Vouchers, Abortion and the Radical Right in Wisconsin Politics

"Conservative" Can be a Misleading Label

Several months ago, I wrote that “conservative” was a misleading label for those on the right in American politics, and that they should be called “radical rightists.”  I said that conservatives were people who wanted to conserve something, while radicals were people who wanted to make radical changes. Recent passage in Wisconsin of a law promoting private school vouchers and of a law creating new restrictions on abortions provide an opportunity to revisit that argument.

Conservatives Favor Limited Government With a Few Exceptions

Historically, conservatism has been associated in the United States with opposition to the expansion of the role of the government in people’s affairs. Conservatives have argued that most decisions should be left to individuals or to the impersonal workings of markets. They have said that unnecessary government interference reduces our freedom.  Therefore, conservatives have traditionally said that the powers of government should not be used to make changes in long-established practices.

At the same time, conservatives have always accepted that some things require collective action, and they have agreed that those things should be the province of government.  Education is one of those things. Public education has been a part of the bedrock of our society since its very beginning in the Massachusetts Bay Colony in the seventeenth century.  Conservatives have traditionally supported public education, and consequently, it has been very strong in conservative parts of our country. It is not an accident that some of our best public school systems and our best public universities are in conservative states like Indiana, Iowa and Wisconsin.

Supporters of Vouchers Favor Radical Changes in Education

Today, however, many on the right in American politics want to apply the principles of free market competition to education. They say that schools that have to compete for students will have to work hard to serve those students well, and in order to stimulate that competition, they have decided to divert tax money from the support of public schools to vouchers that can be used by students who want to attend private schools. This is a radical change in the relationship between government and private education in the United States. 

It is also a radical change in the role of government in determining the structure of education. Setting curricula and setting requirements for graduation have always been responsibilities of local school boards and of state governments in this country.  Under the voucher program, curricula and graduation requirements will be set by private schools even when tax money is used to pay the students’ tuition at those schools. Thus, school vouchers are a very radical solution to the problems of education in the United States. Vouchers may work out well, but by no stretch of the imagination can they be considered conservative.  People who support the use of vouchers are radicals even though they are on the political right.

Opponents of Abortion Favor Expanding the Power of Government to Eliminate Abortions

The situation with regard to abortion is similar. Legal abortion has been an established part of our system for 40 years. However, unlike public education, it has always been controversial.  Supporters of a woman’s “right to choose” and supporters of a child’s “right to life” have no common moral ground. To the latter group, an abortion is a murder, and the group’s members have dedicated themselves to eliminating such murders from our country. Since the decision in Roe v. Wade precludes eliminating the right to abortion, its opponents have focused on making abortions difficult to obtain both physically and psychologically.  The hope is that, if abortions can be made sufficiently difficult enough to obtain, the right to an abortion will become an empty right, which exists only in theory.  No one will actually get an abortion in this country because abortions will be too difficult to obtain.

Here again we see the nature of the political right in our country. Its members seek to alter established practices radically, and in the case of abortion, they seek to do so by means that are directly opposed to traditional, conservative values, which stress limiting the reach of government.  Opponents of abortion seek to extend the powers of government to abridge a right guaranteed in law.  From their point of view, they are correct to do this because, if an abortion is a murder, the law is clearly wrong.  Our system has always included the idea that citizens have a right to oppose laws that are wrong and to attempt to end practices that are immoral.  The anti-slavery movement, for example, used legal and illegal means to bring an end to slavery.  However, such opposition to established practices cannot be described as conservative. A willingness to use all available means to change established practices is a radical stance, and so, members of the anti-abortion movement must be labeled as radicals.

Never Call Radicals “Conservative”!

This is important because words make a difference. The word “conservative” evokes an emotional response that is very different from the response evoked by the word “radical,” and a false use of the word “conservative” affects the character of political discourse.  False political labels mislead voters just as false labels on food mislead consumers. Falsely labeled food is likely to be bad for people who eat it, and falsely labeled political movements are bad for all of us. Never call radical rightists “conservative.”  If you do, you are supporting the use of false labeling. People like Scott Walker, Dave Murphy and Jim Steineke are radicals. They cannot be considered conservatives.

That is the Way to Tyranny

The NSA is Collecting Data on Millions of Communications

We have recently learned that the National Security Agency has been sweeping up data on millions of phone calls and emails. The agency has not collected the content of the communications, but it has collected the number (address) to which each communication was directed as well as its time and date.  Such information will allow the NSA to map communication networks over both space and time.

Is the Information Really Useful?

It is easy to see how this information might theoretically be used to improve our national security, but it is not so clear how much the information has actually contributed.  Have terrorist plots been foiled because of information collected in this way? We don’t know. How many plots have been foiled this way?  We don’t know.  Could they or would they have been foiled without this information? We don’t know.  We also don’t know whether there are other, less costly or less intrusive methods that could have been used. We really should have a national debate on this and other related questions, but we probably won’t be able to have such a debate, because our government will be unwilling to share any information about what has been done on the grounds that the program is “classified” and that revealing information about it would damage our national security. 

Veering Toward Totalitarianism

This is the point where we veer dangerously toward totalitarianism and a police state.  Our government is saying in effect, “We can collect any information about you that we want to collect, and we don’t have to tell you what we are doing because if we told you, we would damage our national security.”

“Trust us,” they say.  

“We have your interests at heart,” they say. 
 

Imprisoning People Without Trial or Even Charges

Before the NSA’s program was revealed, we had already allowed our government to hold people in prison for many years at Guantanamo without having to prove in court that the people had committed any crimes or even that releasing them would endanger our national security.  Again, our government said that it couldn’t reveal how it knew that these people were a danger to national security because to do so would endanger that security. Again, the government said, “Trust us.”

These Programs Invite Political Abuse

The motives of the officials who run these programs today may be pure, but the programs themselves are invitations to political abuse.  If we allow them to stand, they will eventually be abused.  We know that they will be abused because such abuse has occurred in the past.  We know, for example, that for many years, the FBI kept voluminous files on politicians and that J. Edgar Hoover used those files to maintain his power.  We also know that the FBI illegally collected information on civil rights workers because J. Edgar Hoover didn’t like their politics.  We saw with our own eyes that people were harassed and sometimes crushed by the McCarthy committee and by the House Un-American Activities Committee.

We can be certain that sooner or later, the temptation to use the powers of the new programs to silence or harass political opponents will be too great to resist. Sooner or later, the communications of a political opponent of a president, of a powerful senator or of the head of the CIA or the NSA will be monitored.  His or her friends will be subpoenaed to testify before congressional committees. Pressure will be brought on them to keep their mouths shut on political topics. Perhaps, their careers will be destroyed as were the careers of many writers, directors and actors in the days of the Hollywood blacklist. And when we ask why this or that person is targeted, we will be told that unfortunately, the reasons for doing so cannot be revealed because revealing them would damage our national security. This is not a fantasy.  We have seen such things done in this country in our lifetimes, and anyone who thinks that they could not happen again is I am sorry to say, sadly mistaken.  

The Bill of Rights is Supposed to Prevent This Sort of Thing

The writers of our Constitution knew that power will always be abused unless it is hedged about with limitations.  That is why we have the Bill of Rights.  That is why we do not allow our houses to be entered and searched without warrants.  That is why we do not allow people to be imprisoned without clear charges.  That is why the right of habeas corpus is important.  

The Way to Tyranny

Today, again, our government wants to be able to bypass the rules in the Bill of Rights. The war on terror provides a good excuse for doing it, but we cannot allow the excuse to be used unless it can be proved to be a valid excuse.  If we want to continue to enjoy our democracy and our freedom, we have to stand up now.  We have to say that national security cannot be used as an excuse to abridge our freedom without proving that it is a valid excuse and without showing how the scope of the abridgement will be limited. We have to require our government to show that the benefits of abridging our freedom really do outweigh the danger of doing so. We cannot allow our government simply to murmur the words “national security” and then do anything it wants to do.  That is the way to tyranny.

Winners For Walker

The Post-Crescent Labels Medicaid Expansion "a Winner for Wisconsin"

An editorial in the Post-Crescent’s on June 2, 2013 entitled “A Winner for Wisconsin” pointed out that expanding Medicaid to cover more people as provided under Obamacare would be a winner for Wisconsin from nearly every possible point of view. The state would save money.  Consumers would save money. Health care providers would save money, and people without health insurance would obtain it.

Why Has Mr. Walker Refused a “Winner for Wisconsin?”

If expanding Medicaid would be so great for all of us, why has Governor Walker, who is not a stupid man, decided to reject the expansion?  A part of the answer is that, like his fellow radical rightists in the legislature, Mr. Walker believes in minimizing the size of government in order to reduce taxes on the rich, and that consideration outweighs every other goal except that of building political support.  In Mr. Walker’s view, it doesn’t matter whether expanding Medicaid would be good for Wisconsin or not. What matters is that expanding Medicaid would expand the roles of the state and federal governments in providing health insurance, and in his doctrinaire view, that is always bad.

Mr. Walker Plays Politics With Medicaid

The other part of the answer is that the special interests who support Mr. Walker love what he is doing, and Mr. Walker works hard to satisfy the special interests who support him.  In fact, he is so anxious to do so, that in order to please those special interests, he is willing to make one big exception to the principle that the role of government should be minimized.  He doesn’t mind expanding the role of government in order to give large amounts of the taxpayers’ money to businesses.  He says that the purpose of giving money to businesses is to create jobs in Wisconsin, but we know that isn’t true because he has never bothered to track the use of the money to see how many jobs were really being created.  In fact, giving the taxpayers’ money to businesses has not created many jobs, but it has been very successful in building political support for Mr. Walker.

Refusing to Expand Medicaid Uses the Taxpayers’ Money to Further Mr. Walker’s Political Career

The refusal to expand Medicaid also uses the taxpayers’ money to build political support, although in a less direct way.  According to the Legislative Fiscal Bureau as quoted in the Post-Crescent’s editorial, the state would save $119 million by accepting the Medicaid expansion. So, by refusing the expansion, Mr. Walker is giving up those savings.  In effect, he is using $119 million of our money to build political support for his career by pleasing the special interests who support him.  Refusing to expand Medicaid and giving money to business may not be winners for Wisconsin, but they are winners for Mr. Walker, and that is what counts for him.