Are we politicizing our financial woes?

On more than one occasion, members of the liberal media have questioned whether conservatives would be as upset with government spending if it had come from a Republican president.  The answer is simple.

by Michael Naragon

On Friday afternoon, I showed my U.S. history students a film clip of William F. Buckley debating then-California Gov. Ronald Reagan in 1978 over the transfer of the Panama Canal.  I used the clip to give them an idea of Buckley’s mannerisms and speaking style.  We have been discussing the Kennedy presidency, and I am introducing the students to conservatives who began to make a name for themselves in that period, including Barry Goldwater and Buckley.

The students, being the intelligent sponges that they are, immediately recognized the brilliance of Buckley’s logic, his skill at delivery, and just his overall superiority as a debater.  However, one of the points Buckley made concerning the surrender of the Canal caused me to ponder.

“Who in this room doubts,” Buckley asked the crowd in his dramatic fashion, “that if the president of the United States weren’t Jimmy Carter, but, let us say, Douglas MacArthur, and if the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff were Curtis LeMay, and if the Secretary of State were Theodore Roosevelt, and this instrument were recommended to the Senate, who doubts that the conservative community of America would endorse it?”

Buckley told the audience that those who called themselves conservatives were allowing themselves to become “beguiled,” that their opposition to the Canal transfer was simply political, not analytical or principled.

After hearing Buckley’s convincing speech, and the enthusiastic crowd’s reception of his words uttered over thirty years ago, I began to mull over their meaning.  Could it be that we, the 21st century version of the conservative movement in America, have politicized the debate over the government’s spending and stimulus plans?  Would there be no Tea Party movement if George W. Bush or John McCain had advanced such spending for the “good” of the country?  Have we been beguiled by our intellectual affiliations and abandoned our core principles of patriotism?

The answer to those questions is, of course, “no,” and I believe Buckley would agree.

Liberals in the media have stated repeatedly that the Tea Party movement was simply a reaction to a Democratic president and his agenda.  Rush Limbaugh, who views Buckley as one of his inspirations, has been attacked because of his insistence that he would like the president’s policies to fail.  Janeane Garofalo, in her widely publicized diatribe, called the attendees of the Tea Parties “rednecks” who were only opposing the idea of a black man in the White House.

I, however, believe that the name, party affiliation, and, yes, race of the president are inconsequential.  Those who have protested in February and April of this year would have hit the streets regardless of who sat in the Oval Office.  I believe that the vast majority of conservatives were, indeed, acting on their principles when they stood up against TARP I, TARP II, and the largest expansion of the federal government in the history of the nation in the form of the $3.4 trillion Obama budget.

Fiscal conservatives across the nation, like Belshazzar, have seen the handwriting on the wall.  Unlike the Babylonian king, however, conservatives are trying to enact change to avoid the utter destruction of the American way of life.  Our economic system, and, in turn, the economic systems of the world, cannot be sustained with perpetual debt and continual spending.  We who purport ourselves to be conservatives have sat idly by while administration after administration has sacrificed our future on the altar of the immediate.  Our reluctance to stir the pot has ebbed as we see our nation drowning in debt.

The people of the United States are watching their dollar become devalued by a government that cannot control its own spending.  Reports persist that the Federal Reserve is printing money at breakneck speed, using the cash, its ink still moist, to fund the administration’s bailouts and spending because our enemies no longer feel comfortable making loans to the United States.  I believe that a majority of Americans understands that the dike has a lot of holes, and that most of the holes come from Washington.

As one who has experienced the Tea Party movement firsthand, in Atlanta, I can say that the anger expressed was bipartisan.  Though the media have chosen not to show them, there were as many signs berating George Bush as Barack Obama.  They are partners in the same crime in the eyes of those who would seek to enforce the Constitution and limit the federal government.  Unfortunately, limiting the federal government in our day seems about as easy as forcing a voracious lion back into its cage without the aid of a whip and chair.