July 20, 2025

by Stephen Stofka

Sunday morning and another breakfast with the boys as they discuss world events and persistent problems. The conversations are voiced by Abel, a Wilsonian with a faith that government can ameliorate social and economic injustices to improve society’s welfare, and Cain, who believes that individual autonomy, the free market and the price system promote the greatest good.

Abel stirred an ice chip into his coffee. “Last week you were criticizing the childish behavior of this administration. This week we saw another example of petty vindictiveness when Trump pushed Congress to claw back $8 billion from foreign aid and $1 billion from PBS and NPR. I mean, that’s a drop in the bucket compared to the spending and deficits in the Big Bogus bill passed two weeks ago.”

Cain nodded. “I was reading that there hasn’t been a rescission bill passed since 2000 (Source). Anyway, conservatives have complained about public funding of liberal media for decades. In the 1980s, the Reagan Administration ended the fairness doctrine so that radio and TV stations did not have to present both sides of a political issue. Rush Limbaugh started a nationally syndicated AM radio talk show and used to complain that public radio and TV stations were funded by taxpayer money.”

Abel argued, “I always thought public radio tried to be objective in its presentation.”

Cain laughed. “Objective is a matter of political perspective, I suppose. Rush was the angry white guy protesting the liberal policies passed during the sixties and seventies. He got a lot of mileage out of anger and protest. In a sense, he’s the spiritual father of Donald Trump.”

Abel looked surprised. “You keep using the word ‘was.’ Did he die or is he off the air?”

Cain replied, “He died a month after the January 6^th protests. His audience hated Democratic policies and liked conspiracies, so he promoted them. He questioned Obama’s birth as an American citizen. He promoted Trump’s election conspiracies. He made a lot of money and won a lot of converts to the Republican Party (Source).

Abel waited as their server laid the plates of food on the table. “So that was Rush. Kind of a shock jock for the conservative media. I take it he wasn’t alone.”

Cain asked, “You ever listen to AM talk radio?”

Abel shook his head. “Not in a long time. Sometimes when I’m on the road, that’s the only thing on the radio. Bible preachers and such. Too many commercials.”

Cain shrugged. “Well, there  you go. Lefties like NPR get funded by taxpayer dollars. Righties have to sell advertising. Is that fair?”

Abel smirked. “Like I said, NPR seems fairly neutral to me, like the news is supposed to be.”

Cain asked, “You think so? The attack on the U.S. Embassy in Benghazi just before the 2012 election. How much coverage did NPR and the mainstream media give that? Conservative media gave it a lot of air time (Source). A House Intelligence Report found that there were a number of administrative failures to recognize the risks and provide resources to protect embassy personnel (Source).”

Abel argued, “But there was no intentional coverup by Clinton, Obama or Susan Rice. I mean this was mostly a partisan political attack on a Democratic administration. It wasn’t objective news reporting. It was a smear job by Fox News and other conservative media.”

Cain argued, “Look, everyone’s trying to direct the narrative. That includes the political parties, the media, think tanks, you name it. When a media channel like NPR says they are objective, they are helping to direct the narrative. When NPR claims to be objective or neutral, they want to raise doubts about the reputation of another outlet. Of course, the other outlet does the same.”

Abel argued, “Oh, come on. This all started with alternative media outlets like Fox News disparaging mainstream news channels like NBC, ABC, CBS and PBS. They were the new guy in town who criticized the established players.”

Cain shook his head, “The major players were an oligopoly created by lawmakers. It wasn’t until the early 1960s that Congress mandated that manufacturers of TV sets include a receiver capable of receiving UHF signals (Source). Until then, people could only get the ‘Big Three’ on their TV sets in most markets. It was a public private partnership in which the government controlled access to news. Sure, Fox News had to distinguish themselves to compete with that oligopoly.”

Abel asked, “Ok, so when did Fox News start?”

Cain replied, “About the same time as Rush Limbaugh. Mid to late 1980s or so.”

Abel said, “So that’s the birth of conservative media. When Reagan ended the fairness doctrine.”

Cain shrugged. “Well, the networks were glad to see it end. They had trouble following the policy. Broadcasters were supposed to present a balanced view on controversial subject. Advocacy groups claimed that they were not given enough time, blah, blah, blah.”

Abel asked, “How did the fairness doctrine ever survive a First Amendment challenge?”

Cain smiled. “In 1969, the Supreme Court decided that the broadcast spectrum was a limited resource and the free speech rights of listeners were more important than the rights of broadcasters (Source). It was a unanimous decision too. It’s kind of ironic that the decision came down in the same year that Nixon hid a lot of information from the press and public as he prepared to invade Cambodia (Source).

Abel put his coffee cup down. “I just see this rescission bill as part of a broader attempt to undo all the compassionate reforms of the past decades.”

Cain smiled. “You mean liberal reforms, right?”

Abel argued, “They were liberal and compassionate. Why take away funding for global health initiatives?”

Cain replied, “Trump wanted to loosen pandemic restrictions a few weeks after his own administration initiated them in March 2020. He claimed that the pandemic was over and he didn’t like some of the criticisms from international health organizations, including the CDC. He halted funding the WHO (Source).”

Abel sighed, “And Trump is like the elephant that never forgets. I just think he’s coming after every other program that he thinks are Democratic policies. Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, whatever. He has little if any compassion for people.”

Cain nodded. “In this second term, he’s surrounded himself with people who believe that Democrats have controlled the narrative for too long. They believe they are taking back the country, so to speak.”

Abel smirked. “When Republicans enact legislation, they claim it is a public mandate. When Democrats pass legislation, Republicans claim that these are party priorities rather than the will of the people. You can’t have it both ways.”  

Cain argued, “You’re missing the point. We talked about this last week. Yes, the Democrats had public support when they passed all that legislation. But the entitlement programs they passed were designed to enact Democratic priorities even when the party no longer had public support. This is not how a democracy works. The Democrats constructed a legislative monarchy, and a core group of Republicans have wanted to overthrow that monarchy for decades.”

Abel shook his head. “Come on, gimme a break. Republicans were the driving force of some of the Great Society legislation. Less than 10% of Democratic Congressional members in the southern states voted for the Civil Rights Act in 1964 (Source). An equal number of Democrats and Republican House members voted for the Fair Housing Act in 1968 (Source).”

Cain replied, “Ok, I’ll give you that. Most of the southern Democrats were a bunch of racists.”

Abel nodded. “Yeah, that’s the legacy of the civil war we’ve talked about. Anyway, Democrats had a big majority when they passed Medicare and Medicaid in 1965. But the Democrats had overwhelming support for these programs. In sixty years, the elderly population had grown from three million to almost eighteen million and many were unable to get proper health care (Source). The yes votes on that legislation represented three-quarters of the country’s population (Source). In the House, half of Republicans voted for the bill (Source). That’s a convincing mandate. Compare that mandate with the recent passage of the Big Bogus Bill.”

Cain argued, “Let me go back to the southern states. The no votes on civil rights legislation came from the deep south, the former confederate states. My point is that the Civil War was not over in the 1960s and it is not over now. After the 1960s, the Republicans adopted a Southern Strategy to appeal to that opposition and today they control both chambers in most of those states (Source). Since the founding, this has been a divided country. The Jeffersonian view of decentralized power versus the Hamiltonian view of a strong central government. The Civil War unified the country’s political and legal structure, but not its sentiments or allegiances.”

Abel asked, “So this version of the Republican Party headed by Donald Trump is going to try and undo all the social programs of the past sixty years? Is that the goal? To eradicate compassion?”

Cain replied, “Does that legislation really care about people? No. In the case of Medicare, it takes from the young and gives to the old. In the case of Medicaid, it takes from families with private insurance in the form of higher premiums and gives to families who don’t have private insurance. That’s not caring. It’s a political strategy. You want caring? Set up a charity to fund Medicaid. Maybe offer a tax break. Help out your neighbor kind of thing.”

Abel smirked. “That’s not practical. Medicaid’s budget is a trillion dollars. I don’t think that a charity would attract enough funding.”

Cain agreed. “You may be right. But it will demonstrate whether people do care about their less fortunate neighbors.”

Abel argued, “If people did care enough, we wouldn’t need these programs in the first place. After the tax cut legislation in 2017, charitable giving declined by a third, according to the Tax Policy Center (Source). The truth is that people are more inclined to buy something for their own family than some family they don’t know.”

Cain shrugged. “See, that’s the heart of the debate. It’s Democrats who have a cynical attitude toward the human spirit. They believe that people are selfish, mean and nasty at heart so government needs to force people to be charitable.”

Abel rolled his eyes. “It’s not a cynical attitude toward the human spirit, as you called it. Geez, when we live in densely populated areas, most people that we encounter in a day are strangers. Yes, it’s harder to feel the same compassion for a stranger as it is a family member or strong acquaintance. Your favorite author, Adam Smith, made that point. Democrats recognize that government is a coordinating mechanism. It facilitates the general welfare by shifting resources within a dense group of people who are strangers.”

Cain sighed. “Now we are coming back to this eternal disagreement on the distinction between the common welfare and the general welfare. Look, I have no problems with New York City acting as a government charity. I object to the federal government doing that.”

Abel argued, “I know we’ve talked about this general welfare thing before but I noticed that the first lines of the Constitution mention the ‘common defense’ and ‘general welfare.’ You always argue that the founders meant the common welfare, matters that were common to all the states. But the founders didn’t use the word ‘common’ next to welfare. They wrote ‘general.’ Clearly, they meant a welfare that was more expansive than what you and other libertarians think it should be.”

Cain nodded. “Maybe. They might have regarded the two words as synonyms.”

Abel shook his head. “No, we know that they argued about it. Madison thought that the general welfare clause was antithetical to the clearly defined responsibilities specified in Article 1, Section 8.”

Cain argued, “That’s my point. Governments can do no more than take from some and give to others. The states were adamant that they be treated equally when the Constitution was written. That’s why they compromised on the two different forms of representation in the House and Senate. Under these Democratic social programs, the states are not treated equally. The federal government takes a lot from the wealthier states and gives it to the poor states. That is contrary to the spirit of the Constitution.”

Abel replied, “Look, programs of compassion need a central administration. Otherwise people will more likely move to states with better social programs. Let’s say that New York offered universal health care and New Jersey didn’t. A lot of people might move to New York when they had serious health problems and it would overwhelm the system. Health care needs to be a federal program.”

Cain shook his head. “All these big social programs give too much power to the federal government. For that reason alone, they have to be dismantled no matter how much good they do.”

Abel sighed as he laid his napkin on the table. “I don’t understand this obsession you have with central power. In a dynamic society like ours with a growing population there needs to be a large coordinating agency like the federal government.”

Cain argued, “The reason why we have a dynamic economy is because there is no central coordinating agency. The collapse of the Soviet Union and the slow growth of European countries demonstrates that central planning does not work.”

Abel slid out of his seat. “We keep getting stuck on this point, I think. I’ve got to get going.”

Cain looked up at Abel. “Like I said before, the argument between centralized and distributed power and responsibility has been going on since the founding.”

Abel nodded. “Maybe something to discuss next week. I’ll see you then.”

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Image by ChatGPT