Conservatism

Rush Limbaught often makes the point that conservatives need to stop arguing with liberals on policy solutions and start questioning the premises that underly their arguments.

As I look across these blogs, and so many others, I feel awash in class envy and hatred, and within that, an assumption that big government is a good thing for ordinary people.

Republicans have been such poor stewards of conservatism these last eight years, especially the mute President who just left office, who quite unlike Reagan and even Bush the elder, simply refused to explain conservative principles, challenge his critics -- and arguably failed to be a conservative on key issues, like the budget and immigration policy.

But reading about "taxing the rich" and "closing income gaps" is nothing more than a euphemism for confiscation. And on top of it, cheering on the expansion of the federal government into every corner of our lives -- it all seems shocking. What happened to the passion for indvidual freedom? Distrust of government and the centralization of power? These used to be characteristics of liberal as well as conservative thought -- they are rooted in the country's founding and in the thinkers who influenced them, like Rousseau and Burke.

Now we might as well read the Communist Manifesto as read these blogs... read about the proleteriat rising up to appropriate the means of production... transforming private property into the property of the people... appointing a dictatorship of the proleteriat, with the Party as its vanguard... throwing the jackboot of capitalism onto the ash heap of history!

Why did so many of us give up on the founding American principles? Why should we accept that people have given up on them? I urge posters on this board to challenge the premises and assumptions behind these malign arguments, and show how market economies really work for everybody when the right balance between state power and individual freedom is struck.

Krauthammer did a good job of challenging assumptions -- Obama's -- in his column today.

It slipped by everybody, but in his speech to Congress Obama pinned the cause of our economic decline on expensive health care, energy policy, and education policy. Krauthammer paraphrases and replies:

(Obama says) The "day of reckoning" has now arrived. And because "it is only by understanding how we arrived at this moment that we'll be able to lift ourselves out of this predicament," Obama has come to redeem us with his far-seeing program of universal, heavily nationalized health care; a cap-and-trade tax on energy; and a major federalization of education with universal access to college as the goal.

Amazing. As an explanation of our current economic difficulties, this is total fantasy. As a cure for rapidly growing joblessness, a massive destruction of wealth, a deepening worldwide recession, this is perhaps the greatest non sequitur ever foisted upon the American people.

In the speech, Obama did not mention as causes the "credit bubble, a housing collapse and a systemic failure of the entire banking system... improvident loans, corrupted bond-ratings agencies, insufficient regulation of new and exotic debt instruments, the easy money policy of Alan Greenspan's Fed, irresponsible bankers pushing (and then unloading in packaged loan instruments) highly dubious mortgages, greedy house-flippers, deceitful homebuyers."

And now, true to Thomas Sowell's formula in The Vision of the Anointed, we have a crisis, and the anointed have the solution, and anyone who questions his solution is benighted.

In that book, Sowell questioned many liberal assumptions and shibboleths himself. So rather than argue about with liberals on this blog about the distribution of wealth:

"To say that 'wealth in America is so unfairly distributed in America,' as Ronald Dworkin does, is grossly misleading when most wealth in the United States is not distributed at all. People create it, earn it, save it, and spend it."

Exactly.

To me "rich" means having so much money that you don't need to get up in the morning and go to work if you don't want to.

But I don't want those people punished. I want those people spending or investing their money, and the rest of us being able to keep as much of our money as possible so we can all do the same.

I've stayed away from the Rush Limbaugh discussion since it seems the ultimate in Seinfeldian debates about nothing.

My overall sense is that the Frums and the Douthats of the world would be well served by staying away from this argument. As Ross himself has written, the grassroots needs elites -- and the elites need the grassroots. By trying to isolate Rush, the elites break down this elegant separation and veer into micromanaging the grassroots -- a losing proposition, particularly against a brand as sticky as Rush. By staging a power play against Rush, they also play into the Democrats' far-fetched notion that Rush is the GOP's leader -- an 11% proposition -- rather than letting him be as an entertainer and provocateur and popularizer of conservative ideas.

I missed Rush's CPAC address and watching it later on YouTube but was left wondering "What's the big f'ing deal here?" In content, the speech was no different than what Rush has been saying for the last 20 years. Why are we all reacting as if any of this is new? If Rush was going to damage the GOP, he would have done it by now. (In fact, the last time we had Rush in a situation like this, things didn't turn out so bad.)

It's one thing to reject spokespeople with neither egghead credentials nor talent, like Joe the Plumber, or those who are positively cringe-worthy, like Coulter. Rush belongs in neither of these categories. There is value in having provocative voices who know how to string two sentences together with arguments rooted in conservative ideas, not cultural pastiche. And though provocative and sometimes impolitic, Rush's arguments are usually calibrated and thought-out in their own way. Wanting Obama to fail from wrecking a country we all hope succeeds is not something a GOP politician should necessarily say, but is something Rush should be able to say from his perch outside the party. CPAC featured speakers who were still peddling the Obama-is-not-a-citizen nonsense to applause from the crowd. Let's distance ourselves those bumbling ignoramuses, not successful, well-honed voices like Rush.

Obama and his ilk aren't really providing hope and change. In fact, they're just providing a lot more of the same old, same old (enough same old, same old to bankrupt us as a matter of fact). All of the bloated social programs will be inflating further. The economic handcuffs on small businesses and innovators will get tighter. Sure, there'll be new policies, but all of them are based on the idea that the American people need to keep sucking at the government teat, instead of the ideal that we can and should be responsible for ourselves. The real revolutionaries these days are the conservatives. We're the ones who want something we don't have. We are the rebels of responsibility. We believe in a federal government that doesn't try to be all things to all people. We believe there are still matters of conscience and spheres of influence where the government need not interfere. Yes, we want a government that listens to us, but we also want something of ourselves. We want to be a country where are worthy of exercising independence. We believe that actions have consequences, that bad behavior shouldn't be rewarded, and that frugality is a better alternative to living beyond your means. We don't want to see people on the street, but we don't want to subsidize someone living in a nicer house than we own or rent. Like it or not, these are pretty revolutionary ideas these days. So, if conservatives are the new revolutionaries, that can only mean one thing. Liberal is the new Tory. crossposted from The New Pamphleteers.

by  Rose Pedenko and Tanya Simon

The words “subversive” and “subversion” once were used only to describe enemy combatants at the time of military conflict.  Today those same words have been labeled inflammatory – not behind an iron curtain but right here in the United States of America.

In the third month of the year 2009 A.D., the time has finally come to call a spade a spade.  For those on the left who inflame discourse by automatically reading malevolent racist meanings into that phrase, STOP NOW!  America-loving Americans have finally been pushed over the edge, and frankly no longer care anymore what you – the ultra-liberals and the two-timing RINOs amongst you -- consider is bigoted.  Are you listening, Eric Holder?

You have pushed us over the edge … by political correctness (which, in and of itself, is an insult to the American free spirit), by taxation and more taxation to come, and by our Constitutional rights and freedoms being mangled and distorted in order to fit the liberal agenda.

The “Sleeping Giant” awoke when Pearl Harbor was bombed -- and again after our country was attacked on September 11, 2001.  The same giant, this time in the form of conservatives and clear-thinking Democrats, is rising up to confront and revolt against the subversions of our federal government.

For clarification, when we say “clear-thinking Democrats” we do not include the ultra-liberal waterbearers who soaked Barack Hussein Obama with unadulterated praise and elected him on their tidal wave of adulation.  We’re talking about American citizens who joined the Democratic Party believing it would make a difference in creating a better, safer, stronger U.S.A., but discovered they’ve been shanghaied to pre-Stalinist Russia.

Book after best-selling book (albeit by conservative authors) have been clarifying with facts and figures (Kryptonite to the left) what has been unraveling in this country.  We have the Right (the “Good”) stripping away the camouflage of the Left (the “Bad”), and endeavoring to educate the “Stupid” – a feat now thankfully hampered by the self-inflicted collapse of the once great metropolitan dailies, and the sinking ratings of liberal cable news networks.

And in case you weren’t listening, fiscal conservatives were not happy with President Bush either.  He lost his base of support because of his unchecked Democratic-like spending.  We did indeed need change, but not in the present form of throwing good money after bad. One need only look to the engagement of the Cloward-Piven Strategy (manufactured by the left), to clearly understand what has occurred in the United States over the last 43 years:  Leftist academics have dealt irreparable societal damage.

Adding insult to injury is the fact these academics continue to poison the knowledge wells from which we drink – and they’re being paid to do it, courtesy of the American taxpayer.

Explaining how we got here (even with hard facts and indisputable figures) is never enough for the left.  They don’t get the truth from the prolific liars in the mainstream media and refuse to entertain exceptions to their point of view.  Those that actually take the time to read conservative articles do so by inhabiting right-wing blogs like resident cockroaches, commenting with wild abandon from sheer ignorance.  Put simply, those who can, write – and those who can’t, rant.

There have been the decades of liberal out-on-the-street and in-your-face protests, which are as common and tiresome as illegal immigrants banging on our cars demanding work when we drive onto a Home Depot parking lot.  The reason you don’t see loud and obnoxious conservative activists in melees with police or who are being thrown out of congressional meetings is they don’t exist.  Okay, okay, we concede there are a few, like the wing-nut extremists who protest in front of abortion clinics.  Shameful! How dare anyone fight for the life of an unborn human being!

Republicans and conservative-minded Democrats are busy working at our jobs, providing for our families and our communities.  We’re building companies that employ people, and we pay the bulk of this country’s taxes and we mind our own business. But those days may be over, because revolution is in the air, and don’t you just love the smell of “rebellion” in the morning?

We are being forced to rebel because Obama has fogged up his followers’ senses – with endless campaign rhetoric, and it has now seeped into the fabric of this country like radioactive waste leeching into our drinking wells.  The White House and the U.S. Congress have become hangouts for the ham-fisted and the desperate, where they’re all banging into each other like billiard balls on an uneven surface. And this administration’s pathological hunger for absolute power only serves to repudiate Obama’s hollow promises of hope and change.

Neither Obama nor the Democrat-controlled Congress has even once mentioned the phrases “family unity” or “American honor.”  By ignoring the nucleus conventions on which our country was built, they have proven that none of them possesses any sense of responsibility for the offices they hold.

Obama thinks he has things under control (the way Neville Chamberlain thought he had Hitler under control).  He gave back to England the bust of Winston Churchill (which had been given to the White House as a gesture of solidarity after 9/11) and in so doing, revealed an arrogance that threatens to cut all ties with one of our most trusted allies in favor of dialogue with the enemy.

Americans of every stripe are saying “Enough is enough,” and we will rise up, including all of you who voted that Democrat to the presidency.  It will happen, and it will be launched on the words of Patrick Henry’s American Revolution fervor of “Give me liberty or give me death.”

By John Barnhart, Executive Editor, American Daily Review

All one need do is watch the news regarding politics and religion during the holidays to discover that there is indeed a culture war going on in America.

The reason the war exists at all is because secular progressives cannot stand practicing Jews, Catholics, Protestants, Evangelical Christians or Christianity, they do not want to answer to God for their behavior, and the concept of a natural connection between Jews and Christians as it relates to the birth of our nation, the U.S. Constitution and service to Jehovah is even more repugnant to them.

In addition, secular progressives are on a mission to confuse others who are stuck in the middle, lost, unsure what they believe, or are atheist republicans and pull them over to “the dark side” if they can.

To find evidence of the hatred secular progressives have for organized, reverent religion and our Lord who inspires it, just study Supreme Court and other case law.

Secular progressives support the sadistic slaughter of innocent babies, they hate any allowance of prayer in school, they force people to consider and discuss homosexuality, bestiality and other sexual deviancy like the pedophilia that the North American Man Boy Love Association promotes as “normal.”

The Ten Commandments, The Holy Bible, the Crucifix, the Cross, the Star of David, “In God We Trust”, “One Nation Under God” and many other religious icons, traditions, phrases, publications, are under constant attack from secular progressives depending on where and how they are discussed or displayed.

Ruthless, Godless, secular progressives constantly shove their empty, selfish, deviant lifestyles in the face of God fearing believers while trashing us and God in the process. They use the media, science, education and the judicial system to help them in their quest to rid our nation of any reference to God, and they make huge efforts to pit Jews, Catholics, Protestants, and Evangelical Christians against one another.

The way that they twist our faith and portray us angers me greatly, especially when I see their pundits on CNN and other media outlets discussing us as in a negative way as if having a deep seeded faith is a bad thing or just a stupid superstition.

Then they push the envelope and try to split us by saying thing like these…

“Hey you there…yes you… you Jew, you Christian, you Catholic, do you realize how many times that Israel has stolen intelligence material from the United States… the country that “props them up,” or “hey have you forgotten how many Jews and Protestants were killed by Catholics”, and oh yes then there is this old method… “Do you not remember that each of your faith’s have different beliefs in regards to if there is a Heaven, a Hell, a Messiah and if it was or was not Jesus?” And of course it eventually comes down to “where is and who is this God you speak of and why would he allow people to live in horrible poverty and die horrible deaths?” OR “anyone who believes that there is a God is stupid, and uneducated.”

They demonize us by bringing up the worst elements of our histories or the most “unbelievable” stories, “myths” and “legends” of our common Biblical heritage in hopes we will feed on one another instead of closing ranks.

They cite The Crusades, The Inquisition, The Slaughter of the Innocents by Herod the Great, Noah’s Flood, Adam and Eve, Joshua’s bloody battles in Canaan where “God told him to do it”, the mere belief in God, the very concept of or belief in a Messiah, they even use Abraham’s potential sacrifice of his own son to cast shadows on us when some nutty mother or father does something evil like kill their own kids and it makes huge headlines.

What they don’t realize is that for me, and many like me, whether I was a Catholic, a Protestant or an Evangelical Christian, my beliefs will never waver. I will always believe that God gave Israel to the Jews, and that he gave “the free world” especially America, to the Jew and to the Christian so we may live free and enjoy liberty without fear of religious persecution.

To me, secular progressives have chosen to not just oppose our common beliefs but to trample on them, twist them, spit on them, etc. and as such they might as well have declared war on Jehovah God himself and then tied a mill stone around their necks and launched themselves into the deepest ocean.

I have little to no sympathy for them!

The people I care about are those who are “lost.” They “recognize there might be a God” but they don’t have a relationship with him, or they recognize Israel’s right to The Holy Land but don’t understand why, they just think it’s because of the holocaust and they have no clue to the deeper meaning.

Moderate, Atheist or agnostic “conservatives” are you listening? There is more to this conservatism we hold dear than just simple economic politics. REAL conservatism truly comes down to faith in God and his promise to watch over us, if we only do the few simple things he asks and move our nation in his direction.

REAL conservatives recognize the right way to live because of our faith not because of our wallets.

Anyway, with all that said, I will leave readers with this…

Despite secular progressive’s attacks and attempts to divide politically conservative Jews and Christians in the culture war, I will NEVER feel guilty for being a Judeo-Christian, I will NEVER renounce or relinquish my faith in God or deny God’s promises to his chosen people regarding The Holy Land.

I will NEVER stop offering conservative commentary without compromise, and neither should anyone else.

http://www.americandailyreview.com

Michael at the PoliGazette has embarked on a couple of exciting opportunities in his native country of The Netherlands, one of which landed him on national TV there today.  Congrats to Michael for his hard-earned and well-deserved success!

Michael's call to action for his countrymen is simply, "Let’s conservatize this country!", a great message that could serve equally well in the United States as a rallying cry for conservatives and libertarians to come together and reclaim this country.

Doing so won't be easy.  While they agree on many fronts, conservatives and libertarians do not always see eye-to-eye on important issues such as drug legalization and the use of the military.

This was made clear to me yesterday during a conversation with a Christian friend with whom I often agree.  I was flabbergasted to hear him say that not only was he giving Barack Obama the benefit of the doubt - a wise choice, in my view - but that he felt as though it was time for the liberals to "have their say", particularly  in the court system.  I was stunned.  While those on the left would undoubtedly agree with my friend, additional movement to the left on the part of our courts is the last thing this country needs.

Judicial activism is rampant at all levels of the justice system and the Supreme Court is hardly immune.  Indeed, liberal excesses such as the 1960s Affirmative Action and the 1970s Roe v. Wade are still in place, upheld by the high court's rulings, many of which are based on what can only be called dubious interpretations of the Constitution.  This despite the fact that Republicans have controlled the White House during most of the last 30 years.  Do liberals "deserve" even more control over the judiciary branch?  Absolutely not.

That's why it's imperative that libertarians and conservatives find ways to work through contentious issues and form a coalition based on traditional, Constitutional values in order to restore what remains of the social fabric of this country, the strongest threads of which have been severely damaged by the left's misguided, radical takeover of the social agenda.

If this can be accomplished, perhaps the phoenix that is America will rise again from the ashes left behind by the liberal left's burning down of personal responsibility, the Christian church, marriage, and the nuclear family.  If not, the fire that burns in the belly of many Americans will go out completely, for liberalism offers nothing but all-consuming, destructive change that will stop only when there is nothing left to burn.

Take a look at this chart: the blue line depicts the historic percentage of respondents who give a negative rating to current economic conditions (source: Gallup), while the red line depicts the historic percentage of respondents who support the economic recovery package proposed by Barack Obama and the Congressional Democrats (source: Rasmussen).

Although the polling is not long-term enough to indicate a definitive trend, the chart suggests an intriguing possibility: although the public perception of the economy continues to turn increasingly negative, the percentage of the public that supports the stimulus bill is dwindling. In many ways this may seem counterintuitive considering that Americans presumably desire economic relief, particularly as the state of the economy grows more and more severe.

This data seems to indicate a high level of pragmatism among the public — instead of looking for a quick fix laden with excessive pork barrel spending and rampant government growth, they want a long-term and effective solution. This is also a sign that those who proclaim the death of conservatism are severely jumping the gun. Whether this trend will continue as the economy and the public’s perception of the economy fall to even lower levels remains to be seen. However, if it does, it will be further evidence of a nation that remains decidedly center-right, at least on fiscal issues.

In response to Mr. Moran's thoughtful essay: If you are so thoroughly disgusted with social conservatives that you wish to see them leave the party, I have good news for you: there is no need to actually do any purging.  Because a political party founded on libertarian ideals, free of the oogedy-boogedy SoCons, already exists.  It is the Libertarian Party.  But, if you think that there is some merit to some of the social conservative ideas, AND if you are willing to show social conservatives a bit of respect, then you should stay put and try to make the marriage work.

Here are my thoughts.  I see the Republican Party style of conservatism to be a more enlightened form of libertarianism than that which the Libertarian Party offers.  The Libertarians are big on individual liberty.  This is a good thing.  But the Republican Party goes beyond this; it tries to construct a moral framework that attempts to guarantee the future preservation of this individual liberty.  That is to say, it recognizes that individual liberty can only really prosper in an environment that is respectful towards liberty in general.  I believe this is the great value that social conservatism brings to the Republican Party.  It reminds us that libertarianism can quickly descend into libertine-ism if the people are not prepared to accept the responsibilities as well as enjoy the benefits of liberty.  So rather than viewing libertarianism and social conservatism as warring parties forcibly bound together by a Big Tent, I tend to view them as complementary parts of a larger whole.

So rather than having one side kick out the other, I believe a better strategy is to more tightly integrate the two; to more clearly demonstrate the complementarity.  So when it comes to abortion, for instance, we have to not only play up the immorality of it, but also persuade people that legal abortion really is not consistent with a society that values the dignity and worth of every individual.  That's not a religious argument, that is a secular libertarian-esque argument.  When it comes to something like sex education in schools, sure social conservatives will in general be opposed to anything but abstinence-only education, because anything else doesn't reflect their values.  That's not an unreasonable argument.  The libertarian angle might be to support devolution of power over education away from the federal government, and to support competition among schools so that parents have choice over what kind of values education they want their children to receive.  It's a win-win: the social conservatives get to have their desired form of sex education in their schools, and the libertarians get to have a free-market approach to education.

But, honest people can have honest disagreements over issues, and especially in a party that values individualism way more than the other party, those disagreements are going to tend to be larger.  We have to remember, though, that we are all on the same team.  So if a libertarian conservative can't find it within him/herself to oppose abortion, I'd expect social conservatives to be politely respectful of that fact.  However - and here's the important part - if a social conservative finds the greatest justification for his/her views in Scripture, I'd expect the libertarian conservative ALSO to be politely respectful.  From what I see currently, though, the respect is not a two-way street.  The wise and educated libertarian conservatives, with their enlightened views on abortion, are to be looked up to; while the social conservatives, with their crazy Biblical views, are to be looked down upon.  This has got to stop.  If libertarian conservatives do find some value in social conservatism at all, then libertarian conservatives shouldn't throw them under the bus whenever they get embarrassing.

But, if you can't stand doing that, if you really do think SoCons are a bunch of uneducated rubes, then you should join the Libertarian Party.

Consider this definition of social conservatism:

Traditional values, customs and ways of viewing the world have withstood the test of time, hence they should be given deferential treatment over newer values or customs that have not survived the same level of temporal scrutiny.  Moreover social change often leads to unintended consequences, most of the time deleterious ones, so change by itself should be regarded skeptically and, if deemed beneficial, should happen slowly, cautiously and methodically, so that any unintended consequences can be recognized and overcome.  Finally, individual liberty is only beneficially meaningful when it is conjoined with a moral people; hence policies that promote moral clarity should be favored over those that create moral obfuscation or relativism.

Where in this definition do you see the word government power? In other words, if there is social freedom, won't the rewards and punishments of cultural markets be enough to let some behaviors/traditions “survive” and others fail? Won't cultural evolution proceed by Darwinian processes, rather than Intelligent Design (read: inculcation by bureaucrats with a bible under one arm and the Complete Works of Edmund Burke under the other?) 

Customs survive or go extinct in one of two ways—either a) they’re protected by the force of powerful elites (witness slavery, Jim Crow), or b) because they ‘work’ within the environment in which they attempt to function. You may call b) relativism. So be it. But a) gets to be called “moral” by those who hold the power. It’s no different from leftish moralists with some “social justice” bee in their bonnets.

In any case: nothing under a liberty umbrella precludes social conservatism from being a personal cultural disposition that we all, as members of a free society, must tolerate -- like any other disposition or form of expression.

I often hear from moderates that it should be a worthwhile goal to "get away from ideology".  My response, though, is that a political ideology is really nothing more than a guiding philosophy underpinning a set of political positions.  And "getting away from ideology" suggests that we judge issues based on their own merits, and not according to some guiding philosophy.  Sounds reasonable enough, except that issues are not independent, discrete units.  They are all interconnected, sometimes in subtle ways.  For instance, from the Great Society, we know of the connection between generous welfare state benefits and the breakdown of the traditional family unit.  So, if after some rational cost-benefit analysis of each separate issue, the non-ideological moderate concludes that government should have a generous welfare state but yet still promote the traditional family through family-friendly policies, what is the sense in that?  Isn't this contradictory state of affairs arguably worse than the ideologue's supposedly dogmatic adherence to a rigid philosophy?