NSA WIRETAPPING AND BLACKMAIL
Who Will Save America?

I've been reading the essays of old school conservative Paul Craig Roberts on and off for a few years now--it's nutty, but most of his stuff I get from a website run by old school communist Alexander Cockburn, CounterPunch. Roberts is a vociferous critic of the Bush administration and is very easily mistaken for a liberal because of that. But make no mistake about it; Roberts' analysis comes from a very different point of view. The guy was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury under Reagan, and later an associate editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial page, a total supply-sider.

Given my conservative past, it's not so strange, I guess, that I find myself agreeing with him often, although certainly not always, and not just because he appears to hate Bush. Roberts stands as a stark reminder that there are still very strong intellectual, conservative challenges to progressive ideas, despite the fact that nobody else seems to be articulating them anymore. Roberts reminds me that I'm less of a liberal and more of a pragmatist. That is, I have a certain set of social goals, food, clothing, shelter, and health care for all, for instance, that I want to see achieved, but I don't really care how we get there: if conservative programs can do it, then sign me up. It just so happens that most conservatives don't really seem to care about my social goals, so it's progressivism for me, for now.

Here's a sample about what I'm talking about from an essay where Roberts appears to be attempting to clarify where he stands ideologically.

From CounterPunch, courtesy of Crooks and Liars, courtesy of Once Upon a Time:

My goals were to reverse the Keynesian policy mix that caused worsening "Phillips curve" trade-offs between employment and inflation and to cure the stagflation that destroyed Jimmy Carter's presidency. No one has seen a "Phillips curve" trade-off or experienced stagflation since the supply-side policy was implemented. (These gains are now being eroded by the labor arbitrage that is replacing American workers with foreign ones. In January 2004 I teamed up with Democratic Senator Charles Schumer in the New York Times and at a Brookings Institution conference in a joint effort to call attention to the erosion of the US economy and Americans' job prospects by outsourcing.)

The supply-side policy used reductions in the marginal rate of taxation on additional income to create incentives to expand production so that consumer demand would result in increased real output instead of higher prices. No doubt, the rich benefitted, but ordinary people were no longer faced simultaneously with rising inflation and lost jobs. Employment expanded for the remainder of the century without having to pay for it with high and rising rates of inflation. Don't ever forget that Reagan was elected and re-elected by blue collar Democrats.

That's the most compelling explanation of supply side economics, or "Reaganomics," that I've ever encountered. Stagflation, or economic recession combined with inflation, was a horrible problem back in the 70s that threatened to utterly destroy the entire economy. Nobody but nobody appeared to have an answer for how to deal with it; the problem was completely unprecedented. Expanding production capacity by giving tax breaks to business was brilliant in this situation; coupled with a hike in interest rates to ease inflation, Reaganomics apparently took care of the rest.

Don't get me wrong on this. Generally, I'm opposed to such a thing. But sometimes you've gotta do things you wouldn't ordinarily do in order to avoid catastrophe. Stagflation, which appeared to be an unsolvable problem, was just such an occasion: what was appropriate then is definitely not appropriate now--stagflation, as Roberts observes, has not been an issue since the late 70s.

Of course Roberts makes observations that are just nutty, too, and mixes them with fairly true statements just to confuse:

My book, with Lawrence Stratton, The Tyranny of Good Intentions, details the erosion of the legal rights that make law a shield of the innocent instead of a weapon in the hands of government. Without the protection of law, rich and poor alike are at the mercy of government. In their hatred of "the rich," the left-wing overlooks that in the 20th century the rich were the class most persecuted by government. The class genocide of the 20th century is the greatest genocide in history.

Is he talking about China or the Soviet Union? Frankly, he's off his rocker when he asserts that "in the 20th century the rich were the class most persecuted by government." That didn't happen in the US. The rich were certainly under fire at points, but persecuted? No way. Nonetheless, his ideas about law as a shield as opposed to a governmental weapon are right on.

I can only attribute his feelings for the poor and suffering rich as ideological bias; he is a conservative, after all.

But, generally, his analysis seems untroubled by his ideology. Check this out:

Before flinching at my assertion of blackmail, ask yourself why President Bush refuses to obey the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. The purpose of the FISA court is to ensure that administrations do not spy for partisan political reasons. The warrant requirement is to ensure that a panel of independent federal judges hears a legitimate reason for the spying, thus protecting a president from the temptation to abuse the powers of government. The only reason for the Bush administration to evade the court is that the Bush administration had no legitimate reasons for its spying. This should be obvious even to a naif.

The United States is undergoing a coup against the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, civil liberties, and democracy itself. The "liberal press" has been co-opted. As everyone must know by now, the New York Times has totally failed its First Amendment obligations, allowing Judith Miller to make war propaganda for the Bush administration, suppressing for an entire year the news that the Bush administration was illegally spying on American citizens, and denying coverage to Al Gore's speech that challenged the criminal deeds of the Bush administration.

The TV networks mimic Fox News' faux patriotism. Anyone who depends on print, TV, or right-wing talk radio media is totally misinformed. The Bush administration has achieved a de facto Ministry of Propaganda.

The years of illegal spying have given the Bush administration power over the media and the opposition. Journalists and Democratic politicians don't want to have their adulterous affairs broadcast over television or to see their favorite online porn sites revealed in headlines in the local press with their names attached. Only people willing to risk such disclosures can stand up for the country.

Click here for the rest.

He may be wrong; this is clearly speculation. But he's absolutely correct about the kind of power that comes from the ability to listen in on citizens' private communications, and blackmail is nothing new in American politics--longtime FBI head J. Edgar Hoover managed to maintain his position through numerous administrations with blackmail, and LBJ kept Hoover in check by blackmailing the blackmailer himself!

Like I said, I don't agree with everything Roberts says, but I love him because he's willing to constrain his rhetoric and analysis with something that both liberals and conservatives are increasingly less willing to use, intellectual honesty.

Could you imagine what our country would be like if everybody was willing to be honest with themselves?

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