SSDD

Conservative wunderkind, 14 year old Jonathan Krohn has defined conservatism for us.

Quoting CNN, who listed Krohn as one of it Intriguing People to watch for today, "The four basic principles he advocates are respect for the Constitution and the rule of law upon which it is based; respect for life as an inherent and inalienable right for all individuals at all stages; insistence on a government in its most limited form so it does not conflict with an individual's rights and freedoms; and taking personal responsibility and working toward a system of government that makes individuals accountable for all his or her actions."

To start let me say that I heartily applaud this kid. He is thinking, well read and clearly engaged. Sadly however it appears that master Krohn has done little more than soak up the proverbial kool aid.

To begin, I would like to say that I am sick to death of the assumption made by conservatives everywhere that the values espoused above are conservative values alone. I know of no progressive person who eschews the rule of law, nor one without a respect for life for "individuals of all ages." There is no progressive value that would not also require working for a government that is accountable to the people. Short of the "limited government" claptrap (the largest expansion of government in 60 years took place under a "conservative" President and a Congress ruled by "conservative" legislators,) there are no values espoused in the paragraph above that are not the values of intelligent, informed and conscientious individuals everywhere.

With that out of the way, let's look at these one by one:

1. Respect for the Constitution and the rule of law upon which it is based.At what point do we discern a person's lack of respect for the Constitution. Is it when the right against unwarrented search and seizure is negated? Is it when due process is abrogated? Is it when we assume that the Constitution only applies to citizens, leaving us free to torture and imprison people indefinitely? On his web page, Krohn states that he believes that his book will come to be a "a timeless book of facts and logic." Well here are the facts: the concept of the "rule of law" comes down to how the law is interpreted. Interpretations by John Yoo and Alberto Gonzales empowered the President to behave in a many that many others considered to be a violation of the Constitution. Krohn, who claims to value logic, has himself fallen victim to the logical fallacy known as "appeal to belief": simply because someone believes that he respects the rule of law does not mean that his behavior reflects a respect for the rule of law.

2. Respect for life as an inherent and inalienable right for individuals of all ages. Here Krohn has become entangled in another logical fallacy. This one is known as the false dilemma fallacy: He believes that fetuses are individuals which causes him to determine that those who do not agree with him have no respect for life "at all stages." Is it not possible to have more respect for the life of the living mother than that of her as yet unformed fetus? The larger issue is this: how does this "respect" express itself? Is it respectful of life to preserve a fetus only to execute him for a capital crime when he is 25? Is it respectful of life to support an economic model that results in a portion of the population living in abject poverty? Here again, Krohn insists that he has confined himself to the realm of "logic, morality, and history" when he is really just dancing around in the world of personal opinion.

3. "Insistence on a government in its most limited form so it does not conflict with an individual's rights and freedoms" This is just libertarianism parading around in Ronald Reagan drag. The simple fact is this: it is impossible to design a federal government overseeing the welfare (a charge laid out in the preamble to the Constitution) of 300 million people in a way that does not conflict with an "individual's rights and freedoms." Laying aside for the moment the vagaries of the concept of "freedoms," our "rights" are only those laid out within the structure of the Constitution, along with the caveat of the 10th Amendment. It is important to keep in mind that the United States is not a union of people, it is a union of states. Such a union cannot have limited government as its highest value simply because it is an agreement between the government of the United States and the governments of the individual states. Our government is indeed a government of and by the people, but the functioning of that government entails the people agreeing to the limitation of individual freedom in order to assure the general welfare.

4. "Taking personal responsibility and working toward a system of government that makes individuals accountable for all his or her actions." All I can say here is "from Krohn's mouth to God's ear." The whole idea of classical liberalism, the antecedent to all of Krohn's values, assumes a rational and responsible population. Unfortunately - or rather fortunately - our Constitution is based on the more practical Hamiltonian belief that people will always act in their own selfish interest and so government needs to be structured in a way that takes advantage of that fact and uses that self interest to support the common good. Our Constitution assumes that people will behave selfishly and so taxes that selfishness. It would be wonderful to live in a world where humans were rational, sadly that is not the case. Indeed, if we were capable of acting in our own enlightened self interest neither George W. Bush, nor Karl Rove's Congress would ever have been placed in power.

Now, it may seem cruel to be taking a 14 year old to task, but the reality is that there is nothing new here. What Krohn espouses is the same "conservative" mumbo jumbo that has been shrilly touted for years by the likes of Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck (sorry, I cannot bring myself to provide links to these guys.) Clearly this boy is more articulate than Sarah Palin, but he is saying the same old shit.

Tags: Conservative, Liberal, Libertarianism, Krohn

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