The Conservative (and Libertarian) Love Affair with Maximum "Limited" Statism, Corporatism, and Constitutional Fetishism

Whenever I hear (some) “limited government” conservatives and (minarchist) libertarians utter phrases like “We must keep the U.S. federal government to its Constitutional size” and “Only Congress has the legal and just power to [do this] or [do that]” or “These new laws and regulations are an affront to and assault on free market capitalism” or “President [Insert name here] has signed into law a bill that clearly violates the Constitution,” I feel a sudden chill rushing down my spine. And it’s not a good feeling. None indeed whatsoever.

The problem with this school of thought is that the individual who stands to defend this rhetoric bar none injects an enormous amount of political and ideological faith in a few areas under a blind guise of praxeological arguments. Not surprisingly, these aforementioned arguments are of the following:

• That the United States of America as a quasi-governmental corporation must be governed by a blanket set of rules called a constitution and that these rules see the State as a pet to be tamed and put on a leash;
• That, unless the Constitution “authorizes” the State to partake in legal functions (such as granting Congress the power to “coin Money” and to “declare War” against a foreign power) as “America’s Founders had originally intended and envisioned them,” the President, the Senate, and the Congress “has no constitutional authority” to engage in these said functions if said rules expressly forbid them to do so;
• That the 10th Amendment to the Constitution, which states in part, “The powers not expressly delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people,” is the law of the land and that Constitution “is only granted enumerated powers at the State level that the Constitution does not clearly spell out and define.” Oh, and don’t forget that they also say that Washington, D.C. “has no right to tell people and their States what they can and cannot do” because these issues (like taxes, economic regulations, immigration) pertain to “state sovereignty” and “states’ rights.”

  (Some of these so-called limited statist conservatives reach an impasse with their ideological and political paradigms because they cannot reconcile their love affair for the Constitution and their alleged pro-liberty ideologies with their corporate socialist and privileged philosophies, given that they express deference to the State while appearing to favor laissez-faire “free market” capitalism);

• That the U.S. Supreme Court was never meant to be an instrument of judicial activism (that is, the Court having legislative power from the bench on the whims of the judges on account of their personal and political views and interests) but rather a provider of a strict, restrictive interpretative federal power on interstate commerce and limited judicial power (as mandated by the 11th Amendment);
• That the State was meant to be “limited” in nature, and that it must be confined to the chains of the Constitution, as “America’s Founders intended it to be”;
• That the State is meant to be in place to have “federal powers few and defined,” and that some functions of society (such as roads, the police, prisons, and the courts) must be socialized and not left in the hands of a free market;
• And so on and so on;

What’s equally troublesome is their easily-debunkable claim that free markets exist now (despite regulations by the State) and their corporatist/privileged safety net protection rackets are protected and carried out by state decree. Even Objectivists fall under this perturbing rubric all too well.

If those phrases are meant to be taken seriously, then I must ask those who employ them in political and ideological discourses this very paramount question: Why? Why must we care about “limited government” when the State is not some kind of a canine that can be put on a leash and trained to behave at his owner’s command? Is it worth spewing those words, knowing how impossible it is to have a limited “minimized state” government because of its temptation to grow? This political opiate has taken on a life of its own. Even the Founders of whom some conservatives and minarchist libertarians have grown so fond had individually different ideas of what the role of government should be in civil society on its own merits. It’s no secret that the “Founding Fathers” of the United States couldn’t bring themselves to see eye-to-eye on how “small” the State should be. (The Articles of Confederation merely accomplished this [despite some of the problems that it had], but that document was thrown aside in favor of the current constitution.)

If we are an astute judge of constitutional history, then it is obvious that the great constitutional experiment that the Founders established has not created a government “limited” within power and scope but a plutocratic-autocratic hybrid apparatus. In other words, the State has become both an instrument of unlimited power and a collusive partner with Big Business and Fortune 100 and 500 corporations that enjoy privileged advantages at the expense of the underclasses. This is where the “free market capitalism” angle comes in: a politico-economic system that is state capitalistic in nature but disguised as a pseudo “free market capitalistic” system exploiting the underclass and protecting privileged elitism by according the ruling class with tangible perks that are not available to the poor a.k.a. the ruled.

And it doesn’t help that a minor subset of libertarians, whether they fall under the minarchistic or, to a lesser degree, the anarchistic categories, have embraced this “vulgar libertarian” mindset, while forgetting that they condemn corporatism if it does not benefit them but, once it starts to work for them, they immediately embrace it. And some of their conservative allies who embrace the constitutional fetishism that the State is their enemy and that Wall Street and corporate America are enemies of true liberalism, a free market, and a peaceful civil society.

Conservatives (even the Ron Paul ones) have done the same, albeit a much lesser degree than the others. If nothing, they are their own worst enemies, and yet they don’t recognize that.

The conservative and libertarian love affair with maximum “limited” statism, corporatism, and constitutional fetishism is enough for me to deliberately question the absolute integrity of these groups.

Senator-elect Rand Paul Chooses Campaign Aide as Chief of Staff

Senator-elect Rand Paul, who won his senatorial race in Kentucky against Democratic opponent Jack Conway, has chosen campaign aide Doug Stafford, a long-time GOP political consultant, to be his Chief of Staff who will be responsible for assembling a Senate staff.

WLKY.com reports:

Stafford serves as vice president of National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation and as a consultant to the Campaign for Liberty, an organization chaired by Paul’s father, Ron Paul, a Texas congressman and former GOP presidential candidate.

I will admit that, while Conway was worse than Paul on a number of key issues, Rand has made me feel uncomfortable throughout the election season with his comments on a handful of issues that obviously paint him as a social conservative on that front. His troubling positions, as best as I can assemble them, include his positions on gay marriage and medical marijuana, Title II of the 1964 Civil Rights Act* (specifically because of his poorly-argued, poorly-worded semi-libertarian defense of private racist proprietors who refused service to people on the grounds of their skin color), his defense of the War on Terror (specifically his opposition to closing down Guantanamo Bay a.k.a. Gitmo and trying the “enemy combatants” in New York that issue became the center of a much-publicized controversy), his polarizing stances on illegal immigration and birthright citizenship, abortion, transferring some functions like disbursing student loans and Pell Grants of the Department of Education (which he does favor ending, and I concur with him on this) to other departments and agencies in lieu of eliminating them, to name a few. Additionally, his comments on the recent BP oil spill, in which he called Obama’s criticism of BP “un-American,” rankled me because, although I oppose the federal government’s involvement in the clean-up, BP ought to have been held responsible for the spill and be forced to pay for the clean-up costs.

I’m willing to reserve judgment and see how he handles his first six-year term. But don’t expect me to hold my breath either.

[*Note: While I agree in principle that racist proprietors have a right to be racist and do have a right to exclude anyone for any reason (even if it has to do with that individual’s skin color) because of my support for freedom of association, that does NOT translate into me saying that I condone the behavior. I am a much bigger fan of community organizing (like Obama is), and I do favor boycotts, sit-ins, non-violent and voluntary ostracism, and other forms of non-violent protests aimed at private statist employers who use their bigotry as a moral and rational justification for averting non-violent customers from entering their establishments. Such criticisms of these grotesque practices are valid and widely accepted in the Liberty movement. It is regrettable that Paul had to reverse his position on that provision of the bill due to the ugly fall-out of his comments which were clearly poorly-constructed and ill-thought out.]

Joe "The Plumber" Wurzelbacher’s Answer to "Illegal Immigration"?: "Put Up A Fence and Start Shooting Them!"

Joe “The Plumber” Wurzelbacher, the former conservative plumber’s assistant who approached then-Senator Barack Obama about his tax cut plan during his 2008 presidential campaign and current poster boy for the Tea Party and conservative movements as well as the Republican Party, was a keynote speaker at a Cincinnati, Ohio Tea Party rally, in which over 10,000 angry white Republicans showed up at the event. (Interestingly enough, Fox News talker and talk radio show host Sean Hannity was supposed to show up at the same event but his appearance was scrapped over administrative fees; nonetheless, that’s neither here nor there.)

Wurzelbacher, trying to appeal to the Tea Baggers’ populist senses, flies into a nonsensical rant about homosexuality and abortion. According to Free Talk Live executive producer and co-owner and partner of CAI Credit Adjustments, Inc. (formerly Sakal/CAI) Jason Osborne, Wurzelbacher brings up the subject of illegal immigration. What does he propose the “people” should do about illegal immigration?

According to both Irish Central and the Times Reporter news sites, he exclaimed:

“Illegal immigration?” he said. “Put a fence up and start shooting [them].”

Sadly and disturbingly enough, the entire crowd stood up and gave him a standing ovation. How disgusting and twisted indeed!

Even more, The Times Reporter site, in reference to Wurzelbacher, also stated:

He drew an ovation with a talk emphasizing patriotism, taking responsibility and getting involved. “We need to get behind real Americans,” he said, warning the crowd not to let “a bunch of liberal pansies” take away their rights.

I suppose Wurzelbacher was truly referring to “conservative rights”?

This is a reason why the Liberty movement as a whole needs to divorce itself and disassociate itself from the Tea Party movement as much as possible and as soon as possible. Racism, intolerance, and bigotry must be rejected and condemned across the board. But, more importantly, violence against independent migrants must be denounced at all costs.

This is sheer positive proof that the Tea Baggers, including their conservative ilk, are nothing short of racists and fascism across the board. Any conservative, right-libertarian, or Tea Bagger who condones the putrid vitriol and rhetoric coming from Wurzelbacher and the applause and praise from the right-wing crowd deserves to have his or her feet held to the fire, just for simply embracing and advocating that level of trash talk and violence.

Color me both blatantly sickened and confounded.

[H/T to Jason Osborne for mentioning this on last night’s Free Talk Live and my show Liberty Cap Talk Live.]