Traitors to Liberty: How some "Conservatives" are Betraying Conservatism
Filed under: Eastern Europe
I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action"; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a "more convenient season." Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.
-- Martin Luther King, Letter from Birmingham Jail, April 16, 1963
Martin Luther King's outrage at white moderates, implying they might be worse foes of liberty than the KKK, is readily understandable to those who struggle for the cause of liberty and democracy in Russia. Often times, it is those who claim to be "reasonable" and "moderate" on the subject who do by far the most harm.
On June 8, 1982, U.S. President Ronald Reagan rose before the British House of Commons and declared:
In an ironic sense Karl Marx was right. We are witnessing today a great revolutionary crisis, a crisis where the demands of the economic order are conflicting directly with those of the political order. But the crisis is happening not in the free, non-Marxist West but in the home of Marxism- Leninism, the Soviet Union. It is the Soviet Union that runs against the tide of history by denying human freedom and human dignity to its citizens. It also is in deep economic difficulty. The rate of growth in the national product has been steadily declining since the fifties and is less than half of what it was then. If history teaches anything, it teaches self-delusion in the face of unpleasant facts is folly. We see around us today the marks of our terrible dilemma--predictions of doomsday, antinuclear demonstrations, an arms race in which the West must, for its own protection, be an unwilling participant. At the same time we see totalitarian forces in the world who seek subversion and conflict around the globe to further their barbarous assault on the human spirit. What, then, is our course? Must civilization perish in a hail of fiery atoms? Must freedom wither in a quiet, deadening accommodation with totalitarian evil?
Less than a year later, Reagan told the National Association of Evangelicals
Yes, let us pray for the salvation of all of those who live in that totalitarian darkness - pray they will discover the joy of knowing God. But until they do, let us be aware that while they preach the supremacy of the state, declare its omnipotence over individual man, and predict its eventual domination of all peoples on the earth, they are the focus of evil in the modern world. So, I urge you to speak our against those who would place the United States in a position of military and moral inferiority. You know, I've always believed that old Screwtape reserved his best efforts for those of you in the church. So, in your discussions of the nuclear freeze proposals, I urge you to beware the temptation of pride - the temptation of blithely declaring yourselves above it all and label both sides equally at fault, to ignore the facts of history and the aggressive impulses of an evil empire, to simply call the arms race a giant misunderstanding and thereby remove yourself from the struggle between right and wrong and good and evil.
One cannot help but remark upon how closely these statements reflect today's Russia as well, and indeed, Reagan recognized two fundamental truths about the USSR that are equally true of today's Russia -- as we at Publius Pundit have been documenting for quite some time now, the evil empire Reagan's policies destroyed is being rebuilt at frightening speed.
Reagan's first truth was that the USSR was failing miserably. There are some truly crazed Russophiles and Russian nationalists who claim that Russia's current economic plight (a minimum wage of $0.25 per hour, an average wage of $2.50 an hour) was caused by the mismanagement of its transition to capitalism, or perhaps by capitalism itself. This is a blatant lie. The economic fortunes of the USSR were already in freefall as it attempted to keep pace with the U.S. in an massive arms race even while its levels of production plummeted, as pictures from that era clearly reveal. It was that very economic apocalypse that caused the USSR to disappear without a fight. Moreover, Communism was given nearly 75 years to prove itself; Russians gave their transitional form of pseudo-capitalism less than 10% as much time, and to date it has still never been governed by a true capitalist for even one minute. So blaming "capitalism" is doubly unjust.
Second, Reagan realized that it was both a moral and strategic imperative to oppose the USSR on every front since, unopposed, it would spread its "evil empire" throughout the world. In other words, even though it was failing, it was still very dangerous, and because it was failing the time was particularly ripe for action.
Today, a proud KGB spy governs Russia, having risen to power whilst Reagan's adversary the Democrats, governed, and by means of an election. Worse, Reagan's conservatism is being fundamentally betrayed by some who purport to act in the name of conservatism itself. Take for example a Seattle-based organization known as the Discovery Institute which claims to represent conservative positions and claims George Gilder as a prominent member. Operating a blog known as the "Real Russia Project," DI -- cooperating with state-owned Russian media conglomerate "Russia Today" -- is doing all it can to help resurrect the evil empire Reagan struggled so valiantly to defeat. Surely too, Republican President George Bush, who "looked into the eyes" proud KGB spy Vladimir Putin and found him trustworthy, is culpable as well in opening the door for actions of this kind (under Bush, the conservatives have lost their legislative majority, just as liberal legislators suffered under Bill Clinton).
RRP's plan of action, just as in Soviet times, is to spew forth undocumented propaganda in the hopes of once again lowering the world's blinders where Russia is concerned (even as "President" Vladimir Putin does exactly the same thing within Russia itself). On March 29th, for instance, RRP published a post written by a Russophile propagandist named Jon Hellevig, who was identified as "a Finnish citizen currently practicing business law in Moscow" and "co-author of Avenir Guide to Russian Taxes and Expressions and Interpretations discussing Russia's social development from the viewpoint of philosophy and philosophy of law."
In other words, Hellevig has a vested interest in making foreigners think Russia is a good investment bet; he makes money when they pump cash into the country. His firm is called Helevig, Klein & Usov and their banner on his website states: "Attorneys at law for business in Russia." Apparently the firm is a subsidiary of a corporation called Avenir, and much of the "data" Hellevig reports in his article is taken (allegedly, with no links to the source material) from material generated by Avenir (obviously for sales purposes), a company devoted to promoting foreign business in Russia. Thus, he's only too happy to supply RRP with a steady stream of Russophile propaganda.
Trumpeting what he considers the great economic progress achieved by Putin, Hellevig wrote:
At the heart of the reforms lies the classical liberal tax theory according to which lower taxes translates into increased tax revenues. Therefore, it is an interesting historic irony that Russia, a country where the socialist creed reigned strong still very recently, has now been converted into the international showcase of economic liberalism. In America President Ronald Reagan and his supporters were known for campaigning for such tax policies, but it is Putin's Russia that has actually implemented them. Hardly could Reagan have even dreamt of such measures as Putin's 13% flat income tax rate. Fair to say that never before has there been such a dramatic and speedy shift from socialist tax policies to classical liberalism, and hardly could the results be any more impressive.
A gigantic picture of Reagan standing before a huge American flag accompanied the statements. But no evidence whatsoever is presented in the text that tax revenues have risen in Russia because of the flat tax, much less that any economic growth has been produced as the result. (It's hard to imagine how there could be any such evidence, since the Kremlin's data can never be considered reliable as long as it is run by a proud KGB spy.) In fact, in Hellevig's entire 3,000-word article, there is not one single hyperlink to specific source material that readers can judge for themselves. This is a hallmark of the shoddy quality of reporting RRP regularly churns out, and it is perhaps not surprising, since the individual selected by DI to run RRP, one Yuri Mamchur, is a person of highly murky educational background. What's known is that he graduated from a "law school" which had only just been formed and was attached to a "tax academy" owned and operated by the Russian government, and that almost no specific information about the law school is available on the tax academy's website. After a few months working as "lawyer" Mamchur gave up the "law" and became a musician, following which he decided to travel the world, ended up in Seattle and got hired by DI. Russia Blog routinely spews forth propagandistic statements about the Kremlin while having no regard for sourcing, scholarship or truth, as La Russophobe has documented. They even went so far as to claim, totally falsely, that Russia had a film nominated for an Oscar last year, while trying to hype a private screening of the film on their premises to generate revenue (and, if you can believe it, trying to insinuate their own review of that film into the local tabloid weekly).
In other words, Hellevig is simply grabbing a key conservative buzzword, "flat tax," and using it like a hypnotist uses a swinging watch to befuddle unwary right-wingers into supporting the Putin regime, so he can thereby profit. Can you imagine Ronald Reagan saying that we should support Yuri Andropov because, no matter his ICBMs or gulags, he supports the flat tax (or prayer in schools)? Even if the Russian tax scheme had been successful, of course, the idea that Ronald Reagan would somehow approve of Russia being governed by a proud KGB spy is as ludicrous as suggesting that he would have approved of the USSR if it had been posting good economic numbers. In fact, exactly the opposite is the case. Had the USSR been an economic juggernaut, Reagan would only have found it that much more imperative to confront it. Hellevig, however, in the manner of Chamberlain, suggests that we should not only cooperate with but admire this budding dictatorship.
Hellevig then launches himself upon an absurd series of wild mischaracterizations about the Russian economy which are not only false but totally irrelevant to the question of taxation even if true. He states for instance: "The Russian GDP in dollar terms has increased fivefold during Putin's term from 2000 to 2006." He gives no specific source for this statement, referring only to the website of Deutsche Bank, and it is an outrageous lie. According to the World Bank, as reported by Reuters, in 2000 Russia's GDP was roughly $260 billion, and in 2006 it was roughly $760 billion (the 2006 figure is roughly the same as that given by the CIA). In other words, GDP increased not by a factor of five but by a factor of less than three. And, in the end, all such figures are mere estimates based on numbers generated by the Kremlin itself, which is infamous for its lies and run by a proud KGB spy -- in other words, they're undoubtedly too rosy.
How does Hellevig try to support his ridiculous claim of fivefold increase? He relies on unsourced per capita GDP figures which use GDP data different from that relied upon by the World Bank and which totally ignore Russia's plummeting population. If Russia's economy stays the same size (chiefly because the amount of oil produced remains the same and the price of oil skyrockets) and its population falls, then per capita GDP figures will of course rise. Russia loses up to 1 million people from its population each year. During the first five years of the Putin administration, Russia's average adult life expectancy decreased from 66.1 to 65.2 years (as reported by Reuters, citing the United Nations). Russia's UN human development score fell from 60 in 2000 to 65 in 2004. Its corruption score fell from 82 to 121 (as reported by Reuters, citing Transparency International). Millions of people were lost from the population, yet the price of oil skyrocketed, filling Russia's state coffers with cash and papering over the utter failure of the Putin regime.
What does Hellevig have to say about Russia's oil revenues? He says this:
The critics of Russia argue that the economic upsurge is exclusively "oil-driven", that Russia simply enjoys "windfall revenues" from export of oil, gas and raw materials buoyed by surging world market prices. These anti-evolutionist critics of Putin's reforms forget that the raw materials have been on Russian soil for ever, but it is only now under Putin's leadership that they bring unprecedented growth and prosperity to the country. Putin did not create the raw materials; he created the conditions for a democratic market economy that can make use of the natural resources to fuel the economy. It is through consistent and well-thought-out economic and social reforms and the strengthening of statehood that the economy has taken off. Therefore when we put aside all the maneuvers to paint Russia in black we will be reminded that during Putin's presidency Russia has been put on right track with a solid foundation for a competitive democratic market economy.
In other words, utter gibberish and a pathetic smokescreen. Does he really think anyone could be fooled by such empty rhetoric, totally devoid of substance? Well, how long were we fooled by Soviet propaganda? Russia's oil production is a constant, it has not dramatically increased under Putin. The price of oil has risen stratospherically on world markets, and Putin had absolutely nothing to do with that. There is not one single shred of evidence cited in Hellevig's article that Russia's oil revenues are larger because of Putin. Putin has no legitimate academic credentials in market economics (his PhD thesis was famously plagiarized) and no experience whatsoever in the world of capitalism before becoming prime minister, much less any knowledge of the oil industry. He was a career spy and then a functionary of the local government in St. Petersburg. It's simply hallucinogenic to suggest that he miraculously came up with polices that brought economic boom times to Russia
Hellevig states that Russia has the lowest income tax rate on an income of $30,000 in Europe, 13%, with the highest being Belgium at 40%, again relying on unspecified data (this time from his own firm). He ignores the fact that the number of people with incomes of $30,000 in Russia is utterly miniscule compared to the number of such people in Belgium. An income of $30,000 is six times the national average in Russia, equivalent to an income of $180,000 in the United States. In other words, his point is actually that Russia taxes its rich at a lower rate than Belgium taxes its middle class. He makes this point because to talk about the average Russian income would be humiliating: Belgium has an exemption from taxes on income below $6,000. Its tax rate on that much income is zero, meaning Russia's regressive flat tax of 13% on all incomes would be 13 times higher than Belgium's. Despite having such high tax rate on marginal income, Belgium ranks #17 on the Heritage Foundation's Index of Economic Freedom, which measures and ranks 161 countries across 10 specific freedoms, things like tax rates and property rights. Russia, despite having such an allegedly low one and despite having a flat tax system of which the conservative Heritage people are enamored, ranks #121 on the Index.
In a truly bizarre flight of fancy, Hellevig claims that since Russia has a 13% flat tax on income, this proves it is free society. He states: "Clearly when the tax burden is less, then there is more personal discretion on how to use one's income and, for example, how to secure the supply of information. Today Russians have a wide choice in this respect. When tired of Russian television they can e.g. choose from international satellite channels, from CNN to Sky Channel, all serving Russia with the best truth that money can buy." Hellvig makes not the slightest effort to establish how many Russians can afford satellite television or what the audient of CNN in Russia is. Working for an average hourly wage of $2.50,it's unlikely that the numbers are very large. A person with an average salary of $400 per month, $4,800 per year, is not a likely candidate for a satellite television system (or the foreign language skills necessary to understand it) -- especially not when Russia's double-digit consumer price inflation is factored in. Hellevig chooses to ignore, of course, the fundamentally corrupt manner in which the Russian tax system is enforced, up to and including its use to jail presidential contender Mikhail Khodorkovsky in a rigged criminal trial. He has to ignore that, of course, because if he tried to argue that although Russia's tax system crushes the poor, it would be a great idea for the rich to move there, then they'd remember how easy it would be for them to get arrested and thrown in prison. Study after study after study has documented that Russians are becoming less free and less humane with each year that passes, not more. Hellevig simply ignores them all, just like propagandist he is.
His point about tax rates, apparently, is that rich people should consider moving to Russia. This ignores, for instance, the fact that Moscow is the world's most expensive city and yet it has one of the world's lowest standards of living among major cities, for instance ranking 201 out of 215 major cities surveyed for health and sanitation. Brussels, much less expensive than Moscow, Belgium was #14. Is it worthwhile to a rich person to live in filth and disease so as to reduce your tax burden from 40% to 13%? The the average lifespan for men and women combined is 14 years shorter in Russia than the European average. Would you trade 14 years for 27% less in tax payments? And how about factoring in the possibility that you'll end up like rich man Mikhail Khodorkovsky, cooling your heels indefinitely in Siberia? How does relocation to Russia look now?
Even if the Russian flat tax system was producing more revenues than under a progressive system, and even if it, rather than the price of oil, were responsible for recent increases in Russian GDP, Hellevig's propaganda would still be entirely bogus. In a really great year, Russia might have 8% GDP growth. Let's say it's all due to the miraculous liberal tax policies of Putin the spy. On a base of $750 billion, that's $60 billion in growth. Russia has 140 million people. If you divide that sum of $60 billion equally among them, you get a paltry sum of $425 per person per year, or $1.75 per person per day. Only a sociopath, a true hater of the Russian people, could consider that an indication of prosperity that justifies retaining the current administration. Just 2% GDP growth on America's base of $12 trillion produces $240 billion -- four times as much money in total and twice as much per capita as Russia gets from eight times more growth.
And finally, Hellevig totally ignores that Russia's GDP growth never gets close to being equally divided among the citizens. Russia is famous for having massive societal corruption and a tiny clan of superrich oligarchs who gobble up the nation's wealth and leave nothing but crumbs for the commoners. That's why Russia is a world leader in both billionaires and beggars. Their poverty explains why they are dying off so rapidly; despite record waves of immigration as Slavs return to Russia from the far corners of the Soviet empire, Russia still loses up to 1 million from its population every year. This situation, polarized wealth, is exactly what prevailed in Russia 100 years ago and led to the Bolshevik Revolution. In the name of Ronald Reagan, this madman is actually baiting the return of communism to compliment Russia's already established neo-Soviet dictatorship. And all so he can line his pockets for a while!
Perhaps Hellevig's most outrageous statement, though, is reserved for his attack on the United States. He writes: "We can also compare the Russian GDP as a share of e.g. of the USA figure, and see how fast Russia is closing the gap. The Russian GDP per capita which still in 2000 was 1/20 of the US level is today 1/7, and according to the purchasing parity figure approximately 1/3 of the US level." In fact, during the 2000-2005 period described above during which Russia added $500 billion to its GDP, the U.S. GDP soared from $9.7 trillion to $12.5 trillion, adding nearly $3 trillion in value according to the World Bank's data as reported by Reuters. In other words, the U.S. added six times more value to its GDP than Russia during the same period. In 2000, according to the World Bank data, the gap between Russia's GDP and Ameria's was roughly $9.5 trillion. Today, that gap stands at over $11 trillion. In other words, the gap between America and Russia has dramatically widened, not narrowed. On a per capita basis, according to the World Bank, the gap between America and Russia in 2000 was $32,700; today, it stands at $39,700. Here again, the gap has significantly widened, not narrowed. And this ignores the impact of inflation. During this same period, America averaged 2.25% consumer price inflation, while Russia's rate was nearly ten times higher, 20.5%. Hellevig, again, simply ignores this fact. One must give him credit for, if nothing else, being such an apt student of Soviet propaganda techniques.
In short, the Evil Empire is on the way back, and traitors to Western values like Hellevig are rushing to assist the process, just as other such persons rushed to assist the Bolsheviks. They may paint themselves as moderates and, who knows they may even be moderates. But Martin Luther King knew that with moderates like those, democracy doesn't need any fanatics. They act in the name of conservatism, and conservatives should be the most outraged by their actions. Their efforts are just as dangerous to conservatism as any threat from the left because they are undertaken in the name of conservatism. If Reagan knows what they are up to, including invoking his hallowed name to justify their malignant pursuits, he is surely spinning in his grave. Is America really going to take advice on how to deal with Russia from a Russian citizen "educated" in a school operated by the Russian government? Is it even remotely possible he's speaking in our best interests?
We need a new Ronald Reagan to champion our cause and seize back his name from these charlatans. The presidential race is brewing. Nominations?
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