November 9, 2006 

WRTA

 Brown Shoes Diary 

George W. Bush--A Man Without Faith

It could have been worse, I guess, although it's hard to see how.  In any case, the lesson of Tuesday's election is that if you lie to yourself, you'll have a pretty stiff price to pay at some point.  For the conservatives who have been lying to themselves that George Bush is one of them, the settlement day is November 7, 2006.
 
Let's see.  The Democrats will be in control of both houses; Nancy Pelosi will be Speaker of the House; Harry Reid will be senate majority leader; Patrick Leahy will be chair of the judiciary committee.  That line-up means that there won't be another conservative on the federal bench for at least two years and probably a good deal longer.  The War on Terrorists is for the time being lost.  Smaller government (W did promise that didn't he?) has no chance and taxes and tax rates will be raised.  Spending will increase at Bush-like rates, but not for anything but liberal, that is failing, programs that undermine personal responsibility. 
 
It seems like just last month Arlen Specter was telling us he is next in line for Chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee--wait a minute, it was last month!  Is this the silver lining in Tuesday's results?  Will Evil Arlen have incentive to retire now that he is back in the minority and is near powerless?  I know it's wishful thinking, but give me a bone here, okay?
 
Of George Bush's many sins, the one that has cost his party and this country the most is his lack of faith in democracy and capitalism.  I can accept that he really did believe that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and that Saddam Hussein was an imminent threat to the United States.  The latter, of course, does not necessarily follow from the former and is preposterous if you think about it.  But after finding no weapons, what rationale did Mr. Bush give for remaining in Iraq?  To spread democracy and capitalism.  Truth to tell, Mr. Bush never uses the word capitalism, but democracy without capitalism is what subjugated Eastern Europe from 1945 to 1989.  I'm hoping that democratic socialism is not what Bush is intending for the Mid-East.
 
It seems to me that trying to spread democracy and capitalism through military occupation is pretty much the textbook definition of cognitive dissonance.  People who think that way have a tendency to ignore important little details such as their oaths to uphold the Constitution of the United States, which gives no power to the president to invade another country, let alone occupy it in the hopes of spreading democracy.
 
I can also accept Bush at his word that the whole reason for spreading democracy is to render terrorism obsolete.  Trouble is that for the terrorists, the wahhabis, it is democracy which they seek to make obsolete.
 
Basically, Mr. Bush lacks faith in the fundamental goodness and popularity of democratic capitalism.  He thinks it has to be forced on people.  In truth, capitalsim is the regime most consistent with social harmony.  "People will come, Ray," says the character Thomas Mann in the movie "Field of Dreams" about the attraction of baseball.  The same is many times more true of capitalism.  All one needs is a little faith in freedom to understand that people don't need to be forced into capitalism at the point of a gun.  Our President has no such faith and now his party and our country will pay the price for his infidelity.
 

The opinions and ideas expressed in this essay are those of John D McGinnis and should not be considered representative of WRTA.com, any institution with which McGinnis is associated, or anyone else.  He can be contacted at john@wrta.com. This essay also appears at the Penn Patriot blog.  
 

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