digamma.net - notes

In the comments to a typically provocative Chris Bertram post on global warming, someone named Dan Hardie writes:

Further to dsquared’s point, as I understand it one big reason that fuel-inefficient cars are so popular in the US are that US fuel taxes are nowhere near European levels. And I see little prospect of that changing give the disproportionate Senate representation low-population-density, and thus high-car-use, rural states. Of course, a modest fuel tax increase- presented, with good reason, as a measure necessary to enhance national security- might well have been acceptable in the crisis atmostphere of September 2001. But we’ll never know now…

This isn’t the first time I’ve seen a variation on this idea - you can see some of it at the end of this post from Mark Zipkin. The general idea is that my favorite unpopular policy could have passed if only the government had used 9/11 to justify it in the attacks’ immediate aftermath.
That is so evil.*
The government DID take advantage of the 9/11 aftermath to get its favorite legislation passed. In the Patriot Act, the FBI got everything on their Christmas list that they didn’t get after Oklahoma City. Big Labor got a piece of every airport security employee in the country. Every state in the union got pointless pork projects paid for out of Homeland Security money. Best of all, we got to see a bunch of cool explosions as we retaliated against a country which had nothing to do with the attacks, but which the administration had been meaning to get around to one of those days.

I suppose it would have been nice to see Bush on television that week saying, “My fellow Americans, our policies must now change in the wake of these attacks. We will no longer prop up fundamentalist terror-supporting regimes like Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. We’re not going to topple them, but from here on, they must defend themselves without our help. We will no longer pursue a quest for drug prohibition that drives massive profits into the hands of terrorists. Our farm subsidies create poverty in the third world, increasing the popularity of anti-American demagogues, and must be ended. And in all these policy initiatives, you’re either with us or against us.”

But those were my favorite policies on September 10th, too. And if I couldn’t get them passed then, getting them pushed through the next day because of fear would be wrong. Likewise, if you think 9/11 was a great opportunity to get single-payer healthcare in the United States, or something, you’re probably right. But that doesn’t make it a good idea. Because if you can do it, the other guys can too.

* I have just been disinvited from Mark’s party next weekend.