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Washington State conservatives, there is no joy this week. Our hero,
Tim Eyman, has struck out, gone down, imploded. Mr. Eyman is the
locally famous author of several state anti-tax initiatives, whose
efforts inspired anti-tax activists around the country. Of interest
beyond the borders of our state is that he has imploded in the style
of many another conservative hero. This troubling pattern needs
to be explained.
Eyman's story
has already crossed the continent, showing up in the New York
Times. He humbly sold wristwatches in Mukilteo till he launched
the crusade that he called Permanent Offense. He kept his business
and claimed that, as a citizen warrior, he drew no salary from his
political endeavors
His first initiative,
I-695, knocked down the state's outrageously pricey vehicle licensing
fee to $30. Two others, I-722 and I-747, limited tax growth, including
property taxes, which are to be held to a growth rate of 1 percent
a year. His latest would reduce car-tab taxes to $30 per year, but
it seems likely that the present scandal will slow if it does not
entirely stop the push for I-776.
It turns out
that Eyman indeed drew funds, contributed by other anti-tax Washingtonians,
for personal use. In the year 2000 he paid himself $45,000 —
not a fortune. Later he diverted another $165,000, of which he expected
to keep — again, under the table — $157,000. In a somewhat
peculiar verge-of-tears press conference held at the Mukilteo post
office, Eyman has now apologized.
So then here
is the pattern. Every year, it seems, another public conservative
has his career dashed to pieces when it is revealed that he has
been embroiled in unworthy activities, often, but not always, sexual
in nature. Newt Gingrich comes to mind. So might Rudy Giuliani,
who suffered mightily for his own affair of the heart and would
have left office as a much-reduced figure had it not been for September
11.
Meanwhile public
figures committed to liberalism may be exposed as adulterers —
Jesse Jackson, Bill Clinton — and suffer no permanent negative
consequences at all. The contradiction is evident.
With this pattern
in mind, conservative commentators sometimes grasp the mantle of
victimhood. The hostile media are to blame for the destroyed lives,
they say.
Perhaps we
can learn a more important lesson. Again, take Mr. Eyman by way
of illustration. He has said, "The initiatives were always
about ideas, not about me." However, one of the ideas they
were about, as with so many conservative proposals and positions,
had to do with moral responsibility.
For what is
the purpose of reducing taxes or halting their growth? Eyman's opponents
charged that his initiatives would reduce services to the public,
especially to citizens in need. But Washington voters embraced I-695
and the rest not because we peevishly wanted to see library hours
reduced or teachers' salaries capped. We embraced them because we
share a vision of the public good that has as its focus private
individuals doing useful things with their own money, rather than
the government seizing that money and doing things that may or may
not be useful.
In other words,
even an issue like taxes that seems purely pragmatic poses the most
serious question that divides conservatism from liberalism: Is the
individual morally responsible, or is the state?
The lesson
is that conservatives are vulnerable to being destroyed by unethical
behavior because we emphasize personal moral responsibility.
A conservative with significant moral failings is shocking because
individual responsibility is the point of most everything we fight
for. After all, our way of seeing the world is derived ultimately
from Scripture. And the Bible phrases its commandments in the second-person
singular. Individuals, not states, are commanded to do right.
By contrast,
liberalism emphasizes state moral responsibility. In the liberal
understanding, it is the state that, for example, cares for the
needy. This, incidentally, has the attraction of letting individual
moral actors off the hook. Thus when a Clinton or a Jackson is discovered
to have cavorted with a mistress, the public cannot claim to be
shocked.
Just wait;
there will be other Tim Eymans, other conservatives ruined. Rather
than protest liberal media bias, however, when our heroes are brought
down by doubtful deeds we should accept the sad event as the cost
of believing what we do — of being right. That is, finally,
the morally responsible thing to do.
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