Right-Wingers Hate Government But Love Gov’t Help

From AlterNet:

The editorial board highlighted the fact that Rand Paul, the bizarre Republican nominee for the U.S. Senate, has ideas that sometimes “crash into reality” in awkward ways. For example, Paul hates “big government” programs like Medicaid and Medicare, but the health care programs nevertheless constitute about half of his professional income. Indeed, the right-wing ophthalmologist would like to eliminate most of the federal government, but he’s prepared to leave Medicare intact — the socialized-medicine program that’s helped him pay his mortgage.

Likewise, Paul wanted nothing to do with contributions from senators who support the financial industry bailout in 2008. The pledge suddenly disappeared when his campaign decided he needed the money.

More here.

Unfortunately, this isn't the Rand Paul post I've been meaning to write for a few weeks, you know, on how he thinks it is an infringement of sacred property rights for the government to force businesses to serve all races and ethnicities. That one's going to wait for a while longer.

But Paul is fairly representative of the whole conservative big government/small government bipolar intellectual construction of liberalism versus conservatism. Like most self-described conservatives, Paul hates "big government" and loves "small government." Years ago, when I was conservative myself, I thought I understood what that means. Even as a liberal for some years I thought I knew what "big" and "small" government meant. More recently, for the last five or six years or so, however, I've decided I just don't get it.

I mean, sure, I understand what the words "big" and "small" mean, and, of course, I know the word "government." But what, exactly, is "big government"? I have no idea. Back when I thought I understood, I might have said something along the lines of "big government is what we're seeing right now in the Gulf of Mexico, with the Feds moving in to control response to the oil spill, which conservatives should hate because private business could do it better, and because it deprives us of the important economic activity, all the money to be made, that would be created by a private sector response." But, at the moment, conservatives are criticizing the Obama administration, virtually in lockstep, for not being more active in responding to the disaster.

Back when I thought I understood "big" and "small" government, I might have used welfare and other social programs as an example of "big government." But then I discovered the concept of "corporate welfare," big tax breaks and straight-up cash payments to private business, as well as the existence of certain industries, the airlines, for instance, or the recorded music industry, that simply couldn't function without federal support and regulation. Conservatives aren't particularly critical of any of that stuff.

Maybe conservatives are talking about government regulation of economic activity. You know, get the government off the people's backs, and all that. Conservatives hate regulations. But when it comes to the other side of it, you know, labor, conservatives are all about using government to restrict workers' ability to come together and collectively bargain with employers. So it can't be economic regulation, per se, that constitutes "big government."

Then there are roads, the courts, the police, and the military. We've got a pretty big country, situated in a pretty big world, so the government needs to be pretty big in order to supply these necessities that even the most orthodox neoliberal agrees we need.

Either there's something I'm not getting, which is possible because I'm not brilliant, or there is simply no consistent principle behind the notion of "big" and "small" government. Despite my lack of brilliance, I'm inclined to believe the latter option: "big" and "small" government, as political or economic ideas, have no correlation to reality. That is, everybody, across the entire political spectrum, wants to have big government, whether they admit it or not. In the end, it has nothing to do with size, and everything to do with what the government does with your money.

What the government ought to do with your money is a reasonable discussion; whether the government should be "big" or "small" is an exercise in bullshit, and therefore a waste of everybody's time and energy. Yet the conversation continues, with the bogus parameters accepted by both sides. And the big/small debate decisively favors conservatives: who can argue against thrift and savings, or in favor of "oppression"? With conservatives on the winning side in such a debate, there is no incentive on their part to end this characterization of American politics.

Are liberals going to do anything, ever, to change the debate's parameters? If history is any indicator, the answer is "no."

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