Ted Cruz’s Road to Hell is Paved With Wrong Intentions

When opposing something, you have to understand what you’re in favor of, and what you stand for; otherwise, your opposition is meaningless, or worse.

Consider the American Revolution. Talk about an impossibly uphill battle: a bunch of inexperienced and underfunded colonists battling against the greatest world military empire of the time. Yet the underfunded colonists won.

Why?

Among other reasons, because they knew what they were fighting for. It was the idea of individual rights (expressed as natural rights) they were fighting for, much more than the British monarchy they were fighting against.

In more psychological terms, the American revolutionaries were fighting for the right to be left alone. Translated into politics and government, this means a limited government — i.e., a government strong enough to protect property rights and the right to life, but not so strong it could otherwise interfere with the basic right to be left alone. If they had only been fighting against the British monarchy, it would have hardly been worth the struggle. It was only for the deep-seated and deeply desired conviction to be left alone, yet to live in a civilized private property, individual rights-respecting order, that gave them the persistence and tenacity required to prevail against the British.

U.S. Senator Ted Cruz, of Texas, is described by CNN.com as a “conservative firebrand” who seeks to weld together traditional Republicans, Tea Party social conservatives and economic libertarians. However, these groups emphasize different goals and want sometimes contradictory things. Ronald Reagan managed to do it in the 1980s, but only for a time. Before long, these factions split apart and today you see the Republican Party divided from within, not only because they lack a candidate with Reagan’s charisma, but because of the simple fact you cannot reconcile the logically irreconcilable.

Take one example: Obamacare. Cruz is against Obamacare, and favors its repeal the first moment he takes office. If you’re against Obamacare, what can be wrong about that? But consider what Obamacare actually is. Obamacare extended the role of government in medical care — dramatically, to the point where there’s essentially no more dividing line between private and public sector. But if you’re honest about it, that boundary was violated a long time ago — most particularly, with the initiation of the socialized medicine program known as Medicare, enacted 50 years ago.

If Ted Cruz is against Obamacare because it’s socialized medicine, and because it’s an instance of government initiating coercion against its citizens — a principle he holds is always wrong — then he should say so; however, I doubt that’s the case. If he’s like most other “firebrand conservatives,” he’s not against government initiating coercion on principle; he’s against “too much” of it. How much is too much? Well, Obamacare goes too far. So get rid of Obamacare. The implication is that will fix things. But it will not fix things, because Medicare makes that impossible. The government must find a way to “lower” health care costs if Medicare doesn’t end up eating 75-100 percent of the private economy.

There are plenty of conservatives, and even some in the Tea Party movement, who virulently oppose Obamacare, but just as fervently support Medicare. Yet if we’re to have socialized medicine for the elderly, how can the government sustain that promise without ultimately controlling everything? And by what moral right does government do so in either case, Medicare or Obamacare? How can you be against Obamacare in principle — socialized medicine for the bulk of the population — while favoring Medicare, which is socialized medicine for the elderly (the bulk of the medical population)? It’s inconsistent.

Granted, it would be impossible — morally or practically — to pull the plug on Medicare tonight. But it’s entirely possible to fess up, acknowledge that Medicare was a huge mistake, that it never should have happened, and the government’s primary job is to phase it out and radically open up and deregulate the medical and health insurance fields as quickly as possible. Debate can ensue on how best to do so, but not on the question that we must do so; at least, not if you claim to be on the opposite side of the fence from Obama, as Cruz and other Tea Party conservatives say they are.

Trying to reconcile the irreconcilable isn’t how you win a war (including a metaphorical or intellectual one), and — as Cruz will probably discover — it’s not even how you win a primary battle. If you wish to be an intellectual firebrand worthy of the name, you have to go to the root of where you disagree with your opponent, challenge your opponent on his or her most basic premises, and — most important of all — champion and uphold the opposing principle you consider correct. And God isn’t it. God is a principle of religion — not of government. Trying to make God the central purpose of a political campaign — particularly in a secularized nation like the United States — is a recipe for failure, and it cannot even win against Obama’s blatant socialism.

Note that Ted Cruz chose Liberty University, the highly conservative educational institution founded by the late Rev. Jerry Falwell (founder of the Moral Majority back in the 1970s) as the place to launch his campaign. The basic premise of religious conservatism is that freedom is a gift from God. Religious beliefs teach that we do answer to a higher authority, only that authority is supernatural, not political. Their primary objection to Obama is that Obama seeks to take over God’s work, and that it’s God — not politicians — who must run man’s life. By making this claim, religious conservatives have done two things to undermine the cause of freedom (however much they believe otherwise). One, they have divorced freedom from the realm of reason, suggesting that religion and government are the same. Two, they have conceded that they share the same premise with the liberal-progressives, that human beings do answer to a higher authority, and that humans are therefore not sovereign over their own lives and destinies.

If we are not sovereign over our own lives, there’s no basis for making the claim that we are free people. If we don’t own our own lives, it arguably makes more rational sense to hand over our freedom to technocrats in the government than to ministers at the church. Religious conservatives like Ted Cruz, the late Jerry Falwell and many others insist, “You don’t own your life. Your life belongs to God. Therefore, we should get rid of Obama and all the progressives because they defy God, particularly with their homosexuals and abortions, and that’s the reason to be against Obama.”

The road to hell, it’s often claimed, is paved with good intentions. Actually, that’s not it. The road to hell is paved with wrong intentions. It’s possible to be against the right things for the wrong reasons, or for vague and contradictory reasons. Ted Cruz thinks he can merge together the founding American premise of freedom as based on human nature and natural rights, along with the view of the contemporary religious right wing that freedom is exclusively the domain of God and the supernatural (as they personally perceive and believe in it.)

But how can it be both? Freedom either comes from God, or it is an integral part of our nature, and our basic entitlement, as human beings (the only entitlement that matters).

Faith as the basis for something as profoundly rational, life-sustaining and life-supporting as freedom? This gives you a clue as to why religious and conventional conservatives keep losing battle after battle and, quite frankly, should keep losing. In the unlikely event that Ted Cruz becomes president, those who disagree with me on this point — I predict — will be sorely disappointed.

Who should win? Anyone who favors individual rights across the board, and on principle, because of the natural and objective human requirement to think and be free. In other words, rights come neither from God nor the government. Rights are a basic requirement of a human being. Without rights, there is no economic growth, no survival, no self-responsibility, no freedom to rise or fall as one’s own person in life.

When I think of freedom and rights, I think of skyscrapers, computer technology, life-saving medicine, the joy to read and think as you please, to be spiritual (religious or not) as you define it without any threat of force from others, and all the pleasure and comforts brought about by the intellectual and personal freedom permitted to exist, in those exceedingly rare periods of human history where human beings are left largely free.

Ted Cruz, whether he intends to or not, takes us back to the ideals of the Middle Ages, to the time before human beings dared conceive they had a right to live for themselves, for their own sakes, and not because either God or some King (elected or otherwise) gave them permission. His choice to open his campaign at Liberty University speaks biblical volumes about his reasons for opposing Obama. They’re not my reasons.