P.J. O'Rourke and Michael Steele on the GOP

O'Rourke and Steele have some home truths to deliver, and I must say that I agree with nearly all of it.

As I told Thalia recently, I'm a libertarian/conservative, which means that these days I'm not really a Republican. (The whole "big government GOP" was a deplorable mess that flies in the face of both true libertarianism and true conservatism. Yes, I include "compassionate conservatism" in this.)

Here is a great quotation from Steele in his call for the party to return to its founding principles:

Our faith in the power and ingenuity of the individual to build a nation through hard work, personal responsibility and self-discipline is our uniting principle. That is the sacred ground upon which our Republican Party was built. For the sake of all Americans, it is the ground we must reclaim.

Preach it!

On the O'Rourke side, his piece is a little long-winded, but he has some points to make. I particularly like his shot at the "social conservatives," a group that's too easily attached to some of the zealots of the "Religious Right." Everybody pay attention to this: "The law cannot be made identical with morality. Scan the list of the Ten Commandments and see how many could be enforced even by Rudy Giuliani."

I give you also a bit from the humorous O'Rourke on taxes, fiscal responsibility, and government spending:

Yes, we got a few tax breaks during the regimes of Reagan and W. But the government is still taking a third of our salary. Is the government doing a third of our job? Is the government doing a third of our dishes? Our laundry? Our vacuuming? When we go to Hooters is the government tending bar making sure that one out of three margaritas is on the house? If our spouse is feeling romantic and we're tired, does the government come over to our house and take care of foreplay? (Actually, during the Clinton administration  .  .  .  )

Anyway, a low tax rate is not--never mind the rhetoric of every conservative politician--a bedrock principle of conservatism. The principle is fiscal responsibility.

Conservatives should never say to voters, "We can lower your taxes." Conservatives should say to voters, "You can raise spending. You, the electorate, can, if you choose, have an infinite number of elaborate and expensive government programs. But we, the government, will have to pay for those programs. We have three ways to pay.

"We can inflate the currency, destroying your ability to plan for the future, wrecking the nation's culture of thrift and common sense, and giving free rein to scallywags to borrow money for worthless scams and pay it back 10 cents on the dollar.

"We can raise taxes. If the taxes are levied across the board, money will be taken from everyone's pocket, the economy will stagnate, and the poorest and least advantaged will be harmed the most. If the taxes are levied only on the wealthy, money will be taken from wealthy people's pockets, hampering their capacity to make loans and investments, the economy will stagnate, and the poorest and the least advantaged will be harmed the most.

"And we can borrow, building up a massive national debt. This will cause all of the above things to happen plus it will fund Red Chinese nuclear submarines that will be popping up in San Francisco Bay to get some decent Szechwan take-out."