Re-Fighting the Cold War

Today's Object of Ridicule and Scorn is The Washington Post's E.J. Dionne Jr.

GULF OIL SPILL OFFERS A LESSON IN CAPITALISM VS. SOCIALISM by E.J. Dionne Jr. 

So who is in charge of stopping the oil spill, BP or the federal government? 

It’s not really a question. British Petroleum is the only one even trying. At this writing, the Top Kill method to plug the leak—an idea generated and executed solely by BP—appears to have worked.

The fact that the answer to this question seems as murky as the water around the exploded oil platform in the Gulf of Mexico 

There’s absolutely no murkiness in the answer. It’s clear as day. But admitting clarity would deny Dionne the chance to use that clunky simile.

suggests that this is an excellent moment to recognize that our arguments pitting capitalism against socialism 

Less than twenty years after defeating the Soviet Union in the Cold War, Dionne is actually admitting that capitalism and socialism are battling it out for the future of America. This is akin to the United States having “arguments pitting capitalism against fascism” in 1964 or "arguments pitting monarchy against a republic" in 1802. Socialism is a defeated and discredited ideology. If there are large-scale arguments in the United States between capitalism and socialism, who exactly is arguing the virtues of socialism? Conservatives have been blasted from the left for suggesting that Barack Obama and other members of the Obama Administration were socialists. Is this vindication?

and the government against the private sector muddle far more than they clarify. 

Limited government isn’t really complicated. If you want muddled, try reading the tax code.

Many tragic ironies 

I’ve learned how to read columns like this. “Many” means one.

are bubbling to the surface along with the oil. Consider the situation of Gov. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana, a Republican conservative who devoutly opposes the exertions of big government. 

Yes…what situation(s) are ironic?

"The strength of America is not found in our government," Jindal declared in his response to President Obama's February 2009 address to Congress. "It is found in the compassionate hearts and the enterprising spirit of our citizens." 

Yes…what situation(s) are ironic?

But with his state facing an environmental disaster of unknown proportions, Jindal is looking for a little strength from Washington. 

He’s actually looking for Washing to get out of the way of Baton Rouge.

His beef is that the federal government isn't doing enough to help. "It is clear we don't have the resources we need to protect our coast," he said this week, expressing his frustrations with "the disjointed effort to date that has too often meant too little, too late." 

Sure. But his main “beef” is that as a state governor, he is required by law to wait for federal authorization from cumbersome bureaucracies like the Environmental Protection Agency to enact his own ideas. His idea to build barrier islands to protect his state from the oil washing ashore still hasn’t received federal approval from the Army Corps of Engineers, even as marshlands in Louisiana are sullied.

You can't blame Jindal for being mad. But will he ever acknowledge that "compassionate hearts" were not sufficient for coping with this catastrophe? Did he ever ask BP how prepared it was for something like this? Or was he just counting on the company's "enterprising spirit"? 

Well Governor Jindal has a very strong argument that “the enterprising spirit” of BP was sufficient to plug the hole. It certainly wasn’t the bureaucratic spirit of Washington. I don’t think Dionne could possibly twist Jindal’s words any more. He’s not an anarchist, nor is any conservative. The “limited government” advocated by conservatives isn’t complicated in the least. When we have problems overseas, our compassionate hearts and enterprising spirit certainly help, but that doesn’t mean we don’t bring along our M-16s. When someone commits a crime, conservatives don’t advocate a “compassionate heart;” we punishment the guilty with incarceration and often the death penalty. When someone’s pecuniary interests are wrongfully damaged, we advocate responsible tort laws designed to use the mechanisms of government to make the victim whole.

For its part, the Obama administration has not sent a consistent message. 

That’s an understatement.

On Sunday, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar proclaimed outside of BP's headquarters in Houston: "If we find they're not doing what they're supposed to be doing, we'll push them out of the way appropriately." 

Question: How do you push someone out of the way when you’ve got your boot on their throat?

Not according to Adm. Thad Allen, the national incident commander. Speaking the next day at the White House, Allen observed: "To push BP out of the way, it would raise a question: Replace them with what?" 

Exactly. While Allen may not be a political philosopher, he spoke with the sophistication of one during an interview with CNN. 

Swoon. What a dreamboat!

"What makes this an unprecedented anomalous event," he said, "is access to the discharge site is controlled by the technology that was used for the drilling, which is owned by the private sector." 

That sounds like the government would have a leg-up if they inserted themselves into the effort to plug the hole because of BP’s capabilities. How is this a problem or an obstacle?

So there you have it: "Do something!" citizens shout to a government charged with protecting the environment in and around a Gulf of Mexico that is nobody's private property. 

Here is the succinct version of the conservative argument here in two parts:

a) No matter how good the regulation is, (and in this instance, it was downright terrible) a destructive event like this can and eventually will happen. There is no such thing as 100% effective preventative regulation. More onerous regulations will continue to force Americans to pay artificially high prices for energy and stunt the economy.

b) When an event like this happens, it demands a nimble and flexible response that the federal government is simply incapable of. This is why we have state governments (like Louisiana, whose efforts you so foolishly ridiculed). This is why we have local governments, community groups, religious groups, and charities—to clean up the damage when it does come to shore. However, the past fifty years have seen a massive shift in power from the states to the federal government. Liberals have been crippling local and state governments with a Washington power-grab for years. The Tenth Amendment is mocked in liberal communities on the left. Claiming that they don’t have the capability anymore to handle these problems merely underscores the problem with massive federal intervention.

The objection isn’t that the federal government was impotent to plug the hole. The objection is that even while we all know the federal government is impotent to plug the hole, it still thrusts itself into the decision-making process, which just ends up screwing things up.

UPDATE: Upon editing, I feel like I need to apologize for all the thinly veiled sexual language in the last two sentences. 

Yet the government, it seems, can't do much of anything because the means of stopping the flow of oil are entirely in the hands of a private company. BP was trusted to know what it was doing with complicated equipment that, it would appear, it either didn't understand very well or was willing to use recklessly. 

This is like saying that when a truck slides into a ditch, the truck driver was working with “complicated equipment that [he] didn’t understand very well or was willing to use recklessly.” It was an industrial accident. A battery died. That’s what happens with batteries. The risk of failure always existed in low probabilities at these deep-water oil wells, as it is with cross-country trucks, forklifts, bridges, chemical spills, and mechanized robots going on murderous frenzies (admittedly a very small risk until we invent sentient robots). The occurrance of a failure—that is to say, the realization of a risk—doesn’t change the level of risk going forward.

Belatedly, the Obama administration has realized that citizens can never accept the idea that their government is powerless. 

Absolutely we can accept that our federal government is powerless. What we can’t accept is that three layers (federal, state, and local) of government are powerless. We can’t accept that power has been stripped from the states, congealed in Washington, and can never be wielded. We refuse to continue feeding a Leviathan that has grown too big to leave its den and protect us.

It is moving to show that it's in charge, even when it is not. 

Nothing says competence like lying.

The president plans to visit the gulf again, on Friday, and on Wednesday, the White House called in a group of journalists for a briefing with Allen, who is earning a reputation for bluff candor. 

He’s soooooo dreamy. Dionne is going to spend the rest of the week doodling little hearts around “Dionne & Allen 4 eva!!!”

He spoke as the order was given 

The order wasn’t given. Permission was granted. Your federal government hard at work.

to try to plug the well through a process colorfully called "top kill." 

Allen was direct in saying that the law clearly places the responsibility for ending this spill with BP. 

If he had no authority or responsibility, how did he “order” BP to execute the “top kill?”

He added 

with the sophistication of a political philosopher. More swooning.

that it was "a legitimate line of inquiry" as to whether this is where the power should be lodged. "Are these public goods or private goods?" 

Oh fuck me…NOW I get why Dionne was swooning. He wants to nationalize the oil companies.

he asked. "Who should produce them? This is an absolutely legitimate question." It's too bad this legitimate question wasn't asked a long time ago. 

The question was asked a long time ago you fucking idiot. The question has never stopped being asked by colossal buffoons like you. Should the government nationalize the oil companies? The answer always and unflinchingly came back with the booming authority of a nation that still loves its rugged individualism: “HELL NO!”

Allen rightly urged 

With the sophistication of a political philosopher.

that Congress's decision to place so much authority 

freedom is not to be confused with authority.

with private companies 

I’m so glad that the powergrab will not be limited to BP and the energy industry. We're now having a moral and philosophical argument about whether or not private companies should be granted the right to exist.

be reviewed by the commission investigating the spill. And there will surely be an inquest 

Read: inquisition

into how such a potentially dangerous technology 

What qualifies as “dangerous technology?” An Oil Tanker? A gasoline truck? A car?

got by with so little regulatory oversight. 

So, incompetent oversight suggests we need more incompetent oversight?

Before we drill offshore again, we should pause, baby, pause. 

(I'm going to ignore the Palin jab, but don't think I missed it.) There was never a good reason for us to be drilling offshore in the first place. We have massive oil reserves on land and on the continental shelf. The only reason we were drilling so far out in the Gulf at such impressive depths is because environmentalists are idiots.

"Deregulation" is wonderful until we discover what happens when regulations aren't issued or enforced. 

And “regulations” are wonderful until we discover a) the unintended consequences of dismantling the cost structure of an entire industry, b) the incompetence of the people writing the regulations, c) the incompetence of the people enforcing the poorly written regulations, d) the impotence of regulators to make victims whole.

Everyone is a capitalist 

You aren’t.

until a private company blunders. Then everyone starts talking like a socialist, presuming that the government can put things right because they see it as being just as big and powerful as its Tea Party critics claim it is. 

Conservatives didn’t want TARP after the banks fiscal solvency fell into question, but the lame duck Bush Administration with the support of the incoming Obama Administration insisted.

Conservatives didn’t want the stimulus package when private businesses stopped hiring new employees, but the Obama Administration insisted.

Conservatives didn’t want the nationalization of General Motors when the company couldn’t pay back its debt obligations, but the Obama Administration insisted.

Conservatives didn’t want the takeover of the healthcare industry when health insurers in California raised premiums, but the Obama Administration insisted. 

No, the explosion of federal authority has not been overstated by the Tea Party, and NO, EVERYONE DOES NOT START TALKING LIKE A SOCIALIST WHEN COMPANIES BLUNDER!

But the truth is that we have disempowered government 

…What? That's great news! When?

and handed vast responsibilities 

So, private entities (citizens and companies) derive their rights from the government, and not the other way around?

over to a private sector that will never see protecting the public interest as its primary task. 

This is why all conservatives agree that government is necessary and has a range of acceptable functions. Conservatism is not to be conflated with anarchy.

The sludge in the gulf is, finally, the product of our own contradictions. 

No, the sludge is the product of a tragic industrial accident that claimed the lives of ten workers on the rig. The oil lapping at the Louisiana shores is the product of power congealed in Washington that subordinates state and local governments to the EPA and the Army Corps of Engineers in the middle of a crisis. Far from making the point that limited government doesn’t work, the oil spill reinforces the idea that no centralized government in history has ever been as efficient or effective as a diffuse governmental structure.

My one wish of this ordeal is that Bobby Jindal would have told the Barack Obama and the Army Corps of Engineers to go to hell. They have no moral authority, even if they do have the legal authority, to intervene with Jindal’s efforts to protect the citizens he represents.