Zeal For Truth

Mike Huckabee took the high road in an interview last week, calling libertarian-leaning republicans who don’t support government healthcare and public schools “heartless, callous, soulless” and of course unamerican. Yes kids, advocating an idea of the federal government consistent with the US Constitution is unamerican. This is just further nonesense from a man who has been appropriately dubbed by Reason “America’s Life Coach.”

Republicans need to be Republicans. The greatest threat to classic Republicanism is not liberalism; it’s this new brand of libertarianism, which is social liberalism and economic conservatism, but it’s a heartless, callous, soulless type of economic conservatism because it says “look, we want to cut taxes and eliminate government. If it means that elderly people don’t get their Medicare drugs, so be it. If it means little kids go without education and healthcare, so be it.” Well, that might be a quote pure economic conservative message, but it’s not an American message. It doesn’t fly. People aren’t going to buy that, because that’s not the way we are as a people. That’s not historic Republicanism. Historic Republicanism does not hate government; it’s just there to be as little of it as there can be. But they also recognize that government has to be paid for.

Huckabee tries to rewrite history and declare that libertarianism is “new” (and has not been historically a part of the Republican Party). In 1975 Ronald Reagan embraced the libertarian movement, and while he acknowledged that he was opposed to the “no government” shade of the philosophy, he said:

If you analyze it I believe the very heart and soul of conservatism is libertarianism. I think conservatism is really a misnomer just as liberalism is a misnomer for the liberals–if we were back in the days of the Revolution, so-called conservatives today would be the Liberals and the liberals would be the Tories. The basis of conservatism is a desire for less government interference or less centralized authority or more individual freedom and this is a pretty general description also of what libertarianism is.

Now, I can’t say that I will agree with all the things that the present group who call themselves Libertarians in the sense of a party say, because I think that like in any political movement there are shades, and there are libertarians who are almost over at the point of wanting no government at all or anarchy. I believe there are legitimate government functions. There is a legitimate need in an orderly society for some government to maintain freedom or we will have tyranny by individuals. The strongest man on the block will run the neighborhood. We have government to insure that we don’t each one of us have to carry a club to defend ourselves. But again, I stand on my statement that I think that libertarianism and conservatism are travelling the same path.

Huckabee, on the other hand argues that historic republicanism is, well, his right-wing socialism. Really? Historic republicans supported public education and government healthcare? Cutting taxes and eliminating government is “not historic Republicanism?”

Again, Reagan made it quite clear, saying “I don’t believe in a government that protects us from ourselves.” Yet Huckabee’s view of Government as the prime shaper of social values, habits and benevolence completely contradicts this idea.

Even though I no longer consider myself a republican in any way - I have some nostalgic love for the party that birthed my understanding of economic conservatism. Despite the complete takeover of the party by the Neo-Conservative exiles from the FDR left, there was once some good in them. Sometimes I feel like Luke Skywalker pleading with Darth Vader to acknowledge the sliver of good still lingering after years of evil.
Continue reading ‘Mike Huckabee: Right-Wing Socialist’