Via the transcript of MSNBC's Meet the Press on May 22, 2005, statements by Howard Dean:
The problem is it is galling to Democrats, 48 percent of us who did not support the president, it is galling to be lectured to about moral values by folks who have their own problems. Hypocrisy is a value that I think has been embraced by the Republican Party. We get lectured by people all day long about moral values by people who have their own moral shortcomings. I don't think we ought to give a whole lot of lectures to people--I think the Bible says something to the effect that be careful when you talk about the shortcomings of somebody else when you haven't removed the moat from your own eye. And I don't think we ought to be lectured to by Republicans who have got all these problems themselves.
[...]
I will use whatever position I have in order to root out hypocrisy.
Let's compare that Dr. Dean compared to the same Dr. Dean elsewhere:
Are we going to be ethical in government? Are we going to stand up for fiscal responsibility? Are we going to stand up for freedom and personal responsibility?
The president keeps talking about freedom for Iraqis. What about the freedom for Americans to decide their most personal dilemmas in that family?
[...]
The issue is whether a woman has a right to make up her own mind about her health care, or a family has a right to make up their own mind about how their loved ones leave this world. I think the Republicans are intrusive and they invade people's personal privacy, and they don't have a right to do that.
[...]
But when you talk about framing this debate the way it ought to be framed, which is "Do you want Tom DeLay and the boys to make up your mind about this, or does a woman have a right to make up her own mind about what kind of health care she gets," then that pro-life woman says "Well, now, you know, I've had people try to make up my mind for me and I don't think that's right." This is an issue about who gets to make up their minds: the politicians or the individual. Democrats are for the individual. We believe in individual rights. We believe in personal freedom and personal responsibility.
[...]
Shouldn't [third-term abortions] be a realm where doctors and women make up their minds instead of politicians? What do politicians know about practicing medicine? Not very many of us have an MD.
[...]
As it turns out the Schiavo case will probably be the turning point about our ability to make our case to Americans about the incredible invasiveness of Republicans when it comes to making personal private decisions.
In places like Arizona, for example, where there's a huge ethic almost--libertarianism about individualism, this is the action of the Republicans that will undo them and any claim that they prefer to allow individuals to make up their own mind. This is the case that ultimately I think is going to galvanize Democrats into being the party of individual freedom and individual and personal responsibility.
All emphasis is mine.
These are strong words from the Democrat Party chairman. It is clear he is angling to portray the Republican Party in power as authoritarian, invasive thugs who will make decisions for you by means of the state over your objections.
But what else did Dr. Dean say in the interview?
We have an agenda that calls for pension reform, it calls for leaving Social Security alone, except for the tweaks that may be needed to fix it.
[...]
I don't think we ought to attack the Social Security system. It is the last line of defense that Americans have when they lose their pensions.
Social Security is funded through a tax imposed on individual American income. If you or your employer refuse to comply with the rules surrounding the income reporting and submission system, you or your employer face fines and jail time. It is a
coerced wealth transfer program from the younger, working class, to the older, retired class.
Social Security is an attempt to circumvent personal responsibility. It is a government program explicitly designed to relieve the retired and elderly of their responsibility to provide for themselves near the end of their lives. It forces younger Americans, under threat of legal sanction, to collectively bear some of the older generations' cost of living.
Any plan that does not fully abolish Social Security and the payroll tax in their entirety and does not replace them with something else is fundamentally a plan that advocates forced savings, savings taken from you at the threat of violence, to be given to other people to whom you almost certainly are in no debt. The details of the various plans to "fix" Social Security (even plans put forth by some "libertarians") are simply irrelevant if they are attempts to overhaul the system in order to keep it in place and ensure its existence.
So, Dr. Dean is a flat-out hypocrite on Social Security, individual freedom, and personal responsibility. As a perfect example of the self-refuting hackery on display:
...we will be happy to sit down with the president, but the president has got to stop doing what he always does, which is approaching issues from an ideological point of view. There's only one reason to put private accounts in Social Security.
The president has admitted they do nothing to help the problem in 2042.
No, you idiot, there is only one reason to really want
private accounts and that's
because you think individuals should be free and responsible for their financial security,
at all times.
You can't just say, "I want to privatize Social Security because I want to privatize Social Security." You have to really show me why you want to do what you want to do.
I WANT THE GOVERNMENT TO LEAVE ME THE FUCK ALONE OR DISSAPPEAR, WHICHEVER HAPPENS FIRST, BUT PREFERABLY THE LATTER.
That extends to taking a portion of what I've earned and giving it to someone else. This is a simple, elegant idea and it has been totally abandoned by everyone in government. (hint: it's not about the people working the system, it is the system)
Later, Dr. Dean moves on to other topics.
TIM RUSSERT: Congresswoman Pelosi said "We don't need a plan." Is this the Democrats doing, in effect, what the Republicans did with Hillary Clinton? She put forward her health-care plan as first lady. The Republicans didn't offer an alternative but just went at it, criticizing it, and you learned from that politically and that's exactly what you're doing to the Republicans.
DR. DEAN: The problem is that the president won't get off the dime. You know, there was an opportunity for the Clinton folks to compromise with Bob Dole, and we missed that opportunity. I was involved in the health care. I'll take some piece--I'll was--I'll take some responsibility for that. We missed that opportunity. We could have had something.
I was too uninterested (and young) to understand "Hillarycare" then and I was frustrated after a some searching to discover just what the hell it proposed. Apparently, it was complex. What I did find, however, told me that White House wanted universal or near-universal (President Clinton mentioned "95%") health care coverage for Americans and one of the Democrats' fundamental goals was for something, anything, that would expand health care coverage to more Americans. I wrote two posts (
Sorry, but No; A Libertarian Against Howard Dean and
Followup to "A Libertarian Against Howard Dean") discussing Dr. Dean's presidential plans for, among other things, health care and they too included rhetoric about " universal health care." I have little doubt that any compromise bill that the present Dr. Dean and his Democratic colleagues see that as a primary goal, along with premium controls, creation or expansion of "free" programs for the economically weak, some federally-defined "core benefits package" that once-private insurers would be required to provide, and so on.
Just like with Social Security, to arrive at anything other than the complete removal of the state from health care decisions, funding, and production is to say you want to coerce some individuals to pay for the consumption of others. It is to say you want to prohibit some of the options individual health care employees and their customers have by threat of fines and arrest. Government involvement in health care is an end-run around an individual's responsibility to him- or herself; just look at the barrage of near-identical justifications. Because some can't afford to take part in the current system (a system utterly removed from anything that would characterize an honest free market), we must therefore be coerced into alleviating them of their failure to secure medical options?
Dr. Dean is hypocritical in asserting he and Democrats are for individual freedom and responsibility and for universal or government-expanded health care coverage.
Moving on:
But I hate what the Republicans are doing to this country. I really do. I hate deficits, as you know. When I was governor, I really was very tough on fiscal responsibility. Deficits in the long run aren't good for the country, and they do lower our standard of living. Every American family knows that you have to pay your bills.
I am amazed at the conceptual desert that nearly every political commentator has occupied throughout the contemporary discussion of the government's finances. You'll find a great many people bitching about deficits and almost everyone else saying they have some importance, but don't really matter in the long run. Since the rarity of a large American unit of government posting a "surplus" is so great, the dominating issue is the deficit and whether it should be eradicated or what its proper size should be.
Yet, here I am, thinking in a scream, What's the point of arguing over whether wealth taken through the direct threat of police violence and asset seizure ends up meeting the expenses of government or not? Why is this even being debated? That wealth belongs to the government just as much as the car stereo thief owns the audio equipment he steals from a vehicle; in other words, not at all. A government deficit is simply the binge-spending over and above what that pack of criminals already owe their victims from robbery in the first place, but charged to future generations of victims.
Dr. Dean's quite correct when he says bills should be paid. He's got it all wrong by implying the Government of the United States can be accurately compared to an American family. The former frightens people into giving it money. The latter must earn it through the productive employment of its individual members. The former feeds off the ability of the latter.
Taxation is theft and I'm not hesitant to say that anyone who endorses it cannot logically champion individual freedom and individual responsibility all at once. They are absolutely incompatible.
Next up:
MR. RUSSERT: But John Kerry, Hillary Clinton, John Edwards, Joe Lieberman all said Saddam was a threat to the United States. That was the belief.
DR. DEAN: Because they were told that by the president of the United States, and there is a wide berth given to the president. And I think it's justifiable. In a time of threat to the United States, there is a wide berth given to the president. You trust the president of the United States to give you the information no matter what party they're in.
I shouldn't have to explain why the above is incompatible with freedom and responsibility on an individual human scale. This deference clears the path and paves the way for government abuses. This preposterous quasi-sainthood bestowed upon the Executive Branch never fails to confuse me, not the least because it was the threat of that very sort of power that helped lead to the creation of this country in the first place!
I'm not going to be lectured as a Democrat--we've got some pretty strong moral values in my party, and maybe we ought to do a better job standing up and fighting for them. Our moral values, in contradiction to the Republicans', is we don't think kids ought to go to bed hungry at night. Our moral values say that people who work hard all their lives ought to be able to retire with dignity. Our moral values say that we ought to have a strong, free public education system so that we can level the playing field. Our moral values say that what's going on in Indian country in this country right now in terms of health care and education is a disgrace, and for the president of the United States to cut back on health-care services all over America is wrong.
Clear as day, here is what's on his mind. However, when translated by someone who actually wants a dramatic expansion of individual liberty and personal responsibility, it reads differently:
Our moral values, in concert with the Republicans', is we think that it is OK to take from others, even if against their will, to feed children if go hungry. Our moral values say that people who work hard all their lives ought to be able to retire with dignity, even if that means we have to take from others against their will to fund that retirement. Our moral values say that we ought to take from others - who cares if they object? - to fund government education that produces a sea of mediocre students and immerses them in a 8am-4pm prison for 12 years, in effect socializing and desensitizing them to some of the worse of human behavior to create lowest-common-denominator output for businesses to use as labor. Our moral values say that the mass theft and murder of Indian land and people that added to the United States' territorial expansion is to be taken for granted so we can provide the last remaining herded-together communities with health care and education...at the expense of other Americans. The president of the United States is wrong to cut back on health care handouts paid for by extortion.
At least, that's my unpleasant take on his "values." My comments are open, of course, for your thoughts.
When I campaigned for this job, I talked to lots of Democrats. And there are significant numbers of pro-life Democrats in the South. And one lady said to me, you know, "I'm pro-life. I don't like abortion. I would never have one. I would hope my daughter would never have one. But, you know, if the lady next door got herself in a fix, I'm not sure I should be the one to tell her what to do."
Whoever that woman is and despite whatever political views she holds in addition to this, at least she's honest enough to admit to something hardly anyone
gets anymore: would you, the advocate of some government program or policy, be willing to personally and physically prevent someone from doing something illegal in order to maintain that program or policy?
Would you be willing to step into a bar and remove the smokers by hand? How about being there on the coastline, forcibly preventing people from trading with Cubans? What about Canadian loggers who refused to pay a tariff? Would you step up and actually force a businessman to charge the same price for everyone who wants to use his company's services? Does the strength of your convictions extend to getting out there and taking away a individual's sex toys and imprisoning the seller? Have you ever thought about getting between me and a chemical compound that might reduce or eliminate the torturous itch from chigger bites? If you think it's alright for the state to do it, why don't you come over here and slap the joint out of my mouth? Would you be willing to torture a suspect yourself in order to save lives (that one is for YOU, War on Terror supporters)?
MR. RUSSERT: Well, the--but several heads of the American Medical Association endorsed banning third-term abortions because they said life of the mother is one thing but the health is a much different issue. It can be defined in so many different ways, it was a major loophole.
DR. DEAN: You know what I'd prefer to see, frankly? I'd prefer to see medical practice boards around the country, state by state--because people do believe different things about this in different states. I'd prefer to see medical practice boards around the country set ethical guidelines for abortion. I don't have a problem with that.
How does this
not directly contradict what he said previously about this being "a realm where doctors and women make up their minds instead of politicians"??? How does he think these medical boards be created and populated? A governor's preference? Legislative nomination? Local elections? Six month rotating community slots? Random fucking ballot? Tim Russert should have nailed his ass to the wall for this shit.
He did ask him why Senate Democrats didn't vote against the Terri Schiavo legislation, something on which the DNC chairman weakly punted and he managed to successfully change the topic to Social Security and "message discipline." The vast intellectual blank-out present in Dr. Dean's attempt to associate the Democrat's platform with libertarian individualism is laughable and just as damned stupid as John Kerry calling the Bush Administration's agenda "extreme libertarianism".
MR. RUSSERT: In your home state of Vermont, there's a vacancy for the United States Senate about to occur. Bernie Sanders, the congressman from Vermont, wants to run for that seat. He is a self- described avowed socialist.
DR. DEAN: Well, that's what he says. He's really a populist.
MR. RUSSERT: But is there room in the Democratic Party for a socialist?
DR. DEAN: Well, first of all, he's not a socialist, really.
MR. RUSSERT: He...
DR. DEAN: He hasn't said that for a while.
MR. RUSSERT: Oh, he has a--he wrote in his book: "Outside or in the House, I am a Democratic socialist."
DR. DEAN: Well, a Democratic socialist--all right, we're talking about words here. And Bernie can call himself anything he wants. He is basically a liberal Democrat, and he is a Democrat that--he runs as an Independent because he doesn't like the structure and the money that gets involved. And he actually has, I think, some good points about campaign finance reform. The bottom line is that Bernie Sanders votes with the Democrats 98 percent of the time. And that is a candidate that we think...
MR. RUSSERT: So you'd support him?
DR. DEAN: We may very well end up supporting him.
Clearly nonsense of the highest order. A socialist -
by definition!!! - doesn't give an upended shit about individual rights or human liberty. Regardless of their protestations of "the little guy," socialists think in terms of group, class, society, and collective. Individuals are a means to accomplishing an end, marginally Democrat or not.
We're fighting for the future of America, and a Bernie Sanders in the United States Senate is going to be a whole lot better than somebody who will vote to confirm right-wing judges, somebody who will vote to undo minority rights, somebody who will vote to kill Social Security.
There is no point in clamoring for "minority rights" and "individual rights" at the same time, because at some point, one will have to trump the other. The former is a collective rights scheme and no different than simply asserting "majority rights" as the GOP is doing in regards to the judges it wants placed into power. The latter is what actually matters.
To see where these clash, just look at nearly the entire bulk of left-liberaldom's celebrated domestic social agenda for the last eighty years. In order for those "rights" to be enforced, the individual rights of a businessman, a farmer, a doctor, an educator are violated. For example, disabled Americans have a special legal status in the country and get all sorts of mandated breaks that everyone else ends up paying for.
That the DNC can find common cause with Sanders is enough to negate any protestations the party is the part of individual freedom.
MR. RUSSERT: Will Howard Dean run for president?
DR. DEAN: I don't have any idea, but I certainly won't do it in 2008. I gave my word not to and I intend to keep that word.
MR. RUSSERT: But down the road?
DR. DEAN: I don't have any idea. You know, if I could push a button, I would make sure there was a Democratic president in 2008, which would preclude my running--from ever even thinking about it.
I shouldn't have to detail why the act of putting someone in charge of a vast, aggressive, rule-compliance apparatus is at odds with individual liberty.
I had the same thing to say to Markos Zúniga of DailyKos when he said the Democratic Party is the party of personal liberty. I was slightly more polite then.
