{"id":5374,"date":"2013-05-16T12:39:09","date_gmt":"2013-05-16T16:39:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/?p=5374"},"modified":"2013-05-16T12:39:09","modified_gmt":"2013-05-16T16:39:09","slug":"will-congressional-republicans-ever-be-worth-a-damn-for-freedom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/2013\/05\/16\/will-congressional-republicans-ever-be-worth-a-damn-for-freedom\/","title":{"rendered":"Will Congressional Republicans Ever Be Worth A Damn For Freedom?"},"content":{"rendered":"

The American Conservative posted online today my review of Jim Antle’s zippety new book, Devouring Freedom: Can Big Government Ever Be Stopped?<\/a>. \u00a0Antle recognizes the peril of Leviathan and is fairly optimistic on what Republicans can become and achieve. \u00a0Here are a few of my lines from the review – which is posted in its entirety below.<\/p>\n

*\u00a0The friends of freedom are accustomed to being beaten like a rented mule in Washington.<\/strong><\/p>\n

*\u00a0Few Republican congressmen today have the gumption to oppose almost boundless executive power, even when the executive branch is controlled by their arch-enemy.<\/strong><\/p>\n

* Government has been growing by leaps in bounds thanks in large part to the mental turpitude and character defects of the typical member of Congress<\/strong><\/p>\n

*\u201cFreedom\u201d is a word that Republicans enjoy evoking when Democrats are in charge of the White House and executive branch<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

* Many of today\u2019s Republican members of Congress are so clueless that they do not recognize the peril of permitting Obama to perpetuate the secret surveillance that Bush commenced<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

* How many Republican congressmen are more interested in freedom than in power<\/strong>?\u00a0Far fewer than most readers would wish.<\/strong><\/p>\n

American Conservative<\/a>, May\/June 2013<\/p>\n

Bipartisan Predators<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0By\u00a0James Bovard<\/span>\u00a0
\n<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

The friends of freedom are accustomed to being beaten like a rented mule in Washington<\/strong>. Is it time to give up hope for any rollback of Leviathan? Not according to James Antle, a contributing editor for\u00a0The American Conservative<\/i>\u00a0and a very talented writer who has done fine work for the\u00a0American Spectator<\/i>,\u00a0Wall Street Journal<\/i>, and other publications.<\/p>\n

Antle\u2019s new book,\u00a0Devouring Freedom<\/i>, seeks to provide a roadmap for how politicians and activists can curb federal spending and power grabs. Antle is bluntly realistic:<\/p>\n

Cutting government is extremely difficult and rarely accomplished. In a perversion of Say\u2019s Law (\u2018supply creates its own demand\u2019), the supply of government creates its own demand. The breakneck growth of a deficit-financed welfare state makes it inevitable that more voters will develop similar attachments to proliferating government programs, though the broad-based tax increases that they entail will dampen the enthusiasm of some.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

He reveals some of the ways the game is rigged: \u201cEven the conventional economic statistics are stacked against the opponents of big government: they measure a dollar spent by Washington without taking into account whence that dollar came.\u201d<\/p>\n

Unlike your typical political scientist or\u00a0Washington Post<\/i>\u00a0columnist, Antle recognizes the charade of cosmetic reforms: \u201cGovernment programs are like weeds. If they are merely trimmed, they will grow back. They must be uprooted when possible.\u201d Unfortunately, there is a distinct shortage of weed pullers inside the Beltway.<\/p>\n

Unlike many right-leaning pundits, Antle does not fudge on the disastrous record of George W. Bush: \u201cEnrollment in 25 major federal programs increased three times as fast as the population between 2000 and 2006.\u201d Bush did much to propel the explosion of food-stamp enrollment even before the 2007 recession.<\/p>\n

The No Child Left Behind Act deserves the brickbats it receives in\u00a0Devouring Freedom<\/i>. \u00a0That law was falsely sold as giving freedom to local school officials. In reality, it empowered the feds to judge and punish local schools for not fulfilling arbitrary guidelines. Many states \u201cdumbed down\u201d academic standards, using bureaucratic racketeering to avoid harsh federal sanctions. Though the No Child Left Behind Act promised to permit children to escape \u201cpersistently dangerous\u201d schools, most states defined that term so as to claim that all their schools were safe.<\/p>\n

Regnery may have targeted\u00a0Devouring Freedom\u00a0<\/i>at readers who have not closely followed political battles in recent decades. The book declares, \u201cThe nexus of big-government and big business remains a well-kept secret.\u201d This is a secret only to people who get all their information from their \u201cObama phone.\u201d David Stockman, former director of Reagan\u2019s Office of Management and Budget, flogged business subsidies 30 years ago, and even the mainstream liberal media sometimes jibes corporate handouts.<\/p>\n

The book is kind to a fault to Newt Gingrich\u2019s glory years. It declares that the 1996 \u201cFreedom to Farm act set agricultural subsidies on a glide path to elimination.\u201d In reality, that farm bill tripled cash handouts to farmers and sufficed with an unenforceable pledge to phase down subsidies in the next century. The budget deficits of the mid-1990s vanished primarily because federal revenue rose almost three times as fast as the inflation rate between 1994 and 1998. In a series of budget deals with Bill Clinton, Gingrich did more than any other Republican to unleash the federal spending he later deplored while seeking the Republican presidential nomination. (The fact that so many Republicans still consider Gingrich a \u201cdeep thinker\u201d does not inspire hope for the movement.)<\/p>\n

Antle justly lauds the Republican-controlled Congress of 1947\u201348, which struck down some of the New Deal\u2019s worst excesses. \u201cLed by Sen. Robert Taft \u2026 the Eightieth Congress rolled back the militarization of the U.S. economy and prevented the creation of a full-blown European-style welfare state.\u201d Federal spending fell from a wartime high of 43.6 percent of GDP to 11.3 percent in 1948. \u201cWartime price controls on food and other consumer products were repealed. Taxes were cut. The peacetime draft was, at least temporarily, suspended.\u201d And changes to federal labor law curtailed the power of the nation\u2019s largest unions. President Truman pilloried Republicans as a \u201cdo-nothing Congress.\u201d But after a long period of mushrooming government, repealing bad laws and slashing spending is the height of public service.<\/p>\n

Devouring Freedom<\/i>\u00a0reminds one of a passionate football coach chalking out savvy defensive plays in front of a roomful of listless players who have no desire to tackle their opponents.<\/strong> Many Americans, remembering the rhetoric of Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan, have counted on conservative organizations to resolutely block the expansion of government power. But the sellouts keep on coming. The\u00a0New York Times<\/i>\u00a0reported on April 9 that the American Conservative Union has solicited contributions from business lobbyists to help thwart the push for budget cuts. A draft proposal circulating in Washington even offered to use the Conservative Political Action Conference to blunt attacks on federal infrastructure and military spending. Campaign for Liberty president John Tate observed that the proposed lobbying effort \u201csmacks to a lot of people as taking big money to do the bidding of big business.\u201d<\/p>\n

When Georgia governor Lester Maddox was criticized in the late 1960s for the abysmal conditions in his state\u2019s prisons, he blamed the problem on the poor caliber of the convicts. Similarly, government has been growing by leaps in bounds thanks in large part to the mental turpitude and character defects of the typical member of Congress<\/strong>. Antle observes late in the book: \u201cOpponents of big government \u2026 overestimated the degree to which the average American understands the details of the federal budget and what\u2019s at stake.\u201d But most members of Congress also have little or no understanding of the vast majority of federal programs. For every Tom Coburn\u2014the Oklahoma Republican senator who plunges avidly into the details and issues reports on backburner boondoggles\u2014there are a score of congressmen who vote like a know-nothing herd following leadership\u2019s command.<\/p>\n

\u201cFreedom\u201d is a word that Republicans enjoy evoking when Democrats are in charge of the White House and executive branch<\/strong>. But one of the best gauges of character is the number of Republican congressmen who openly resisted the abuses and power grabs of George W. Bush. To say that the list is short is the understatement of the year.<\/p>\n

It is pathetic that the biggest civil-liberties issue thus far this year is whether the president should be permitted to assassinate Americans residing within the nation\u2019s boundaries. Even more appalling is that few congressional Republicans stepped up to support Rand Paul\u2019s Senate filibuster on this issue. And despite a token gesture to Paul from Attorney General Eric Holder, Americans still know almost nothing about the extent of, and legal rationale for, Obama\u2019s prerogative to order killings based solely on his own decrees.<\/p>\n

Few Republican congressmen today have the gumption to oppose almost boundless executive power, even when the executive branch is controlled by their arch-enemy<\/strong>. Can you imagine Everett Dirksen taking the floor of the Senate to boisterously champion President Lyndon Johnson\u2019s prerogative to read the private mail of Dirksen and every other Republican member of Congress? With their own party in the White House, however, GOP members of Congress gave Bush a standing ovation when he bragged about his illegal \u201cTerrorist Surveillance Program\u201d warrantless wiretapping in his 2006 State of the Union address. Perhaps many of today\u2019s Republican members of Congress are so clueless that they do not recognize the peril of permitting Obama to perpetuate the secret surveillance that Bush commenced<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Devouring Freedom\u00a0<\/i>warns, \u201cRepublicans who are committed to the fight against big government may have to fight their leaders first.\u201d Unfortunately, it is difficult to see any sign of a learning curve from GOP leadership. Antle notes, \u201cShortly after the November 2012 elections, Congressional Republicans purged four strong fiscal conservatives\u2014Justin Amash of Michigan, Tim Huelskamp of Kansas, David Schweikert of Arizona, and Walter Jones of North Carolina\u2014from their preferred committee assignments.\u201d Kicking Amash and Huelskamp off the Budget Committee signaled that the Republican leadership would not tolerate any principles when it came to negotiating tax-and-spending deals with Obama. Expelling Walter Jones from the House Financial Services Committee was especially tawdry since Jones was out of the few courageous and sagacious Republicans opposed to the Iraq War (an unforgivable sin).<\/p>\n

Antle does not lull readers with assurances of no-sweat victories:<\/p>\n

It would be foolish to claim that stopping big government is easy. Many people clearly benefit from government. Others perceive benefits where they may not exist. Most of all, asking politicians to think of something more important than fundraising or reelection cuts against human nature. But big government has been challenged before, with some success. With some courage\u2014and more than a little luck\u2014it can happen again. Learning from the recent past is a great place to start.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"May\/June<\/a><\/p>\n

But how many Republican congressmen are more interested in freedom than in power<\/strong>? Far fewer than most readers would wish.<\/strong> And what are the chances that an effective core of pro-freedom congressmen will arise who are as eloquent as Reagan, as tough as Phil Gramm, and as well-informed as David Stockman?<\/p>\n

Antle points Republicans and conservatives in the right direction, but it is unclear how many will heed his message.<\/p>\n

James Bovard is the author of\u00a0<\/i>Lost Rights, Attention Deficit Democracy,\u00a0and a new e-book memoir,<\/i>\u00a0Public Policy Hooligan<\/a>.<\/i><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The American Conservative posted online today my review of Jim Antle’s zippety new book, Devouring Freedom: Can Big Government Ever Be Stopped?. \u00a0Antle recognizes the peril of Leviathan and is fairly optimistic on what Republicans can become and achieve. \u00a0Here are a few of my lines from the review – which is posted in its […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[22,15,658,229,52,213,47,45,673,137,38,165,192,228],"class_list":{"0":"post-5374","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"hentry","6":"tag-attention-deficit-democracy","7":"tag-congress","9":"tag-conservatives","10":"tag-democracy","11":"tag-farm-subsidy","12":"tag-fbi","13":"tag-freedom","15":"tag-george-w-bush","16":"tag-obama","17":"tag-paternalism","18":"tag-rand-paul-2","19":"tag-republicans"},"yoast_head":"\nWill Congressional Republicans Ever Be Worth A Damn For Freedom? - James Bovard<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/2013\/05\/16\/will-congressional-republicans-ever-be-worth-a-damn-for-freedom\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Will Congressional Republicans Ever Be Worth A Damn For Freedom? - James Bovard\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The American Conservative posted online today my review of Jim Antle’s zippety new book, Devouring Freedom: Can Big Government Ever Be Stopped?. \u00a0Antle recognizes the peril of Leviathan and is fairly optimistic on what Republicans can become and achieve. \u00a0Here are a few of my lines from the review – which is posted in its […]\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/2013\/05\/16\/will-congressional-republicans-ever-be-worth-a-damn-for-freedom\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"James Bovard\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:author\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/jim.bovard\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2013-05-16T16:39:09+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/www.theamericanconservative.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/may-june-issuethumb.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Jim\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@jimbovard\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Jim\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"9 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/jimbovard.com\\\/blog\\\/2013\\\/05\\\/16\\\/will-congressional-republicans-ever-be-worth-a-damn-for-freedom\\\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/jimbovard.com\\\/blog\\\/2013\\\/05\\\/16\\\/will-congressional-republicans-ever-be-worth-a-damn-for-freedom\\\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Jim\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/jimbovard.com\\\/blog\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/79550830ad81c14be529a2c37469974f\"},\"headline\":\"Will Congressional Republicans Ever Be Worth A Damn For Freedom?\",\"datePublished\":\"2013-05-16T16:39:09+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/jimbovard.com\\\/blog\\\/2013\\\/05\\\/16\\\/will-congressional-republicans-ever-be-worth-a-damn-for-freedom\\\/\"},\"wordCount\":1757,\"commentCount\":2,\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/jimbovard.com\\\/blog\\\/2013\\\/05\\\/16\\\/will-congressional-republicans-ever-be-worth-a-damn-for-freedom\\\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"http:\\\/\\\/www.theamericanconservative.com\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2013\\\/04\\\/may-june-issuethumb.jpg\",\"keywords\":[\"Attention Deficit Democracy\",\"Congress\",\"Congress\",\"conservatives\",\"Democracy\",\"farm subsidy\",\"FBI\",\"Freedom\",\"Freedom\",\"George W. 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The Wall Street Journal called Bovard \\\"the roving inspector general of the modern state\\\" and Washington Post columnist George Will called him a \\\"one-man truth squad.\\\" His 1994 book, Lost Rights: The Destruction of American Liberty, received the Free Press Association\u2019s Mencken Award as Book of the Year. His Terrorism & Tyranny won the Lysander Spooner \\\"Best Book on Liberty in 2003\\\" award. He received the Thomas Szasz Award for Civil Liberties work, awarded by the Center for Independent Thought and the Freedom Fund Award from the Firearms Civil Rights Defense Fund of the National Rifle Association. 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The Wall Street Journal called Bovard \"the roving inspector general of the modern state\" and Washington Post columnist George Will called him a \"one-man truth squad.\" His 1994 book, Lost Rights: The Destruction of American Liberty, received the Free Press Association\u2019s Mencken Award as Book of the Year. His Terrorism & Tyranny won the Lysander Spooner \"Best Book on Liberty in 2003\" award. He received the Thomas Szasz Award for Civil Liberties work, awarded by the Center for Independent Thought and the Freedom Fund Award from the Firearms Civil Rights Defense Fund of the National Rifle Association. 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