Liberty Maven

I hate to admit it but when I first became interested in politics, I was a liberal.  I was naively taken in by the feel-good positions and promises of politicians such as Paul Tsongas, Mario Cuomo, and Bill Clinton.  I felt that, of course, the government should help people, take care of people.  It was those evil Republicans who were mean-spirited and nasty all the time.

So I voted for Clinton.  Twice.  But near the middle of his second term I started to become jaded by politics in general, and I focused the majority of my daily attention elsewhere in life.

At some point later, I started listening to Rush Limbaugh “just to see how the other side thinks” and ended  up becoming pursuaded by many of his arguments against those blasted liberals, so I thought I might really be a Republican.

But that didn’t last long, because I found the Libertarian Party.  I realized I was most attracted to the ideals of the Founding Fathers, most notably Jefferson and Madison.  I began to realize that there isn’t much difference at all betweens the Democrats and Republicans, that both support statist, authoritarian ideals.

Since the election of 2000, I’ve voted for the Libertarian Party candidate.  (Well, this past election I changed my affiliation temporarily to Republican so I could vote for Ron Paul in the Primary, but then I changed back to Libertarian after the election).  Today, while I typically agree mostly with the Libertarian-Party candidates, I don’t find myself wed to the Libertarian Party itself; I tend to be more of an anarcho-capitalist, believing mostly in the free market and ahbor some of the powers that even the Constitution gives the Federal government.

Then, in the past year or so, with the economy tanking, I became interested in economics for the first time in my life.  I immediately realized that the Austrian school of economics are very in line with my way of thinking — and it seems so fitting, since Austrians tend to be small-government, libertarian thinkers. Therefore, it seemed natural to me that Democrats, liberals, and progressives, if they gave more than a modicum of thought to the subject of economics, would be attracted to Keynesian theory, which pushes deficit spending to artificially “stimulate” the economy.

But why were so many conservative politicians voting (and even campaigning) for stimulus packages?  The idea of a “conservative Keynesian” seems to be to be a paradox in terms.But a recent article by Sheldon Richman helped to straighten me out.  Apparently, even though these conservatives may share some of the same ecomic beliefs as their liberal brethren, they may not admit it or even realize it.

Indeed, you would be hard-pressed to find a conservative who admits to being an orthodox Keynesian, conservatives having joined the Church of the Supply Side many years ago. But though Keynesianism tends to be associated with big-government “liberalism”—in its original form, liberalism stood for small government in all realms—many who take Keynes’s approach to economics are nevertheless self-identified conservatives. In practice, “conservative Keynesian” is not a contradiction in terms.

What is a conservative Keynesian? While there may not be a formal definition—mainstream Keynesianism has many nuanced variations—it is fair to say that a conservative Keynesian 1.) looks at the world in terms of macroeconomic aggregates, that is, total output, total employment, and most especially aggregate demand; 2.) sees government fiscal policy as a way to improve those aggregates; and 3.) embraces or at least tolerates deficit spending and inflation in the short run. That much is pretty close to standard Keynesianism. What makes one a Keynesian of the Right is a preference for tax cuts over government spending, although the intention is the same: to put money into the hands of consumers as a way to increase aggregate demand during recessions.

And then these conservative Keynesians can be further categorized as either “military Keynesians” (those who believe in the myth that World War II spending lifted us out of the Great Depression) or “supply-side Keynesians” (who favor stimulus spending in the form of tax-cuts).  But…

Despite their differences, conservative Keynesians and supply-siders can resemble each other. In a recession a conservative Keynesian could favor a cut in marginal tax rates to stimulate demand and, thereby, investment, while a supply-sider would favor a cut in marginal tax rates to stimulate investment and thereby demand. The policies look the same from the outside.

All of this just serves to push me further away from the “conservative” movement.  But now I’m not longer perplexed when I see so many supposedly small-government politicians embrace the concept of stimulating ourselves out of enonomic trouble.

Do yourself a favor and check out Sheldon Richman’s article for yourself.