Capitol Ideas: The Age of Consent
Bethell, Tom
,CAPITOL IDEAS by Tom Bethell The Age of Consent I s America moving in a more conservative, or a more liberal direction? Lee Edwards, the author of biographies of Ronald Reagan and Barry...
...But it is not what the liberals had in mind either...
...Now, perhaps we have a whistle that competes with the squeaks...
...Edwards's conservative revolution is based on "two epic events...
...It is modern-day liberalism that is revolutionary, because it attempts to refashion society and regards human nature as malleable...
...Is it not possible that their common direction indicates the real "movement" that has taken place in America since 1964...
...More and more, however, McCain is turning out to be the darling of the liberals...
...By early August, an impeached, lame-duck president was confident enough of his masteryof the message to argue that a tiny tax cut, spread over ten years, would be bad for the economy...
...There may be such a trend...
...Free-market forces are now much stronger than they were in 1964, and they seem to be getting stronger all the time...
...tells me that, despite all the talk of eliminating it, the Department of Education's budget has actually increased by 4o percent since the GOP took control of Congress in 1994...
...More than 18,000 conservatives filled the arena (hard to imagine that today), and there was a passionate ovation: "We want Barry, we want Barry...
...In fact, Edwards (rallying the troops, as he does so well) wrote in May that "all the contenders for the Republican presidential nomination in z000 are conservative...
...Tom Campbell (R-Calif...
...But one group is imperiled by a society designed for consenting adults—minors (especially those so minor that they are still in the womb...
...Individuals have to make their own choices and the government can't interfere...
...the government takes cash from you so that it can dole cash back to you in retirement, and so on...
...Because it was so much at odds with human nature, this ambition was bound to fail on its own...
...The free-market system itself changes more than it conserves...
...Here and there we do indeed see signs of conservative reaction to liberal gains, but my sense is that Edwards regards these reactions as autonomous initiatives...
...With about 5o percent of the electorate now owning stocks, up from perhaps 20 percent a generation ago, and the middle class increasingly invested in market-dependent retirement plans, markets themselves now act as a powerful check on politicians...
...But she befriended the elderly senator and, grateful for "his personal support for both Bill and me," she went to see Goldwater in Phoenix in 1996...
...One sign of this would be further moves to decriminalize drug use—something that may well be overdue anyway...
...In March, in the state's new open primary system, they will be able to do so...
...or cranking up another entitlement program...
...There is another side to the story, and it could be put this way...
...He construes the raised temperature of the body politic as a sign of health...
...Liberal found themselves agreeing on...
...It describes someone who feels obliged to be optimistic, to rally the troops, to magnify small victories, no matter how adverse the overall political trend may be...
...Affirmative action, for example, is a direct attack on equality before the law, a basic underpinning of the Constitution...
...His latest book is The Noblest Triumph (St...
...Goldwater predicted that a "wave of conservatism" would eventually triumph in America...
...Since that Madison Square Garden rally, we have seen many other policy shifts inimical to conservatism...
...We now have not just an invisible hand but an invisible whistle, which emits a loud warning signal whenever politicians in Washington threaten anything foolish: raising tax rates, for example, or expanding the money supply too much...
...Liberal friends of mine in the Bay Area, who think Al Gore rather dull, tell me that McCain A Conservative, or a Libertarian Revolution...
...We may expect that the ratio of owners will continue to increase, that pressure to cut the inheritance tax will grow, and that the market's warning whistle will only get louder...
...I suspect that when Edwards says "revolution" he really means "counter-revolution...
...The family is now much weaker than it was in Gold-water's day, and public education has declined sharply...
...The first was victory in the Cold War...
...This is the Barry Goldwater I think of so often," she wrote after she became first lady...
...This suggests something other than a conservative era...
...I can't help wondering whether the country really is becoming more conservative...
...Federal taxes as a share of national income are higher than they have ever been...
...Even more unusual, he didn't mind playing offense...
...What kind of an America would that be...
...We may be entering a period when it will be difficult either to cut spending or to increase it, a time when government is padlocked in place, difficult to shrink or enlarge...
...Another young Goldwater supporter was Hillary Rodham...
...in fact, that is what the phrase "movement conservative" surely means...
...As I know from meeting him over the years, he is also a man of great integrity and decency...
...Edwards has strongly conservative inclinations himself...
...I could go on, but that's enough of the doomsayer's version...
...At the time of Goldwater's death last year, he wrote that in 1962 he had attended a rally sponsored by Young Americans for Freedom at Madison Square Garden...
...She even shook hands with the great man himself...
...Unlike most political prophets, he was right," Edwards says today...
...It's true that earlier in this century, and throughout the last, there was no "conservative movement," but that was because we still had a conservative country...
...He teaches at Catholic University and is a fellow of the Heritage Foundation in Washington...
...He, too, is said to be conservative...
...The conservative movement, if you want to call it that, has more than its fair share of professional optimists...
...Tax rate hikes and monetary instability have always been bad for the economy, of course...
...If it's freedom that those young Americans sought at Madison Square Garden, Americans today are hardly deprived of it...
...Others have moved in the same direction...
...It was abortion rights and gay rights that Mr...
...With its narrow majority in Congress, the GOP has done little more than hang on to power...
...Freedom of association, one of the most basic civil rights, is highly restricted by the civil rights laws...
...Conservatives have long understood that the dynamics of democracy make it difficult to cut spending: Benefits are concentrated, costs are diffused, and thesqueaks of interest groups affect politicians more than the murmur of taxpayers...
...Then again, maybe I'm just a congenital pessimist...
...Liberal—Ted Kennedy, say—has moved so far to the right that he is lauded by an (imaginary) right-wing first lady, and is invited to travel on Air Force One...
...But he does think that this revolution, or counter-revolution, is succeeding...
...A movement that has not been remotelyconservative...
...Martin's Press...
...Goldwater, too, had "evolved," and in much the same direction as Hillary Clinton...
...the second was "the American public's rejection, after years of acceptance, of the idea that the federal government should be the primary solver of our major social and economic problems...
...One might even conclude that in the last generation we have indeed lived through a revolution, but a liberal rather than a conservative one...
...What has changed is that these relationships are now much better understood, and the relevant information is more efficiently transmitted from Wall Street to Washington...
...Above all, it is difficult to see one's own time clearly, without the influence of wishful thinking...
...Perhaps it would be one in which a conservative revolution really had occurred...
...In his epitaph, admittedly harsh, Goldwater was a "role model for self-satisfied country-club Republicans who don't mind returning their party to minority status so long as they are in charge of the remnant...
...As the many books and newsletters about non-materializing economic crashes attest, there is a market for doom-saying, as there is for optimism...
...Or consider the tax-cut debate this summer...
...He told the San Francisco Chronicle recently that if elected he "absolutely" would support the appointment of gays and lesbians to his cabinet and that, "in the short term or even in the long term," he would continue to support abortion rights...
...Lee Edwards, the author of biographies of Ronald Reagan and Barry Goldwater ("The Man Who Made a Revolution"), and (this year) The Conservative Revolution: The Movement That Remade America, is one of those who say we are becoming more conservative...
...All the old arguments have now been forgotten...
...When he died, the liberals' praise of Goldwater was extravagant...
...I know my libertarian friends will remind me of the many areas in which we do not by any means live in an Age of Consent...
...Try to imagine an America in which Mr...
...If the libertarian trend is real, then the various "freedom to choose" initiatives in education should soon begin to succeed...
...Still, if Edwards (and of course many others) want to give the credit to Ronald Reagan and his allies, I certainly won't object...
...The Clinton administration, for all that it has been dominated by liberals, has pursued economic policies that have probably not differed much from what Republicans would have delivered...
...The American Spectator • October 19 99 19...
...By then, of course, her political views had "evolved" (her word...
...One possibility is that the country is moving toward an arrangement in which "consenting adults" are free to make their own agreements and contracts, and to make up their own morality...
...It was not a happy moment for those who recall the supply-side fervor of 20 years ago...
...18 October 1999 • The American Spectator is the first Republican since Pete McCloskey they would consider voting for...
...Movement toward a more libertarian society would hardly indicate a conservative revolution...
...Edwards includes a chapter on Newt Gingrich, and he was indeed one of the few Republican leaders of the postwar period who was comfortable with ideas...
...Even though it is unpopular, and really should be rolled back, Republicans have not felt strong enough to try anything so bold...
...Furthermore, it has had considerable success in reshaping the former, if not the latter...
...The word for this direction, of course, is libertarian...
...Communism was the ideology of extremists, who thought they could socialize all wealth and allow an elite to micro-manage the lives of millions of people...
...And it is, in a way, because an invaded body that does not so react will surely not survive...
...The influence of private sector trade unions has declined sharply...
...with rate changes expressed as static revenue losses and so on...
...I find Goldwater's mindset nationwide among upper-income Republicans," Robert Novak wrote in a column last year...
...The public's "rejection" of big government is more problematic, however, because big government is still with us...
...In 1964 she wore a cowboy hat, a red-white-and-blue sash, a gold button reading AuH2o, and she handed out campaign brochures...
...Still, Tom BETHELL is TAS's Washington correspondent...
...Not the country that we live in...
...Nonetheless, he was essentially driven from office, hampered though the opposition was by a scandal-ridden president...
...She found him as "plain spoken as ever," and the odd couple even found themselves "once again agreeing on some things...
...Lest one think that this judgment is based on the eccentricities of Goldwater in his dotage, consider the man who replaced him in the Senate, John McCain...
...Almost everyone thinks that something must be done about the state's near monopoly in this field...
...She passed along the president's invitation "to ride on Air Force One...
...Is there a "unified field theory" here, a single way of looking at these developments...
...His major piece of supporting evidence for the latter is Clinton's declaration that "the era of big government is over...
...Conservative and Ms...
...One can't help thinking, incidentally, that the very notion of "revolution" is antithetical to that of conservatism...
...We shall see...
Vol. 32 • October 1999 • No. 10
