Obama Administration Scandals and the Danger of Cynicism

by Bruce Frohnen

Some conservatives, and our libertarian friends in particular, have been rather enjoying hearing about recent Obama Administration scandals. I would not begrudge anyone a certain amount of perverse pleasure in the discomforts of an administration that has been seeking to undermine our culture, way of life, and economic freedom since day one. But I honestly do not think these scandals are good news for our nation, let alone that they should lead us to believe that we will see any political, economic, or cultural improvements in their aftermath. Here I am thinking in particular of Greg Gutfeld’s enjoyable post. Gutfeld argues that “The IRS scandal, if perceived correctly, spells the end of big government.” How so?  Because, according to Gutfeld, it exposes the IRS as an ideologically biased, arrogant bully. By extension, apparently, big government has been shown to depend on thuggish minions and to be serving its own ends, rather than those of the people. For Gutfeld, the true victory in the IRS scandal is that big government is exposed as the untrustworthy, selfish beast that it is.

Would that it were so. It would seem logical that people would cease to look for favors from someone (or something) that keeps constant tabs on them, abuses its power for its own reasons—and, of course, wastes huge amounts of money on needless, even harmful projects. But nothing in our experience, or that of any other nation, should lead us to believe that this will actually happen. The mainstream press’ response to the most recent scandal, regarding “data mining” of our phone records, is more common and to be expected, namely, “so what?” A few civil libertarians are upset at the Obama Administration’s secret collection of data on Americans, but most have assumed all along that governments snoop on their people, and the press is all-too-willing to give a snooper of its own ideological predilections a pass on “information gathering.”

What these scandals are producing, what these kinds of scandals have been producing for many decades, is cynicism. And cynicism does not breed righteous indignation, demands for justice, or even a prudent aversion to petitioning the government for favors. Rather, cynicism breeds self-interested, unprincipled gamesmanship.

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Bruce Frohnen is Professor of Law at the Ohio Northern University College of Law. He is also a senior fellow at the Russell Kirk Center and author of many books including The New Communitarians and the Crisis of Modern Liberalism, and the editor of Rethinking Rights (with Ken Grasso), and The American Republic: Primary Source.