The political culture in twenty-first century America is something to behold. Here words, labels, definitions, and classifications have little or no meaning. Turn on your favorite cable news network and you are likely to see Democratic Party activist “X” debating some Republican strategist “Y”. Sure, X and Y spout their respective party lines and generally put on a good show, heck they might even yell at each other, but in the end that is all it really is – a show, whose observers rarely stop and actually think about the issues being talked about and most importantly the actual arguments advanced by our favorite talking heads. If genuine conservatives ever get around to this they will notice something very important: the “right-wing” Republican rarely disagrees with the “left-wing” Democrat on the desirability of the ends of a given public policy.

The whole debate about “reforming” Social Security provides an instructive example. On this issue in particular, both establishment Right and Left agree: we must “save” Social Security for future generations. Instead of advocating the abolition of this socialist, coercive, statist system, our “right-wing” champion merely lauds the prospect of the President “allowing” American citizens to put their Social Security funds in government-managed “private accounts.” But why would any conservative (or insert your favorite Cato Institute “libertarian” here) want to save this socialist gift of Franklin Delano Roosevelt? Forgive my ungratefulness, but since when do I need permission from the federal government to plan for my own retirement? Where does Article I Section 8 of the Constitution authorize Congress to establish a system of forced savings for the American people?

The major point here is that both “right” and left are in agreement on big, unconstitutional government – the fruit of my labor is not really mine per se, my economic fate is up to the whims of politicians and government bureaucrats. It should be clear that this reasoning is utterly unconservative, for in the historic conservative view, the people limit the size and scope of the state, wealth belongs to the individual, and government doesn’t “allow” citizens to keep their earnings because they do not belong to the state in the first place.

So in effect, what we have in modern America are two sides (and two parties) to the same big government coin dressed up with “conservative” and “liberal” monikers. Both agree on the ends but only disagree on the stylistic means. When either win, liberty and the Old Republic fade away just a bit more - think about that the next time you watch cable TV or listen to talk radio.

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