The worst policy disasters of the country’s history have enjoyed some of the broadest bipartisan support. New scandals and culture war clashes have distracted us. They have obscured a deeper truth: the big-taxing, big-spending, war-making bipartisan consensus has dominated Washington policymaking for generations and it is far more durable than we are led to believe.
While the red and blue teams seem to be fighting each other, they are allied in their war on the rest of us. Among the most subtle and insidious frauds perpetrated by the united political class is the notion that citizens are in a kind of agreement with the government.
If we are in fact in an agreement with the government, it is one of a very strange kind. Consider entitlement programs. These programs do not in fact entitle any individual to anything, just as funding police departments through tax dollars doesn’t entitle one to protection, just as paying for government schools doesn’t entitle one to a serviceable education. You’re not in a contractual agreement with the government that creates obligations for it — only for you.
As philosopher Michael Huemer points out in his book, "The Problem of Political Authority," American courts have been of one voice in roundly rejected the proposition that the government has any duty, of even the flimsiest kind, to protect its citizens.
Of course, if we consider history, this stands to reason. The government was never supposed to protect citizens in the first place; government instead predates its citizenry, holding them captive to enrich itself and its friends. It was to establish this system which is and was a permanent war upon its people. This remains the primary purpose of government.
Policy wonks and political philosophers who insist that government represents a social contract apparently do not know the meaning of the word contract. By definition contracts create reciprocal duties.
Social insurance is not really insurance, a type of agreement whose terms would be contained in a legally enforceable instrument. For example, money stolen from you to fund the federal government’s Social Security program can be and is used for whatever the government sees fit to spend it on, trillions of dollars having been “borrowed” from the program.
If we are to judge the government by its own behavior and the terms of the supposed agreements it has made with citizens, then it is a lawless marauder, constantly untrue to its word.
The apologists who honestly believe we are “in this together” have been bamboozled, though they can’t be faulted for not knowing better. A concentrated stream of misinformation, pageantry and propaganda — supported by both parties — exalts the government and euphemizes its misdeeds.
Even when they sincerely believe otherwise, the two team are much more alike than they are different. For example, supposedly small-government Republicans waste taxpayer dollars with reckless abandon whenever they get the chance. The George W. Bush administration presided over a massive increase in federal spending. “In fact,” notes the Mercatus Center’s Veronique de Rugy, “President Bush increased spending more than any of the six presidents preceding him, including LBJ.” And just as Republican hypocrisy is most conspicuous on issues like deficit spending, free market economic policy, and size of government generally, so are Democrats embarrassingly hypocritical on national security and civil liberties issues.
While he campaigned on hope and change, the changes Barack Obama inaugurated were superficial, “at the level of packaging, argumentation, symbol, and rhetoric,” as Jack Goldsmith noted in 2009. The Obama administration in fact escalated many of the most abominable policies associated with the war on terrorism. If we can’t necessarily blame Obama himself, then perhaps we can’t blame any one individual. For in the most important areas of policy, national security and war among them, the machine is now effectively driving itself, elected officials coming and going as a class of permanent, expert “civil servants” preside over a set of policies that remain relatively constant from one administration to the next.
Partisan politics and the country’s so-called culture war are mere distractions, drawing our attention away from the fact, glaring though it is, that on the most important issues, the political class is united. They’re not locked in contest with one another, but with us, with a “massively entertained, hyper fearful" citizenry fixed on the vacuous debates of cable news talking heads, all as a military-police state consolidates its power. The solution is not to get out the vote, to recommit ourselves to participating in a broken, corrupt political process, but to build outside of that process a set of communities premised on genuine agreements.
