{"id":1531,"date":"2003-10-28T17:04:31","date_gmt":"2003-10-28T22:04:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kith.org\/journals\/vardibidian\/2003\/10\/28\/1531.html"},"modified":"2018-03-12T16:43:29","modified_gmt":"2018-03-12T21:43:29","slug":"grover-norquist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/2003\/10\/28\/grover-norquist\/","title":{"rendered":"Grover Norquist"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Those of my Gentle Readers who read random lefty blogs (Your Humble Blogger has a shortcuts folder called \"lefty blogs\") will already be aware of this, I suspect, but Grover Norquist was on Fresh Air<\/a> a while back. There's been some outrage over a few things he said, such as progressive taxation coming from a Holocaust mentality, or that he couldn't conceive of saying \"we\" and including the government. I noticed the following quote, though, which occurs about 20 minutes in to the interview. He'd been asked about government funds for Homeland Security, and had said, essentially, that the states had plenty of money and only incompetent governors or mayors would be whining for more. Then he says this:\n

About 20 minutes in. \"One of the good things about the states, and I am a Ronald Reagan Federalist, meaning I like 50 states—not because they are closer to the people; that's nonsense, I'm not any closer to my governor than I am to the president—but there are fifty of them, and when they do something really stupid, you can move.\"<\/blockquote>\n\n

OK, there are a bunch of ways in which this is wrong-headed.\n\n

First, and most obviously, sure you can move if you've got the money. If you are fairly affluent and have access to liquid capital, you can vote with your feet. If ninety percent of your assets are in your house, you can't; you can sell your house and move, but it is a time-consuming and costly process. If ninety percent of your assets are in your car, I suppose you can change states easily, but I hope he's not talking about them.\n\n

What he's really talking about is that he can move his investments, he can incorporate in Delaware, or in Texas, or New Hampshire; he doesn't really need to have an office in any of those places in order to incorporate there, so he can \"move\" cheaply and easily. This, presumably, is the way he wants corporations, those that own factories and those that provide information services of various kinds, to think. And that leads me to the second big part of the wrong-headedness: it's astonishingly selfish.\n\n

Read it again. \"If [the state government does] something really stupid, you can move.\" You don't need to change it, or act in any way to improve things. You just move somewhere else, and let your neighbors deal with the stupidity however they like. There is no responsibility to your community—heck, there is no community. If you think of yourself as a Virginian, or a Californian, you are just a sucker. That's just the way of keeping you from seeking the best deal for yourself. There is no sense that a person might lose something if they left their friends, their neighbors, their schools, but more than that, there's no sense that a person might be obliged to help their friends, their neighbors, their schools. It's an ugly and demeaning selfishness, and it isn't even particularly to most people's benefit.\n\n

And then there's another level. There wasn't anything in his words, or his tone (in my analysis), that allowed for the possibility of the state doing something good. There was the ever-present fear that the state might do something stupid, but no possibility of anything smart happening. There is no room in this mindset for accomplishments, for achievements, for vision. There is no way the government could build a bridge (literally or metaphorically). There is no way a government could put a man on the moon, or eliminate smallpox, or pave roads. This isn't conservatism; it's paranoia (well, and it's something like libertarianism, too).\n\n

Grover Norquist is terribly influential in state and federal government. He is not some random guy, ranting on in a blog about his perception of the universe. He is the guy who vets the candidates for lobbyist positions for the big associations; he meets regularly with legislative leaders and their aides, and with White House staff at very high levels. He heads an umbrella group of so-called conservative organizations, which act in concert under his direction. Just so you know.\n\n

Redintegro Iraq,
-Vardibidian.\n<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Those of my Gentle Readers who read random lefty blogs (Your Humble Blogger has a shortcuts folder called “lefty blogs”) will already be aware of this, I suspect, but Grover Norquist was on Fresh Air a while back. There’s been…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[201],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1531","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-navel-gazing"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1531","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1531"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1531\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16856,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1531\/revisions\/16856"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1531"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1531"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1531"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}