Read My Lips

New at Reason: Julian Sanchez says the thing that can not be said.

Comments

[ex-libertarian]

I totally agree. It is time for libertarians to advocate the raise of taxes.

Congress will never stop spending, it is somehow personally my fault, so fuck it! Raise my taxes to 100% so I can be a slave to the government.

That is today's libertarianism.

[Sir Real]

Don't let the door hit ya where the good lord split ya-

wanker.

[ex-liberarian]

I'm a wanker for siding with Sanchez? For agreeing that (Reason-version) libertarianism is now about raising taxes, holding working people personally responsible for the idiots in Congress? I am just being a good Reason libertarian, against overthowing tyrants and for raising taxes. With the budget going the way it is, we might as well be slaves (100% taxes) right now, so future generations won't have to pay (yeah right).

Slavery now, that is libertarianism today.

[thoreau]

I don't support tax increases, let me say that right away before I get accused of heresy (which happens to me all the time anyway).

However, if I were a legislator, and I had to decide how to allocate my political capital, my staff, and my time, and the choices were tax cuts or spending cuts, I'd come out in favor of spending cuts every time. Don't get me wrong, if a tax cut bill came to the floor, I would vote for it if I were a legislator. But while a more popular legislator was busy lobbying to pass the tax cut, I'd be leading the suicide mission lobbying to pass the spending cuts.

OK, you can go and accuse me of heresy now.

So, if I'm ever a legislator, my letterhead will read "The Honorable Senator Henry David Thoreau, General, Doom Brigade, Buried With Full Honors After Leading a Political Suicide Mission to Cut Spending."

[Julian Sanchez]

"Ex" misses the point, and I suspect many others will too, so let me elaborate a bit. The choice isn't between taxes or no taxes. Barring libertarian revolution next week, it's between somewhat higher taxes now or reduced incomes through slower growth and debt-crowding plus higher taxes later. It's not like "working people" don't pay in either case. I'm suggesting that the former is the least bad of bad options, and that showing a principled commitment to fiscal discipline gives us the credibility we need to simultaneously demand deeper cuts in spending.

[alma hadayn]

"...against overthowing tyrants and for raising taxes"

So I gather you want the government to overthrow tyrants and you don't want to pay increased taxes to the government. Who, exactly, do you think should be paying for overthrowing the tyrants?

A question for libertarian imperialists: Do you think more Americans want to spend money fighting foreign tyrants or on government subsidized health care?

[jv]

for some time, i've been waiting to find some venue to say this: the "starve the beast" theory that holds that dubya's policies are ultimately for smaller gov't would with equal force support the proposition that bush is a marxist revolutionary. bush on mtp: "under my policies, the stale illusion of the so-called american dream will be wiped away by an undeniable reality of a tax-exempt plutocracy hording all political and economic power. on my administration's watch, america's permanent underclass, which up until now has succumbed to the devious appeasement offered by religion, shopping, illicit drugs, and the occasional flash of a naked breast on television, will achieve self-awareness, and will hear the call of revolution!"

[ex-libertarian]

>>Ex" misses the point,

Nope, but let the spin begin...

>> The choice isn't between taxes or no taxes.

No, it is between higher and lower. You advocate a raise in taxes. Just admit it.

>> Barring libertarian revolution next week, it's between somewhat higher taxes now or reduced incomes through slower growth and debt-crowding plus higher taxes later

You are doing a lot of "assuming" with my money. Do I really want to pay more now for your crystal-ball predictions? There is an equal or better chance that my income will rise in the future and therefor the marginal cost of taxes will be reduced - if taxes stay the current rate. Or I can invest the money I would have paid in taxes, funding future taxes along with additional income.

Instead you seek to increase my pain now because congress is spending like a drunken whore. It's not like get any "free" shit out of it so I fail to see how that is "least bad" for us working stiffs. And I fail to see how this is a better strategy since your whole thesis that deeper cuts in spending is impossible to begin with.

[Jason Ligon]

"A question for libertarian imperialists: Do you think more Americans want to spend money fighting foreign tyrants or on government subsidized health care?"

Imperialist isn't the right word, but I gather you are talking to folks like me. Answer: people prefer goodies paid for by someone else to many alternatives.

Do these hypothetical people have any understanding of economics? The long term benefits of 'free' goodies are not clear if they do.

Put a camera on a guy in Iraq being put through a wood chipper after witnessing the violation of his wife by government officials. Maybe another camera can capture a Saddam speech railing against the Great White Satan simultaneously with a list of UN violations concerning the destruction of WMD. I'm not sure it is as clear that overthrowing tyrants is all down side, either.

[Julian Sanchez]

>You advocate a raise in taxes. Just admit it.

I rather thought I just had.

[alma hadayn]

Jason:

Clearly the war in Iraq was to you a high priority, maybe even a necessity. I don't want to have that argument again. But there are many people for whom it was not, or who considered it wrong (and not because they like watching people in wood chippers; Ken Roth of HRW, which was documenting Iraqi atrocities while the US was lending Saddam Hussein money, has argued that the war was not justified as a humanitarian intervention.)

So my question is this: as a libertarian who presumably (correct me if I'm wrong) thinks that the fact that many people feel that health care should be a right for all Americans does not justify forcibly taking people's money to pay for it, why do you think it's OK to focibly take their money to pay for what you consider a humanitarian imperative and they do not?

[digamma]

The Shaggy link in the article is broken.

[alma hadayn]

"it wasn't me"
the shaggy strategy

[ex-libertarian]

Julian: So you admit you want to rob me of choices based on the "collective good" of the future (which nobody can predict). Choices that very well could reduce reduce the pain of taxes over the long run, provided I make good decisions with my own money (a choice) or increase my income (a choice) before any future tax hike. Instead you want to raise my taxes (which leaves me with NO choice).

Libertarianism used to be about maximizing individual choice.

[Julian Sanchez]

So... taxing people now is about individual choice but taxing people or shrinking their incomes in the future is about "collective good"? And the fact that we're not psychic means we shouldn't think about long term consequences? Interesting. As for the rest ofs the points, just go read some of the Brookings stuff linked in the article; it really is pretty much symmetrical. We won't have any more choice about facing the consequences of bad fiscal policy than we will about taxes.

[ex-libertarian]

>>So... taxing people now is about individual choice but taxing people or shrinking their incomes in the future is about "collective good"?

Yes. Human beings can only make choices (act) in the here and now. And if I know that taxes might be higher in the future (due to government debt) I can CHOOSE to use the money I have now to invest wisely or increase my income --- so marginally the tax hike wouldn't effect me as much. Or I could choose not to and pay more. But it still should be my choice (or as much so as possible).

>> And the fact that we're not psychic means we shouldn't think about long term consequences?

No, the fact that you are not psychic means that I don't want you robbing me of my financial choices.

You are predicting that the future collective herd is going to have "less income" - not only do I find this claim unlikely (standards of living could may rise, marginally reducing the cost of taxes, etc), but I also dispute that I should be robbed of choice today for the "good" of the collective herd in the future.

>>We won't have any more choice about facing the consequences of bad fiscal policy than we will about taxes.

I know I have more choices with more money in my pocket today than I would with less.

[Jason Ligon]

alma:

"So my question is this: as a libertarian who presumably (correct me if I'm wrong) thinks that the fact that many people feel that health care should be a right for all Americans does not justify forcibly taking people's money to pay for it, why do you think it's OK to focibly take their money to pay for what you consider a humanitarian imperative and they do not?"

This is a good summary of some problems in my position, and they work equally well in reverse. A couple of points, here.

1) I personally don't think that humanitarian reasons are themselves sufficient, but I do think that they could be made very popular, just as popular as public healthcare. The point there is that popularity isn't necessarily a good yardstick.

2) My hawkishness and my libertarianism can coexist in my head because I have a broader definition of self defense than an isolationist libertarian. To me, it is a fundamental truth that power, as defined to be the capability to harm, is the most basic level of interaction between parties. Safety for party A lies in major part in the public's belief in A's ability and willingess to inflict harm if provoked. Self defense at times involves the establishment of such a credible threat.

3) I am somewhat pessimistic about the success of liberty on a global scale. The natural state of man in society is not free, but crushed under the heel of those whose strength is greater. I am a minarchist, not an anarchist. The preservation of freedom within American borders may well require an 'interventionist' policy. Threats to freedom don't all wear military uniforms. If terrorists have considerable success operating against US citizens here and abroad, the resulting fear and government crack down would be much worse than anything we have seen with Patriot here. Broadly understood, the old saw about it being better to fight for freedom elsewhere is still true.

A bit rambling, but that is how I think about these things in general. The short version is that I have always viewed isolationist libertarianism (they will leave us alone if only we left them alone) as a bit naive. It is a position that assumes quite a bit about humanity at large that I am not willing to assume, and it undervalues the virtue of a peaceful society with a massive capability to inflict harm.

[joe]

I know it's fun to pose as the rebel speaking truth to power and saying the emporer has no clothes, but "Hey, Bush is a Big Spender" is an idea that has appeared in all the major news weeklies, the Wall Street Journal, The New Republic, The Economist...

[Julian Sanchez]

I know; I cite some of them. We've probably said it here a dozen times before too. That wasn't really what the piece was about, though.

[Jason Ligon]

As for lower taxes with defecits, I dunno. A number of conservative friends have made the argument that the government is an identical reflection of the people at large. People vote for politicians who will give them stuff at the expense of others. With that in mind, the question is, what if the choice is between a group of people who have a policy of boundless spending and boundless taxation and another group of people who have a policy of boundless spending and bounded taxation?

The argument goes that item B is better because eventually the boundedness in one will limit the other, though maybe only after defecits have run insanely high. The argument further goes that it is much better for the government to keep taxes low and make promises it can't possibly keep than to empower the government to pay for whatever it wants. Is Julian's analysis valid for any arbitrary level of taxation?

In addition to that argument, I am not convinced that the debt is as big of a problem as it seems to be. In the real world, there is good debt and bad debt. A house mortgage is, among other things, an investment in a real asset that can appreciate. A car is bad debt because it's value depreciates rapidly. In government spending, it is hard to tell which is which, but it probably isn't all bad.

[joe]

You're right, Julian. My bad. I guess the idea that you should make sure you have enough income to cover your expenses doesn't bowl me over as much as other regular readers.

[fyodor]

I think it's interesting that Jason Ligon is using essentially the same argument in a defense realm as Julian is using for taxation and economics. I.e., a little blood now is better than the anticipated* bloodbath if principle stays our knife in the present moment.

*feel free to substitute speculated, envisioned, predicted, etc.

[shane]

If the Bush administration's vision is to spend now with the idea that future politicians will make the "tough choices of spending cuts", then that is sheer recklessness.

That assumes that entenched interests will let go of their focused entitlements, while the broader public will be mobilized to reduce spending overall.

Alot of dreamy assumptions IMHO.

[thoreau]

I second what Shane says.

Tax cuts in and of themselves make sense as tools for starving the beast. Outrageous spending (with or without tax cuts), however, makes little sense from the perspective of starving the beast. One could argue that in the future the burden of interest payments will become so huge that the gov't will have to divert money from programs to interest payments. However, in the absence of a tradition of fiscal discipline there's no reason to hope that future politicians will make tough cuts.

Moreover, even if future politicians resist the urge to hike taxes to keep programs going despite interest payments, this won't actually reduce the amount that gov't takes from you in the future. It will simply shift the spending around. And interest payments will basically divert money from those who didn't buy government bonds to those who did buy government bonds.

(Yes, one could say that spending on legitimate gov't functions like defense diverts money from those who don't manufacturer tanks to those who do, but at least the people who don't make tanks are getting something in exchange for their money.)

So, basically, there is no fiscal genius underlying Bush's budgets. His tax cuts are good, but the spending is reckless. And for those who ask "How can we have tax cuts and still balance the budget?" I'll be happy to start identifying programs I'd like to cut.

[Charles Oliver]

Seems ex never understood libertarianism to begin with.

[shane]

Yeah, thoreau it's faulty reasoning to assume that deficits will magically break the iron triangle of special interests, bureaucracy, and congress.

Let's see your list of programs thoreau. 🙂

Me, I'd axe these departments and most of their programs:

Agriculture
Energy
Labor
Transporation
Education

[thoreau]

What would I axe?

Off the top of my head I'd start with the following:

-Drug War
-Dept. of Agriculture
-Dept. of Education
-Dept. of Labor
-Much of the Dept. of Transportation
-Much of the Dept. of Homeland Security (I wonder how much the giant mood ring will fetch on EBay 🙂
-Certain parts of the defense budget
-The Medicare prescription drug bill.
-FCC
-FDA

Don't get me wrong, there's lots of other stuff, but that's where I'd start.

I'd also change the Constitution so that any new taxes or tax increases must be approved by 2/3 of each House of Congress instead of a simple majority.

[shane]

Oh yeah, my list is just a prologue. 😀

I agree with the supermajority for taxes.

I'd also love to see some sort of sunset provision or mechanism in place where ALL programs must be renewed after a certain time.

Zero-based budgeting might not be a bad idea either.

End the Post Office monopoly on first class mail.

Move all Veteran's programs to HHS.

Auction-off all BLM non-wilderness, non-leased lands to states or private entities(Natue Conservancy, etc)

[ex-libertarian]

Charles Oliver: Yup. I thought it was about individual liberty and reason versus collective guilt. Guess I have been proved wrong yet again.

[shane]

Are all libertarians anarcho-capitalists ex?

[Jean Bart]

shane,

In France, the government postal system no longer has a monopoly on the mails. If France can do it, so can America. 🙂

[Jean Bart]

Jason Ligon,

The woodchipper appears to be apocryphal.

[Charles Oliver]

Does Bastiat's phrase "the seen and the unseen" ring a bell?

[Andrew]

The budget equation is made of four components:

The taxation/borrowing mix.

The military budget.

The domestic discretionary budget.

The entitlement budget.

Can you raise taxes? Bush did, and it cost him his job. Clinton did more...and you can safely assume he took it about as far as it could go (and reversed a bit later). Will resuming the level of taxation under Clinton balance the budget? Probably not.

Can you cut military spending? I suppose so-- although past some point it can't be a good idea, the public won't be that comfortable with it, and you get surprisingly little help from Democrats in practice. Will it balance the budget. Even with raising taxes, probably not.

Can you cut discretionary spending? Reagan did, and you can safely assume he took it about as far as it can go...which wasn't terribly far.

If you set taxes and military spending at cicra 2000, and the discretionary spending at, say, 1992, you might indeed have a healthy surplus. This might be what a Kerry presidency might look like...and realistically it would probably take a Democrat to do it. And it's the best you can hope for (pretty sceptical of the domestic cuts myself...and not much more confident of the military cuts, either).

It would be about as much fun as root canal, about as glamorous as an exercise-Disco sound-track, and would leave the world no better off than we found it...

and Baby-Boom retirement will come along to flatten everything. Everything. The domestic budget. The military budget. The aversion to borrowing.

Can you cut entitlements? Well, no one has tried it. That is literally true...no one. The one politician who fielded the idea-- Ross Perot-- did OK with it, far as I can see.

So...

Be faux-populist-- wealth and means tests for the pension portion.

Be anti-Washington-- renege on lots of federal benes.

Be silly-- crack on waste and fraud in the Disability.SSI portion.

Be fair-- raise the retirement age and crack on the double-dippers.

Be bold-- shitcan Medicare...all of it.

Julian...when you got in the hot-tub after the conference, wasn't this what the wonks REALLY whispered in you ear?

[Jason Ligon]

fyodor:

That is one way of looking at it. I quibble that the principle is being violated, though.

The principle maintains that initiation of force is a wrong. Fine. What if you witness the initiation of force against someone you don't know? Are you violating the principle if you stop it? More to the point, what if it is risky to take action, but circumstances have made it so that you can increase your overall safety by dealing with the aggressor publicly?

And yes, the implication is that any tin pot who oppresses people has abandoned the protection of the non initiation of force principle. They are protected only by the inconvenience of stomping them.

[Mason]

Jason-

Your hypothetical situation is all well and good. And yes, if I was seeing a situation that was clearly the initiation of force I'd do my best to stop it. But the big diff is, we're talking about actions of the government, not of individual human beings. For the same reason that I'm opposed to the government-sponsored altruism of welfare, I'm opposed to gov't-sponsored preemptive military action, no matter how noble the cause. All actions of the government are supported by violence. Remove all those "you"'s from your post, a guy walking down the street witnessing something bad happen to his fellow man and a major superpower government with complex geopolitical objectives are hardly equivalent.

[Kevin B. O'Reilly]

My view is that, given the budget deficit/debt, tax cuts would not be at the top of my priority list (revenue-neutral tax reform would be), but I think it's silly under any circumstances to actually advocate tax increases. If spending isn't cut and entitlements reformed when the budget is as terrible as it is, when will it *ever* happen? I think the "starve the beast" theory is just an excuse for short-term political strategery, but that doesn't mean repealing the Dubya tax cuts it he answer.

[Jason Ligon]

Mason,

Calling the cops on an assailant is using the government to take care of the situation, and using taxpayer dollars.

I am sympathetic to the arguments you raise, but at the end of the day they can be raised about any use of tax dollars whatsoever. Abolish tax dollars and you abolish the state, but as I have mentioned before, I am not an anarchist.

Also, I would point out again that the humanitarian aspect of it is secondary, the enhancement of security by way of re establishing a credible threat of harm is primary. This is an extension of the rule of self defence, and is not in my mind a great leap. I don't perceive tin pots as moral agents whose rights I would be violating, so I have no hangup whatsoever about doing what I need to do to enhance my safety. There is real harm that comes to Iraqi citizens that must be considered, but one can't pretend that many would not die at Saddam's hand anyway, so the calculation is not straightforward.

If I accept a legitimate government function of protecting liberty for US Citizens, then I see no moral problem with this conflict. If you do not accept this function as legitimate, you are a more radical libertarian than I.

[alma hadayn]

"This is an extension of the rule of self defence, and is not in my mind a great leap."

There's the crux of it- I think it is a great leap. While one might make the case that using force only to repel an imminent direct attack is not sufficient to protect America in these "post 9/11" times (I'm not sure I agree, anyway), it is quite a concession to gov't authority to let the President make war whenever he deems it in the interests of "national security".

Lincoln put it well: "Allow the President to invade a neighboring nation, whenever he shall deem it necessary to repel an invasion, and you allow him to do so, whenever he may choose to say he deems it necessary for such a purpose -- and you allow him to make war at pleasure. If today, he should choose to say he thinks it necessary to invade Canada, to prevent the British from invading us, how could you stop him? You may say to him, 'I see no probability of the British invading us' but he will say to you, 'Be silent; I see it, if you don't.'"

[Jason Ligon]

fyodor,

I offer a refutation of your accusation of conflation into a blurry aggregation! Or something ...

Think of it this way. If you are walking down the street and see someone who gives you an oogie feeling, you can't just smack them down. If you know for a fact that the same person just yesterday killed a pedestrian in the neighborhood, I'm saying smack away, or have the police do it.

We are not charged with protecting others in the same sense we are charged with protecting ourselves. However, if we get that oogie feeling and we are dealing with someone who we know has murdered people and violated human rights left and right, we can act with impunity. The moral constraint is not present, and it becomes an issue of practicality. How much will our safety be enhanced by instigating the smack down? How much will it cost? If we are wrong in our assessment, we have made an error of estimation of the threat (we beat up a weak bully), or we have spent too much in lives and money, but we have not violated a moral principle. There is some texture to this position. The point is that we can engage in a broad application of self defense only in those circumstances where we are not violating a moral principle that you and I agree on (I think).

As for the flow of power from the people, I don't think that is all that hard to tell. Elections and a free press would be a start.

Much of my problem with arguments used by the anti war crowd is that they rest on an all or nothing, binary view of the world that is, to me, unrealistic. It is not the case that because we invaded Iraq that we are obligated to invade North Korea, because there is a -shock- combination of factors that led to strong justification in Iraq. The decision process is:

1) Are we dealing with a poop head or not?

2) If so, we have the OPTION of initiating a smack down if we want, without any further justification.

3) Is our security at risk by allowing Mr. Poop to exist in his current capacity? If so, the option begins to look like a requirement of self defense.

4) Is the cost of unseating the fellow too high to justify the gain in security? If so, the requirement of self defense argument thins, and we are left with just an option.

[Rick Barton]

Julian wrote:
A tax cut financed by deficits is ultimately no more responsible than a spending program financed the same way.

A little premise checking here. Surely a tax cut resulting in X magnitude of deficit increase is likely to be more responsible than spending program resulting in X magnitude of deficit increase; because the tax cuts (especially if they are rate cuts) will lead to investment and economic activity which will bring in more revenue than the equivalent spending program thus resulting in a smaller future deficit. This will mean less interest to pay, so the burden of the state will be less.

So, if were going to start trading away tax cuts for spending cuts we should demand more than a one for one dollar swap.

[James Merritt]

Sell off government assets before raising taxes or increasing the debt.

If Social Security is such a looming monster, why not offer cash to those now on the system or soon to be drawing from it; land or other assets to those who are in the mid-range (say, 15-20 years away from retirement age); and smaller grants of land or cash back to those who have only been paying in a few years. Then cut all of the short- and mid- timers off the system entirely, transferring them to private retirement accounts and ending FICA withholding. This is not a new idea; it was, indeed, the platform of several Libertarian campaigns for President (and also, of the national LP, I believe).

I still think Libertarianism is about THAT.

The Republicans (or their embeds) don't give up. If they can't hypnotize us into agreeing that libertarianism is no more than a splinter group of republican conservatism, then they'll try to make it OK, issue after issue, for libertarians to go along with them: OK for imperial war overseas; OK to raise taxes; OK to suppress freedom of speech; OK for "reasonable" gun control (whose reasons?); OK for expanded search and seizure; and so on and so forth. By degrees, co-operative libertarians will morph into good little republicans.

I call frog-soup shenanigans on the elephant show!

[Rick Barton]

What about this political position?:

We need a balanced budget now! Not this, cutting the deficit in half in five years BS. The interest on the debt eats into our future prosperity! Raising taxes is out of the question because the tax burden is already too high. Taxes hinder investment and economic growth. Taxation is theft. We don't want it to increase. This theft shreds the ethical fiber of civil society!

We must cut spending so we have a balanced budget now. Here is where we start.
These get eliminated: This is really fun!

-HUD
-Dept. of Energy
-Dept. of Education
-Dept. of Labor
-Dept. of Transportation
-The Medicare prescription drug bill.
-FCC
-Foreign Aid
- IMF
- World Bank
- Drug War
-Dept. of Agriculture
-"Aid" to States and municipalities
-FDA
-NSF
-NE for Arts
-PBS (don't worry they get most of their funds from non-government sources now anyway. They will still be on. Even if they weren't, were talking principle here)

80% cut this year
-Dept. of Homeland Security
-Nasa. One last project. Send Bush and Kerry to the Moon. Space exploration is cool. Don't sweat it. Private funds will come in.

60% cut this year
-Defense budget

How much more do we have to cut? We could "means test" Medicare.

[fyodor]

Good debating skills there, Jason, and I realize I argued myself into a corner a bit by allowing you to talk about invading Iraq like the only one being "smacked down" is Saddam himself, or at worst Iraqi sovereignty. Now I don't know exactly what proportion of Iraqis preferred our action to the status quo, maybe 80%, maybe 40%, and I can admit that there's a certain point short of killing one person to save the entire planet where the ends may justify the means. And it's nice that you've personally designated the costs as not being too high. But I don't suppose I'd be a (mostly) libertarian if I did't think the ends justifying the means was a rare bird indeed reserved for extremely rare (and extreme) circumstances. And it's killing thousands of people to ward off a future and unsubstantiated threat that you're talking about, and aside from arguing over all the details of your case for war which I don't want to bother with, that is what I compare to Julian's argument.

[Rick Barton]

James Merritt for President!

[Jason Ligon]

alma,

I don't think that the president should be doing it without the consent of Congress, and I don't like the 'free pass' congress gave Bush. We just disagree on the national security bit.

[Jason Ligon]

Back to the debt, there is no question that the Merritt/Barton ticket is preferable to defecits. I am just fatalistic enough to believe that because people want free stuff, they will elect those who will give them free stuff. I would vote for the M/B ticket as a finger in the eye of the guv'ment, but I don't believe they would attain much more than .05% of votes.

I almost believe that as a matter of practicality, only a dire financial crisis will result in the cutting of spending. Our effective choices are spending with high taxes or spending with low taxes and high debt. Sigh.

[MJ]

"We'll accept the rollback of the Bush tax cuts if you join the fight on the spending side."

And who exactly does Sanchez suppose is going to accept that offer, and actually work at it? Who is the target audience, and do they have enough numbers to actually put a dent in the GOP porker, RINO and big government Dem coalition that currently holds sway in the halls of Congress? Most likely you're going to be asked to give away the tax cuts up front in favor of promises of future spending cuts, and likely hearing your supposed partners mutter "sucker" under their breaths as they walk away and plan to add more spending. I think this suggestion just does not take political reality into account.

Sorry, you may theoretically be able smother a fire using a pail of gasoline, but I would not recommend it since your more likely to blow yourself and those around you to kingdom come.

[Jussi H]

Remember Mondale's words:"Mr. Reagan will raise taxes, and so will I. He won't tell you. I just did."

He was right.Then Bush I raised taxes,and then Clinton.And that took care of the deficit,for a while.

Faced with the choice of cutting the welfare state,or raising taxes on the "rich",the Congress and the next president will inevitably choose the latter.

"Cutting government spending" has virtually no constituency in the real world.Present company excluded,of course.

[Rick Barton]

Julian wrote:

If you're willing to charitably add the qualifier "non-defense domestic" to Bush's statement, it's true that the rate of growth in budget authority, as opposed to real outlays, has declined under Bush.

Julian, what is the "budget authority" and how does it relate to real outlays?

Julian wrote:

...the dubious proposition that conservative goals can be achieved by running up deficits to constrain future spending.

Yeah, dubious for sure, when those deficits are caused by new spending, because spending tends to engender constituencies for it's maintenance and growth.

[Russ D]

"Just one more tax raise and I swear I'll be fiscally responsible from now on."

I've heard that argument before. It doesn't work, no sense in denying history.

[Amy Phillips]

"Budget authority" refers to the amounts in President Bush's proposed budget. Those amounts are supposed to reflect the upper limit of the budget the President is willing to sign into law. "Real outlays" are what Congress actually passes and authorizes, and the President usually signs to approve them even when they exceed his proposed budget. So, for example, Bush's budget authority for the Dept. of Defense for FY2005 is $401.7, but real outlays will likely be higher since, for some reason, that number doesn't include the costs of maintaining operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Basically, the point is that while Bush may be claiming that he won't spend too much more of our money, his budget plan will likely result in spending a lot more than he has claimed he will.

[fyodor]

James Ligon,

I was specifically addressing the argument you made earlier on this thread, that self defense did not necessitate waiting until you were attacked when doing so would invite greater danger down the road.

You pretended to address the parallel I brought up between that argument and Julian's by introducing an entirely different argument, i.e. the one about protecting citizens in foreign nations against their own tyrannical governments. Now, I fully and duly understand the argument (aside from whether I agree with it) that Saddam's tyranny allowed us to intervene although it did not obligate us to do so, but hopefully you are willing to admit that his tyranny was not the sole reason for our intervention and thus citing that reason cannot be sufficient to explain our invasion without inviting the quite obvious charges hypocrisy and selectivity.

As for your metaphor, it merely begs the question of the validity of national sovereignty and under what circumstances any agent (individual or state or what have you) is ethically charged with intervention in a situation where force has already been initiated. Yes, I would like to think I would help an individual in need if I could do so and if it were quite clear what the situation called for. Does that allow the US government to intervene with a military invasion against any government in the world we-- no, make that "our government --deems tyranical? To make that leap one must thoroughly disregard and disrespect the entire concept of national sovereignty. Is this concept so worthless? I must admit I'm undecided at the moment. But I doubt you would see it so if the US government were to make any motions toward ceding any its own authority or jurisdiction to anyone other than US citizens or the states.

Sorry to bring up issues surrounding the "should we have invaded Iraq" blah blah, but it was the natural response to what I read, and actually I believe I didn't really start it.... 🙂

[Jason Ligon]

fyodor,

What you are perceiving as two different issues, I am arguing as one. This:

"I was specifically addressing the argument you made earlier on this thread, that self defense did not necessitate waiting until you were attacked when doing so would invite greater danger down the road."

was not an accurate depiction of the argument I was making, because it was incomplete. Self defence does not mean you can violate the rights of those who have never taken aggressive action, even if you perceive there could be a threat down the road. This principle of self defense does permit you to take action against someone who is violating the rights of others under the same set of circumstances. In subsequent posts, I tried to make clear that humanitarian intervention in this case (though not in all)was an insufficient reason, but that doesn't mean it can't contribute to an aggregated set of reasons that add up to perfectly fine justification.

As for sovereignity, to me, the governments of dictators do not enjoy it. Governments in which power does not flow from the people are not to be treated as though they were of similar legitimacy to those in which power does flow from the people. I would even like to see a requirement that they be segregated into UN Minor and have no votes about anything. If they ever want to seek audience with real countries, the tin pot himself should be entering on his knees and begging for money or whatever. But I digress ...

[fyodor]

that doesn't mean it can't contribute to an aggregated set of reasons that add up to perfectly fine justification.

And, once again, I presume that one component of that aggregation is the anticipated danger of doing nothing, which I also say again is analogous to Julian's argument on the effects of not raising taxes?

A sheriff who does not seek to bring justice to a murderer, any murderer, is not doing his job and I would seek his removal from office. Do you see our role in that light when it comes to bringing justice to murderous foreign dictators? Why not? You shift the notion of self defense away from what is done to us to what is done to others. And I'm glad that (for now) you would limit your principle of preemptive self defense to the prosecution of those who have harmed others. But are we (or again, I should say "our government") charged with protecting others the way a sheriff is? If so, we are doing a lousy job of it. And who decides when a foreign government does not derive its power from its citizens? Oh well, I digress as well. I still say, with respect, that you're trying to have it both ways, which you try to gloss over by conflating two different arguments into a blurry aggregation.

[fyodor]

But at least you've addressed my point! I wonder how Julian, a staunch opponent of the war, would reconcile the contradiction? I believe he has quite eloquently made the point that the war was wrong because it is simply not ethically permitted to commit immoral acts on the grounds that moral results will ensue. I confess to being wishy-washy on the matter, but I invite some engenuous debate on the matter!