Frank’s Case Book

As long ago as 1959, the sainted leader of modern Conservatism, William F. Buckley Jr. observed that Liberals in his time did not recognize Conservative thought as a competing intellectual perspective or philosophy. Rather, if they even thought at all about Conservatism, it was as a pathology that moderns were growing out of or that people needed to be cured of.

It is, therefore, of some amusement that a recent issue of Social Justice published “When Morality Opposes Justice: Conservatives Have Moral Intuitions that Liberals May Not Recognize,” by Jonathan Haidt and Jesse Graham, psychologists at the University of Virginia. The plucky thesis of their argument is that it may not be the case that all Conservatives are morally evil. Rather, some (probably a minority) may have a “moral intuitions” that are not entirely shared by Liberals. As a Conservative, perhaps I should offer some thanks for this small gracious concession.

It should be noted that this conclusion emerged from psychologists who, I suppose, are qualified to render a clinical conclusion that Conservatism is not necessarily aberrant behavior. Discussion and debate between Conservatives and Liberals should reside the Politics or Philosophy Departments of universities, but first Conservatives, I suppose, need to be professionally certified as eligible to participate in open discussion.

In fairness, some elements of the paper criticize the presumption of some liberals who assume that their positions can be the only moral ones. We are gently informed, for example, that some scholarly research indicates that “some portion of the conservative [1] opposition to affirmative action is truly based on concerns that affirmative action programs sometimes violate the principle of merit.” Gee, I would like to know when providing opportunities to people on the basis of the race or gender does not violate the principle of merit.

Haidt and Graham write as reasonable people. However, articles in scholarly journals are supposed to represent original ideas. The fact that such an article was necessary indicates just how insular and arrogant Liberals and particularly the Liberal intelligentsia in academia have become.

[1] A lower case “conservative” indicates a conservative temperament. The authors should have capitalized“Conservative” since it is a competing political philosophy or ideology. Their punctuation suggests that the authors, despite their openness, are still treating Conservatism as a mental condition rather than a set of consistent ideas..

The year 1949 marked a time when the hubris in the competency government was near its peak, especially after the successful conclusion one of the largest and most successful government enterprises of all, World War II. At that time the Federal Communications Commission issued the Fairness Doctrine, trusting in the government’s ability to arbitrate fairness. The doctrine required broadcasters to provide all sides of a controversial issues in a manner that the FCC considered fair. The fundamental rationale for the doctrine was that the broadcast spectrum is a limited public resource and should be used for the public good. As a practical matter, with the club of the Fairness Doctrine over their heads and their licenses at risk, most broadcasters simply  avoided political controversy. The risks were too great.

In 1969 Red Lion Broadcasting v. FCC case, the Supreme Court upheld the Fairness Doctrine based on the limited number of stations, but hinted that if the doctrine were used to suppress speech, the doctrine could be re-evaluated. By 1984, FCC v. League of Women Voters, the Court concluded that the scarcity  argument was loosing its saliency. In this environment, the FCC backed off a the Fairness Doctrine altogether in 1987.

The period since has experienced an explosion in public affairs related broadcasting. For a variety of reasons, Conservatives have been particularly successful on talk radio, while one could easily make the case that broadcast television news is provided from a liberal perspective. Indeed, many political operatives view talk radio as the major source of contemporary Conservative thought.

Any arguments about scarcity have long ago been overwhelmed by modern technology. Not only has there been significant growth in the number of radio stations, but radio information is beamed from satellite increasing available bandwidth. In an age, when one can receive “netcasts” over the cell phone networks on smart phones or assemble one’s own webpage, their is virtually no limit on the space available for political discourse.

The First Amendment is  unequivocal. “Congress shall make no law …  abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press…” It is very likely that the imposition of the Fairness Doctrine with the current state of technology would loose a constitutional challenge.

What is interesting is  the liberal (they would like to say “progressive”) community’s instinctive reaction to wield political power by suppressing inconvenient free speech. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has said that she personally favors the revival of the Fairness Doctrine.  She has blocked votes that would prohibit the FCC from imposing the Fairness Doctrine. So much for the free speech movement of San Francisco. It is hard to reconcile the First Amendment with the ethos of using the government to ration speech. Such an effort would be rightly rejected in the case of newspapers, where scarcity is a graver than in the broadcast media.

To his credit President Barack Obama, through his press secretary Michael Ortiz, has said the he “does not support reimposing the Fairness Doctrine on broadcasters.” Unfortunately, the reasoning provided is not reassuring. Ortiz explained that the Fairness Doctrine debate it distracts from among other things like support for public broadcasting and increasing minority ownership media outlets. It does not seem that opposition to the Fairness Doctrine arises from principle, but from tactical calculation. For now, perhaps the pressure to re-instate the Fairness Doctrine will ease. It would have been more heartening if Obama said he would actively oppose the re-institution of the Fairness Doctrine. The good news is that time is one the side of free speech. As communications technology improves and becomes even more ubiquitous, the Fairness Doctrine becomes not only less justifiable, but far more difficult to implement.

In 1989, Senator John Tower was President George H. B. Bush’s first choice for Secretary of Defense. President’s almost invariably get their choices for cabinet positions confirmed by the Senate. According to King and Riddlesperber [1] in the post-War era from 1945 to 1988, opposition to the nomination of cabinet officials was dominantly based on policy differences, but still are very rare.  On paper,  it looked like Tower had the necessary qualifications including Chairmanship of the Senate Armed Services Committee. Moreover, Senators are generally loathe to embarrass their own.

However, Senators perhaps knew Tower too well. Although, he served competently in the Senate he was reputed to have a drinking and womanizing problem. Part of the ultimate rejection of Tower was a little political payback to Bush winning the previous election, but Tower would have survived the nomination process had there not been very real and serious  issues with Tower’s character.

In retrospect, the Senate did President Bush an important and historic favor. Ultimately, Dick Cheney was approved overwhelmingly by the Senate for Secretary of Defense. Whatever present reservations there are about Cheney’s recent performance as vice president, there remains consensus that he was a key element of the successful effort to remove Saddam Hussein from Kuwait in the first  Gulf War.

The Senate, particularly, the Republicans, as the opposition party now have an obligation to exercise due diligence and put up a substantial fight against at two of the remaining  nominations of President Barack Obama. The opposition should not be based upon political or policy differences but on the simple question of character.

Eric Holder, Jr. the nominee for Attorney General, should be opposed based on the role he played in the Mark Rich pardon and the pardons of the Puerto Rican terrorists — pardons that were clearly made for political expediency under President Clinton. As Deputy Attorney General, he had a obligation as a presidential legal adviser to stand up to President Clinton’s ill-advised pardons. The president would have probably still issued the pardons, but at least he would have been ignoring the proper legal advice.  There may come a time when a  sensitive legal issue comes before President Obama. He deserves an Attorney General whose legal advice is  not hostage to cynical political calculations.

There is no informed and intellectually  honest person who believes the nominee for Treasury Secretary, Timothy Geithner,  did not deliberately cheat on his income taxes. He is just too smart and informed about his tax obligations to have committed an inadvertent over sight. There is no doubt as to Geither’s credentials or that he would try to implement Obama’s policies with competence. However, he lacks the character to be granted the fiducial  responsibility of Treasury Secretary. Just as yourself if you would hire a brilliant financial analyst to handle your finances if you knew that he cheated on his own taxes. We are told that  Geithner is so brilliant that we have to overlook his character. Is that the moral message the Obama wishes to endorse?

The Democrats, perhaps not for the most altruistic motives, helped President Bush (41) by forcing the selection of Dick Cheney over John Tower for Secretary of Defense. It is time that Republicans paid that back favor to President Obama. He would be best served by an Attorney General with character to tell the President what he make not want to hear and a Treasury Secretary worthy of the trust placed in that position.

[1] King, J. D. and J. Riddlesperger, chapter in From Cold War to New World Order, 2002.