Conservatives, Liberals, and me.
If you were to see me walk into a room and you reacted at all, you would likely think “White, middle-aged, businessman. Nice tie.” My liberal friends tend to think I’m a liberal and my conservative friends tend to think I’m a conservative. But if a discussion really gets heated, and I really get pushed, I am sometimes apt to blurt out “I find it hard enough to be a good Catholic without also having to figure out how to be a good conservative or a good liberal too!”
What a wonderfully pretentious thing to say, you may be thinking. And you are no doubt correct. But as I try to be a good Catholic (and I am a Third Order (Secular) Franciscan candidate right now so I am called upon lately to really think about these things by my new family) I find that relative to right and left I am deeply confused.
I feel deeply conservative when I say that I oppose abortion even in cases of rape and incest. I feel deeply liberal when I say that it does not follow from this that pregnancy is any kind of punishment that some women should endure for “mistakes”, nor that poor women should just be thrown to the dogs in our individualistic bootstrap society, nor that the bulk of the abortion problem will be solved if we can just put the issue back into the hands of the police. I feel like a liberal when I say that we need some serious Federal support for universal health care. But I feel like a conservative when I make an argument for this based on sound, capitalistic business principles. But I feel like a liberal when I also make an argument for the same thing that appeals to charity.
When I think of the short list of authors whose new releases I will always purchase out of the gate, I feel like a total conservative when I say that I can’t walk past a book by John Lukacs or Ralph McIntyre and a total liberal when I say the same about Thomas Merton or Ivan Illich. (My beloved Alasdair Macintyre, on the other hand, seems to straddle the divide, to few people’s complete satisfaction.)
When I say that when push comes to shove I’d have to say that I’m a Catholic first and an American second, I feel like a liberal. When I say that I consider myself an America loving patriot precisely in John Lukac’s sense of the word, I feel like a conservative. When I say that I think that American nationalism is at least as big a threat to Christian civilization as American secularism, I’m not sure what I feel like.
To mix this up further, I seem to possess certain wicked traits that seem to me more human than conservative or liberal. For example, I have been known to feel a vicious little thrill when someone scores a snarky but witty point in a political discussion, especially when the person saying it is me. I sometimes get angry at complete strangers on the internet and I have been even known to feel a little shiver of joy when I see some poor soul from a political group that I don’t like get embroiled in a personal scandal. Like all of us, I look for coherence. But I just don’t see it on the left or the right.
I see a sloppiness everywhere, and most of all with myself. The only thing I can think of to do, and not very consistently, is to tell myself that no matter how stupid, misguided, depraved or wicked someone seems to me to be in the political sphere, I am no less stupid, misguided, depraved or wicked myself. Sometimes this allows me to keep myself in perspective.
Color me human.
on November 9th, 2009 at 11:23 pm
Sounds like a remarkable assessment, mixed with plenty of paradox. My guess is that you are very well versed in health care but not in theology, scripture and history. Most liberals and conservatives do not take the time to study what is going on in Christianity but hold on to thngs they were carefully taught and find it difficult to get out of that box. This is why you find the right and left so confusing. Circumstances do occasion change. Many men become sympathetic to women’s ordination, for example, only at the insistence of their wives while remaining rigid in everything else.
Our biggest fault is that we react to Rome instead of studying matters separately. This is filled with guilt, rebellion and deception. Not enough thinking outside the box.
on November 9th, 2009 at 11:48 pm
Lucky you! My liberal friends tend to think I’m a conservative and my conservative friends tend to think I’m a liberal.
on November 10th, 2009 at 12:06 am
All my friends know exactly who I am: 100% hard-a**ed right wing, unambiguous believer in force, including lethal force if necessary, shamelessly unapologetic and shamefully unconvinced about so much of the b.s. that passes as theology these days. Sorry, Unagidon, I can’t relate.
on November 10th, 2009 at 12:15 am
No offense meant, but from my own liberal point of view, I’d say you are not, even sometimes, what I’d call a liberal :)
I think I’d be thought of as liberal on everything except that I have an interest in and empathy for Israel, which I think would be perceived as conservative, and I am committed to Ignatian spirituality, having had a conversion experience during a Spiritual Exercises kind of retreat.
on November 10th, 2009 at 12:27 am
You say you are Catholic first and American second…me too… however the officers who worked with Ft Hood shooter Hassan say he repeatedly told them he was Muslim first and American second .. they will use that against him/// are a lot of us in trouble???
on November 10th, 2009 at 12:32 am
My conservative friends know I’m conservative and my liberal friends think I’m apolitical.
on November 10th, 2009 at 3:09 am
Very interesting post unagidon.
I think that the heart of the problem with the “liberal” “conservative” labels is that they don’t apply anymore – if indeed they ever did. They were always used as a loose and somewhat lazy short hand and there is no doubt that what constituted “liberal” in 1950s America bears little similarity to what is meant by that term today. Similarly, the term “conservative” has lost all possible relationship to its more recent historical meaning – by which I mean the last 50 years.
I kinda like that my friends find it difficult to pigeonhole me. I don’t fit within the broad church of either of these labels politically.
On faith matters, they are absolutely irrelevant.
on November 10th, 2009 at 6:27 am
This was interesting to read and consider when I first saw it, even more so now that there is a comment thread.
My inclination is to agree with Catherine Harding, but I do think that in the end these terms do matter even in matters of faith, even if I wish that they did not.
My liberal friends think that I am such a hip, liberal Catholic… until they hear me on abortion. Then the room (or comment thread) turns cold. They begin to wonder how I could arrive at such a point, so harsh.
My conservative friends think I am such a solid, conservative Catholic… until they hear me on abortion. Then the room (or comment thread) turns cold. They begin to wonder how I could arrive at such a point, so weak.
I guess that if I can ever get myself to write about why this is, then this might make more sense and no I am not trying to be wry or funny.
And I have come to a point, on the eve of turning 52, where I ever describe myself as an American Catholic. I am always a Catholic American at this point in my life.
I do love what Bill Mazzella said about thinking outside of the box. And I do love that you posted this thought provoking piece, excellent food for thought and conversation.
on November 10th, 2009 at 8:49 am
Great Post. Thanks…
Catherine Harding, “no doubt that what constituted “liberal” in 1950s America bears little similarity to what is meant by that term today. Similarly, the term “conservative” has lost all possible relationship to its more recent historical meaning – by which I mean the last 50 years.”
Let’s have a walk back. What has changed in “liberal”? What has changed in “conservative”? over the last fifty years? Say from 1960….
I’ll offer this: Robert Taft and Nelson Rockefeller would probably be read out of the Republican Party today…though whether Taft would be a Blue Dog Democrat is doubtful.
On the culture front: back then, most liberals would protest the level of pornography now loose in popular culture; mostly liberals seem indifferent to it, even when it is degrading to women. And possibly many conservative of a moderate bent have the same attitude.
on November 10th, 2009 at 9:14 am
I found myself nodding in agreement to everything you wrote, unagidon.
What makes our anomalous position more difficult is that the mediating institutions in our society tend to reinforce liberal/conservative identity. For example, as has been remarked here many times, the secular media tends to report on religion through the prism of liberal/conservative.
on November 10th, 2009 at 9:15 am
… and may I add that it is good to see others recognize the importance of worthy neckwear!
on November 10th, 2009 at 9:20 am
Thanks, Unagidon, you’ve made my day. You’re even more messed up politically and philosophically than I am. :)
on November 10th, 2009 at 9:27 am
I was heavily involved in the far left as a Young Person, and then flirted briefly with WF Buckley conservatism in my 30s (when I had lots of money, was in a fencing club, and learned how to sail).
After age 35, life got complicated and adherence to predetermined notions of “right” and “left” seemed way overrated as a method of trying to find the moral center of things.
Blessings on your journey with the Franciscans. I envy your faith.
on November 10th, 2009 at 9:36 am
The terms “liberal” and “conservative” obscure more than they reveal. Perhaps the use of them, however, is a necessary evil. Sometimes muddle has advantages over clarity.
on November 10th, 2009 at 9:51 am
Good thoughts, well put unagidon – thanks.
I agree with Claire. My liberal friends often think I am too conservative (e.g. abortion, gay marriage, socialism, relativism, the Church) and my consevative friends often think I am too liberal (immigration, capitol punishment, tolerance, the common good, mercy in law and society).
I am Catholic first of course, or at least I try to be; I love to say “I am Catholic”. Secondly, an American who is almost always proud of his country; I like to be called a “Yankee”.
on November 10th, 2009 at 9:54 am
I did hear a funny joke over the weekend; it might be an old one but it was new to me:
—————
Two men were walking along a road, when they saw a third man who had been robbed and beaten and left in the ditch, in very tough shape, groaning for help.
The Liberal said to his companion; “You wait here and I will go and find the person who did this terrible thing; they obviously need help!.”
:-)
on November 10th, 2009 at 10:41 am
I believe we should qualify whether we are Catholics first. Like this. We are Catholics first when it comes down to the many great traditions handed down to us. We are Christians first when we distinguish how many hierarchs have confused the faith with power politics and domination.
on November 10th, 2009 at 11:53 am
This shows how impoverished American political categories are. Catholics who faithfully attempt to follow basic church moral and social teaching truly have no party in the United States. For what it’s worth, I find myself in the same situation.
on November 10th, 2009 at 12:29 pm
Can one be a Catholic first and a Christian second? Can one be a Christian at all if one is something else first?
on November 10th, 2009 at 12:45 pm
First, I think I understand what people mean when they say they are Catholic first and American second, but i do have to ask what it is about being a Catholic and an American that makes people feel they have to rank themselves as one first and the other second. I am a man. If for some bizarre reason America demanded that I have a sex-change operation, I would move to another country without hesitation. But I don’t feel the need to say I am a man first and an American second.
Is there anything that says you can’t be a good American and a good Catholic at the same time?
on November 10th, 2009 at 12:59 pm
Obviously David, one can and if fact should try to be, a good Catholic and a good American; they are not mutually exclusive.
on November 10th, 2009 at 1:00 pm
In fact I would venture to say that the vast majority of Catholics who live in America are “good Americans”.
on November 10th, 2009 at 1:46 pm
Liberal and conservative definitely do mean something, if only because of all of the real emotional investment that people put into these terms. To Margaret’s point, the current general definition of these changes over time and if we took each one at the current date and excavated it like archeologists to reveal their internal differences, we would probably find their recent histories reflected in various layers in both. Rockefeller conservatives are still alive and well in my middle class neck of the woods on the outskirts of Chicago, where it is said that all the Democrats vote liberal Republican and where the difference between Republican candidates seems to rest on whether they were more likely to have had cow dung or carpet fibers on their shoes when they were growing up.
It is nice to fantasize about a Catholic political party, but I’m sure that as soon as somthing like this was rolled out, people would be asking whether it’s a conservative Catholic party or a liberal Catholic party. I am not saying that we should not be actively engaged in politics. But I think the true political focus for a Christian is in (although I hate to use this term because it sounds so fundamentalist) personal witness. Our main political sphere of action is and needs to be the people around us.
I threw the “Catholic first” thing out to be a bit provacative. Friends of mine who are anti-Church (especially if they are lapsed Catholics) look at a Catholic first statement as some sort of admission of radical conformity. The bishop gives me my orders through a red phone on my desk. But I use it in a different sense. There is a strong counter cultural component to being a Christian. I am not saying that we are, in fact, a bunch of hippies. But Christ’s rejection of social values, as opposed to Christian values, seems to me to be explicit. I know that many will fancy that one can construct a society made up of entirely Christian values. Since I’ve never actually heard of one existing in fact these 2,000 years, I’ll have to take it as an aspiration.
But one Christian value that probably cannot be incorporated as a social value (given how we allocate resources) is Christian charity, which I define not only in terms of compassion, but in terms of gratuity. The objects of our charity never deserve it, just as we don’t deserve what we get from God (in the sense that there’s anything that we would do to compel God to give us anything). Societies and economies are about the allocation of resources and the structure of order. By their nature they are about rules and measurements and desserts. So a Christian will always, I think, come into conflict with society, because of the very personal and individual nature of Christian witness.
on November 10th, 2009 at 2:46 pm
Unagidon,
Thank you for this post — and for the follow-up comment. If it is true that Christian charity can never be fully incorporated into political theory or practice, it is also true that Christianity changes (or should change) our understanding of justice, which is the preeminent political virtue.
As you say, charity is gratuitous and therefore exceeds justice, which is all about making sure people get what they deserve. But the Western understanding of what human beings deserve, just by virtue of their humanity, has been profoundly influence by Christianity. The Christian idea that all human beings are made in the image of God, and that our ultimate dignity does not depend on qualities we don’t all possess in equal measure (e.g., intelligence, physical health and strength, beauty) — this idea has profound consequences for political philosophy. It would obviously be untrue to say that all Christian societies have been fundamentally egalitarian (too many “Christian” societies have been fundamentally pagan, and turned the idea that souls are of equal worth before God into the idea that humans are of equal worth only as souls and only before God — so don’t worry about it); but it is fair to say that all egalitarianism, at least in the West, derives from this Christian teaching, which arrived as a schock in the ancient world.
on November 10th, 2009 at 3:13 pm
In the main, I second Matthew’s comments. Whatever nuances I might try to add here are too minor to bother any of you with.
on November 10th, 2009 at 3:34 pm
I agree with what you say Matthew, and I wasn’t trying to imply that Christianity and Christian charity has not had an affect, and a radical one, on the development of law and society. However (and this is really a bias on my part more than anything) there is something about individual Christian witness that will always transcend any possible formal system of Christian law or virtue. I seem to remember Ivan Illich saying once that the Christian impulse to gratuitous charity comes from the gut, by which he meant the physical gut of a physical person. His primary example is the story of the Good Samaritan which he describes as nothing less than a radical event in human history.
The point is that we will try to develop a just moral order, but Christianity will always be more than about the moral order because however well this is developed, it will always, always hold an element of abstraction. It’s sort of like a definition of love. We can probably define love very well in general in an abstract way, against the concrete love that we might feel for some specific person, which I would argue is always uniquely tailored to that individual.
I can’t go into this now, because it would be another topic altogether. But we don’t have good vocabularies, especially at this time in the West, to talk about things that are qualities that can’t be expressed as quantities. Love, beauty, art, and other things all fit this. (I would argue that this quality is part of the tangible link between them.) But part of our condition is that we also live in a world where things are defined by quantities (less, more, enough, better, worse…). In a way, we live in two worlds. And in a real way, as Christians we need two politics.
on November 10th, 2009 at 4:06 pm
“Liberal and conservative definitely do mean something, if only because of all of the real emotional investment that people put into these terms.”
I wonder about this. I suspect that these terms are primarily used to express our approval and our tendency to agree generally with someone or some group of people, or, alternatively, our disapproval and tendency to disagree generally with someone or some group. In other words I think these terms are less informative than emotive and evaluative.
on November 10th, 2009 at 5:04 pm
My non-catholic friends think I am too Catholic, while my Catholic friends accuse me of being more a Thomist than a Catholic (to repeat the charge laid at St. Jerome about being a Ciceronian).
I do enjoy Commonweal and America for the theological pieces, though I find the politics too far left. Sometimes I wonder if a good old fashioned course in economics would raise the level of discourse, but I am also a Canadian and have yet to understand the opposition to healthcare reform. I am reminded of the Chesterton quote regarding the Republicans and Unionists in N. Ireland: Republicans say they want good Irish government in N. Ireland, while unionists say they have good English Government in North Ireland, which is absurd. Rather they should say that they want good English government in North Ireland.
Or even more apropos: “The whole modern world has divided itself into Conservatives and Progressives. The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of the Conservatives is to prevent the mistakes from being corrected.”
On the other hand, I enjoy First Things on a political level but find the theological tracks shallow.
Maybe my library is an exemplar: I have Karl Rahner, Yves Congar, Etienne Gilson, Jacques Maritain, Chesterton and M-D Chenu.
Is there a home for liberal Catholics and conservative Canadians?
on November 10th, 2009 at 9:02 pm
Unagidon,
I apologize if I teased you about your scant theology, history and scripture because you capture it all with the theme of the Good Samaritan. How Christians thought in too many cases has worked on explaining this great lesson away.
Ivan Illich? Showing your age. He was right about South America when he noted that the revival was in the laity and not the clergy. History has proved him right as SA is more genuinely Christian than North America.
on November 10th, 2009 at 9:28 pm
A few thoughts:
– Social scientists tell us that people at opposite of values spectra tend to think that those at the opposite end from them are more different from them than their opposites actually are. People at the same end of the spectra tend to think that they are more alike than they actually are.
– I’d say that before the 60s in the Roosevelt era there was a cluster of issues that defined Liberals. These were largely cncerned with economic issues, issues that concerned groups of people. For instance there were laws passed about unions and laws concerning economnic justice, such as banking laws It was also the era of the beginnings of the civil right movementfor African Americans. Social security affected both individuals and families.
In the 60s legislation and judicial decisions were directed more towards individuals, especially free speech including porn, theclegal right to abortion based on a purported constitutional right to privacy. I’d say that the most liberal lberals became more identified with the libertarian wing of the GOP.
What did the GOP stand for? Mainly for opposition to proposals by Democrats, especially to spending money.
I used to say in the 50s that I was really Maassachusets- a fiscal conservative but social liberal. (Abortion wasn’t an issue then.)
Now the Republicans are the biggest spenders (when the costs of the wars are factored in). All on all, the GOP is just about dead, except for a few old Mass. Republicans who rarely dare open their mouths.
on November 10th, 2009 at 9:37 pm
Sorry about the typos. This phone is wicked today
I would like to add that I think that the term “progressive” has started to mean someone who does not subscribe to all of the new liberal positions, e.g., abortion, porn, gay rights.
on November 10th, 2009 at 10:32 pm
Where I live the word “liberal” is synonymous with the Liberal Party – which is actually our version of the British Conservative Party. No self-respecting member of the major opposing party – the Labor Party -would describe herself as “liberal” – the favoured term of the moment is “social democratic.” Forty years ago, many would have been more than happy to describe themselves as “democratic socialists.”
on November 11th, 2009 at 7:11 am
“Now the Republicans are the biggest spenders (when the costs of the wars are factored in).”
Are you referring to economic spending as measured in USD or some other metric? If the former, that statement is not consistent with any financial accounting I am familiar with.
on November 11th, 2009 at 7:18 am
MAT said: “Are you referring to economic spending as measured in USD or some other metric? If the former, that statement is not consistent with any financial accounting I am familiar with.”
I think she’s referring to this graph.
http://crooksandliars.com/jon-perr/obamas-summit-and-myth-republican-fiscal
And she’s right.
on November 11th, 2009 at 12:02 pm
This thread is quite important and Unagidon deserves a big thank you!
He clearly expresses the basic reality many of us, including yours truly,of our trying to avoid how we are really in a difficult struggle to make sense and live our best in this highly complex and rapidly changing world in our political and religious lives and where they often intersect.
That’s why this thread ties so closely to the new thread on reaching future CW folk and the Peter Steinfels categories discussion.
Just as liberal/conservative and Peter’s 4 groups have some merits in describing orientations we bring, the many topics we continue to discuss here and our approaches are far more complex than that for the most part, including not only health care,Afghanistan, recent elections, the religious”visitation” -now somnewhat amended – ,the Archbishop’s blog and the inmvite to Anglicans.
While I think we will surely continue to differ, and naturallyso, based on our experience, position and goals and to do so passionately since we’re invested here, I think we are hamstrung not only by our own humanity but the information we receive(Why I strongly supported the recent America articles by Fr.s Christansen and Massaro on that topic) and the polarization of that by leadership, both political and religious.
(I note that Rep. Cao is already on the hot saet according to this morning’s paper from his GOP party for not puttng the party line above all. I think the continued insistence by Rome that women’s issues no tbe dealt with and the problem(still going) of handling sex abuse issues, be it opening of files, SOL legislation, etc. can leade to editorials in NCR on what’s “really anti-Catholic.”)
This polarization of view just makes our struggle harder to come to grips and move ahead -which is what I beleive we must do, not just say problems are old stories we knew about already.
Calling people papal despisers or tremendously insouciant, when they have a point to make, underscores a problem in leadership that exacerbates the problem we all share to some degree in humanity but IMO even more in leadership is vital today – the ability to really listen!
Finally, I think we’ve got to do better, despite our differences, in recognizing not only shared basic values but also the tremendous import of intellectual honesty both in what we talk about but also in how we talk about it.
Without that coinage, discussion of issues or even how to get future CW readers strike me as insufficient.
on November 11th, 2009 at 3:24 pm
“I think she’s referring to this graph.
http://crooksandliars.com/jon-perr/obamas-summit-and-myth-republican-fiscal
And she’s right.”
I do not believe she was referring to that graph and she is certainly not right. First and foremost because that graph is a graph of national debt as a percentage of GDP, not “spending”. Secondly, the X-axis of the graph is the sitting President at the time, but given the Congress has the power of the purse, not really relevant. For the 12-years where the GOP did control the House, there was little change in the national debt as a % of GDP, even if one were to choose that new metric you have introduced instead of the original metric. Thirdly, the premise was that oft-repeated claim that the “cost of the wars” is material to the overall US budget, which they are not. Lastly, ad arrguendo, if you want to talk about the public debt, that graph ends 30 Sep 08 when the public debt of the United States stood at approximately $10 trillion. To exclude the spending of the 111th Congress is quite disingenuous as it has singularly introduced a new baseline to spending the likes of which the Republic has never seen before. They spent more than the entire cumulative cost of the foreign policy operations formerly knows as the War on Terror in their first month. $1 trillion in the first month, all debt financed. That is 25% of the cumulative deficits of the previous 10 years in one month. (yes, I know I am using nominal dollars, but the conclusion would not change) Again, using the new public debt metric, when Speaker Gingrich began his service on 4 Jan 95, the national debt stood at $4.8 trillion. When Speaker Pelosi was sworn in on 4 Jan 07, the national debt was $8.67, a $3.87 trillion increase which is an 81% total increase or about 6.7% per annum (excluding compounding). The current national debt is $12 trillion, up $3.3 trillion which is a 38% increase in just under three years or a 13% rate of increase – a nearly double, or 89% higher annual rate of increase than when the GOP caucus was in the majority. The unique mathematics employed by the Ruling Party notwithstanding, the public debt will be exploding over the next ten years, such that an apples-to-apples comparison to the Speaker Gingrich / Hastert numbers is a projected public debt of $32 trillion in 2019, or a 269% total increase, 22% per annum. And that is before the two new debt-financed entitlement programs being discussed.
on November 11th, 2009 at 4:33 pm
MAT –
I’m referring to the total expenditures legislated by the Reagan and Bushes Republican administrations. I mean the total costs of non-military legislation plus the total costs of military expenditures, including the humongous military R&D expenditures and the costs of the wars they directed. I can’t remember where I read this, but I have read it many times over the years in reputable popular publications. Perhaps they were wrong, but I found no reason to question it.
Do you have figures which contradict the claim?
on November 11th, 2009 at 4:40 pm
MAT, debt comes from over spending relative to resources, so the graph is just fine as a measurement of spending, just as a decline in debt would be just fine as a measurement of savings and cost control. The debt went way up under Reagan and Bush I, started to go down again under Clinton, and went way up again under Bush II. You can say that Congress holds the purse strings, but Congress also holds the war strings, yet I don’t think we can say that the White House has been some kind of innocent bystander to all of our wars, at least since the 1960’s.
I don’t know what you mean about “costs of wars”. But I do know that a big part of the problem began with a massive military expansion under Reagan in reaction to a non-existant threat by the Soviet Union based on faulty military expenditure estimates. And I don’t think that the wars started by GW Bush are insignificant to the picture, although they do not tell the whole story of how he, DeLay and Hastert plunged the country into the debt it is in today.
I have two issues with your characterization of the 111th Congress. First, they inherited a massive financial problem from a Republican administration and a Republican Congress. I don’t think that had the 111th Congress been a Republican one that there would not have been a massive bail out, regardless of the miracle of their mass conversion to fiscal responsibility on a cold day in January. Second, of course as the massive debt grows the massive interest payments accelerate, especially when the underlying principle of the debt keeps growing as well. The interest comes from the original debt and the accumulated interest payments and are not a case of “look what they are doing now!”
Finally, the GOP talking down current government spending on the bail out, infrastructure repairs, and the health bill in the name of some newly found fiscal responsibility is not quite the same as offering concrete alternatives.
on November 11th, 2009 at 4:44 pm
“Thirdly, the premise was that oft-repeated claim that the “cost of the wars” is material to the overall US budget, which they are not.”
MAT –
If the U. S. budget doesn’t include military spending and interest on said spending, then I ask you: who is paying our debts? Wars have to be paid for, MAT, as does military R&d, as well as the support of wounded Veteran’s, another huge factor in our overall debt.
on November 11th, 2009 at 5:05 pm
“I’m referring to the total expenditures legislated by the Reagan and Bushes Republican administrations. I mean the total costs of non-military legislation plus the total costs of military expenditures, including the humongous military R&D expenditures and the costs of the wars they directed. I can’t remember where I read this, but I have read it many times over the years in reputable popular publications. Perhaps they were wrong, but I found no reason to question it.
Do you have figures which contradict the claim?”
What you originally said was “wars”. not the entirety of the defense budget. Nevertheless, why do President Kennedy’s and Johnson’s and Carter’s and Clinton’s wars not count? And why does the single largest decrease in the defense budget which occured during President George H.W. Bush’s presidency not count? My numbers have the 41st President reducing the defense budget by $48 billion over 4 years, $52 in 1991 alone. President Clinton reduced it by a smaller amount over twice as long a period of time during an inflationary period – $47 billion I believe.
on November 11th, 2009 at 6:56 pm
“MAT, debt comes from over spending relative to resources, so the graph is just fine as a measurement of spending, just as a decline in debt would be just fine as a measurement of savings and cost control. ”
I do not dispute the merits of debt to GDP % – I favor it actually. I was just pointing out that I was reacting to a very narrow portion of a comment and that was not referencing that metric. It also makes it hard to do quick back-of-the-envelope calculations for the purposes of discussion in this forum using that additional variable as well.
“You can say that Congress holds the purse strings, but Congress also holds the war strings, yet I don’t think we can say that the White House has been some kind of innocent bystander to all of our wars, at least since the 1960’s.”
Congress should not be absolved of being in breech of the contract they have with the American people. That they have violated that contract and ceded so much power to the Executive should not preclude us from continuing to hold them accountable for their contractual responsibilities which includes drafting and approving the federal budget. There is also the practical matter – paesi che vai – and all of that – people here already hate me enough, so I try not to refer to the current President directly so as to keep the hostility to a minimum and not offend anyone intentionally.
“And I don’t think that the wars started by GW Bush are insignificant to the picture…”
Those appropriations represent 5% or less of the total federal government’s expenditures even with imputed interest expense. If you include amortization of R&D and overhead or something to that effect, that is a different matter but I would consider that an unusual way to look at it as those are not incremental costs of the conduct of those wars. Suffice it to say, I consider that number insignificant and it is also consistent with remarks members of the Ruling Party have made regarding certain appropriations in ARRA and the health insurance bill for that matter, in particular Division C.
“I have two issues with your characterization of the 111th Congress. First, they inherited a massive financial problem from a Republican administration and a Republican Congress.”
The 110th was also a Democratic Congress actually. I am not going to debate the merits of the actual spending – I leave that to much smarter people than myself. I would note that there is a notion held by some in the electorate that much of the 111th’s spending is both one-time in nature and intended to increase the growth rate in job creation and GDP and I think that is not an accurate depiction of reality. I would point to ARRA as an example. We will see how the 112th’s budget looks and then we can evaluate better if indeed the spending that some in the electorate believe is one-time, is in fact so.
“Second, of course as the massive debt grows the massive interest payments accelerate…”
I think you misunderstood my comment. It was just regarding my calculation, I did not take the time to calculate a CAGR – I just took total % / # years to come to a quick % per annum.
on November 11th, 2009 at 8:20 pm
I suppose a short reply I could give is this. The Republican claim to be the party of small government and limited expenditure conflicts with their desire to maintain America as an imperial super power. They can’t do both. They may well end up with neither.
on November 11th, 2009 at 8:39 pm
MAT –
I most certainly do not hate you. In fact I admire the way you stick to your guns when you think you’re right. Yes, I and others disagree with you. But saying “You’re/ wrong/mistaken/lack evidence for your view” is not an expression of hatred. True, it is not unknown here for someone to say “You are dishonest/selfish/unChristian”, and those insults are certainly themselves unChristian and no doubt motivated by antipathy if not sheer hatred. But few people talk like that here, so I doubt that much if any hatred is directly at you. So please continue to speak your mind. In fact, I also think that given your passionate adherence to your own views you are less snarky than most of us (we all fall sometimes, except maybe Fr, Umbelli and JAk :-). You try to stick to facts as you see them, and I admire that very, very much.
Granted, I didn’t make myself clear about what I had in mind when I said “military spending”. But I thought I was clear in saying that I was talking about ALL the spending under the Regan administration and the Bushes.
on November 11th, 2009 at 9:46 pm
“…we all fall sometimes, except maybe Fr, Umbelli and JAk :-)….”
That is something we are definitely all in agreement on.