Politics Of Fear

During the last administration (of the dreaded warmonger Bush the Terrible), I don't think a week passed that I didn't hear some complaint about how the Republicans were manipulating the public with what they termed "the politics of fear." The problem, according to our left-wing friends, was that the administration was playing Oil-Pong with public money and national good-will, and scaring us into footing the bill. They were hopping mad--and many still are.

But it turns out they don't actually object to the politics of fear. Al Gore produced a film predicting the end of the world and Jim Hansen said we have only four years to reverse catastrophic climate change--or it'll be too late. And now President Obama threatens that the economy will collapse if the government doesn't do something huge and right away. The situation is so dire that we can't afford to debate a debt-financed government expenditure that will double the national deficit at a stroke.

It gives a whole new meaning to the old "carrot-and-stick" approach to diplomacy. Applied to domestic policy a la hopeandchange, Obama traipses all over the American landscape for two solid years telling everyone that the era of fear is over and that 'we are the ones we've been waiting for', that hope has arrived at long last and change is on the way. And like a collectively sensible ass, we lurched after the carrot. But fewer than 20 days after the inauguration we're rubbing our backsides as we get the stick--if we don't pass this gargantuan stimulus right now, we're going to lose our jobs.

So much for the end of the politics of fear.

That's not to say that fear isn't an entirely rational response, or that the politics of fear is always illegitimate. In fact, Saturday's post (Courage!) was an argument from the premise that our fear of economic recession is entirely justified. But it also recognized that government is not a net "producer" economically speaking. Some of its economic functions are indispensable (i.e. providing a forum for the remedying property disputes, as in tort law), but on the whole, government does not actually create wealth. Prosperity is the result of a net-productive population.

There is more to this argument, but it will keep for another day. But for our purposes here, let us recognize that this central fact about the productivity of government is lost in the current scramble. We have a big problem, so we need a big solution. And since we need a big solution, we need a big agent. Which leaves us with the Federal Government. Apparently.

I had a lengthy discussion with a friend of mine recently in which he admitted that the government bears some of the responsibility for the economic crisis but...you guessed it: government is the only thing that can inject enough liquidity to make the economy recover. No matter that it previously bungled economic policy by creating perverse incentives in the housing-loan market, it's a "big problem" requiring a "big solution" which only a "big government" can provide.

With blind faith like this being treated like prudence, I'd say nationalization of the whole economy is all-but-inevitable. I think it's safe to say I'm thoroughly terrified.

Here's to the Politics of Fear.