Which Parts of the Government Do You Trust?
Ezra Klein writes:
What we’re seeing here is not merely distrust in the House health-care reform bill. It’s distrust in the political system. A healthy relationship does not require an explicit detailing of the “institutional checks” that will prevent one partner from beating or killing the other. In a healthy relationship, such madness is simply unthinkable. If it was not unthinkable, then no number of institutional checks could repair that relationship. Similarly, the relationship between the protesters and the government is not healthy. The protesters believe the government capable of madness. There is no evidence for that claim, which means that there is no answer for it, either. That claim is not about what is in this bill, or what government has done in Medicare and Medicaid and the VA. It is about what a certain slice of Americans think their government — and by extension, their fellow citizens — capable of.
Will Wilkinson responds:
It requires an amazing kind of selective amnesia to think that there is “no evidence’ that the U.S. government is “capable of madness.” The government of the United States invaded Iraq and its agents have killed many tens of thousands people on the basis of the fact that some Saudis trained in Afghanistan flew planes into the World Trade Center, plus some lies. Torture, extraordinary rendition, indefinite detention, etc. I call that madness. Of course, Ezra means the other parts of government concerned with domestic affairs. But not the parts that break into peoples’ houses and destroy their lives for selling contraband herbs, or that subject us constantly to mendacious propaganda about drugs. Our government — and by extension our fellow citizens — is capable of terrible things and proves it every single day. Is it really possible to love government so much, to invest so much hope in its benevolent efficacy, that we grow blind to its evident capacity for evil? Anyway, there must be some parts of the government that are not capable of madness. Ezra invites us to think about those when considering health care reform. Will you accept?
It is notable that the mainstream Republican position is that the President is a mysterious quasi-socialist who isn’t to be trusted… except with sweeping executive powers to do pretty much anything he wants in foreign policy… whereas the mainstream Democratic position is that it’s irrational to fear that the federal government will engage in obviously immoral practices… except for all the torture it committed and detainees it abused over the last 8 years.
Is it me, or is Ezra Klein starting to show his age?
— Kristoffer V. Sargent · Aug 11, 05:55 PM · #
Ezra writes:
Will you judge me if I do the obvious and quote Federalist #51? Well, so be it:
And to complete the sophomorica, Nietzsche on madness:
But whatever, right? Good intentions and wishing wells. And let’s get rid of the filibuster, too.
— Kristoffer V. Sargent · Aug 11, 06:20 PM · #
Ezra has stated that he meant with respect to health care.
— Erik Vanderhoff · Aug 11, 06:35 PM · #
Using Will’s example the conclusion would be do not trust right wing policies?
Steve
— steve · Aug 11, 06:40 PM · #
Another conservative day zero, where everybody wakes up to this strange world of big government and nobody, and I mean nobody, knows what is going to happen next. All of these reforms, altering forever the American social fabric. Social Security? Medicare? Medicaid? The EPA? Perhaps this will spell the end of America as we know it, perhaps it won’t. In one year, it’s possible we will be eating our elders to survive. I mean, who knows? And Social Security will have killed off the capitalist spirit? It’s possible, right? No more corporations, no more hard work, no more choice or innovation. Liberal Fascism. Don’t say it wasn’t noticed at the beginning.
— Modulo · Aug 11, 06:55 PM · #
Conor:
So, what the hell is your point? Which side are you on? Are they both right? Are they both wrong? Is that possible? Can one wish for big government (whatever that is) while at the same time hold forth for individual freedom? Is this just an intellectual exercise for you? Are you espousing a third way? A third party? Who the hell are you?
— jd · Aug 11, 07:07 PM · #
Conor:
Does the fact that limited government means limits on almost everything except a President’s ability to wage war make any difference in your attempt to portray moral equivalence between the two parties?
— jd · Aug 11, 07:11 PM · #
JD,
Until you see my birth certificate, which I refuse to release, how can you ever know who I really am? Turning to your other questions, I should note that I am not trying to “portray moral equivalence” between Democrats and Republicans — I am saying that the mainstream view in both parties is contradictory insofar as it criticizes government for doing immoral things in one realm, and then acts shocked, shocked when anyone suggests that it is capable of doing immoral things in another realm. I thought all that was quite clear from the post.
As for what side I am on, my disgust with both political parties hovers at such a high level that my only answer can be that I am on neither side.
— Conor Friedersdorf · Aug 11, 07:26 PM · #
i appreciate the point that hey, it’s all one government and therefore any part can be corrupted. but i think you have to admit that the government has different parts, and their likelihood and severity of corruption is markedly different. health care reform is probably going to be run mostly by dhs, whereas the whole torture regime (and other assorted security abuses of the 20th and 21st century) is run by a national security apparatus which regards itself as protecting a state of perpetual emergency, which allows 24-type logic to be rationalized and argued for. so yeah, undoubtedly we’re going to have all sorts of shenanigans with dhs (drug prices and gay rights are two I can think of off the top of my head), but I’m not sure we’ll get the extraordinary abuses of the national security apparatus.
— dth · Aug 12, 12:39 AM · #
There are pretty much always constraints on trust. I trust my boss, but I wouldn’t let her trade with my retirement account. I love and trust my girlfriend, but I wouldn’t let her give me bypass surgery. I trust the executive branch to run a public healthcare option under the scrutiny of congress, the media and the people, but I don’t trust it to arbitrarily and indefinitely detain and torture foreign persons on the basis of bald assertion and under a cloak of secrecy.
— southpaw · Aug 12, 01:15 AM · #
Given that other countries with nationalized health care have committed terrible atrocities with it ought to be some evidence that it could happen here, too. We all live on the same planet and have the same DNA, and have basically the same capabilities.
Unless, that is, we believe in some type of American Exceptionalism that says we’re pure and better than anyone else.
— The Reticulator · Aug 12, 02:04 AM · #
Reticulator:
I agree with your thoughts on health care—it COULD happen here, and undoubtedly would.
However, American exceptionalism doesn’t mean that we as a people are any different (certainly not better) than anyone else. It means that our constitution and resulting economic freedom are exceptional in all of written history. I think that’s the thing the liberals here just don’t understand. They really don’t see how exceptional this country is compared to all that have gone before, and compared to any that currently exist. If they do see it, they don’t ever REALLY ask why.
— jd · Aug 12, 08:55 AM · #
From what I can tell Ezra Klein favors a system which allows government to be sufficiently hard-headed to deny people coverage (it is true that those who can afford it would be allowed to bypass, but in practice most people would become highly dependent on government’s offerings.) Government would do this when it determines that a particular good is not “objectively” worth the expense.
Some people think that this arrangement poses insurmountable epistemological and ethical problems, and thus that it is immoral to try to do this; progressives disagree. But the disagreement need not involve the expectation that bureaucrats will exercise their power in extraordinarily malicious ways.
Similarly, progressives criticize insurance companies as institutionally flawed because they are motivated by economic profit, without necessarily attributing malice to insurance bureaucrats.
— Aaron · Aug 12, 08:55 AM · #
Conor wrote:
Your disgust rarely shows for anything but conservatives you don’t like. For someone who has cursed “both their houses” you seem remarkably amenable to “good government,” and wonkish solutions to all our problems.
— jd · Aug 12, 09:02 AM · #
See, this is why I read Wilkinson. That linkage is just … wow. I wish I’d thought to see it that way.
But I sort of don’t know what you do with that, Conor. I guess there’s a very good argument that given the very great excesses of the past years you want a meek president who does as little as possible right now to re-emphasize the bounds on presidential, and government, power. On the other hand it also seems like you’re screwed enough by a lot of things right now that most Americans are going to want an activist government; passivity is not an acceptable option for most voters.
Probably where Wilkinson’s argument leads, then, is enlarging government in ways that err on the side of empowering individuals; the kind of thing David Brooks (or Reihan Salam) advocates as “big-government conservatism.” Wilkinson seems to be setting their argument up for them. Which is amusing because I can’t imagine Wilkinson liking that course even a little tiny bit.
— Sanjay · Aug 12, 09:16 AM · #
I think Klein makes a good point here, in that I don’t like where this is going – where one party can whip its supporters into a frenzy where they are a yelling, screaming mob. Mob politics doesn’t end well. Just ask the Romans in the late Republic.
And of course, the response to mobs is your own mobs. Lets hope this is a blip, because if this gets normal, it portends bad things.
— B. Minich · Aug 12, 09:50 AM · #
Yeah, because we’ve never seen animated and frenzied protests before. Those iraq war protests, protests against NAFTA, etc were all just big peace circles where everyone sang kumbaya. Clearly every one at those town halls and those (haha!) teabaggers are just a part of a violent rabble who are not only un-american but who also hate freedom.
Additionally, I can see why we’d want to always give congress the benefit of doubt on domestic policy. Billions of dollars worth of pork barrel politics, contracts given to donors, the pursual of policies regardless of the cost breakdown and politically driven in-effective policy has never happened.
— shei · Aug 12, 10:35 AM · #
“Yeah, because we’ve never seen animated and frenzied protests before. Those iraq war protests, protests against NAFTA, etc were all just big peace circles where everyone sang kumbaya.”
There’s a difference between staging a frenzied protest and going into a town hall with the deliberate intent of shouting everyone else down and preventing any intelligent discussion from occuring. There’s a difference between people criticizing NAFTA, even if their criticisms are stupid and wrong, and people who love their Medicare bitching about “government run health care”.
Mike
— MBunge · Aug 12, 11:15 AM · #
There’s also a pernicious demagoguery in claiming that all those in such a movement are simply going to shout down others. ‘Preventing intelligent discussion’ has orwellian overtones considering that youre trying to mischaracterize the entire movement by statements from a few ‘how is the medicare bitching not analogous to stupid/wrong nafta criticism?’ I’m amazed that you even have the gall to try to slander every protestor/questioner/town hall attendee as some type of brown shirt (apparently you don’t notice the SEIU thugs who are on call because ‘they attacked america’) and at the same type just completely disregard that the iraq war and nafta protestors actually had segments which specifically went in to commit physical violence.
Most of the frenzied protests have been outside the town halls. Most of those opposed to health care have asked questions or made points regarding the bill. If your idea of intelligent discourse is the Obama town halls where there is genuine astroturfing occurring as people are bused in and where campaign workers are asking questions then its not surprising that you don’t understand why this anger exists.
— shei · Aug 12, 11:31 AM · #
“There’s also a pernicious demagoguery in claiming that all those in such a movement are simply going to shout down others.”
Which is exactly why I did no such thing. Try and argue with the actual points I made instead of this tired, limp-wristed victimization crap.
Mike
— MBunge · Aug 12, 12:25 PM · #
Has “Orwellian overtones” become the new “that sounds like something Hitler would say?”
http://www.digitalroom.net/index2.html
— turnbuckle · Aug 12, 01:38 PM · #
Republicans don’t want sweeping powers for the politicians…but if they exercise their already considerable authority, let it be on the foreigners instead of your own people. Always remember, it is more terrible to hurt your own family than it is to hurt a strangers.
Democrats think that we should be friends with strangers and be domineering towards our family.
— koolau · Aug 14, 08:11 PM · #
Generally speaking, I believe our government will behave more responsibly when it intervenes internally in our society (openly, that is!) than when it intervenes in another country. The impact of that intervention will be felt in the everyday lives of American voters. The impact of the Iraq war is largely felt by Iraqis, US servicepeople & their families. I think that matters.
I do see the mirror-image of the two parties’ typical positions, and I agree it’s worth pointing out. I had the same reaction to Ezra’s post that many did in his comments section (wtf Ezra? Did you totally miss all the crap that’s been going on since 9/11?). The gummint isn’t to be trusted. Liberals should know that as well as anyone. The proper response, IMO, is not to simply reject governmental action, but rather to require a strong case be made for governmental action (wrt health care reform, I think such a case has been made, easily) and then aim for as much transparency as possible. Sort of like “trust but verify” but more like “be wary, but don’t let it paralyze you.”
— Rob in CT · Aug 18, 02:12 PM · #
Several hours after he made that post, Ezra revisited this issue. He made a lot more sense on the second try.
I’d go further—it’s kind of a banal observation that the right is willing to ignore the actual history of abuse of security and intelligence powers but still manages to cook up scenarios in which legislators, the medical establishment, the media, academia, the civil bureaucracy, and the voters conspire to enact death panels, carry out death panels, conceal death panels, and fail to repeal death panels once grandma is disappeared. Maybe if you just consider military, intelligence, and law enforcement personnel infinitely trustworthy and everyone else infinitely contemptible this might start to make sense.
But even then this fails, because the same people deathly afraid that panels of doctors will kill you are the ones who want to drastically curtail malpractice lawsuits and leave the private “death panels” and “rationing” run by private insurers in place and churning away.
— Consumatopia · Aug 18, 11:09 PM · #
If this were the case I’d expect more Republicans to speak up about Tazers.
Republicans think we should kill strangers and abandon our family. Democrats think we should leave strangers alone and take care of our family.
— Consumatopia · Aug 18, 11:27 PM · #