There was a moment in one of the Republican debates last month when candidate Ron Paul said: “9/11 came about because there was too much government.” That statement is flat-out delusional ― yet not one of the other candidates challenged the Texas congressman’s point.
I want to challenge Paul and others who think that way. I want to challenge those politicians who attack and seek to unravel the American system of government.
Some of the trademarks of this thinking are: a willingness or eagerness to see the federal government default on its debt obligations or shut down for lack of funding; a belief that all taxation is bad, that the less we have of any kind of taxation, the better off we will be; and a stance that suggests that the federal government is the source of everything that is wrong with our country.
We forget sometimes what other people and countries around the world admire about the United States. It’s not our military power ― there’ve been other empires with huge armies and navies. It’s not our commercial strength that commands respect ― there have been and will be other commercial powers as successful as the United States, and as a matter of fact, there is one emerging now ― China ― that is bidding to surpass us. If the economic geniuses in the tea party succeed in pushing the American economy into a serious depression, China may just be able to do it.
What sets us apart, and what others have admired since our founding, is our system of government: its individual liberties, its limited government with checks and balances, its flexibility and capacity for pragmatic innovation, and the rule of law. I’ve talked with people in Europe, Asia, Africa and most recently in the Balkans. Many of them would like ― many of them have risked their lives ― to live under a system of government like ours. They find it incredible that there’s now a major political group in the United States that wants to unravel our system of government.
Proposing or opposing a particular plan, policy, law or aspect of government is legitimate ― indeed, that kind of criticism and debate is central to our system and is one of the things that makes it so strong.
But trying to take down the system itself ― that is extremist and destructive. That’s what the communists, for example, tried to do.
The behavior of many who march in the name of the tea party suggests that they want to turn their back on what made us great. Some of them want to abolish the Federal Reserve, which has been admired around the world as the anchor of sensible monetary policy for a century ― keeping the banking sector honest and fighting inflation. Others are beginning to question legal as well as illegal immigration, when ours is a country built on the import of tough, resilient, innovative talent willing to cast their lot with a young democracy.
I don’t mind the rough and tumble of politics, and I don’t even mind a little loud rhetoric and healthy exaggeration. But if you want to undo Social Security, tell everyone they have to get health care totally on their own, abolish the Federal Reserve and think it’s OK for the United States to default on its debts, then I say you are trying to take apart the American government. The line the extreme right spouts is an incantation. Its adherents argue that cutting taxes will create jobs, but they don’t have any research to support that. The biggest advances in America have come when we’ve paid attention to the facts and acted pragmatically and innovatively. We’re in deep trouble now, and incantations and magic potions won’t cut it.
The presence of a significant movement in our midst that seeks to paralyze or take apart the American government is the single biggest threat today to what we need most: a common effort to adopt practical solutions to the huge economic problems that face us. Before we are done, each of us will have to decide which side we are on.
By Peter Goldmark
Peter Goldmark, a former publisher of the International Herald Tribune, headed the climate program at the Environmental Defense Fund. ― Ed.
