Conservatives Love Government, When It’s the Military
In ranting against the government, one thing you seldom hear conservatives criticize is the military. Even though government, according to them, can’t run anything. Here’s the government conservatives go after:
- Social programs
- Public schools
- EPA
- Postal service
- Libraries
- Health care
- Court system
- Corporate regulations
Here’s the government conservatives love:
- Armed forces and military
- Police department
- Fire department
- Jails and the penitentiary system
- Personal regulation – definition of marriage, etc.
- Corporate rights
I’m sure there’s others, but it’s interesting to me that some government is ok for conservatives while other types of government are inefficient and ineffective.
Why is this? Where is the anti-government hysteria coming from.
A couple thoughts occur to me, but the one I’m going to play with is to think about who is generating most of the conservative anti-government propaganda.
One of the few things I agree with Rush Limbaugh about that most things in politics come down to money. The question I’d ask then is: who is profiting from the anti-government movement?
Here’s a couple industries that benefit:
- The big banks wanted to deregulate banking and financial regulations.
- The pharmaceutical industry got into Medicare and Medicaid and wants a bigger piece of it.
- The private education industry keeps pushing for more “options” in the schools.
- The oil industry wants more drilling rights on public land and less regulation.
- The book industry would benefit if they could get rid of public libraries.
- The health care industry want to put caps on lawsuit payments.
Industry lobbyists have learned that they can stoke public outrage about the government in order to “reform” it to their advantage.
I just wonder why no one seems to question why government programs such as the military, police, and fire departments seem immune from the “free market” propaganda.
Is it because conservatives really have a socialist “soft side”? Or could it be because certain industries have targeted certain government programs first?
For example, public school systems were not initially part of the target until certain businesses started to think about how they could make a profit from privitization.
Will the military ever come under question? Probably not until some business starts to think they can make more money from completely privatizing it.
Private armies are a scary idea, as are private police forces. Don’t think liberals want that either ;-).
Whilst I think some of it is clearly lobbying influenced, I think the majority of it falls under the libertarian creed. Their idea is that government exists solely to protect its citizens from harm.
Therefore industries like the military, police force, fire service, all fit the model of where government should be involved. Jails and, for me, the court system, also serve a purpose to protect people. Meanwhile anything else should be left unregulated.
I’m not a pure libertarian. Personally I think regulation can be a good thing, it’s all about moderation. Equally I don’t think that tiny government is good; just that smaller is better than bigger.
Governments should be involved in things like education (which means libraries, schools, museums etc) and law and order (jails, course, police, military). Bodies like the EPA are necessary since free markets require that companies seek profits at all costs, so environmental responsibility is bottom of their priorities.
Meanwhile I think areas like healthcare, postal service and social projects are best served by public and private working together. Either through partnerships (private-public partnerships) or by the government setting up public bodies to compete with the private ones, to ensure a healthy, yet primarily market-driven environment for key services like the post and healthcare.
Some areas are best served by private-only operation (financial markets) but with government supervision and regulation. There needs to be some limits on the free market to ensure that greed doesn’t create bubbles like the housing bubble, dot-com bubble and the mortgage-backed securities bubble. Those are bad.
Finally some areas (marriage) need to be largely free of intrusion by the government. Apart from marriage licenses (which should be used solely to for things like public health, via AIDS tests, or public records, like recording blood types) the government has no business in getting involved in marriage. People ought to be free to marry anyone they like, man woman or cat. Seriously.
Of course some conservatives are pure free-marketeers, others are authoritarians, and others, like myself, are pragmatists who recognise that conservative values need to be combined with a few liberal ones to ensure we have a free society that works.
At least, that’s what I like to think about my own philosophy đŸ˜‰
That was meant to read “courts” not “course” (5th paragraph)