The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal are, by most mainstream definitions, two of the best newspapers in the world. And their opinion pages do an exceptionally good job of capturing what’s essentially two alternate universes in America — the right and the left. Here’s a tale of the two.
In the first universe, President Barack Obama’s administration is taking America on a crash course to America’s financial ruin, particularly with an $11.9 trillion deficit. The stimulus was poorly handled, health care reform is “The Worst Bill Ever” (Google it) — complete with insane spending and bad accounting — and Iran, North Korea and other hostile nations aren’t taking us seriously.
Obama’s foreign policy, which attempts to recast America’s image abroad, is instead making us appear weak and unsure of ourselves. And enhanced terrorist techniques under the Bush administration provided invaluable intelligence that may have prevented another Sept. 11, or at least were necessary in the cause of preventing one.
In the second universe, “enhanced interrogation techniques” is a term for torture — and torture hasn’t given the U.S. any valuable intelligence. Instead, it’s made us less safe by helping terrorist recruitment and damaging our image and interests abroad. The $787 billion stimulus kept the U.S. from driving off the cliff to another Great Depression, and it’s working, despite its hitches. Health care is a basic human right that can’t be left to the free market, and the free market’s failed — with one out of three Americans without health insurance between 2007 and 2008.
In the first universe, the media has a clearly liberal bias, exemplified by the coverage of major broadcast networks like CNN, ABC, NBC and especially MSNBC. University professors also have a liberal bias, which contributes to a strong liberal slant in American education.
The free market handles most issues better than government and usually does best when left to its own devices. Government should be relegated to handling areas like roads and defense and, in general, when government’s size increases, citizen freedom decreases, like a mathematical formula.
Arguments for net neutrality are borderline bogus — Internet service providers should be allowed to regulate and dictate prices for how much bandwidth one uses, just like FedEx can charge more for postage. When the market speaks, it’s almost always right in the end — barring cases of absurd government regulation and natural boom-and-bust cycles, which self-correct anyway.
In the second universe, government has to carefully, and efficiently, regulate businesses in ways that keep busts from getting too big without stifling the booms. That regulation might include capping CEO compensation. In the first universe, this kind of regulation is anticompetitive and encourages American top-talent to move elsewhere or overseas.
In the second universe, climate change is real, and there is a scientific consensus spelling out the possibility that the entire world could face enormous consequences from carbon emissions, including famine, disease, global instability and the end of society as we know it. In the first universe, that’s garbage.
Every generation seems to think that society is the worst it’s ever been and the challenges bigger than ever. Americans today, facing the possibility of terrorism, an insane deficit, global instability and the possibility of climate change, have a great case for claiming this is the worst it’s ever been. Luckily, we have two gigantic political ideologies — by no means all-inclusive — promising us all the answers.
Reach Matt at matt.culbertson@asu.edu.
