We're Not Socialists, Comrade

You hear the hubbub. You hear the grumblings.

People look this $787 billion dollar stimulus incredulously. Arkansans raise eyebrows at the $2.1 billion they will receive for education, health care, and whatever else you can spend $2.1 billion on.

The word hangs in the air like the shimmering blade of a guillotine: Socialist.

Opponents decry, "This is socialism! Big government is aspreadin' like wild fire!" They bemoan the tax-payer money being thrown in every which way to recoup what the unregulated and unsuccessful businesses the American people invested in have lost. They see it as an unprecedented and vast expansion of the government.

And they have good reason: They're right. They're right about everything except the title. This isn't socialism. It may not be strict, free market capitalism, and the price tag might be too steep, but this isn't the despotism that we have defeated in the past.

Some aren't quick to shed the moniker. My colleague John "Twitterbug" Brummett has said before that what we have here in the U.S. is a capitalist society with a socialist safety net. We let that free market run like a gravy train with biscuit-capped wheels — until it derails. Then we depend on our Mothergovernment to take care of us until we can get our feet back under us.

It's hard to disagree with him. By all accounts of the Great Depression and this Not-So-Great Recession, that seems to be the trend. Yet I'm not so quick to concede this as socialism; What's the point of a government — any government — if not to protect its citizens?

And rest assured that this bill is protecting us, although the staunch GOP opponents would say at too steep of price, or as one delegate said, "All we need is a life-preserver, and they're throwing us a yacht." That too may also be accurate. But even they will agree, this is still sound governance and not necessarily socialist.

I have to hearken back to Thomas "Tawmmy" Hobbes and his Leviathan to quell my own reservations about such a proposal.

Hobbes describes the world without government as the state of nature. Now this state of nature isn't like a still frame from Bambi or Snow White; more like a frame out of Saving Private Ryan. It's war — bloody, gritty, violent, and relentless war against your fellow man to simply survive to the next day. Those who do not fight perish. In De Cive, he describes it as bellum omnium contra omnes, or "The War of All Against All."

A bright and chipper fellow, this Tawmmy Hobbes was, huh?

Now hold that Hobbsian thought; let's talk about Milton Friedman, the Godfather of Capitalism. Regarding the Great Depression, Milty found the sole blame to be found at the desk of those who directed and managed the Federal Reserve. In his memoirs that he let his wife co-write (apparently she cooked quite the babka), Friedman claims that the Fed was "largely responsible for converting what might have been a garden-variety recession, although perhaps a fairly severe one, into a major catastrophe...Far from the depression being a failure of the free-enterprise system, it was a tragic failure of government."

Now, of course, Milty is likely rolling over in his grave about all of the de-deregulation that has been reshaping the avenues from Washington to Wall Street. But is this a failure of the free-market or of the Marketeers who have driven their own companies into the ground?

But Friedman dealt with the businesses, which in the case of the auto industry I said specifically yesterday, but I think the point applies generally as well, the government isn't bailing out the industries; they're bailing out those who are tethered to those businesses. The free-market system works — if these businesses continue about their idea-void and inept ways, they're certainly doomed. But the government should and is protecting its people in this case.

Now back to Hobbes: This stimulus is aiming at keeping people out of the state of nature by trying earnestly to garner gainful employment and protection. Think that such an endeavor isn't keeping people out of the state of nature? Ask the 500,000 plus who have recently lost their jobs and find their livelihood becoming more of a scarce commodity. Ask those unemployed people who are now scrambling, hoping, and praying that something comes along to take care of them.

There's the state of nature for you.

With the interests of so many relying on the competency of so few, a bailout is appropriate. The magnitude of the bailout is debatable, as we can clearly see on Capitol Hill.

Sure, this might be a slippery slope. But there have been plenty of slippery slopes that good men have overcome. George Washington had the slickest slope of them all, and could've made he and his family set for the rest of their lineage, but didn't cave. Not to toss around platitudes about the precedents of Presidents, and certainly not to compare Obama to Washington, but we ought to have enough faith in our political system that despotism won't be able to get too far without be dealt with swiftly and with much prejudice.

Besides, it's all about the ebb and flow anyway. One minute you're up, the next you're down, and back again. Cross em if you got em, but we should be alright. Someday.

UPDATE: If Milty Friedman is the Godfather of the Free Market, Alan Greenspan is his consigliere. One of the most vocal proponents of laissez-faire capitalism says he's now in favor of temporarily nationalizing banks. Maybe Friedman isn't rolling over in his grave after all?