I was reading this Salon article about the chaos in Iraq and how the terrible planning of the neocons in the White House made this quagmire possible.

Then my mind wandered back to that O’Reilly-Franken-Ivins forum (which you can download here in mp3 format). What, I hear you cry, could the connection possibly be? Here, let’s start off with the quote by Bill O’Reilly that keeps repeating in my head:

Bill O’Reilly: The difference between Ms. Ivins and myself is that I don’t think the government can help you all that much in your life, all right? I don’t believe that all the big government programs, that are set up to benefit the folks, most of them never get to the folks. I was a high school teacher, I know where the money goes, it doesn’t go to the kids. You want more money? fine. It ain’t going to the kids. It’s discipline, it’s structure, it’s paying the teachers a better wage, it’s training the teachers better, all of those things. So, I see the world as a world that self-reliance matters. That’s what should be taught, all right? That’s where I’m coming from. You know, we talk about the tax and the deficit, well, you know, the left now is screaming, the deficit, the deficit, the deficit, I’m looking at them going, look, you guys are driving the big government programs ever since the Great Society of 1964. I mean, those are massive spending programs, many of which failed dismally, and the corruption, here in California, for example, in the MediCal program, is astronomical. It’s a giant waste. Safety net yes, nanny state, no. All right? And I don’t believe in income redistribution, all right, I don’t believe in taking money from me, all right, who started out–[garbled interruptions]– who started out with nothing, all right, and then giving somebody else, and then not regulating what that person does with it…

We see here that O’Reilly is staking out a classic American conservative vision–taxes are fundamentally, philosophically illegitimate and that government programs are intrinsically wasteful and unnecessary.

This kind of thinking is wilfully naive. Whenever people say something like this, the first thought that pops into my head is, “have you ever lived in a country that doesn’t have a government?” Only softies who live in governed countries could possibly take for granted the idea of government’s necessity (and the corresponding necessity of taxes).

The thing is, we know O’Reilly doesn’t fully believe his own bullshit. He condemns big government spending programs and throwing money at problems, yet in the same rant he says we should pay teachers more, provide them with more training, and establish a “safety net” (The key to unlocking this self-contradiction, I believe, is that the only thing he really means is, “I don’t believe in taking money from me.” Not in my backyard and neither in my checkbook!).

What does this all have to do with Iraq, I hear you cry? Reports on life in Iraq now do sound terrible; violent crime, riots, looting, no water, no electricity, massive unemployment, foreign companies coming in to take oil profits, etc. But you could easily put a positive conservative spin on it–this is a country with no taxes, no economic regulations, and the overwhelming majority of families own firearms (as mandated by old Ba’ath party policy). Fundamentalist religious influence on politics has never been greater.

The U.S. is doing its part, too–I call it blitzkrieg privatization. Since Saddam’s corrupt Ba’ath state basically ran everything, the fall of the government has resulted in chaos and disruption of previously state-owned utilities and oil fields. But don’t worry, American private enterprise will be airlifted in on a white helicopter soon.