Day: November 19, 2005

Will the Real Conservatives Please Stand Up

The local Republican student group recently put up a series of fliers on campus which reminded me why I’m not a Republican, even though I’m extremely conservative.

These students are probably to the right of most conservatives, bringing in jingoists like Pat Buchanan and supporters of the Japanese internment like Michelle Malkin to speak (as Cathy Young notes, in her bizarre defense of internment and attack on U.S. reparations to its victims, Malkin is repudiating that great left wing activist Ronald Reagan).

But the flier that really drove it home were ones that appeared at the same time as those promoting Malkin’s appearance that included a quote attributed to Barry Goldwater, “A government that is big enough to give you all you want is big enough to take it all away.”

That made me laugh out loud. Goldwater, of course, ran unsuccessfully against Lyndon Johnson on an anti-big government campaign and lost by a landslide. Johnson went on to continue the huge increase in the size of the federal government.

But where has supporting that latest incarnation of Republicans landed conservatives? According to the American Enterprise Institute, in Bush’s first term, federal spending actually increased faster than it did under Johnson. According to the AEI, for example, Johnson increased federal discretionary spending 33.4 percent from 1965-68. Bush increased discretionary spending 35.1 percent from 2002-05.

Compare that to a conservative president, Ronald Reagan, who launched a massive military build-up to counter the Soviet threat. Reagan only increased discretionary spending 15.3 percent over his two terms. Clinton, the liberal spendthrift, had a net 0.1 percent increase over his two terms.

Please, can Republicans find some real conservatives to run for office? Or are LBJ conservatives all the party has left?

Source:

President Reagan, Champion Budget-Cutter. Veronique de Rugy, American Enterprise Institute, June 9, 2004.

How Bush Outspends LBJ. Nick Gillespie, Reason, December 2005.

In God We Trust In Fact Checking

The other day I ended up at Rogers Cadenhead’s DrudgeRetort.Com site and saw a story that piqued my interest — the Supreme Court this week refused to hear a case involving whether or not the presence of “In God We Trust” on money is a violation of the First Amendment’s Establishment clause.

The comments thread was annoying, however, because there were many folks claiming that the “In God We Trust” motto did not start appearing on money until the 1950s. The implication being that its not an old tradition in the United States, but a latecomer that doesn’t deserve the deference that an older tradition might. Unfortunately, that claim is off by about 90 years.

As this Treasury Department history notes, “In God We Trust” first appeared on coins in 1864. An 1837 act of Congress had prescribed what mottoes could appear on coins, and the 1864 Coinage Act gave the Treasury Secretary the authority to approve the design of coins. Shortly afterward, “In God We Trust” appeared on the two-cent coin.

“In God We Trust” has appeared continuously on the penny since 1909, and on the dime since 1916.

So what happened in the 1950s that makes people think its only started appearing on money then? Eisenhower signed a bill in 1956 that put the motto on paper money as well. “In God We Trust” first appeared on paper money in 1957.

A number of atheist sites such as this one and programs such as this falsely claim that “In God We Trust” didn’t start appearing on money at all until the 1950s and that the motto itself is of very recent origin. Apparently, there is a right wing Christian myth as well that the motto’s use goes back to American Revolutionary times, but I could not find any instances of people actually making that claim (though there are enough quotes falsely attributed to famous figures of that time period to fill a small book).

Leaving aside the historical trivia, what about the substantive issue — is the minting of “In God We Trust” on money just one step away from a theocracy in the United States as some of the shriller atheists imply?

I take the opposite view — as an atheist, I can’t imagine a better place for the motto than on the nation’s money. In this, I agree with President Theodore Roosevelt’s opinion that the motto’s appearance on money was close to sacrilegious and that “it seems to me eminently unwise to cheapen such a motto by use on coins, just as it would be to cheapen it by use on postage stamps, or in advertisements.”

Exactly. If anything, America’s official state religion is capitalism and what greater way to reinforce that by put religious mottoes on money of all places. And certainly what Roosevelt predicted has come to past — “In God We Trust” is, I suspect, a meaningless phrase to many people (much like “E Pluribus Unum” or “So Help Me God” when being sworn in at court) because of its sheer repetition and commonality. It is on the penny after all, which certainly demonstrates the poor currency of the phrase.

Source:

The U.S. National [sic] Mottos. ReligiousTolerance.Org, Accessed: November 19, 2005.