Conservative?

Here is the problem with modern American "conservatism" as evidenced by a "conservative" Senator in the form of an op-ed piece.

And the sad part is, this poor guy probably really thinks he is a conservative. And so do a lot of people who voted for him. But conservatism is by definition a philosophy of small and limited government, of adherence to the Constitution, of states rights and individual freedom.

But look at Sen. Brown's objection to the health care law in his own published words.

He isn't against it in principle because it transgresses the Constitution - including putting burdens on the states and the people that run afoul of the tenth amendment and the body of the Constitution itself. When he talks of "repeal" he really means rolling back a few features of the bill that he doesn't like, a sort of cosmetic tweaking that would make it acceptable to him.

To "repeal" only the "worst parts" of the bill is no repeal at all. It is to misuse the word, and to do so in a clever way to appear to be conservative. This is a crafty and careful use of deceptive language, and it is unlikely a word he came up with himself. Conservative Americans are being sold a bill of goods by Republican strategists and focus-group driven marketeers. Brown also states that he is "working on legislation that would allow states to opt out of this federal health care bill because states need flexibility, not a federal government takeover of health care."

And therein lies the problem.

To speak of "allowing" the states to do what they already have the right to do is to grant the premise of big government - even while giving the appearance to the contrary. It is to embrace the very things the rank and file conservatives claim to be against - and to do so under the radar screen. It is to agree with the Democrat Party philosophically and to lock arms with them constitutionally - all the while using rhetoric to appease the Tea Party movement. A true conservative would have used "allow" to speak of what the federal government may or may not not do. The federal government has no authority to "allow" the states to do anything. He may be proposing a slightly longer leash, but he still wants the states under federal control. That is the antithesis of conservatism.

Sen. Brown has revealed his true colors - which are well within mainstream Republican thought.

Brown even invokes the Republican-authored Massachusetts health care plan - which operates under the same basic schema as ObamaCare, and in fact is not all that different. President Nixon's health care proposal was also quite similar to the new law. And as Anthony Gregory and Paul Krugman have shown even the allegedly conservative Heritage Foundation's proposal was basically the same thing.

But does the federal government have any authority to mandate health care in any way, shape, or form? Is it even a good idea for state governments to be so involved in the operation of the market mechanism? Those are the kinds of questions real conservatives would ask. And the answers have to do with what the law is, not what would be popular or what we think we can get away with, nor even what would be a good idea. If federal mandates over health care are indeed a good idea, then the Constitution needs to be amended to allow for it - otherwise there is effectively no Constitution and no rein or limit on government of any sort.

That is what a conservative would say, anyway.

At best, Sen. Brown is a cautious moderate or a pragmatic left-leaning centrist. He has wandered away from the conservative fold while still cluelessly waving the banner, like a sports fan who is unwittingly sitting on the wrong side of the stadium wearing the wrong colors unable to understand why everyone around him is cheering at inappropriate moments.

He also writes:

"I am leading a charge to take the billions of dollars sitting unused in the stimulus slush funds of federal bureaucracies and give immediate tax relief — as much as $100 a month — to every American worker so that they can support their families now and inject money into the economy rather than let it stagnate in Washington."

Rather than use the language of "repeal" to speak of the bipartisan stimulus plans, rather than condemning these Republican and Democrat schemes as unconstitutional, Sen. Brown simply proposes spreading the wealth in a different way. This is so typical of federal bureaucrats who call themselves "conservative." He promises to get his constituents more of the federal take, while it doesn't seem to dawn on him that the federal should not "take" to begin with.

Economically, Sen. Brown reveals that he is a Keysian at heart.

The poor fellow seems to think the government can actually create jobs in the private sector. He may be right that Americans say they want "their government to fully focus its attention on the economy and getting our citizens back to work." But the Constitution has nothing to say about "focus[ing] its attention on the economy" and tinkering with the market in an attempt to make work. That is a play right out of FDR's book, which was already torn out of Karl Marx's. The only positive thing government can do for the economy is to get out of the way. A big step would be to abolish the Federal Reserve and to bring sanity back to our money and banking system. But to do so would be for the federal government to let go of its reins of control over the states and the people and trust the market and individual liberty.

But then again, that devotion to freedom is a conservative idea, one that Sen. Brown seems to have abandoned.

Maybe the current Republican rhetoric that ObamaCare will bankrupt the country and turn America into a third-world Socialist has-been state is true. But at least they can take comfort in knowing that the destruction of America is a bipartisan effort. There is no "I" in "team" after all.

We are indeed "all Socialists now."

But the real eye-opener is Sen. Brown's goal of "faith in government." This flies in the face of not only conservatism as a philosophy, but of the Constitution and the entire American experience itself. "Faith" is the language of religion. And the Constitution, including the Bill of Rights, was written because our founders knew better than to put faith in government. If that was their intent, they would not have written a Constitution, but simply trusted the federal government with a lot of power - which is how the British Empire worked. Instead, they seceded from that Empire and created a decentralized government of checks and balances with a written charter of specifically enumerated powers. There is no language in this op-ed article.

But the most glaring "smoking gun": a conservative could not have written this piece without once using the word "Constitution."