WHAT'S WRONG WITH CONSERVATIVES? JUST LOOK AT TIM HUTCHINSON

You want to know what's wrong with conservatives? Here's what's wrong. Tim
Hutchinson of Arkansas is widely regarded as the most conservative member
of the U.S. Senate. The national Democrats badly want to defeat him next
year in their bid to take firm control of that body.

What does Hutchinson believe? He recently said: "Government can do good
things, but government, like large corporations or large labor unions, . .
. if left unchecked can be a threat to individual liberty. . . . The kind
of country I think we should be is going to be one where individual liberty
is enhanced, not restricted by do-gooders in government who think they know
better than the individual."

This sounds like a ringing endorsement of individual freedom. But if you
look closely, you will find gaps large enough to drive a Ford Explorer through.

Hutchinson repeats a classic fallacy - that government is like other
institutions, such as corporations and unions. It is not.

Government has one feature that makes it different in kind, not just
degree, from everything else in society. It has the legal power to use
physical force against people who have not themselves used force against
anyone else.

This power begins with taxation - fiscal force - and proceeds through
everything government does. It is difficult to imagine government without
that power.

Government may compel peaceful individuals to do things they would rather
not do, and stop them from doing things they wish to do. Only government
can legally force people into the army and into combat, where they might
kill or be killed.

Only government can legally take people's money against their will. Only
government can legally forbid people to pay willing employees less than a
legislated minimum wage.

Only government can legally imprison you for taking a drug you wish to
take. Only government can legally demand that you pay for schools you abhor
and refuse to use.

Only government can legally decree that you will surrender part of your
income for the sake of the poor, the middle class and the rich. And only it
can legally punish you if you refuse.

If you or I as private citizens attempted any of these things, we'd be
jailed, and rightly so. But criminal activities are magically rendered
virtuous if people who are elected to office or hired by bureaucracies do
them. That's moral alchemy.

Hutchinson's problem is not merely that he can't see the distinction
between government and everything else. His blindness to that distinction
opens the way to the very government meddling he says he opposes.

If, as he believes, corporations and unions are a threat to liberty "if
left unchecked," who do you suppose will have to do the checking? The
government, of course.

That's what the open socialists of the Democratic Party also say. They
would agree with him entirely that government must be powerful enough to
prevent "abuses" by private organizations, which in fact have no inherent
power to violate anyone's rights. Government grants any such power unions
and corporations have.

For example, unions can force nonmembers to pay dues only because Congress
passed a law making that possible. Without that law, union threats would be
treated as extortion.

Hutchinson's position obligates him to support all manner of government
intervention in the peaceful, productive affairs of private organizations.
This includes antitrust laws and myriad regulations of the terms of
production and employment.

His seemingly innocuous statement concedes a major premise that underlies
socialism and the meddlesome welfare state. Perhaps if Hutchinson were
confronted with this argument he would revise his philosophy. But I rather
doubt it.

Conservatives talk a good game about liberty. But despite being shown their
fallacies time after time, they stick to a wide range of government
interference in our private lives.

The war on drug users comes to mind. Hutchinson's brother, former U.S.
representative Asa Hutchinson, has just become chief of the Drug
Enforcement Administration. The anti-freedom impulse runs in the family.