The
War is a Bore
It’s all well
and good for the United States to bring peace,
democracy, free markets and human rights to the
far reaches of the world, but it is making a
mess of our budget, and it is taking its toll on
our military and on our economy. It is time to
declare victory and to start to bring our troops
home. Iraq may or may not have been a diversion
from the war on terror, but it has certainly
been a diversion from the Republican agenda, at
least as we understand it.
There are some
indications that certain Republicans in
Washington are beginning to understand that
without an exit strategy, we risk losing the war
politically and economically at home, as well as
jeopardizing our achievements abroad. But, until
we start to extricate ourselves from Iraq, the
political spectrum may not revert to its former,
brief, relatively “up-down,” “liberty
versus big government” orientation. The
political spectrum may become stuck in the
recently revived “left-right,” “conservative
versus liberal” orientation.
The RLC Index of
Congress is based on two dimensions of freedom,
economic freedom and personal freedom. As
libertarians, we want the government out of our
pocketbooks and out of our bedrooms. This doesn’t
mean we’re libertines. Just the opposite, we
believe that freedom is conducive to virtue. We
believe that it is because America is a free
country that Americans are most church-going,
family-oriented, decent and law-abiding people
in the world. This is not to say that we insist
that everybody go to church or join into
traditional families or live their lives
according to anybody else’s idea of what is
proper.
What we insist
upon is that people respect the equal rights of
all persons to life, liberty and the pursuit of
happiness. We insist that people respect the
property and the privacy of others. We believe
that those who live their lives responsibly will
flourish; that is, we don’t believe that
goodness needs to be supported by the
government. We, furthermore, think that
government generally taxes what is good and
subsidizes what is bad and, so, is
counter-productive to virtue. And, while we
would allow individuals to make their own
mistakes, we would hope that we would all learn
from these mistakes.
Left and Right
Before getting
into the specifics of the 2004 RLC Index, I
would like to direct your attention to the big
picture. In this year’s LiberGraph, we have
plotted the scores of the members of the U.S.
House of Representatives. Republicans are shown
as blue dots, and Democrats as red dots. In the
old “left – right” political spectrum,
some politicians sought to defend our personal
liberties; e.g., freedom of speech, and of
association, and the rights of the accused.
Other politicians sought to defend our economic
liberties; e.g., to buy and sell in the
marketplace, and to own and enjoy the use of
property. In the “up – down” political
spectrum that exhibited itself from 1998 to
2002, the same politicians who defended our
property rights also defended our personal
freedoms. Notice that the political spectrum,
for 2003 and for 2004, has reverted back to
something of a “left – right” orientation.
Consider the
traditional liberal concern for freedom of
speech. Liberals, nowadays, advocate speech
codes on college campuses, the regulation of
political speech, and public-financing of news,
entertainment and art. Consider the traditional
liberal concern for equal rights. Liberals,
nowadays, want quotas, set-asides and
preferences. When you go into court, they don’t
want justice to be blind, but want certain
people to have “status.” To be sure,
conservatives do not systematically embrace
personal liberties. They look at us strange, for
example, because we support state laws
legalizing medical marijuana.
We understand
that conservatives do not share our principled
support of liberty, and only support it on an ad
hoc basis as, for example, a market-oriented
economy is more productive than a socialistic
one. We understand this, and accept the
challenge of making liberty palatable to a
sufficient number of our fellow citizens.
Roll Call Votes
To
construct the two-dimensional index, I first
identified a total of eighty roll call
votes, twenty on economic liberty issues,
and twenty on personal liberty issues for each
of the two chambers of Congress. This step was
aided by the roll call votes identified by Bill
Westmiller’s semi-automatic preliminary index,
constructed by him toward the end of last year,
and by his insightful comments, suggestions and
all-round good humor regarding my draft lists.
In the end, I take responsibility for the four
lists of roll call votes, and absolve the
Republican Liberty Caucus, its officers,
employees and assigns of any blame.
As in the past,
identifying roll call votes concerning economic
liberty was not a problem. With a
super-abundance of roll call votes to select
from, my main concern was developing two lists
of votes that, roughly, spanned the overall
subject. The resultant lists includes votes on
the overall level of spending, as well as
spending in a variety of specific areas, votes
on taxes and economic regulations, and votes on
energy, labor, trade and industrial policies. I
was also able to include some easy and some
tough votes, so as to distinguish among the
better and the worse members of Congress.
Also as in the
past, identifying roll call votes concerning
personal liberty posed some challenges. First of
all, my choices are limited to what Congress
actually votes on, and – in this component of
my index – I often have some unevenness in the
distribution of votes. In the list for the
Senate, for example, I may be heavy on gun votes
(even though I didn’t use all the gun votes I
could’ve used), and light or completely void
in a number of areas of potential concern.
Second, because of limitations in my choices, I
sometimes construct a “synthetic”
libertarian position by combining a vote in the
which the libertarian position is arguably
coincident with the conservative position with
another vote in which the libertarian position
is arguably coincident with the liberal
position.
This year, I
included such a synthetic libertarian position,
in the list for the Senate. This synthetic
libertarian position includes a “no”
position on the development of bunker-busting
nuclear weapons, and a “yes” position on
missile defense. My thinking is that, other
things equal, we would prefer the use of weapons
with less collateral damage, as the “enemies”
we face are not “the nations” with which we
may go to war, but the individuals who have
gained power in those nations. If you aren’t
happy with this part of the list, bear in mind
that I’m not either.
Other votes
concerning personal liberties include freedom of
association in the purchase of health insurance
and in the formation of civil unions (we’re
for freedom of association), expedited
deportation, secret tribunals, and using the
military to “close the borders” (we’re
against such things), the drug war in Columbia
and the drug war at home (we’re against almost
all the wars in which our government is
involved), and the prohibition of some speech
and the subsidization of some other speech (we
think the Congress should pass “no law”
respecting freedom of speech, just like it says
in the 1st Amendment). I should also
mention that, in the Senate, I included votes on
the confirmation of two very fine judges.
Top
Scorers
In
the U.S. House of Representatives, the #1 and 2
members of Congress for 2004 were clearly Ron Paul of
Texas and Jeff
Flake of Arizona. Also scoring well were
Bartlett of MD, Franks of AZ and Miller of FL.
If you will look at the LiberGraph, you can
easily identify the blue dot denoting Dr. Paul.
It’s the one near the northeast corner of the
diagram. It is awesome to think that Dr. Paul,
my immediate predecessor as National Chairman of
the Republican Liberty Caucus, returned to the
Republican Party and was elected to the U.S.
Congress after running for President as a
candidate of the Libertarian Party. In the
history of the United States, only three people
who have run for President as the candidate of
one party were, subsequently, elected to
Congress as the candidate of another party. And,
what is really noteworthy about Dr. Paul, is
that, last year, he ran unopposed. Our
conservative brethren within the Republican
Party might think that we libertarians are
strange, yet Dr. Paul demonstrates that we align
as well or better with the people of the country
as they do.
Economic Votes
On the Economics
component of the index, we had two 100’s,
Franks of AZ and Miller of FL. Five others got
95, viz., Flake of AZ, Hensarling of TX, Shadegg
of AZ, Stearns of FL and Tancredo of CO. In
three of these five cases, the Representative
was tripped on the base closing vote. Also on
the Economics component of the index, we had
five 0’s, Butterfield of NC, Davis of IL,
Frank of MA, and Oberstar and Sabo of MN. As The
Godfather once said, “Keep your friends close,
and your enemies closer.”
Senate Rankings
Turning to the
upper chamber, the #1 Senator for 2004 was John Sununu of
NH, followed closely by Saxby Chambliss
of GA, and John Ensign of NV and Don Nickles of
OK. Senator Nickles, who retired last year, has
always scored well in our index, and several
times was #1 in the Senate.
On the Economics
component, we had five 100’s, including Zell Miller of
GA and Rick Santorum of PA, as well as Chambliss
of GA, Ensign of NV and Nickles of OK. Senator
Miller, who also has retired, is a Democrat who
all but switched to the Republican Party last
year. We can’t help but notice how, liberated
from the trappings of the Democratic Party, his
score on the index rose to Libertarian. We also
got three 0’s, Byron Dorgan of North Dakota
and the Democratic Party’s running mates of
2004, John Kerry and Jonathan Edwards (provided
that you overlook the fact that they were so
busy running for President and Vice President
that they only voted a few times).
Clifford
F. Thies e-mail
Past Chairman, Republican Liberty Caucus
Professor of Economics and Finance
at Shenandoah University
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