Enlightenment Watch

I've blogged previously about Bush's contempt for the enlightenment and about his dream of becoming a Sun King. A couple things came up last week that demand an update to this line of criticism. But first, a trip down memory lane.

My opponent thinks the government -- the surplus is the government's money. That's not what I think. I think it's the hard-working people of America's money and I want to share some of that money with you so you have more money to build and save and dream for your families. It's a difference of opinion.

This quote is from George W. Bush in the October 10, 2000 presidential debate. Everyone knows that because of Bush and his insatiable desire for cutting taxes and increasing spending, we have a crushing deficit far larger than anything we could have imagined in 2000. I would contend that having a solvent government would have helped the American people more than shifting the tax burden off the absurdly wealthy and onto the middle class.

But what he describes in this passage is goes beyond the woulda-shoulda-couldas of policy. It is less a a difference of opinion than a difference in the fundamental philosophy of what government is. Al Gore, apparently, supported a classical liberal view, the view that this country was founded on, the view that came out of the Enlightenment itself. George W. Bush supported, and supports to this day, a regressive view that would take us back before the Enlightenment.

You see, in a liberal democracy, the people are the government. There is no opposition between paying down the debt and rewarding the people for their hard work and prudence. The people of the United States are in debt up to their eyeballs, both personally and socially.

Fun fact: repealing the estate tax entirely would cost the people of the United States over $8 billion over the next ten years from the Walton family (owners of Wal*Mart) alone.

Anyway, on to the two updates: outsourcing tax rules and signing statements.

#1: a continued emphasis on destroying the rational-bureaucratic norms that are a central feature of all modern societies. This time it's back to the IRS, which apparently is pushing to allow private tax attorneys and accountants to just rewrite tax rules as they see fit.

In the Conservative mind, this is a perfectly reasonable thing to do. Who better to write tax rules than the people who deal with them every day? So much the better that these people are willing to do it for free! There's probably no catch, and if there were, it probably wouldn't be based on rigging the tax rules to favor their clients.

In the liberal, Enlightenment view, by contrast, the people regulate themselves through the intermediary of a meritocratic bureaucracy. The bureaucracy is employed using money collected from the people and directed by politicians elected by the people. This system is good because everyone involved is accountable to everyone else. Doing it their way, the doers are accountable only to their captain of industry clients.

#2: the issue of signing statements is finally upon us in a much more tangible way. To provide a brief refresher, signing statements are the mechanism Bush has been using to assert an unjustifiably extravagant amount of Constitutional authority. The hubbub over signing statements is about a year old, but heretofore it has been largely hypothetically. Last week, the FBI put a much more real face on the situation.

It all begins with the reauthorization of the PATRIOT Act in the fall of 2005. One of the measures included was an unreasonable ability for the FBI to infringe on privacy with virtually no supervision. Some people complained about this at the time, but of course that would have meant the terrorists win. To the surprise of approximately no one, the FBI promptly turned around and abused their awesome, completely unchecked power by breaking even the modest oversight requirements in the law.

The connection here is that the signing statement Bush issued with the reauthorization of the PATRIOT Act is the very one that drew attention to the controversy over signing statements to begin with. And that signing statement spelled out very clearly that Bush intended to ignore the portions of the law that the FBI has now, indeed, ignored.

This could force a real showdown over the Constitution, which one has to believe was the intention of the Administration all along. After all, if Bush wanted to just get away with one, why would he announce he was going to break the law? Democrats in Congress, and self-respecting pundits, are already making noise about getting Alberto Gonzales to resign. Between this scandal and the politically motivated firing of otherwise competent US Attorneys, it is starting to look like Gonzales may not be able to make it too much longer, which can only be good for the country: it's time we stopped assaulting the Enlightenment.