Where Do We Go From Here?
Part I: Defining the Terms
America can't be fixed. Having
declined to its current irreparable condition long before Obama was
elected, it won't be saved by either the 2014 mid-terms or the 2016
presidential contest even if they prove to be fair and free elections
which is not likely. Republicans don't abandon their conservatism
once they breathe in the rarefied atmosphere of DC; most of them
have no conservative principles to begin with. And as Thomas
Fleming of Chronicles Magazine, among others, has suggested,
if the Democrats are the evil party, the GOP is the stupid party.
It isn't that the Democrats are really
smart. While they presume that conservatives are hateful morons,
Democrats in the main are themselves lacking in rudimentary
knowledge of virtually every subject. Even Yankee Ivy
League-schooled leftist elites are only a little more knowledgeable
than the unread and entitled masses who vote Democrat. And neither
is it that the Republican is really stupid; he is far more educated
than the average Democrat. Republican leaders in DC, however, appear
to be inept bunglers constantly outfoxed by slick liberal
propagandists. They waste time raging against liberal lying and
voter fraud—this is no more productive than chastising a
rattlesnake for biting.
By definition a liberal is a
relativist, and, for him, there are no absolutes, no right or wrong,
just what the liberal-relativist wants to do. Add to this mix the
fact that in a real sense the rank and file Republicans are
predominantly liberals themselves: They want smaller big government,
but they, in the end, still want big government. They think that
Hannity, Rush...and Paul Ryan... are conservatives. WMAL talk show
host Chris Plante's listening audience in the Virginia- Maryland-DC
metro area will tell you that Plante is the standard bearer for
conservatism. But neither he nor the sundry cliché-spouting
“luminaries” who appear on Fox News are remotely conservative,
and they don't have the answers for a hopelessly broken America.
The liberal-conservative dichotomy and
the fights it engenders provide a distraction from what really is at
stake as America implodes. But in order to begin to make the case
for any argument, terms have to be defined. Since the term most
misunderstood and misused today is conservative, here briefly
are a few examples of the way a true conservative, more correctly a
paleoconservative or constitutionalist, thinks:
A federative system where the central
government has attenuated powers best protects liberty. This limited
federal government does not run daycare centers; it doesn't provide
for the poor, the elderly or the disabled. This will seem harsh to
those who confuse sentimentality with true Christian love and who do
not understand the principle of subsidiarity. Individuals, families,
churches, communities, counties and even states are responsible for
charitable works, not the federal government. But the real burden
falls on the individual; if he does not feed the hungry and clothe
the naked, he will answer to God. Even some “conservatives” say
that it is naive to believe that, people, absent the arm-twisting of
the feds, will help others. Yes, freedom is messy and imperfect, but
it is far less bloody and murderous than some statist “utopia.”
The federal government must confine
itself to providing for the common defence, delivering the mail,
making treaties and regulating genuine interstate commerce (this does
not include creating a single payer national health care behemoth).
Extending the hand of friendship to all nations, the central
government should not engage in global interventionism for the
purpose of spreading democracy. (In fact, democracy is not desirable
because it is little more than mob rule. Rule by a concurrent
majority of the states ensures that minority interests are better
served.) If a sovereign country, however, is attacked, or has real
evidence of an imminent hostile move against its people, it is
obligated to respond with deadly force.
Concerning behaviour in the public
square, here are some examples of real conservative thinking: If
Mayor Bloomberg of New York, for example, wants to ban large
carbonated drinks, and the people of that city like the idea, that
is their business. They can throw Bloomberg out of office if they
don't like his over-regulation.
Local police, the lesser magistrates,
have every right to arrest the members of the Westboro Baptist
Church when they scream the vilest of invectives at military funeral
mourners. The Supreme Court overstepped its authority when it became
involved in this situation eventually ruling that the Westboro Church
could continue its protests because of the group's First Amendment
rights. The First Amendment, however, only protects political
speech directed against the federal government. It protects the
right to criticise that government, not some right to disturb the
peace as people bury their dead.
If Washington State wants to legalise
marijuana, that is up to the people of that state. Further, if the
people of a sovereign state wish to establish atheism as their
official “religion,” they have a right to do so. A Christian
living in a state that wants to outlaw God has the right-actually the
obligation- to fight such legislation tooth and nail. But if his
“side” loses, he can vote with his feet as they say. ( Many
Marylanders are doing just that as Maryland becomes more and more
secularist.) On the other hand, a state also has the right to
establish a Christian faith or Judaism as its official religion. The
First Amendment only prevents the federal government from involving
itself in religious issues. It must leave the states alone in this
respect no matter what the ACLU thinks.
These truly conservative stands will
only seem extreme to liberals and most Republicans because they are
ignorant of history and constitutionalities. False conservatives
with bated breath hang on every decision of the Supreme Court and
pray that the right will prevail instead of railing as they should
against federal judicial tyranny. It is OK they reason for the
Supreme Court to reign over us all as long as SCOTUS tells the
Westboro Baptist Church to behave itself, as long as it outlaws
abortion and gay marriages. This is not to say, however, that the
paleoconservative himself condones abortion and gay marriage.
Concerning the former, he believes that the abortion issue should be
resolved at the state, or even county level, not at the federal
level. And he believes that it is his God-given obligation to fight
against legal infanticide. There is only an apparent contradiction
here to those who are comfortable with the nationalist state America
has become. I am compelled to add that a moral people will make
moral laws that conform to God's laws; they will not wish to legalise
that which is immoral.
These distinctions are not made on Fox
News or talk radio. And right wingers and neo-cons, who would
destroy their own country to defend Israel, will only allow
acceptable “conservative “ views to be expressed. Rush will hit
the kill button in a New York minute if a Lincoln hater calls in.
Lincoln was a despot, but Rush and Plante and their ilk worship him.
And they will employ the same tired debating tricks used by the
liberals – name calling, begging the question, knocking down straw
men, etc. They wish to stifle dissent on the part of those they view
as crazy, read paleoconservative. Maybe it's time to turn off the
radio. Or the TV...which is what I did after Andrea Tantaros on Fox
News' The Five suggested that everyone go see “Lincoln” the
movie because Honest Abe, the Republican, freed the slaves,
something, I might add, England and France managed without the
slaughter of 600,000 of their countrymen. In reality Lincoln's
regime made slaves of us all. With conservatives like Tantaros who
needs liberals?
To be continued...
