Despite being a registered Republican for more than 22 years, I have to admit that I don't truly understand mainstream-Republicanism. Then again, I've never understood "popularity" in general. Let's face it, the most popular music is the least artistic, the most popular movies are cookie-cutter nonsense, and popular opinion seems to be whatever the media says it is.
Maybe it's just human nature, therefore what is, is. But it must be recognized, that this desire for "popularity" has created the zombie-like attitude, solely responsible for the mess this country is in today!
You know ... I always thought conservatives were principled against Big Government, and I'm NOT talking about the politicians here either. It's the voters, who are the real concern.
Early in the 20th century when the conservative movement was born, it fully recognized the timeless lessons of Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, John Adams and the rest of our Founders. Led by people such as T.S. Eliot and H.L. Mencken, the conservative movement was vehemently against the State.
The movement picked up it's name from Russell Kirk's 1953 classic, The Conservative Mind: From Burke to Eliot, which not only defined conservatism, but provided its identity. Although many conservatives (including myself) realize his misconception that regards individualism as "hideous solitude," he none-the-less was no friend of unfettered political power. Number 9 in his 10 Conservative Principles states:
The conservative perceives the need for prudent restraints upon power and upon human passions. Politically speaking, power is the ability to do as one likes, regardless of the wills of one's fellows. A state in which an individual or a small group are able to dominate the wills of their fellows without check is a despotism, whether it is called monarchical or aristocratic or democratic.
Fast-forward to the presidency of George W. Bush, and one has to wonder if the conservative movement has become similarly Statist as the progressives, or just dumbed-down in to blind, zombie-like obedience. Glenn Greenwald sums this up perfectly:
One of the linchpins of the Bush presidency, especially during the first term (and well into the second, until he became a major political liability), was the lock-step uncritical reverence - often bordering on cult-like glorification - which the "conservative" movement devoted to the "Commander-in-Chief." An entire creepy cottage industry arose - led not by fringe elements but by right-wing opinion-making leaders - with cringe-inducing products paying homage to Bush as "The First Great Leader of the 21st Century" ...
Even as Bush implemented one massive expansion of government power after the next -- the very "un-conservative" policies they long claimed to oppose -- there was nothing but (at best) the most token and muted objections from them. The handful of conservatives who did object were cast aside as traitors to the cause, and criticisms of the President became equated with an overt lack of patriotism. Uncritical support for the Leader was the overarching, defining attribute of conservatism, so much so that even Bill Kristol, in The New York Times, acknowledged: "Bush was the movement and the cause."
Hey, there's no pointing fingers here, I'm as guilty as anyone else ... but witnessing as we are now, the radical Statist agenda of President Obama and the "re-shaping" America ... Conservatives in large part must take responsibility. In sitting idly by, and worse, cheering Bush on as he blatantly abused the power of his office ... Obama has been handed authoritarian powers of historical proportions.
Outside of some occasional rhetoric, there's not much about Bush that can honestly be considered conservative. Unarguably, he expanded the size and scope of government every bit as much as Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Yet, conservatives treated him like a hero, while poking fun at genuinely conservative politicos like Rep. Ron Paul.
Concentrated power has always been the enemy of liberty. - Ronald Reagan
Presidential campaigns are about more than just choosing a person to take office. They're about debating a governing philosophy, and attending not just to the "issues" of the day, but to the very ideals of America itself. Needlessly ridiculing those who wish to discuss these ideals, simply because they aren't "mainstream" (read popular) enough, makes the argument against a corrupt mainstream political culture ring hollow.
You see ... It matters not whether you believe a guy like Ron Paul is "presidential." What matters is that his principles and philosophy are based firmly in the roots of conservatism, and in the heritage of our great nation. Discounting this is neither conservative, nor even American (as far as I'm concerned).
Conservatives ... the time for confession is now. It's time to relinquish any blind adoration of the "party," the idolatry of politicians, faith in the State, and to start relentlessly pursuing liberty with all our might!
Man is not free unless government is limited. - Ronald Reagan
[...] hours 18 min ago 1http://digg.com/search/page2?s= …22 hours 18 min ago 1http://the-classic-liberal.com/ …13 hours 52 min ago 1http://vancechristensen.com/node/231 day 12 hours ago [...]
aaa,
I think you’re right on! Corporatism is fast replacing free markets in our country, and just looking at last falls bailout, polls showed time and again that “we the people” were against it, yet they went ahead and voted in favor of it anyways.
It’s tough to keep your customers when you fail to deliver the product they expect.
I suspect that if you distilled the disillusionment of most conservatives – or even moderates – with the Republican Party wrt economic matters it would be twofold: 1) their drift to a corporatist orientation. Big business vs small business, 2) failing to fight to the last drop of blood on taxes.
I agree! This is why I’ve said many times the Democrat vs. Republican debate is dead. Two peas in a pod. The sad truth is that people are more inclined to vote for their “team” than vote what they believe.
Yes! While I’m certainly “Old Right,” or classically liberal, I’m willing to support politicos who will at least move in that direction. But as long as “Republicans” continue to discount anyone with a genuine desire to head in that direction (limited-government), they might as well proclaim “we all Statists now!”
I apologize for double posting, but I found this comical.
http://forum.isi.org/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/5790067135/m/95810811/r/61810771#61810771
Query: John, the Recovering Republican, do you ever post anything different? Lol.
Good post, CL.
The problem is simple CL, it is ignorance. Look at the comments here, trying to dissect conservatism and you can understand my point.
Russell Kirk served it up well when he explained that conservatism has no “fixed ideology.” There is no paradigm to its thought, no manifesto required, or political dogma to define it.
If there is one definable statement on conservatism it is this, “Conserve what is meant to be conserved and change what needs to be changed.” It doesn’t get any simpler than that.
I don’t get too caught up in the Right-Left paradigm. I believe there’s only forward to liberty and prosperity, or backward to socialism and government intervention.
Americans are not very “conservative”. It’s why government always seems to grow under any and every administration that’s ever existed. Ronald Reagan certainly didn’t downsize the Federal Government, and George W. Bush, as you pointed out, did his fair share of damage. The People tend to follow whatever gets them the most “stuff”, and government recognizes this fact. It’s why the Federal Budget is chuck full of over 9,000 earmarks. My complaint isn’t necessarily with the spending as those earmarks account for only 1% of the total federal budget, but rather it’s about principle. Those 9,000 earmarks represent the fact that our Congressmen and women use their position to buy off constituents or campaign contributors. How can a system really last if that’s how it’s supposed to operate? Why even tolerate a system as such in the first place, let alone continue it?
A perfect example of why Americans are not “conservative” is with the bailouts. I’m rather astonished at how Americans are finally standing up and speaking out, but unfortunately it’s for the wrong reasons and wrong motivation. Americans aren’t upset at the fact that we’re bailing out companies–they’re more upset that they themselves aren’t getting a bailout. Essentially, many people are just jealous and selfish that they aren’t getting their “fair share”. You can see people holding up signs or wearing t-shirts at these protests saying, “Where’s my bailout?” Why do we need to bail anyone out, let alone everyone?
I also don’t quite understand American logic. The backlash against the first TARP money–$350 billion of the $700 billion that was appropriate–was immense. More than 9 out of 10 Americans opposed it vehemently. Who votes for it? Barack Obama. What’s Barack Obama’s approval rating? Currently around 70%. So 90% of Americans were not just upset about this legislation, but furious by actually crashing Congressional office servers with emails and tying up phone lines with feedback, yet 70% of the country supports Barack Obama even though he voted for it.
What’s more? In the 2008 election cycle, Congress had an 8% approval rating–eight percent. Single digit support, the lowest in American history. What happens? We re-elected 89% of Congress. 92% of Americans did not support Congress, yet 9 out of 10 Congressmen were re-elected. We have bigger problems in this country than we think, and most of it is with the people.
Forget, please, “conservatism.” It has been, operationally, de facto, Godless and therefore irrelevant. Secular conservatism will not defeat secular liberalism because to God both are two atheistic peas-in-a-pod and thus predestined to failure. As Stonewall Jackson’s Chief of Staff R.L. Dabney said of such a humanistic belief more than 100 years ago:
“[Secular conservatism] is a party which never conserves anything. Its history has been that it demurs to each aggression of the progressive party, and aims to save its credit by a respectable amount of growling, but always acquiesces at last in the innovation. What was the resisted novelty of yesterday is today .one of the accepted principles of conservatism; it is now conservative only in affecting to resist the next innovation, which will tomorrow be forced upon its timidity and will be succeeded by some third revolution; to be denounced and then adopted in its turn. American conservatism is merely the shadow that follows Radicalism as it moves forward towards perdition. It remains behind it, but never retards it, and always advances near its leader. This pretended salt bath utterly lost its savor: wherewith shall it be salted? Its impotency is not hard, indeed, to explain. It is worthless because it is the conservatism of expediency only, and not of sturdy principle. It intends to risk nothing serious for the sake of the truth.”
Our country is collapsing because we have turned our back on God (Psalm 9:17) and refused to kiss His Son (Psalm 2).
John Lofton, Editor, TheAmericanView.com
Recovering Republican
JLof@aol.com
PS – And “Mr. Worldly Wiseman” Rush Limbaugh never made a bigger ass of himself than at CPAC where he told that blasphemous “joke” about himself and God.
Ron Paul gets sympathetic treatment from lefties like the interviewer in that video because the left sees him as
1. Not quite sane
2. A disruptive influence in the GOP and thus helpful to the Democrats
3. Too far out of “the mainstream” to ever be a serious contender for President, or even for Senator from Texas, and therefore no threat to the liberal agenda.
I’m not saying I agree with these perceptions, I’m saying these are the perceptions of the lefties and they act on those perceptions. So, a lefty can conduct friendly, non-hostile interview like the one in the video with plenty of smiling and laughing, because the lefty sees no possible harm to the leftist agenda. And, there’s the possibility of making mischief within the GOP as a bonus.
In the interview Paul uses some of the same deceptive techniques as the left. For example, thousands of construction contracts have been issued in Iraq. Inevetibly, some of them will go sour, especially in a war zone. Sometimes corruption is to blame, but often there are other reasons that don’t lead to the conclusion that someone deliberately squandered taxpayer funds or committed fraud. But Paul speaks of contracts for “rebuilding bridges that don’t rebuild the bridges” as if that were typical, that all contracts went sour and all contractors were corrupt. This is a leftist technique. smear everyone involved with the sins of a few.
It is not an illegitimate use of American troops and treasure to liberate a nation like Iraq, and then help it re-boot as a functional democracy. The Japan example should be all we need to understand the enormous benefits to America in improved national security and decreased military threat from abroad.
Maybe Iraq was the wrong place for this strategy, maybe not. History will tell. But the strategy itself is Constitutional and proved effective, and preferable to fighting off attacks on the homeland, which would be the long term result from disengaging from the world and refusing to fight “foreign wars.”
A deliberate US strategy of engaging enemies abroad was first articulated in the 1890s and has served us well ever since. As awful as foreign wars are, they certainly not worse than fighting invaders on the beaches of Santa Monica, or terrorists in setting bombs in football stadiums and shopping malls and churches.
I don’t disagree with you, all I’m saying is, that heckling and squashing people like Paul only results in limiting the topics of debate. From Bush to McCain for example, our presidential debates have been one Statist vs. another Statist. That’s why I said:
Paul’s popularity is not a cult of personality, it’s one of philosophy. What Paul offers in a presidential campaign, more than anything else, is the ability to alter the debate. He’s the only Republican I know who doesn’t run around trying to offer his version of what the Left says is the issue.
If everything is left up to the “popular kids,” the conservative movement is going to ridicule itself straight out of its own philosophy.
And while the “popular” right correctly ridicules people like Frum who insist on being “moderate,” if they’re poking fun of Paul at the same time … the attacks on Frum ring hollow.
And on personality? Watch the video clip below and let me know how he performed.
http://the-classic-liberal.com/home-run/