A Large
Whiskey
January 27, 2000
The
bibulous Irish playwright Brendan Behan stated his philosophy
crisply: Theres no such thing as a large whiskey. He
lived by this credo until his liver gave out, before he was 40.
Behans words are pertinent when
we recall Bill Clintons proclamation of five years ago that
the era of big government is over. We should bear in mind
that this was the declaration of an addict who believes theres no
such thing as a big government.
By the time you read this, Clinton will have
proposed nearly a hundred new federal initiatives in his
State of the Union address. In the one year he has left as president, he is
eager to leave a legacy, and to his way of thinking a
legacy means a permanent enlargement of the reach of
government. But no matter how vast its expansion, it will never be, in
Clintons mind, big.
There used to be presidents who were
content to have had the honor of being president and to have conducted
themselves honorably in office. Millard Fillmore never dreamed of being a
great president; he simply tried not to squander the
taxpayers money or to allow Congress to exceed its allotted
powers. For men of his generation, honor itself was a sufficient
legacy.
By that standard, its too late for
Clinton. A single year of honorable conduct would hardly erase the record
of the previous seven, in which he set all-time records for disgraceful
behavior that are likely to last as long as the presidency itself.
When Clinton leaves the White House and
can no longer control access to information, we are sure to learn even
more than we already know about scandals that are now considered
minor, such as his illegal possession of FBI files. Future
historians may marvel that he was impeached only for perjury and
obstruction in a sexual scandal.
Clintons defenders argued that it
was disproportionate to impeach him for crimes that were only
about sex. Posterity may agree, but from an opposite perspective:
Why was this man impeached for the least of his offenses?
Meanwhile, Clinton hopes the history
books will link his name with something other than Monica Lewinsky. So
for the next twelve months the Republic will have to stave off his
desperate final attempts to build legislative monuments to himself.
Clinton still insists that he was
defending the Constitution when he lied about his sexual (or
rather, subsexual) relations with Miss Lewinsky. But he constantly
assaults the Constitution by asserting powers that were never, by the
remotest implication or most strenuous inference, delegated to the
federal government.
Clinton stands for that modern
monstrosity, autonomous government: the state that defines its own
powers as it pleases, with no particular rationale.
In a sense, Clinton is the price we pay
for decades of tolerating autonomous government. We no longer demand
either constitutional or philosophical justification for the expansion of
the state. We merely bicker over whether we like this or that particular
measure, on the maxim De gustibus non est disputandum. To be
guided by principle is to incur the odium of being
ideological.
Our two greatest
presidents, by general agreement, were Abraham Lincoln and Franklin
Roosevelt, who were, as it happens, the two presidents under whom
hundreds of thousands of American boys died in war. It is as if the most
honored surgeons were those who had lost the most patients on the
operating table.
Government, George Washington is said
to have remarked, is neither eloquence nor persuasion: it is force. And
there can be few occasions when a government is warranted in using force
including the power to tax against the people. That is why
the Constitution gave the federal government only a few specific powers,
strictly leaving all others to the states and the people.
The more extensive the government, the
greater the ratio of force to freedom in society. Today the coercive
powers that were supposed to be exercised sparingly are used
promiscuously.
Worse, the use of force is always
disguised as benevolence. Politicians like Clinton count on our failing to
understand that every promise of benefits to some citizens is an implicit
threat against the others who will be forced to pay for it.
Joseph Sobran
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