The Latent Authoritarianism of Marco Rubio's Moral Politics
In a recent speech at Catholic University, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) engaged in much despondent handwringing over the country’s frayed social fabric. He blamed, in a fashion increasingly in-vogue in a Republican party increasingly enthralled to populist sentiment, private business’ supposed preoccupation with profit. Like so many preening politicians, Rubio wrapped himself in the mantle of middle America, at once both championing and cajoling the people whose interests and actions he has decided to embody.
America—and his party in particular—have “neglected the obligation of businesses to act also in the best interest of the workers and ultimately of the country that have made that success possible.” lectured Rubio.
Rubio is certainly not the first politician to invoke intransigence as an impediment to progress and infuse in the undertone of his speech a nasty insinuation about the intentions of objectors to his view. Nor is there anything original in his argument.
Rubio’s tone is rosy and optimistic, but this sentiment is riven through with authoritarianism. Is the best interest of an auto worker in Michigan the same best interest as a worked in a chintzy Boston boutique? Common sense says no. Yet Rubio attaches centralized policy decisions to welfare by invoking the idea that the country makes success possible. And centralized decision making does not admit pluralism; it is one-size fits all.
But the private sector, which Rubio is so quick to criticize, operates on a completely different set of principles than does government. In the public sector, ultimately only one viewpoint prevails. Public policy validates a particular way of thinking. It imbues a permanent sense of moral superiority to it by backing it up with the supreme force of the land, at the same time excluding all others.
The private sector, however, allows people of divergent opinions to pursue their ideas side-by-side. Private consumers may choose to shop at the mom-and-pop corner store or the big box. Even within the same store, consumers have the options of competing brands and can make the purchasing decisions that best benefit their families without infringing on the ability of their neighbors to do the same. Certainly, different choices breed different outcomes: the grocery bill of a family that exclusively purchases budget store brands will be lower than a family that favors organic goods. But because these outcomes are ultimately the result of freely-chosen autonomous actions, it would be hard to call this injustice in the same way that the disparate impact of a law imposed from above has on different communities can be called unjust.
Yet, it is precisely this latter kind of injustice Rubio’s macro ideology would generate. Individual choices, made in accordance with disparate scales of value-judgments, determine the degree of success different businesses have.
This is something Rubio misses in posing the incredibly inane question, “our country exist to serve the interests of the market? Or does the market exist to serve the interest of our nation?”
The answer, of course, is neither. The rosy spirit of collective cooperation that Rubio invokes is pure fantasy. If we might all just come together in agreeance, he suggests, everyone would benefit. But a country does not make success possible: the most liberal and deregulated space in the world will not produce an entrepreneurial Eden. It takes individuals, acting in accordance with their talent and judgment, to succeed in business. Even a whiz at economics will not go far unless he possesses an idea and a product capable of recognizing the brilliance and utility of it. The market reflects the collective judgment of the people who make it up. But the collectivism of the market is a vastly different collectivism of Rubio’s position. Rubio collapses the sum total of the American citizenry into a singular entity, whose voice he unilaterally makes synonymous to his own. The collectivism of the market allows individuals to retain their autonomy, for it expresses diverse choices: the earnings of one company fall as another rise because a confluence of individuals have decided one product is more deserving of another.
The market exists to serve the interests of the individuals who chose to participate in it. The country exists not to serve the interests of any one group of citizens but to protects the rights of its citizens.
Sadly, politicians like Rubio have lost sight of this. But the rise of preening politicians like Rubio was presage. Rubio is the embodiment of the specter cast by Barry Goldwater who, in an address on the Senate floor, bemoaned the rise of politicians eager to tie political ideology to moral righteousness and to force “government leaders into following their positions 100 percent.” Goldwater was speaking specifically of the surge of the religious right in the 1980s, but the thrust of his argument holds true regardless.
“I, too,” said Goldwater, “believe that we American should return to our traditional values concerning morality, family closeness, self-reliance, and a day’s work for pay. These are the values our forebears clung to as they built this Nation into the citadel of freedom it is today…And I am frankly sick and tired of the political preachers across this country telling me as a citizen that if I want to be a moral person, I must believe in “A”, “B”, “C”, and “D”. Just who do they think they are? And from where do they presume to claim the right to dictate their moral beliefs to me?”
Goldwater might well be speaking directly to Rubio. Rubio, like many of his brethren in Congress, has forgotten that he is not a pundit but a public servant: subservient to the will of his constituents, not a driver of that will. His job is not to dictate to the citizenry of America how they ought to behave for the benefit of all, but to preserve a private sector wherein they have the freedom to act in a way that promotes their interests and their morals.
Rubio seems preoccupied with advancing the public interest, but by tying his beliefs to that interest, he promotes a hardline belief that insinuates any who disagree with him are lacking in a general benevolence towards their fellow man, which narrows the public space for public debate.
As Goldwater bemoaned, “This unrelenting obsession with a particular goal destroys the perspective of many decent people with whom I think I agree on most issues. In the quest for moral righteousness they have become easy prey to manipulation and misjudgment.”