John McCain is no Conservative
Writing by abuhatem on Friday, 14 of March , 2008 at 2:55 am
Despite the new tone of his rhetoric, Republican nominee John McCain’s voting record is far from conservative. Although McCain now paints himself as a supply-side, small government conservative who was a “foot soldier in the Reagan revolution,†there is a gaping disconnect between his words and his actions.
As recently as August 2007, McCain voted in August against moving millions of SCHIP dependent Americans eligible for employee sponsored health insurance users off of the government plan to private insurance. Although telling the Washington Post that he opposed embryonic stem cell research and was a member of the Pro-Life movement, in April of last year he also was one of 17 Republicans who voted for the Stem Cell Research Enhancement Act.Â
Instead, this is the same John McCain who is a neoconservative in his foreign policy - wanting to kick Russia out of the G8 and put pressure on China, and maybe bomb Iran - while being a liberal in his domestic policies.
Hayek and Mises discuss how government’s intervention in the economy domestically - through plundering of property, and transgressing natural rights - is analogous to warfare in foreign policy. As Randolph Bourne says “War is the health of the state.” And the absurd thing is, as almost every economist has proven since the 16th century and Bastiat’s ingenious “broken window fallacy,” war does not really help the economy - it hurts it.
 My next post will be about the classical American conservative movement and war - as well as their similarity in thinking with Muslims.
Category: American Politics
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