The Enemies List

by P. J. O'Rourke

  The Constitution promulgates our system of courts and laws, the purposes of which are to keep individuals who are too smart, too big and strong, too rich, or too pretty from running the rest of us ragged. It is an imperfect system, as the O. J. Simpson trial has proved exquisitely. But it beats deciding legal cases by means of armed combat—unless you’re Nicole Brown Simpson or Ron Goldman.

  The Bill of Rights protects freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and freedom of assembly, of course. You could hardly call yourself free without those freedoms. But even more important, the Bill of Rights protects your money, car, house, and stereo. The Fifth Amendment says, “... nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.” Some alleged defenders of liberty look down their noses at property rights, believing them to be the sordid, mean, and grubby side to freedom. But think how little time you spend worshiping idols your neighbors abhor or gathering in mutinous crowds. And when was the last time you said anything more controversial than “Evan Dando sucks.” Now think how much time you spend using your Visa card.

  In fact, most day-to-day freedoms are material freedoms. Your career, your home, your workout at the gym, shopping, traveling, entertainment, recreation, any buying and selling, any hiring and firing, the baseball team you root for, and the prerogative of its players to stay out on strike until beach volleyball becomes the national pastime are all matters of property rights. In the old Soviet Union there wasn’t any private property. Everything was public—like a public restroom, which is how the old Soviet Union looked and smelled. Dead-end jobs and zoo-cage lives, shoddy goods and mucky food and constant shortages of even those, complete lack of initiative and innovation in all things—that was what made the Soviet Union so depressing, not the fact that it was illegal to stand on a street corner shouting, “Marx bites his farts!”

  And one other thing the Bill of Rights does is try to protect our freedom not only from bad people and bad laws but from the vast nets and gooey webs of rules and regulations that even the best governments produce. The Constitution attempts to leave as much of life as possible to common sense or at least to local option. Says the Ninth Amendment: “The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.” And, continues the Tenth, “the powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” And it is these suit-yourself, you’re-a-big-boy-now, it’s-a-free-country powers that conservatism seeks to conserve.

  BUT WHAT ABOUT THE OLD, THE POOR, THE DISABLED, THE DISADVANTAGED, THE HELPLESS, THE HOPELESS, THE ADDLED, AND THE DAFT?

  Conservatism is sometimes confused with social Darwinism or other such me-first dogmas. Sometimes the confusion is deliberate. When those who are against conservative policies don’t have sufficient opposition arguments, they call the love of freedom selfish. Of course it is—in the sense that breathing’s selfish. But because you want to breathe doesn’t mean that you want to suck the breath out of every person you encounter. Frankly, it’s a disgusting idea and not the kind of thing the average conservative would care to be seen doing on the street.

  Conservatives do not believe in the triumph of the large and powerful over the weak and useless. (Although most conservatives would make an exception to see a fistfight between Norman Schwarzkopf and George Stephanopoulos.) If all people are free, George Stephanopoulos must be allowed to run loose, too, however annoying this may be.

  But some people cannot enjoy the benefits of freedom without assistance from their fellows. This may be a temporary condition, such as childhood or when I say I can drive home from a bar just fine at 3 A.M. Or, due to infirmity or affliction, the condition may be permanent. Because conservatives do not generally propose huge government programs to combat the effects of old age, illness, being a kid, or drinking ten martinis on an empty stomach, conservatives are said to be uncaring or mean-spirited. In fact, charity is an axiom of conservatism. Conservatives like and admire manners, mores, religion, family, friendship, and most fraternal and community organizations. And charity—being kind and helpful to others—is central to all these customs and institutions. Even the Crips, the Hell’s Angels, and the Democratic Leadership Council claim to supply mutual aid to their members. Charity is one of the great responsibilities of freedom. But in order for us to be responsible and, hence, free, that responsibility must be personal. Of course not all needful acts of charity can be accomplished by one person. But to the extent that responsibility should be shared and merged, it should be, in a free society, shared and merged on the same basis as political power, starting with the individual. Responsibility must proceed from the bottom up, from the individual outward, never from the top down, never from the outside in, with the individual as the squeezed-cream filling of that giant Twinkie which is the state.

  You have to take care of yourself to the best of your ability to do so. Your family has to take care of you. Friends have to take care of your family. Neighbors have to take care of those friends. And a community has to take care of its neighbors. Government, with its power of coercion, red tape, and inevitable unfamiliarity with the specifics of the case, is a last and a desperate resort.

  There is no virtue in compulsory government charity. And no virtue in advocating it. A politician who commends himself as “caring” and “sensitive” because he wants to expand the government’s charitable programs is merely saying that he’s willing to try to do good with other people’s money. Who isn’t? A voter who takes pride in supporting such programs is telling us that he’ll do good with his own money—if a gun is held to his head.

  When government quits being something that we only use in an emergency and becomes the principal source of aid and assistance in our society, the size, expense, and power of that government are greatly increased. This in itself is a diminishment of the individual. And proof that we’re jerks, since we’ve decided that politicians are wiser, kinder, and more honest than we are and that they, not we, should control the dispensation of eleemosynary goods and services.

  But government charity causes other problems. If responsibility is removed from friends, family, and self, social ties are weakened. You scratch my back, and I’ll get a presidential commission to investigate your claims of dorsal itch.

  We don’t have to look after our parents. They’ve got their Social Security checks and are down in Atlantic City with them right now. Our parents don’t have to look after us. Head Start, a high school guidance counselor, and AmeriCorps take care of that. Our kids don’t have to look after themselves. If they get addicted to drugs, there’s methadone. If they get knocked up, there’s welfare. And the neighbors aren’t going to get involved. If they step outside, they’ll be cut down by the 9mm cross fire from the drug wars between the gangs all the other neighbors belong to.

  WHAT GOVERNMENT ACTUALLY CAN DO—SUCH AS KILL PEOPLE

  Making charity part of the political system confuses the mission of government. Charity is, by its own nature, approximate and imprecise. Are you guiding the old lady across the street, or are you just jerking her around? It’s hard to know when to offer charity without being insulting or patronizing. It’s hard to know when enough charity has been given. Parents want to help children as much as possible but don’t want to wind up with helplessly dependent kids. Parents want to give children every material advantage but don’t want a pack of damned spoiled brats. There are no exact rules of charity. But a government in a free society must obey exact rules, or that government’s power is arbitrary, and freedom is lost.

  This is why government works best when it is given limited and well-defined tasks to perform. And even the most adamantine conservative believes there are certain tasks for which government is needed. War, for instance.

  Privatization of military force has been tried at various times in history. The Dark Ages in Europe are an example of the results. Law enforcement is also t
he proper duty of the commonwealth. As bad as our police have sometimes been, giving a Glock and a warrant to a McDonald’s rent-a-cop would be worse. Certain public works and public services are best, or at least most conveniently, provided by the state. The post office, the highway system, and even schools could, perhaps, be run by corporations, but it’s hard to imagine the advantage of competing networks of sewer pipes. When building a new home, you’d look up sewers in the Yellow Pages, call around to get the best estimate, and they’d come dig a hole to your toilet. And there are some projects that are cool—like going to the moon—but just too weird, expensive, and long-term to undertake with personal funds. Finally, there is nothing wrong with a nation acting as an ultimate insurance pool.

  When catastrophes occur that individuals cannot reasonably be expected to foresee or defend themselves against, we all pitch in. It is a proper use of tax dollars to alleviate the honest distress caused by fires, floods, storms, earthquakes, riots, plagues, mudslides, and tidal waves. Although it is exasperating to the individual taxpayer when all these things happen in California every three months. I’ve about had it with sending Spam and tarpaulins to homeless movie producers.

  There is a subtle but important difference between the government organizing mutual help in a crisis and the government providing compulsory charity—between disaster aid and a federal welfare system. Note that the end result of all the above-listed limited functions of government is simply the survival of the individual. He is protected against being attacked by Iraqis, shot by gangsters, felled by typhoid, or left to starve in his ruined Malibu, California, beach house. There is no government attempt to make his life good or fair, much less to make a good or fair person out of him.

  The preamble to the Constitution says, “We, the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare....” It doesn’t say “guarantee the general Welfare.” It certainly doesn’t say “give welfare benefits to all the people in the country who aren’t doing so well, even if the reason they aren’t doing so well is that they’re sitting on their butts in front of the TV.” And here is the source of contention between conservatives and liberals. A liberal would argue that those people are watching television because they lack opportunities, they’re disadvantaged, uneducated, life is unfair. And a conservative might actually agree. Conservatives do not attack liberals for saying that things are bad. Rather, the fight begins when liberals say, “Government has enormous power/Let’s use that power to make things good.”

  It’s the wrong tool for the job. The liberal is trying to fix my wristwatch with a ballpeen hammer. Government is an abstract entity. It doesn’t produce anything. It isn’t a business, a factory, or a farm. Government can’t create wealth; only individuals can. All government is able to do is move wealth around. In the name of fairness, government can take wealth from those who produce it and give wealth to those who don’t. But who’s going to be the big Robin Hood? Who grabs all this stuff and hands it back out? Remember, even in a freely elected system of government, sooner or later that person is going to be someone you loathe. If you’re a Republican, think about Donna Shalala. If you’re a Democrat, think about Ollie North. And when government takes wealth from those who produce it, they become less inclined to produce more of it (or more inclined to hide it). And when government gives wealth to those who don’t produce it, they become less productive, too, since they’re already getting what they’d produce in return for not producing it.

  If government is supposed to make things good, what kind of good is it supposed to make then? And how good is good enough? And.who’s going to decide? What person is so arrogant as to believe he knows what every other person in America deserves to get? (Well, actually, all of Washington—press and pundits included—is that arrogant. But never mind.) We don’t know what people want. By the same token, we don’t know what people need. The government is going to wind up giving midnight basketball to people who don’t have shoes to play it in. Then there’ll be a block grant to provide shoes, which people will boil because what they really lack is something to eat, and that brings us to expanding the school-lunch program. Pretty soon it’s not government, it’s shopping. It’s not Congress and the White House, it’s Mall of America. And a bunch of politicians have your charge cards.

  Once the government has embarked upon a course of making all things fair, where is it to stop? Will tall people have to walk around on their knees? Will fat people be strapped to helium balloons? Will attractive people be made to wear ridiculous haircuts? (And has Tank Girl begun a one-woman campaign on this issue?)

  When government quits asking, What is good for all individuals? and starts asking, What is good? individual liberty is lost. We abandon a system in which all people are considered equal and adopt a system in which all people are considered alike. Collective good replaces individual goodies. Now life will be fair at last. The whole power of government will be directed to that end. But limited government is hardly suited to a task of this magnitude. The role of government will need to be expanded enormously. Government will have to be involved in every aspect of our lives. Government will grow to a laughable size.

  Or it would be laughable, except for our experience in this century. Nazi Germany, Soviet Russia, Communist China, and dozens of other places around the world did indeed create just such leviathan governmental engines of “good.” And the dreadful history of the twentieth century is in large part a history of the terrible results of these collectivist endeavors. Once respect for the individual is lost, then what do a few million dead individuals matter? Especially if their deaths are for the collective good? Fifty million were killed in the war the Nazis started. Soviet purges and persecutions killed twenty million more. As many as thirty million died in Chinese famines caused by forced communization of agriculture. That’s one hundred million dead from collectivism, not counting Korea, Indochina, Angola, Cuba, Nicaragua, and so on.

  Of course, a liberal would say that a sharing and caring government doesn’t have to turn out this way. It could be something like Sweden. And there you have it. The downside: one hundred million dead. The upside: Ace of Base, Volvos, and suicide.

  WHY COLLECTIVISM DOESN’T WORK

  But why can’t life be more fair? Why can’t Americans take better care of one another? Why can’t we share the tremendous wealth of our nation? Surely if enough safeguards of liberty are written into law and we elect vigorous, committed leaders.... Have another hit on the bong.

  Collectivism doesn’t work because, first, it’s based on a faulty economic premise. There is no such thing as a person’s “fair share” of wealth. The gross national product is not a pizza that must be carefully divided because if I get too many slices, you have to eat the box. The economy is expandable and, in any practical sense, limitless. We have proof of this in the astonishing worldwide per-capita economic growth of the past two hundred years. Certain resources may be finite—petroleum and ocean-front property. But human resourcefulness is not. Thus we get wind power, solar power, atomic energy, gasohol, and vacations in Kansas instead of at the beach. The lesson of economic development is that what happens when we run out of a resource is what happened when we ran out of whale oil—nothing.

  We’re not about to run out of pizza ingredients, and if we want our fellow citizens happily shouting, “Hold the anchovies,” we’ve got to bake more pizza. In order to do this we need economic liberty. People are much more likely to invest in expensive ovens and learn how to toss gobs of dough in the air if they stand to profit from doing so. It is for this reason that conservatives so strongly support free enterprise and capitalism, not because conservatives are greedy (although if you have any inside stock tips on companies that have invented an edible Domino’s carton, this conservative would like to know).

  Collectivist economic policy has been a failure the world over, but that’s nothing compared with the
failure of collectivist political policy. Moscovitch automobiles are bad, but even a Moscovitch doesn’t collapse as spectacularly as the Berlin Wall. Collectivist political policy has failed for a very simple reason: It makes everything political.

  Under collectivism, powers of determination rest with the entire citizenry instead of with the specific citizens. Individual decision making is replaced by the political process. Suddenly the system that elected the prom queen at your high school is in charge of your whole life.

  Individuals are smarter than groups, as anybody who is a member of a committee or of a large Irish family after six in the evening can tell you. The difference between individual intelligence and group intelligence is the difference between Harvard University and the Harvard University football team.

  Think of all the considerations that go into each decision you make. Is it ethical? Is it good in the long run? Who benefits? Who is harmed? What will it cost? Does it go with the couch? Now imagine a large group trying to agree on all these things—imagine a very large group, say 260 million people—and imagine that group trying to agree on every decision made by every person in the country. The result would be stupid, silly, and hugely wasteful. In short, the result would be government.

  Individuals are not only smarter than groups, individuals are—and this is one of the best things about them—weaker than groups. To return to Harvard for a moment, it’s the difference between picking a fight with the football team and picking a fight with Michael Kinsley.

  Collectivism makes for a large and hence very powerful group. This power is centralized in the government. Any power is open to abuse. Government power is not necessarily abused more often than personal power. But when the abuse comes, it’s a lulu. At work, power over the whole supply cabinet is concentrated in the person of the office manager. In government, power over the entire military is concentrated in the person of the commander in chief. You steal felt-tip pens. Nixon bombs Cambodia.