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(This article originally appeared in The Wanderer and is reprinted with permission. To subscribe call 651-224-5733.)
What am I talking about? Well, I am perplexed by the seemingly shameless flip-flops that take place among politicians, journalists and political commentators on the great issues of the day. We could start with Thomas Jefferson. Remember? He argued for states’ rights, against the Federalists, who wanted a stronger central government. Yet, upon becoming President, Jefferson boldly assumed new federal powers to complete the Louisiana Purchase.
Or we could look at the feud between the New England states and the Southern states in the early 1800s. In the face of an embargo against their prosperous trade with England, the New England states argued the case for states’ rights and secession, while the Southern states stressed the need to maintain the union. In the years before the Civil War, when the South saw its cotton interests threatened by the industrial north? Flip-flop. On both sides. Daniel Webster of Massachusetts started talking about “Liberty and Union, now and forever, one and inseparable.”
The same kind of reversal of positions can be seen on the question of the power of the Supreme Court. In recent memory, it has been conservatives who have argued against judicial activism, and the liberals who have called for the Court to assert itself in the name of social justice and human rights. But this was not always the case. The Supreme Court once stood in the way of Progressive Era social legislation, arguing the case for private property rights. You will remember Oliver Wendell Holmes’ barb, that the Constitution had not institutionalized Herbert Spencer’s Social Statics. This was his way of criticizing what he believed was the Court’s slavish devotion to the Framer’s conception of private property rights.
Recall, too, the way liberals and conservatives have changed positions on the powers of the Presidency. Arthur Schlesinger, the favorite mandarin of the Kennedy Camelot and champion of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s assumption of new powers as President, began writing of the dangers of what he called the “Imperial Presidency” when Richard Nixon became President. And many conservatives, who once could be counted upon to warn us of the dangers of excessive concentrations of power in Washington, D.C., suddenly saw the merits of a “national greatness” agenda to be advanced by the President when they saw Ronald Reagan sitting in the Oval Office.
There are other examples. Conservatives, who argued determinedly for the need to preserve “neighborhood schools,” in the face of court decisions requiring busing to achieve racial balance, were often the same individuals who saw nothing wrong with busing white kids half-way across town in order to maintain segregated schools during the time of the Jim Crow laws. And the black activists who champion busing for racial balance, were the same people who opposed busing when it was used to maintain a separation of the races; they wanted the “neighborhood school” when it would be an integrated school.
Another example is the way the liberal opinion makers will heap praise on the clergy when they “take a stand” on a “matter of conscience” and march against American military campaigns, to “ban the bomb,” end segregation, expose corporate polluters or assist union organizers. The smart people find no problem with the separation of church and state in these cases. But when abortion is the issue at hand – flip-flop. Mind your own business, Father.
The beat goes on. Nowadays, liberal activists oppose local control of the schools when a local school district wants to include creationist theories in biology classes and prayer at the beginning of the school day, but they favor it when a minority neighborhood wants to conduct symposia devoted to the ideas Malcolm X. Liberals, who once manned the barricades in the cause of “academic freedom,” now require politically correct classroom instruction on issues favored by homosexual and feminists pressure groups.
Liberals who told us when deficits were being run up by Democratic Presidents that deficits do not matter and may even stimulate the economy in a favorable way, now speak in ominous tones whenever a deficit is run up by a Republican President. And, yes, the Republican talking heads found little wrong with deficits when Ronald Reagan was running them up.
Recall too who used to use the line about how we could not be the “world’s policeman.” It was the liberals who opposed our military intervention in Korea, Vietnam and Latin America. We were “ugly Americans” when we attempted to reshape societies under Marxist control, guilty of “ethnocentrism” for assuming that other societies should maintain our standards on human and political rights. Then Bill Clinton became President and decided to intervene in places like Haiti and Bosnia, and – flip-flop. The doves became hawks and called for the country to unite behind Clinton’s efforts to promote democratic causes around the planet.
Here’s another, very recent example, one that has me scratching my head. Did you ever think that liberal columnists such as Maureen Dowd of The New York Times and Washington Post columnist Mary McGrory would champion the idea that the Pentagon should hold sway over the ideas of civilian leaders? Well, I guess that when the military is on your side you see things differently. Dowd and McGrory oppose a military intervention against Saddam Hussein. Apparently some Pentagon officials are also urging caution. In one of her columns, Dowd warned of the possibility of a “civilian coup against military” authority by Bush administration “hawks.”
McGrory made specific what Dowd implied. She mocked Defense Department advisors who were never in the military, referring to Richard Perle, an adviser who favors the overthrow of Saddam, as “the generalissimo of the Cakewalk Corps, that ferocious band of civilians who have never worn their country’s uniform but wish to lead it into war.”
Now, you may agree with those military leaders who are asking the administration to think long and hard about what an invasion of Iraq would mean for the world. That is not the point just now. The question is how leftwing commentators can keep a straight face when calling for greater deference to those in uniform and belittling the views of those who have never been in combat. Can you imagine if a group of retired generals made such a suggestion when the issue was whether we should bomb Hanoi or give military aid to the Contras in Nicaragua? There would have been candlelit teach-ins on every campus in the country.
What I find most perplexing about all this is that, when these flip-flops take place, those who change their positions make no reference to how they have reversed themselves on a matter of what they once considered high principle, be it states’ rights, academic freedom, civilian control of the military or the separation of church and state. They act as if there is no inconsistency in their assuming a new stance, as if no one should be surprised or call for an explanation.
How to explain it? Is it an example of outright hypocrisy? Is it that simple? Whose ox is being gored? Or is it some kind of amnesia brought on by enthusiasm for partisan political interests? Or something else? I am not being coy: I don’t know. I don’t get it. Anyone have a suggestion? A debate on this phenomenon could be enlightening. Feel free to email me if anyone would like to get the ball rolling.
