The following is taken from a 1991 speech by Russell Kirk, author of The Conservative Mind, and one of the most important American conservative thinkers of all time.
Russell Kirk's conservative credentials simply cannot be denied.
As the prophet of American conservatism, Russell Kirk has taught, nurtured, and inspired a generation. From . . . Piety Hill, he reached deep into the roots of American values, writing and editing central works of political philosophy. His intellectual contribution has been a profound act of patriotism. I look forward to the future with anticipation that his work will continue to exert a profound influence in the defense of our values and our cherished civilization. - Ronald Reagan, 1981
[I]n my lamenting of the present state of Republican leadership in Washington, I am more moved by sorrow than by wrath.
[T]he Republican Party, which achieved its greatest vigor in this century during the presidential terms of Ronald Reagan, now seems in the sere and yellow leaf. Permit me to discuss with you ... the domestic errors of the Republican national administration, and then to examine ... that administration's blunders in foreign policy.
My task with respect to the fiscal measures of the Bush Administration is made the easier for me by Dr. Edwin Feulner's "State of Conservatism, 1991" message, entitled "Fashionably Out of Fashion Again." I concur heartily in his observation that "after more than eight years of steady growth, a combination of new federal taxes, out-of control spending increasing, and suffocating regulatory burdens have conspired to send the economy into spasms" ... The reforms of income tax and inheritance tax, worked in the Reagan years, are undone. As socialism dissolves in Eastern Europe, in the United States, an unofficial and unproclaimed form of socialism gains ground.
Why has this come to pass? Why does a national administration elected on a conservative platform offer such feeble resistance to measures advocated by doctrinaire liberals.
"Rockefeller Republicans." Why, one ought not to blame Mr. Bush unduly. When he stood for the Republican presidential nomination against Mr. Reagan in 1980, of necessity he turned for support to the liberal wing of the Republican Party. That wing had insufficient strength to secure him the nomination; but in the course of the contest he acquired advisors and helpers best classified as "Rockefeller Republicans." Those people, some of them eminent, are at his side still, and have his ear.
I am suggesting that all presidents, in some degree, are held captive by the inner circles of the Executive Force, their own Executive Force.
Now the Republican Party long boasted of its frugality. The Bush Administration, on the contrary, has stolen some of the Democrats' old clothes while the sons of Jefferson and Jackson were out bathing. But those purloined garments are ragged; and Republicans look odd and unconvincing when clad in them.
Oppressive Taxation. With respect to a sharp increase in the level of taxes, it seems as if the Bush Administration really does not understand the principle of diminishing returns, or know the history of the consequences of excessive taxation. When computing our federal income tax very recently, my wife and I discovered that more than half our gross income is taken in taxation -- federal income tax; Social Security taxes; state income taxes; village, township, and county taxes, school property tax; sales taxes. And we are not of the number of Franklin Roosevelt's "malefactors of great wealth." We are in the process of educating four young daughters, paying off mortgages, trying to save something for one's declining years -- I, being seventy-two years of age already -- and contributing to charitable causes. Yet we are better off than many taxpayers. What straw will break the camel's back?
A state that annually exacts in taxes half of a citizen's income is more oppressive, financially, than the despotisms of old. In the ancient monarchies of China, a tax load of more than ten percent would have been thought unjust. Excessive taxation is a major cause of the decline and fall of great states: so writes C. Northcote Parkinson, the author of Parkinson's Law, in his last book.
"Taxation, taken to the limit and beyond, has always been a sign of decadence and a prelude to disaster," as Parkinson puts it. "For government expenditure is the chief cause of inflation and is also the means of government interference in commercial, industrial, and social life. Where evil has been averted it has normally been from lack of funds. Where evil has been done it was usually because the perpetrators had money to spend."
The Bush Administration had one handsome prospect for reducing governmental expenditure, reducing the federal deficit, and possibly even making a gesture at reduction of the federal debt: that is, the prospective contraction of the armed forces, what with the dwindling of the Soviet menace. Instead, Mr. Bush has plunged the United States into a war which, so far, has cost about a billion dollars a day. (You will recall that a billion dollars is a thousand million dollars.) Already, more taxation to pay for this struggle in the Levant is being discussed in Washington. So I quote Parkinson once more: "Taxes become heavier in time of war and should diminish, by rights, when the war is over. That is not, however, what happens. Although sometimes lowered when the war ends, taxes seldom regain their pre-war level. That is because the level of expenditure rises to meet the war-time level of taxation."
Unless the Bush Administration abruptly reverses its fiscal and military course, I suggest, the Republican Party must lose its former good repute for frugality, and become the party of profligate expenditure, "butter and guns." And public opinion would not long abide that. Nor would America's world influence and America's remaining prosperity.
Source: Political Errors at the End of the Twentieth Century
These are wise word indeed, but will anybody listen?
We spend money more today than we did in 1991 ... fighting mere cavemen.
In my 41 years of life, the Leviathan has never stopped growing. It has grown under Republican and Democratic "leadership" alike. To solve this problem, any problem, one has to first look in the mirror. Therefore it is of vital importance, that conservatives see the Republican Party for what it is, and not for what it should be.
Like Russell Kirk, my criticisms of the both the Republican Party and often the conservative movement in general, arise because "I am more moved by sorrow than by wrath." I care for each individual deeply, thus proudly stand in the conservative tradition ...
I am anti-State! Always and everywhere.
