The High Cost of Compassionate Conservatism

Tennessee Congressman John J. Duncan, Jr., is decrying Bush's reconstruction policy in Iraq. Ordinarily, such criticism would come as no surprise—but Mr. Duncan happens to be a Republican.

Why isn't this Republican toeing the party line? Why has he not jumped on board Bush's imperial bandwagon? Well, there are about 87 billion reasons.

The straw that broke the camel's back was the president's request for more money to fund his nation-building exercises in the Middle East. That includes $67 billion in military spending and an additional $20 billion for U.S. reconstruction efforts in Iraq. According to the president, that money would be used "to help rehabilitate that country, so that the people of that country can live a free and hopeful life."

That was too much for Congressman Duncan. In a recent statement, he said:

There is nothing conservative about the U.S. policy in Iraq.

Conservatives have never believed in massive foreign aid. Our occupation of Iraq has become the largest foreign aid program in the history of the world.

We are building or rebuilding thousands of Iraqi schools, giving free health care to Iraqi citizens, and even making back payments to the Iraqi military and Iraqi retirees.

Last week I read that we are sending 60,000 soccer balls there. Our Founding Fathers could not have foreseen this in their wildest dreams.

Indeed, the founders would be shocked by this orgiastic spending spree. Were they alive today, one could not help but wonder if a new version of the Declaration of Independence would be in the works.

As if the new hikes in wartime spending weren't enough, the current administration has already given us huge increases in domestic spending. In fact, when it comes to non-defense spending, George W. Bush makes Bill Clinton look like a conservative:

And since the Republicans control both houses of Congress, most of the president's proposals sail through unopposed. Education, farm subsidies, prescription drugs for seniors, the list goes on.

What surprises me is not that Bush and the GOP are engaged in a fiscal feeding frenzy; it is that there are so few conservatives out there who are willing to call them on it. I suppose with the 2004 election just around the corner they can't afford to be principled right now. After all, winning is everything, and they will stand behind Bush and his socialist policies come hell or high water.

The bottom line is that the growing cost of compassionate conservatism is enough to make even the most liberal advocates of the welfare state blush. We simply cannot continue spending as we have been—whether on domestic social programs or the "war" on terror.

Does being conservative mean throwing away our economic future? If so, then count me out. I don't think our nation can afford to become any more "conservative" than it already has.

Redefining the "Rule of Law"

Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore has been harshly criticized for ignoring a federal court order calling for the removal of a monument displaying the Ten Commandments on public property. Most of the attacks have come from the usual suspects on the liberal left, but conservatives, in a surprising twist, have also joined in the fray.

"Cultural Crusader" Michael Medved accused Justice Moore of taking a position that could lead to the breakdown of the rule of law. Radio icon Rush Limbaugh said on his show, "For our system to work, for there to be a functioning legal system, the federal courts have to be obeyed no matter. And then dealt with within that system, whenever a decision come down that's obviously wrong or offensive or what have you." Limbaugh went on to say that if more people followed Justice Moore's example, it "would lead to chaos, anarchy and a system of civilization and society that we would not want."

Traditionally, conservatives have been the strongest advocates for the rule of law. In the Ten Commandments case, however, many of them have taken a position that is diametrically opposed to the rule of law. They sympathize with Justice Moore and concede that the federal judiciary is making a mockery of the Constitution, yet they insist that we must abide by these unconstitutional rulings lest we plunge our entire civilization into the fathomless depths of chaos and anarchy.

Fortunately, some conservatives actually get it. Alan Keyes, in a column for VisionForum.org, wrote the following:

When, by their careless and contradictory abuse of the Fourteenth amendment, the federal judges and justices arrogate to themselves the power, which, by the first and tenth amendments the Constitution reserves to the states, they deprive the nation of this prudent and logically balanced approach to the issue of religious establishment. Whether through carelessness or an artful effort to deceive, they ignore the distinction between the individual right to free exercise of religion and the right of the people to decide their government's religious stance. They have in consequence usurped this right of the people, substituting for the republican approach adopted by the Constitution an oligarchic approach that reserves to a handful of un-elected individuals the power to impose on the entire nation a uniform stance on religion at every level of government.

These federal judges, in granting themselves power they were never meant to have, are the ones violating the rule of law. What's puzzling is that many conservatives fail to see the inherent danger of allowing this to continue. They would rather have us believe that the widespread disobedience of immoral and unconstitutional court rulings (which is not even happening) is somehow worse than the rulings themselves.

What we have here is a prescription for judicial tyranny, pure and simple. Those who say that we must abide unquestioningly by their definition of the rule of law are in essence asking us to succumb to the whim of a few black-robed tyrants. After all, once the rule of law has been bastardized, it ceases to be the rule of law.

So, where does that leave us? Is anarchy the only alternative to tyranny? If that's the case, I'll take anarchy.