ON SATIRE

Here's a non-satirical reminder for John Derbyshire: satire is supposed to highlight the grotesque nature of certain views in order to induce thoughtful members of the audience to change those views. No one thinks that Swift really thought people should eat Irish babies, or even do them much harm at all; in fact, the point was that English policies were harmful to Ireland and that people should change them fundamentally.

Derbyshire gets it half right, from at least a certain perspective. He wants tougher immigration policies, tougher policies against gays and lesbians, tougher policies against China, less regulation and lower taxes, so his satirical piece in favor of abolishing Congress is partly an attempt to shame Congress into taking power away from the executive and the judiciary, or perhaps, in his view, re-taking them.

But Derbyshire's argument breaks down when he writes the following:

Hold on there, Derb, I hear you murmuring. Aren't you going a bit too far here? After all, Congress does make laws, you know. And we do need laws, don't we?

We certainly do. However, you should entertain the possibility that we already have all the laws we need, and that the republic would probably get along just fine if no new laws were passed for a few years. Twenty years ago we had several hundred less federal laws than we have now. I suppose that in some ways we were worse off in 1984; but things weren't bad.

Astute readers will note the Reagan-esque disdain for federal governing institutions that undergird this argument. Is that strand of Republican argument also part of the satire? I doubt it. Derb lets the mask slip a bit here, and the satire suffers.

It's time to realize that the Reagan revolution in american conservatism was a dangerous affair precisely because it blamed government -- Congress included -- for the nation's problems. Grover Norquist is the apotheosis of this transformation. The folks at the Corner are a little embarrassed by Norquist nowadays, since the Bush administration has attempted to argue that cuts in defense are a Democratic idea. But the problem is that the "starve the beast" mentality is part of the heritage of Reaganism, a close cousin of the "hamstring Congress" view to which Derbyshire clings, albeit ambiguously and under the guise of an attempt at satire. (For less ambiguous clinging, go here.) It's as if he were to write, "you don't have to eat all of the babies, just the really fat ones," and hope that his readers would actually agree. Very funny indeed.