Shorter Michael Gerson: Fred Thompson is a Big Meanie

Michael Gerson, who tried to go from Bush speechwriter to political philosopher with his book, Heroic Conservatism, is now slamming Fred Thompson for being “callous.“

Thompson’s crime? Disagreeing with the “compassionate conservative” spending on AIDS in Africa. The set-up:

At a campaign stop attended by a CBS reporter in Lady’s Island, S.C., Thompson was asked if he, “as a Christian, as a conservative,” supported President Bush’s global AIDS initiative. “Christ didn’t tell us to go to the government and pass a bill to get some of these social problems dealt with. He told us to do it,” Thompson responded. “The government has its role, but we need to keep firmly in mind the role of the government, and the role of us as individuals and as Christians on the other.”

Thompson went on: “I’m not going to go around the state and the country with regards to a serious problem and say that I’m going to prioritize that. With people dying of cancer, and heart disease, and children dying of leukemia still, I got to tell you — we’ve got a lot of problems here. . . . “

That sounds pretty reasonable to me.  When the federal government gets involved in things like AIDS treatment in Africa, priorities for that spending are based on who has the most lobbyists on Capitol Hill.  As Thompson rightly points out, who’s to say whether cancer research or AIDS programs in Africa deserve more funding?  When you look at the the cost of any given aid program, you have to take into account not just the dollar cost, but the opportunity cost of how that money could have otherwise been spent.  And when you’re talking about tax dollars, that money could have been kept by the people who earned it to use as they saw fit.

Michael Gerson is one of those Republicans who wants to turn our party into the religious man’s Democrats.  Some excerpts from his attack on Thompson:

Thompson’s argument reflects an anti-government extremism, which I am sure his defenders would call a belief in limited government. In this case, Thompson is limiting government to a half-full thimble. Its duties apparently do not extend to the treatment of sick people in extreme poverty, which should be “the role of us as individuals and as Christians.”

“Anti-government extremism?”  Really?  I don’t think it’s at all extreme to question whether we ought to be pouring billions of dollars into fighting AIDS.  Especially when we have actual medical researchers who think that spending on AIDS may be out of proportion to its impact.

If you accept, as Gerson does, that it’s our responsibility to treat Africans infected with AIDS, aren’t there millions of people in this world living in various states of poverty, disease, oppression and squalor?  Why do AIDS patients in Africa get $30 billion over the next five years? If it’s just a question of morality, who gets to decide which cause is more deserving than another?  Which is of course the appeal of such an approach:  it’s nice to feel compassionate and important at no great cost to yourself.

Thompson also dives headfirst into the shallow pool of his own theological knowledge. In his interpretation, Jesus seems to be a libertarian activist who taught that compassion is an exclusively private virtue.

By definition, virtue must be private.  Forcibly confiscating other peoples’ money in order to give it to the poor doesn’t make you virtuous.  Nor does being forced to give money to poor.  As soon as it’s forced, it’s not virtue anymore.  People can be virtuous.  Governments cannot be.

What of the more than 1.4 million men, women and children who have received treatment with the help of Bush’s AIDS initiative? According to Thompson, they are not a priority. The 800,000 HIV-positive pregnant women who have gotten treatment to prevent transmission to their children? Not a priority. The care of nearly 3 million orphans? Not a priority.

Does Thompson actually believe this? Perhaps he was merely pandering to anti-government conservatives — though it is difficult to imagine what collection of shriveled souls would be excited by an attack on AIDS treatment. Either way, Thompson’s image as a courageous teller of hard truths — the “adult” in the race — is damaged. It cannot be called bravery for a millionaire actor, with a blessed life, to pick on the most vulnerable people on the planet.

This part is complete assholery.  Shriveled souls?  Picking on the most vulnerable?  Gerson is in fine liberal form today, picking up one of their classic techniques: If you don’t agree, you’re a terrible person.  Thompson is saying that it shouldn’t be up to a handful of bureaucrats and politicians to set the charity priorities of the nation.  Gerson says that Thompson is just being mean, or pandering to mean people.

Thompson’s questioner got it wrong. Support for the fight against AIDS is not a matter of being a “Christian” or a “conservative” — or a liberal or a Buddhist. It is an expression of compassion and empathy, which also reflects a serious conception of America’s role in the world.

No, I think you’ll find that you have it wrong, Mike.  Donating your own money to AIDS treatment is compassionate.  Insisting that the taxpayers fund your charitable projects is theft.

It takes great hubris to be a Michael Gerson.  You have to believe that your priorities are always the right ones.  You have to scorn the idea that individuals may be able to make better charity decisions than government bodies can.  You have to believe that people who disagree are just callous or ungenerous.  Gerson is effectively saying that he doesn’t trust the American people to be charitable with their own money - they need the government to force it out of them.

Gerson wants to save the Republican party with his ideas about compassionate conservatism.  Americans shouldn’t pride themselves on having a generous government, but on being a generous people.  Why not let individuals make their own choices about which cry of need to answer?  I suppose if we did, people like Michael Gerson wouldn’t get to feel as morally superior.

The Wall Street Journal published a review of his book which aptly points out some of the great errors in his judgment.

 

Human Events Endorses Fred Thompson

Good choice, folks.  In terms of electoral practicality, the Republican party needs a candidate who can unite several distinct groups of conservatives: the tough-on-terror crowd, the social conservatives and the fiscal conservatives, to over-simplify.

Huckabee only holds appeal for the second group.  And while Giuliani is good for the foreign policy hawks, and mostly acceptable to the fiscal conservatives, he’ll alienate the social conservatives.  Romney is only marginally trustworthy on any of the three: while some will be convinced that he really believes that principles, that might not be enough to energize the base in November.  McCain, who got a big boost from New Hampshire, is more experienced that Giuliani on foreign policy but has shown too great a willingness to compromise other issues.

That leaves Fred Thompson.  And as the Human Events endorsement points out, Thompson has strongly conservative opinions on the issues that separate Republicans from Democrats.  Even more importantly, he has put forth serious policy proposals in contentious areas like fiscal policy and Social Security Reform.

Fred Thompson doesn’t just talk the conservative talking points, he actually understands Federalism.  Any goombah can talk about keeping Clinton’s hands off our guns.  But it’s a rare candidate who understands and applies the principles of conservatism and federalism rather than just the pre-fabricated policy positions, which seems to be what the rest of the field (except Ron Paul) is doing.

 

Yet another reason to support Thompson

Because Pat Sajak does, and has contributed the maximum $2,300 to Thompson’s campaign.

And if you can’t trust the political tastes of the man who has hosted Wheel of Fortune since 1981, who can you trust? Maybe if we publicize this a little bit, Thompson will pull in the nursing home vote.

But wait! Before you cast your ballot or send your checks prematurely, let’s hear what Sajak has to say on the matter of celebrity endorsements:

If any group of citizens is uniquely unqualified to tell someone else how to vote, it’s those of us who live in the sheltered, privileged arena of celebrityhood. It’s one thing to buy an ab machine because Chuck Norris recommends it (he’s in good shape, isn’t he?) or a grill because George Foreman’s name is on it (he’s a great guy, so it must be a great grill!), but the idea of choosing the Leader of the Free World based on the advice of someone who lives in the cloistered world of stardom seems a bit loony to me.

I think I’m going to have to add Pat Sajak to my big list of celebrities I want to meet someday (Bean, I’m expecting the hook-up when you’re famous). The man has a measure of common sense that belies his haircut.

Update: A quick googling revealed that Pat Sajak has had his “Sajak Says” columns published on Human Events Online; I’ve had two of my columns published there also. We both support Fred Thompson. He’s contributed the maximum legal amount; I’ve contributed the maximum amount my retail slave job allows. He has a terrible haircut; I have a terrible haircut. It’s really a little bit eerie how alike the two of us are.

 

Dick Morris says: If you don’t like the race you’re in, invent a new race!

Huckabee lost me as soon as he started pulling out the class warfare arsenal and calling the Club for Growth  the “Club for Greed.”  Which, in addition to being a serious mischaracterization of C4G, is really just a terrible insult.  If you really want to tackle the Club for Growth, you’d better be a little more creative than that.

Here we Dick Morris ardently defending Huckabee’s record as a fiscal conservative (to which I say: then why is he so willing to pound the “rich-people-and-corporations-are-evil” drum). But what really caught my eye was the way he tried to paint the race as a three-way contest between Giuliani, Romney and Huckabee.

When voters who have decided not to back Rudy Giuliani because of his social positions consider the contest between Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee, they will have no difficulty choosing between a real social conservative and an ersatz one.

Romney, who began as a pro-lifer and switched in order to win in Massachusetts, and then flipped back again, cannot compete with a lifelong pro-lifer, Huckabee.

The choice is not between Romney and Huckabee, it’s between Romney and Huckabee and my man Fred Thompson.  Not only does Thompson have a perfect pro-life voting record, he’s also a fiscal conservative in the model of (dare I say it?) Ronald Reagan.  Unlike Huckabee, Romney or Giuliani, Thompson has actually released a fiscal policy plan that includes a variety of tax cuts and tax reforms that would benefit every American.

So it’s really no wonder that Morris would prefer to act as though Fred Thompson doesn’t exist.  He’s the only good choice in a field of half-hearted Republicans who enjoy quoting Reagan without understanding that there are unifying principles behind those talking points.

Finally, this paragraph really rubbed me the wrong way:

But Huckabee’s strength is not just his orthodoxy on gay marriage, abortion, gun control and the usual litany. It is his opening of the religious right to a host of new issues. He speaks firmly for the right to life, but then notes that our responsibility for children does not end with childbirth. His answer to the rise of medical costs is novel and exciting. “Eighty percent of all medical spending,” he says, “is for chronic diseases.” So he urges an all-out attack on teen smoking and overeating and a push for exercise not as the policies of a big-government liberal but as the requisites of a fiscal conservative anxious to save tax money.

Written like a man who doesn’t really believe in conservatism to start with.  Mike Huckabee is one of those surely good-hearted people with an unfortunate tendency to conjure rights from thin air.  Or, more often, to mistake privileges for rights. For example, illegal immigrants have a right to federal college money too.

Also, the idea that we’re going to start cracking down on smoking, overeating and lethargy is frightening in its implications (and not just because overeating and lethargy are my vices of choice).  When we reach a point where government (and through taxation, your fellow citizens) is responsible for health care, why should they not take action to discourage unhealthy lifestyles?  But part of living in a free society is that people can choose to be either healthy or unhealthy.  They can choose to have bad habits and vices, because their fellow citizens aren’t forced to shoulder the burden of their choices.  But when my tax money starts paying for your health care, you can be damn sure I’ll do whatever it takes to get you on that treadmill.

 

As if I needed another reason to support Fred Thompson

Not only was Thompson the first man out of the gate with a comprehensive plan to deal with Social Security, he’s just released a tax reform plan that gets a gold star from the Club for Growth.

According to Club for Growth President Pat Toomey:

His plan is based on the fundamental fact that lower rates and simpler rules across the board promote economic freedom and enhance economic growth. This is the kind of plan economic conservatives can rally around.

Meanwhile, the conventional wisdom still says that Thompson is lazy and unintellectual, which I’m beginning to think is media code for “Southern,” as neither accusation is grounded in reality.

 

An awful vision

There I was, innocently listening to Disney songs while studying for Macroeconomics. Suddenly, I had a nightmarish vision of Rudy Giuliani singing “I Just Can’t Wait to be King” from The Lion King.

From everything I’ve read about Giuliani and everything I’ve heard him say, my general impression is that of a man with a taste for authoritarianism. Not only do I not believe that Rudy is serious about his commitment to appoint strict constructionist judges to keep social conservatives happy, I don’t think he’s in line with any other guiding principle of conservatism.

He sure as hell isn’t an economic conservative. He and Romney keep scrabbling over who is less of a dirty liberal, and have thus far only convinced me that they’re equally unsuited to lead the party of low taxes and limited government. His record of fighting crime in New York City would be more impressive had he not gone so far near the end of his tenure, moving from tough-on-crime to ignorant-of-civil-liberties.

I’m also a firm believer in the idea that how a man (or woman) acts in his personal life spills over into public life. I’m just not convinced by the argument that leaders can completely compartmentalize their lives, treating their families poorly but their constituents well. A man who lies to his wife (or in Rudy’s case, wives) has proven himself willing to lie. If he lacks the moral clarity to keep his promises to his wife, why should I believe that he will keep his far less sacred promises to voters?

Finally, there is the issue of whether Rudy is the only man who can beat Clinton in ‘08. I think Paul Ibrahim lays out a good argument that this isn’t really the case. But I think there’s another, more important question at stake here: is foiling Clinton’s bid a good enough reason to sacrifice the principles the Republican party ought to stand for? If Rudy gets to the White House and performs the way I predict he will, he could do more to ruin the Republican brand than even our current president has. If that’s the case, then it might be worth it to stand on principle, grit our teeth for four years of Clinton and hope that Mark Sanford runs for president in 2012.

If Rudy wins the nomination, conservatives would do well to focus their support on Congressional races, getting some real Club for Growth-certified men and women to Washington. A slim majority, or even a vocal, principled minority of conservative Republicans in the Senate and House may be enough to prevent the worst mischief of a Democratic White House (Our Founding Fathers weren’t kidding about the whole “checks and balances” thing).

For now, I’ll root for Fred Thompson, the only guy in the race who seems to understand not just the application of conservatism, but the principles themselves, and hope that my fellow Republicans don’t shoot themselves in the feet with guns Rudy doesn’t want them to have in the first place.

Side note: Much as I don’t want to see Clinton in the White House, I actually dislike John Edwards even more. Seriously, I can’t stand the man. Every time I see a picture of him, or hear his awful, grating voice, I want to smack him upside the head. I know, I know - violence isn’t always the answer. But no one should be allowed to be as smarmy as Edwards and not get punished for it.