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01/01/2004: "The Conservative Addiction to the Prescription Drug Cuttax"

The strategy of becoming the party of “Damn the deficits, full speed ahead” has become an addiction as powerful and difficult to beat as an addiction to heroin. The analogy is appropriate to mention here because it helps to make my point that today’s Republican leaders are not bad people, they are merely all too human, with the human tendency to rationalize practices that are lucrative in the short run but non-sustainable in the long run. And how can there be an argument even from the most partisan that deficit spending is a sustainable situation? As with addicts, the moral failings of Big-C Conservatives occur not because they are inherently bad people but because they are weak in the face of overwhelming temptation, a temptation that can be indulged with no immediate rap to the knuckles. This is an all too human failing. You can also make the case that Big-C Conservative addiction to deficit spending has led to many of the other policies that are at odds with traditional Republican positions. As the debt has grown, Republican positions in other areas have changed at least in part to serve as a justification or excuse for deficit spending, in the same way that an addict will rationalize destructive behavior in order to avoid coming to terms with their addiction. Let’s look at some examples next time.