Saturday, July 2, 2011

Santorum the Sophist

Rick Santorum supported a balanced budget amendment when Clinton was in office, yet voted for a total of 1.25 trillion in deficit spending from 2001-2006 while Bush was in office, and now again claims to support balancing the budget in his 2012 presidential campaign.

In ancient Athens, every citizen would serve a term the general assembly--Athens was a democracy. Citizens wanted to make speeches in support of things and wanted to sound convincing so others would vote for them. They thus consulted the Sophists, who were a group that taught how to argue effectively. The Sophists were primarily concerned with winning arguments and not, per se, with whether what they argued for was right or truthful. One famous sophist boasted that he could take either side in an argument and win.

Socrates, on the other hand, wanted to go beyond just arguing well and to really reach the truth. So concerned with the finding the purest truth was he, that he concluded that he knew nothing since he could find no such pure truth. Yet Socrates still had his opinions. For example, he thought democracy was doomed to fail because voters weren't smart enough to make it work--we would agree given our experience.

Anyway, "some contemporary social critics [including the NuPo] compare modern day advertisers, lawyers, and politicians to Greek sophists. Many of these people, the argument goes, are concerned only with convincing you to believe them, not with the truth."

We accuse Santorum of being a sophist. Santorum wants you to think he's a poster child for balancing the budget, but Where was his advocacy of balancing the budget when Bush II was in office? Santorum was too busy sabre rattling for the costly Iraq war and voting for spending increases such as Medicare Part D and No Child Left Behind. Perhaps Rick merely lost his way during the Bush years and forgot his balanced budget ideals.

Yet, it makes sense that one would want to constrict spending when a member of the opposing party is president but conveniently forget this desire when a member of your party is in office. Think about it, a president from your party will be more likely to sign on to your preferred spending (and that of your campaign contributors) than would a president from the opposing party.

Democrats have shown the same sophisms. Many may remember that the Democrats complained loudly about Bush's huge deficits, but now that Obama is in office, they are silent.

Is Santorum concerned only with getting us to believe he supports a balanced budget, when in reality he has no concrete plans to balance it? Indeed, in 2011 Santorum has called for more spending on foreign aid and implicitly for more spending on the Libya war since he supports remaining there. Spending increases are the last thing someone would advocate if he were was truly concerned with balancing the budget.

Are there any modern-day presidential candidates who truly support balancing the budget and do not argue like Sophists but more like Socratic altruists? Gary Johnson cut the size of government astronomically as governor of New Mexico. Ron Paul votes against every budget, believing each to have been to large. Both are opposed to the Libya war and Paul wants foreign aid to end. Johnson has offered a plan that would balance the budget by 2013. Paul plans to balance the budget. They do these things because they follow a philosophy of limited government, as a matter of principle. They have consistent records to match their avowed fiscally* conservative principles. But alas, just as Socrates was in the minority, so too are Paul and Johnson.
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*Gary Johnson is a social moderate and Paul is a social conservative.

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