A Saurischean Special Comment, Quasi KO-Style: Analysis of the Current Moment

These days, the Republican Party isn’t abiding by the Jeffersonian principles of individual liberty and limited government; instead, it’s peddling a degenerate version of those principles, reduced to a simple-minded hatred of government and, indeed, of anything that hints at willingness to help anybody in any way. I’d say these types have the soul of a stone, but that would be insulting to stones.

Of course, their hatred of “big government” doesn’t translate to an equally fervent dislike for “big business.” That’s because they are economic fascists, men and women who believe in a close partnership between the State and huge corporate entities that have anything but the best interests of ordinary people in mind. What they want to do, to put the matter straightforwardly, is not reduce the role of government in our lives and thereby open up the field for greater liberty, creativity, and happiness; no, they want to deliver us crude to the powerful jaws of the aforementioned corporate entities, who will, I presume, gnaw on us until we become a fine paste useful for something or other, and therefore vendible.

The passage of the health-care-access bill, such as it is (with all its flaws and limitations), still amounts to a repudiation of the above-mentioned outlook on life and politics, so to that extent it is indeed dangerous to those who currently control the Republican Party. This legislation will force the major insurers towards acting like responsible citizens and honest merchants, both of which concepts are anathema to the proponents of “HELL No You Can’t.” They are to the true market practice and philosophy what ill-garmented, STD-ridden, alley-based rapists are to the Art of Love, and they have well deserved your and my disgust and contempt.

Failure to craft some kind of humane arrangement regarding health-care access was the last thing that separated us from the Euro-democracies (those SOCIALISTS!), and now, by all the big insurers’ most cherished pre-existing conditions and reasons to rescise, we have advanced some way towards closing the gap. The sinking-in of that realization is just now driving the less respectable among il partito conservatore the other half of cracked that they already were. There are even a few would-be pogrom-instigators, apparently, throwing bricks through congressional office windows, calling the honorable Jim Clyburn and other African Americans in the House the you-know-what word, and our dear demo-brother Barney Frank – well, never mind what they’re calling him. You’re not old enough to know what they’re calling him…. Pretty soon the rabble will be a-jumpin’ up and down, burning copies of Tom Jefferson’s Notes on the State of Virginia.

What’s a damn liberal or indeed any sane person (among whom there are, of course, still many who call themselves conservatori), to do in such shameful times? Well, by no means should we backpeddle: the rogues I’ve been outlining above invariably take kindness for weakness. They do it so insistently that, to some extent, it begins to ring true: to be overly kind and understanding with these people is to be weak, and as Milton’s “Divil” says, “to be weak is miserable / Doing or Suffering.” Enunciate and clarify your principles, and if you’re a liberal legislator, fight civilly but firmly for what you believe in. Don’t apologize for having won an election a little more than a year ago, and don’t apologize for supposing that the purpose of government is to help guide ourselves towards a better and more humane existence, and better relations with our fellows. The remaining true conservatives are quite right that we can and should do most of that work on our own, as individuals and freely associating communities; but where there’s a problem that doesn’t seem to be resolvable or ameliorable that way, government at some level, from the local to the federal, can legitimately become part of the response.

What’s needed here, at least on the intellectual plane, is a balance between the Founders’ “rational distrust” of government and the Aristotelian idea that the purpose of government is to assist us in our efforts to achieve the good life. Achieving the balance is never easy, and the penalty for continued failure will almost surely be the loss of our right to self-determination as citizens.

Finally, with regard to the prospects of the Republican party, a party inaugurated by a man as fine as Lincoln has its reserves; there are better angels within its nature, mystic chords to be struck within its memory. On those, at least, I’ll not give up, even if few members among the current batch in the House and Senate do their side of the aisle any credit.