Memo to Republicans: Your serious contenders are hypocrites, too

By David McElroy · July 22, 2011

If you believe in the democratic system and want to be a serious part of it in this country, you can be a Democrat or a Republican. That’s it. Most of those who want small government join Team GOP, believing they’re pursuing small government. Sadly, they’re mistaken.

I have lots of friends who are still active in the Republican Party, as I once was. Many of them are very sincere believers in cutting the size of government. I certainly know some who are social conservatives and neo-conservatives, but most among my friends are fiscally conservative and fairly socially tolerant people who are opposed to big government. They honestly believe supporting the Republican Party is going to cut the size of government.

There’s absolutely no evidence to support that fairy tale.

I was reminded of that again today when I saw this story about Texas Gov. Rick Perry — a wannabe Republican presidential candidate — blasting the Obama administration for cutting jobs in NASA now that the space shuttle program is winding down. (The link comes via The Agitator, a site which is worth your daily perusal.)

Isn’t a Republican supposed to be in favor of cutting government jobs? Are NASA jobs somehow special and worthy of keeping around because we all like watching rockets launch if they have big ol’ American flags on ’em? Even though I dearly love space travel (and am eager for humans to start taking it seriously as a business opportunity), I’d be happy if NASA were shut down this afternoon. A Facebook friend of mine had an astute observation about the end of the shuttle program:

“I heard the space shuttle program end. It sounded like a giant vacuum shutting off after sucking $192 billion into space. At least it was a success, though, by government standards. Only two of the five orbiters were destroyed.”

With many Republicans — such as Rick Perry — they’re always in favor of cutting someone else’s government program. Whatever program is sacred to them, of course, should be off-limits. (As governor of Texas, Perry was much more concerned about job losses at Houston’s NASA facilities than he was about principles of smaller government.)

For some Republicans, it’s the space program. For others, it’s farm subsidies. For yet others, it’s corporate welfare for their fat-cat donors. And they pretty much all love the prescription medicine benefit that’s going to help bankrupt the government. Medicare and Medicaid are even pretty popular with them. And don’t even think about suggesting that we get rid of Social Security, because that’s way too popular for them to pursue dumping that.

Taken together, you have a picture of hypocrisy on the issue of cutting the size of government. Even if you ignore the cost of insane, aggressive wars that a Republican president led us into in the last decade, government grew under Republicans. And if you add in the insane military costs, you have a picture of complete and utter insanity — one that proves beyond a shadow of doubt that limiting government is simply a stump speech for Republicans, not a subject they take seriously.

Where can you start if you’d like to get the facts that you won’t hear from talking heads on television? I’d like you to consider taking a look at a couple of books from scholars at the Cato Institute that lay out the case for how the Republican Party has betrayed you:

Buck Wild: How Republicans Broke the Bank and Became the Party of Big Government — When this book was written six years ago, Republicans controlled the White House and Congress, so they had the chance to slash government’s size if they were serious about it. Instead, they massively increased the size of government. This book goes a long way toward explaining it. If you don’t want to take the time to read the book, at least listen to this Cato Institute book forum with the author, along with comments from the late conservative columnist Bob Novak.

Leviathan on the Right: How Big-Government Conservativism Brought Down the Republican Revolution — This one is from four years ago, but it’s still just as relevant today. It also has a Cato book forum you can listen to if you’re not willing to read to whole thing. The responder on this book forum was former GOP House Speaker Dick Armey. (I don’t think Armey takes nearly enough blame these days for the damage that his willingness to compromise caused, but that’s another story. They always talk tough about cutting government when they’re no longer in the position to do so.)

I don’t believe in the coercive state in the least. I think it’s coming apart at the seams and something else is going to replace it. (Actually, many different things.) That’s why I’m not terribly interested in trying to support one of the incumbent parties, even if I didn’t see the majoritarian system as immoral. I think they’re increasingly irrelevant. But even if you do still believe in the state — and believe it’s just fine to force people to do what the majority want, as long as it’s not “too much” — you should re-evaluate your loyalty to the Republican Party. Regardless of the rhetoric of its leaders, it’s no better than the Democrats when you actually give it power.

The only real difference between the parties is their cultures. The culture of the GOP is that of a more traditional middle-class white America. The Democratic Party’s culture is an amalgam of cultures that are very different from the cultural conservatism that Republicans are comfortable with. Personally, I’m more comfortable with some parts of Republican culture, too. They look and sound more like me than the Democrats do. But they’re just as committed to using force to control people as the Democrats are.

Republicans have been promising the same thing ever since at least the ’60s, but delivering very different results when given the power to make a difference. If you’re in favor of small government, get over the notion that the GOP is going to get you there.

It’s just a fantasy. It’s not going to happen.

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I’ve come to believe that some of us — including me — aren’t very good at knowing how to be happy. I don’t mean that in the sense that happy talk and positive thinking should be able to make us happy regardless of the circumstances. I mean that some of us had so much experience with being unhappy when we were young that we were trained to be unhappy — and that being happy is an unconsciously uncomfortable thing. When I look at times in my past when I should have been happy, it rarely lasted. I believe now that I found reasons to be unhappy — and caused real problems for myself — because being comfortable and happy felt so foreign to my programming. If I’m right, this means that some of us have to do more than just change our circumstances. It means we have to learn how to accept the happiness that we unconsciously fear we don’t deserve.

After I wrote last night about being happy, I thought of an old song that mirrored what I was feeling. After listening to the entire album, I found it remarkable how well the emotions of that music match my own heart at this point in my life. Bob Bennett’s “Matters of the Heart” came out while I was in college. Even after all these years, it holds up really well, and you can listen to the entire album on YouTube. The specific song which matched my feelings last night was “Madness Dancing,” but I still find every song on the album to be strong with the exception of the eighth and ninth. (The song about his parents, called “1951,” is especially poignant.) In fact, the opening and closing songs paint a picture of my heart at its best now in these lines: “A light shining in this heart of darkness, A new beginning and a miracle, Day by day the integration of the concrete and the spiritual.” It’s old music that you’ve probably never heard, but it means a lot to me.

Narcissists tend to turn their children into narcissists — and since a narcissist doesn’t realize he or she is a narcissist, there’s no bad intent. How does this happen? I watched a YouTube video over the weekend from an Australian psychologist who does a nice job of summarizing how it works. None of this is new to me, but I thought it was useful for those who haven’t spent years digging through books and articles about it. The same psychologist has an excellent summary of something which confuses a lot of people about narcissism. You’ve all seen examples of the loud, boisterous and overbearing narcissist, but what about the ones who are more introverted and vulnerable? This type is called a covert narcissist (or a vulnerable narcissist), and this is what my father was. In the first video, I strongly see myself in the ways my father treated me and in the second video, I see what my father was almost successful in making me become.

It’s National Dog Day in the U.S. and Lucy is here to remind you to go express love and appreciation to your favorite canine. Not only does your doggie friend give you love and affection, but he or she also protects your home from intruders — such as birds, squirrels, mail carriers and other undesirables who deserve to be barked at vigorously. Where would we be without that? And if you think this service is actually unnecessary, ask yourself how long it’s been since your home was the victim of a vicious squirrel attack. See? The doggie defense works. Keep barking at ’em, Lucy.

I’ve spent a tremendous amount of time over the last couple of years thinking and writing about love and connection. I’ve come to understand that this lack of love and connection is at the root of a lot of human tragedy and unhappiness, including addictions and depression. As I talked with others and researched the psychology behind the issues, I ran into the surprising fact that researchers are increasingly using psychedelic drugs to allow volunteers to have experiences which are giving them a sense of connection which they’ve lost — something that allows them to feel connected to love and God in a way they didn’t understand before — which is having dramatic effects in combating things such as depression and addictions. In this 15-minute TED talk — without an audience in the age of COVID-19 — Johns Hopkins researcher Mary Cosimano shares her experiences with guided psilocybin sessions being used to treat addiction, depression and end-of-life issues. One of her key observations is the importance of love and connection. She said that it seems love is literally part of the answer. In her role as director of guide/facilitator services for the program, Cosimano is responsible for training and supervising session facilitators.

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