On government

Bush's acknowledgement and strident defense of warrantless wiretaps (isn't that on its face a violation of the 4th amendment?) has revealed more about our political dialogue--and it isn't good. As I think I have mentioned here, it strikes me as odd that conservatives can often use their own misdeeds to just reinforce their anti-government rant. And that is what I am hearing from conservative friends. This is "just politics" and "everyone does it." Isn't that amazing? Bush violates the constitution and his Jesus quoting supporters say "everyone does it."

Bush's own defense, btw, is incredibly weak. The FISA courts are too slow, he says. Terrorism demands quicker response. Huh? My reading says that FISA warrants can be granted after the fact. So, Al Gonzales can start listening on his headphones to the nefarious plots, realize they are on to something big, and go get a warrant. How is that too slow?

But back to our dialogue. The most insidious part of this is the conservative--or perhaps more accurately--Bush supporter defense. Those who buy his defense are just not thinking. The others are furthering what the worst in conservatives want to do--completely undermine government. They used Watergate as justification that government was bad. Now, oddly enough, they are using their own President to do it. And the response is not to make it better, it is to attack the other side.

Government is clearly not the answer to everything. Never has been. It has only been utopic in novels. In reality, government is gritty and human and flawed and worth watching. Conservatives who fear government are not completely wrong. After all, it has been governments who loaded people into cattle cars. But they forget that governments have also freed people--have also put together infrastructures to improve sanitation and reduce disease.

But if government is not the answer to everything--and clearly it isn't--then we need only look at the aftermath of Katrina to see what the absence of good government produces. Chaos and hunger and death. Government is about people cooperating and working together to build a society that they can all live in. It won't please everyone--it won't cure everything--and it won't be anyone's salvation. But it can make our water cleaner--our streets safer--and lessen our poverty and deprivation.

This conservative strand that hates government is not the mainstream conservative. In my opinion, very few of my friends and relatives who call themselves conservative really want to undermine government. They want better government, and they want lower taxes. But they believe in a social contract--or at least they used to. But many of those conservatives have been coopted by the culture wars and unwittingly are helping people who really, genuinely don't care about Christian values.

As a result, conservative Christians find themselves defending torture and the invasion of privacy. Part of me fears that they are so easily manipulated because their Bible has been severely edited. Gone are the passages critical of wealth and demanding justice. Elevated are the few passages demonizing gays. Gone are the passages demanding love for their enemy. These same Christians would be up in arms if those being tortured were clutching King James bibles. They would storm the gates of Washington if those being spied upon were anti-abortion activists.

I hope that isn't the case. I hope they are just distracted. I hope they don't believe that torturing their enemy is based on some bible verse.

But it is time to reclaim a healthy approach to government. One where, like our friends to the north, we don't love government, but don't hate it either. One where we see it as a human creation with an important task of producing a civil society where people of all faiths and creeds and sexual orientations and races can find a way to coexist. One where our young people would see public service as a good and noble thing.

Sigh.... /rant