and they hinder volunteers from going in.”

“So there’s no magic about FEMA,” he concluded.

Rep. Cantor had a similar response when tornadoes devastated Joplin, Missouri, and the GOP has continued to push for cuts in the budgets for FEMA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association despite the critical roles those agencies play in predicting, preparing for, and dealing with the consequences of natural disasters. 

While Winning Progressive is used to hearing today’s GOP take absolutely ridiculous positions on issues, we were even a bit shocked to see the GOP questioning the federal government’s role in disaster relief.  For one thing, after the debacle that occurred during Hurricae Katrina due to the W. Bush Administration’s budgetary cutbacks, privatization, and crony governance at FEMA, you would think that the GOP would be hesitant to make disaster relief an issue they speak out strongly on.  And more generally, few things a more important or appropriate job for government than helping our fellow Americans get through and rebuild from a natural disaster. 

Upon furthe reflection, however, we realized that the importance and appropriateness of federal action on disaster relief is exactly why the GOP is attacking it.  In short, disaster relief is a huge flashpoint for conservative zealots because it goes to the heart of the philosophical debate between progressivism and conservatism.

On the progressive side, we believe that while government cannot and should not do everything, it can and should provide societal goods that individuals and the free market cannot or will not provide on their own. And disaster preparedness and relief is a prime example of such societal goods, as individuals cannot possibly be expected to deal with the full impacts of an earthquake, hurricane, or other natural disaster, and the “free” market is likely to respond to such disasters with price gouging and is certainly not going to fund rebuilding public infrastructure that is destroyed by the disaster.

Unfortunately, today’s conservatives have a pathological hatred of anything that suggests government might be able to help average Americans. So, they work to cut the budgets and preparedness of disaster relief agencies not only so they can free up more money for tax cuts for the wealthy, but also because they realize that inadequate government responses to disasters help undermine people’s faith in government as an instrument for good.

In order to challenge this ideological zealotry, we must reaffirm the fundamental role that the federal government can and must play in disaster relief, and make sure that disaster relief agencies like FEMA are sufficiently funded to be able to do their jobs effectively.  We know from the Clinton Administration’s reformation of FEMA, and from the federal government’s response to the tornadoes that swept through the South this past May that federal disaster  relief works.  The key now is just to make sure that conservative ideological zealots do not prevent it from doing so.