By Andrew C. McCarthy
Saturday, January 03, 2015
‘No Labels” seems like a dodge to me. Or at least it used
to.
I’m referring not so much to the No Labels group as to
its idée fixe. The group was established in 2010 by an array of moderate
Republicans and what we used to think of as “New Democrats.” Describing itself
as a “movement” — the better to suggest a grassroots surge rather than a
Beltway-insider gambit — No Labels devotes itself to making Washington “work”:
to transcending partisan and ideological branding, to finding the common ground
needed to solve the nation’s problems.
But what if Washington is the nation’s problem? Not the
much-touted dysfunction of our central government but the very conceit that the
problems of 320 million people are suitable to being solved by a Beltway
political elite whose lives are increasingly remote from those of the people
they nominally represent?
To say that “no labels” is a dodge is to use too loaded a
word. No Labels members are deeply concerned about our country, particularly
our security. Their desire to fix what ails us is genuine. To my mind, though,
they are hearkening to a time more fondly imagined than actually lived — a time
when political adversaries put their differences aside and addressed challenges
cooperatively. Presuming their good faith, as I do, it is better to say the
project is ill-conceived.
Our political divide is about principles, not labels.
Labels have always been given to sets of principles, but principles and
politics have never been mutually exclusive. The practice of politics in a
constitutional democracy is, after all, the repetition of a calculation about
principle: Knowing that everyone does not agree with me but that I have
opportunities to convince them over time, how much can I afford to compromise
today such that my principles can advance in the short run and prevail in the
long run?
Still, the No Labels people do have a point when they
argue that labels hinder effective governance. I don’t think, though, that this
is because the labels make us intransigent. It is because the labels make ever
less sense. Their main effect today is to obscure the real scrimmage line in
our politics.
I am not just referring to the oft-observed truism that
what we commonly call “liberal” is, in fact, the antithesis of liberal in the
classic sense — the real liberals being those who defend the Constitution’s
guarantees of individual liberty and state sovereignty against centralized
government’s overbearing proclivities, namely “conservatives” and
“libertarians” (at least those libertarians who actually believe in limited
government — i.e., those for whom healthy skepticism about government has not
devolved into implacable hostility towards government even in its essential
functions).
A fascinating op-ed appeared in the Wall Street Journal
this week, entitled, “The Progressive Case for Fracking” (here, but behind the
subscription wall). The author, James Bloodworth, is a self-described
progressive and the editor of a blog called Left Foot Forward. The piece was
compelling, except . . . after reading it, I was sure that I must be a
progressive, too.
Mr. Bloodworth’s point was that, by logic, progressives
should support the “hydraulic-fracking revolution” forged by American shale
producers. Why? Because it has resulted in a steep decline in energy prices and
enhanced the prospects for American energy independence, which have roiled
dictatorships in Tehran, Moscow, Caracas, and Riyadh. Thus, the “emaciation of
civil liberty,” cast by Bloodworth as the bane of progressive existence, could
finally be overcome by “a price war with some of the world’s vilest regimes.”
Given that the Left’s passions are stoked by narratives,
the truth of which is beside the point, I doubt an argument employing logic
will make much headway, even if offered by another progressive. But
Bloodworth’s argument rests on amnesia: One must forget a history — much of it
recent — of progressives coddling autocrats, turning a deaf ear to civil-rights
advocates, and rationalizing the vileness of dictatorial regimes as a
regrettable but understandable reaction to something (or is it everything?)
that America has done.
The most notable thing about Bloodworth’s piece, though,
is why it had to be written. While it’s not at all clear that progressives
oppose tyranny, their opposition to fracking is unstinting, as is their
opposition to all carbon-based energy production. This hostility is based on a
narrative about saving the planet; the last thing it will permit is celebration
of collapsing prices that encourage more energy consumption — not unless
progressives are suddenly going to start being a lot more progressive than
liberals are liberal.
This matters because progressives run Washington. The
energy revolution has happened in spite of the federal government. It is driven
by liberty: private property, far removed from the Beltway, exploited by private
entrepreneurial initiative. Once again, the issue is not whether Democrats or
Republicans in Washington have better ideas about regulation. It is about the
widening disconnect between an entrenched, meddlesome, bipartisan ruling elite
and a people for whom the concept of self-government does not entail being
ruled.
What doesn’t work in Washington is . . . Washington — its
officeholders-for-life, its strangling bureaucratic sprawl, its incestuous
network of staffers and lobbyists, its naked cronyism, and its invested media.
The gridlock bewailed by Beltway insiders is actually a
sign of political health, not dysfunction. Our constitutional system is
designed to limit the central government’s influence — not because we don’t
have serious problems but because those problems are best addressed locally,
where their causes are intimately understood and their impacts acutely felt.
However much good-government types despise gridlock, it does not signify an
inability to solve problems but the reality that, for most problems, the
solution is elsewhere to be found.
The Constitution’s impediments against federal intrusion
and radical change have been greatly eroded, but they still work. They
frustrate not only radicals who want change and good-government types who want
solutions, but liberty lovers who want the Constitution’s impediments more
rigorously enforced. Naturally, that breeds rancor and label-laden
name-calling. But that’s nothing new and, historically, we’ve had far worse.
Political labels do not paralyze us. The worst thing
about the traditional labels — Democrat or Republican, liberal or conservative
— is their tendency to obfuscate rather than illuminate the real fault line.
When I encounter politicians these days, I’m less interested in whether they
style themselves as “constitutional conservatives” or “pragmatic progressives”;
I want to know: Do you want to make Washington work or work against what
Washington has become?
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