I Am A Heretic

My friend "ThinkCarpeDiem" has posted an objection to this post about the competition between liberalism (i.e. modern conservatism) and progressivism (i.e. modern liberalism). Unless there is an outcry for it, I shall not post that objection--you can look at the link yourself--but I think the counter-comment I wrote clarifies my position on this issue. Read on:

TCD:
Thanks for the comments. I think you may have misunderstood
what I wrote, because I'm not entirely sure what relation your comment has on my
post. But I shall attempt a response.

1. I think your impression is that I mean that liberals are not smart. That's not what I said at all, and in fact there are many quite intelligent progressives both in the past and now. What I said was that progressivism is not an intellectual movement;
it isn't about philosophy, it's about action. It has certain underlying
assumptions, primarily that government has the authority to take action in any
area of life if it may improve people's lives. It assumes that all those
opposed to the sort of government action they desire are either immoral,
ignorant, or insane. These facts can be traced throughout the history of
progressivism.

2. I don't believe progressives are inferiors. I do believe they are incredibly wrong about the role of government, and dangerously so. I do not flinch from speaking the truth that communism, fascism, syndicalism, and many other utopian dreams were--and are--motivated by the same or similar ideals expressed in the modern progressivist movement. Finally, I do not respect those who, having reflected upon the situation, would unhesitatingly choose to take away my freedoms for their view of a better society. There are many who would choose to take away my freedoms without inspecting where such a choice takes them or what motivates it. But the
sort of person who has thought about it and still chooses to enslave me to their
utopian vision is the sort of "well-intentioned busybody" that C.S. Lewis
decried and who is worthy of no respect or admiration, only contempt and
defiance.

3. I know that your dream is that good-natured debate and
reflective thought will bring everyone to a consensus about what should be done,
or at least amicable disagreement. The problem is that there is no debate
between classical liberalism and progressivism. There is no intellectual
defense of progressivism that has been presented for many years, because
progressives for many years have not considered themselves in need of
defense. Their good intentions, reverence for "science," and impulse to
action are all the evidence they need that they are right and their opponents
are wrong. This is the reason that progressivism has become a secular
religion. Classical liberalism is then not simply a competing view to be
debated, but a heresy to be demonized.

Whither The GOP: Positives and Negatives

Yuval Levin wrote a piece for Commentary recently, entitled, "Not Quite Dead," in response to an obituary written by George Packer of The New Yorker for a political philosophy--you can guess which one. Here's an interesting bit:

Let me suggest two things he might have noted. First of all, the kind of
intellectual turmoil and self-searching he cites would be almost unimaginable on
the left, today or at most points in the past half century. Conservatism is an
intellectual movement in a way that American liberalism generally hasn’t been.
For a long time, American liberals could draw their ideas from the European
Left, and from the socialist experiment. The fall of communism—which certainly
ended an era for the Right, and left many conservatives searching for a clear
purpose—was far more of a challenge to the Left, and one the left has yet to
recover from, or even fully engage. Clintonian triangulation helped pass the
time for a while in the 90’s, and anti-Bushism has helped since, but what is the
worldview underlying Obama’s and Clinton’s platforms today? The relative absence
of heated arguments about that question on the left is not a sign of strength.

As Jonah Goldberg would point out--what? I'm reading his book, alright?--modern liberals (i.e. progressives) would rather not probe their philosophical foundations, since it has a genealogy that goes back to Jean-Jacques Rousseau and the French Revolution, and more recently Karl Marx, with the discomfiting philosophical off-shoots of fascism and communism. Moreover, progressivism is all about improving mankind, both in its external environment and internal character. Thus, they have no need for a political philosophy beyond this; there is need only for science to tell us what government ought to do, and do it. Fascism, Communism, and the Wilsonian experiment, the New Deal, and the Great Society are all experiments toward this goal.

Conservatism--that is, classical liberalism--on the other hand, is uniquely an intellectual and philosophical entity. Unlike progressivism, it has always been fed through discourse and argumentation rather than action. This is undoubtedly a time in which progressives see the door open for bold new experimentation in government problem-solving, but with the continuation of conservative stalwarts such as National Review, Commentary, and The Weekly Standard, as well as the burgeoning blogosphere and new and important thinkers, it is also a time of intellectual rebirth for classical liberalism.

Take heart; here are a few past presidential elections that featured only progressives, after which liberalism lived on:

1912 (Progressive Party endorsed Teddy Roosevelt, Wilson ran as the progressive hero of Princeton)
1916 (Charles Evans Hughes had a progressive track record, Wilson was Wilson)
1928 (revered progressive Herbert Hoover won this, no politcal conservative he)
1932 (Hoover wasn't going fast enough for progressives anymore)
1936 (Republican Alf Landon supported much of the New Deal)
1944 (Thomas Dewey accepted most of the New Deal)
1948 (Thomas Dewey vs Truman)
1952 (Eisenhower continued the New Deal, and Adlai Stevenson was a famed progressive leader)
1956 (see before)
1960 (leftist Nixon vs militarist Kennedy)
1968 (Nixon vs revered progressive Humphrey)
1972 (McGovern. Nuff said.)
1976
1988
1992
1996
2000
2004

Okay, that leaves 1920's Harding, 1924's Coolidge, 1940's Wendell Wilkie, 1964's Barry Goldwater, and 1980's and 1984's Ronald Reagan. Harding was philosophically better than Wilson and certainly left the country in better shape, but hardly distinguished himself. Coolidge basically represented the American resentment toward progressivism that lingered after Wilson's suppression of domestic dissent. Thereafter, Wendell Wilkie managed to win nomination only because of Republicans' distrust of its party's more distinguished but dovish aspirants. 1964 was a watershed moment, as the first truly classical liberal nominee in forty years managed to become the Republican nominee. The New Conservatism, by now the intellectually robust movement it is today, then gave us Ronald Reagan in 1980.

Some leading lights have faded, but new ones are coming. Until then, keep standing up to those who would take away your freedoms.

Socialism Watch

Representative Maxine Waters (D., Venezuela) yesterday threatened a major oil executive with "socialization" of the oil industry if off-shore drilling didn't produce lower gas prices:

Link: sevenload.com

At least she's honest about which direction she wants America to go, unlike Barack Obama; if your philosophy is that the government exists to solve problems, then what better aspiration could there be than government take-over of large, crucial industries?

Now, at present these are merely the ravings of (I believe) the same notoriously batty representative who also asked NASA spokeshumans on the House floor if the Pathfinder robot saw our flag on Mars. In this instance, she also couldn't come up with the correct word for what she wanted to do: "nationalize." On a deeper level, she couldn't possibly be ignorant of what generally happens to oil production--key to lowering prices--when the government takes over...could she? (See Mexico and Venezuela for results.) But under the influence of the Obamas, Clintons, and Edwardses of the world, our nation inches closer to this possibility.

Of course, if government did take over the oil industry, the prices would likely be raised on purpose, if they could get away with it. After all, gas usage contributes to global warming! Modern liberalism--or, to use the correct term, "progressivism"--is all about making a better world and a better people through government policy. As Jonah Goldberg has written, it's what inspired Leninism in Russia, Nazism in Germany, Fascism in Italy, and the vast government experimentation of the Wilson, Roosevelt, and Johnson administrations.

Waters's socialist remark should be a reminder of what is at stake in this coming election--although McCain is as close to a progressive as self-proclaimed "conservatives" get. Her party, should a Democrat win the presidency, will have a nearly free hand to attempt to engineer society however it wishes. Caveamus...let us be wary.

Blogging Shall Return...

...tomorrow, or possibly tonight. Don't worry, I haven't forgotten about you, gentle reader! I have, however, sacrificed your general enlightenment in favor of earning a few bucks, for I must go to work today.

However, I shall leave you with a fantastic column--by one of my favorite classicists, Victor Davis Hanson--about the colonels who have turned Iraq around, their possible promotions to general, and commanders in American history who have won wars by rejecting the conventional wisdom of the Army establishment. Enjoy!

Whither The GOP: A Short History

In the 1930s, the progressive craze nearly destroyed the Republican Party. The twin crises of the stock market crash of 1929 and World War II frightened the nation into accepting enormous amounts of government control, taxation, and spending, and the Democrats owned it all. The Republicans, still embracing the classical liberalism of the 1800s and 1920s, were nearly destroyed, left at one point with 18 senators in total.

The GOP, however, managed to retake Congress once the war ended, but the damage was done. The sweeping new powers of government could not be turned back. Truman continued the New Deal policies, and Eisenhower sustained them. Classical liberalism, now termed "conservatism," was on the decline. In this environment, William F. Buckley lighted a small candle called the National Review, in the hopes of pushing back the lengthening shadow of government control against which no one else resisted. This candle grew into the flame of Barry Goldwater, the first representative of the "New Conservatism" and the first victory over the old conservatism of anti-Semitism, on the one hand, and elitist big government policies on the other. National Review grew in influence among Republicans, but still the GOP tactic of being watered-down Democrats dominated with the election of Richard Nixon in 1968 and the nomination of Gerald Ford over Ronald Reagan in 1976.

The flame was fanned into a wildfire by 1980, as the big-government policies of James Carter and his predecessors sent the economy into a downward spiral that defied Keynesian analysis, featuring both inflation and unemployment--previously considered an impossibility. The New Conservatism, by now firmly entrenched in the Republican Party, pushed Ronald Reagan into the presidential nomination and then into the White House after a crushing victory over Carter. This new paradigm in the Republican Party tolerated a more moderate George H.W. Bush to ascend to the presidency, then made an impact on the Democrats as Bill Clinton moved his party to the right with his "New Democrats." Newt Gingrich counterattacked by pointing out the big-government policies that Clinton, despite his promises, actually pushed through, and his 1994 Contract With America, based primarily on decreasing government spending and term limits for legislators, unelected a sitting Democratic speaker of the house and retook both houses of Congress. The partisan battles roared on until 2000, when George W. Bush promised to move his party to the left with "Compassionate Conservatism." Winning the 2000 election by a sliver, Bush proceeded to enact several large federal programs while simultaneously paying slight attention to conservatism with two modest tax decreases. This method of taking over previously Democratic territory by moving left worked for a few elections, as Republicans saw unprecedented mid-term election gains in 2002 and even more in 2004.

However, the price was steep. Demoralized conservatives, after having campaigned against Kerry and Gore, found themselves with no one to turn to. The excitement of 2004 evaporated and was replaced by a serious malaise, manifesting itself first in the massive electoral defeat of 2006. While conservatives weren't paying attention, congressional Republicans became first-class purveyors of pork barrel spending and big-government solutions. They became indistinguishable from Democrats, and this shift was led by none other than Senators John McCain and Lindsay Graham.

With the presidential primary approaching, consevatives tried to determine their course. Mitt Romney was a successful Republican from a very blue state, but his serious lack of consistency was problematic. Rudy Giuliani seemed solid, but had never held even statewide office, and his pro-choice and pro-gay marriage views were worrying in regard to Supreme Court appointments. John McCain was a war hero and an old stalwart among the conservative ranks, but his 2000 rejection of conservatism, his craving for the media's love, and his decided lack of higher conservative principle were troubling. Huckabee related well with the evangelical element of the GOP base, but outside of his rhetoric, there wasn't much real conservatism to be found. Ron Paul, of course, represented the conspiracist, anti-Semitic, isolationist Old Right. Fred Thompson was conservative in all the right ways, had a good track record, and was a phenomenal speaker, but he didn't have the energy or dedication for the campaign trail.

The result of all this confusion was John McCain, mostly because people liked his toughness and believed him to be the most electable due to his centrism.

We find ourselves today not with a conservatism that fails to excite, but with a GOP leadership that fails to be conservative. This is the fundamental failing of the GOP, that they are trying to steal the Democrats' natural territory--a doomed effort, to say the least--by giving up their own ground. They have failed to be an alternative, so no one is choosing them.

We need to give conservatives a choice again. But how? Tune in for the next blog post!

Today's GOP: The Problem

My little series about the future of the GOP happened, luckily, to coincide with a fantastic but depressing column by Robert Novak about congressional Republicans' latest lunacy:

On May 9, Flake sent Boehner a candid letter: "We need more than individual
members of the Republican leadership to state their opposition to the bill. We
need the leadership to use its good offices to explain the importance of
sustaining the president's veto as opposed to advising members to 'vote their
districts.'"

Boehner, waiting four days before responding, last Tuesday
rejected the "vote their districts" escape for House Republicans: "I believe
they should also vote their consciences, and cast their votes in a manner
consistent with the small government principles upon which our party was
founded." Boehner took the floor Wednesday to speak against the bill.

But nobody cracked the party whip. On the contrary, Minority Whip Roy Blunt voted
for the bill. So did Republican Conference Chairman Adam Putnam, who was seen
whipping votes for passage. House Republicans voted 100 to 91 to approve the
bill (with only 15 Democrats in opposition), assuring an overriden veto.
Similarly, in the Senate, Republicans voted 35 to 13 for the bill, and the only
Democrats opposing it were Rhode Island's two senators.

If you can stomach it, read the whole thing. We've come a long way since 1994! (Although, for my friends who hold the fantastical belief that Democrats are more committed to low spending: I don't know what to tell you.)

As Novak writes, the story of this bill's passage is the story of today's GOP. It is a party currently without a philosophy apart from how best to get elected.

Unfortunately for them, that philosophy is, basically, idiotic. The track record for Republicans when trying to become Democrat Lite--"We'll spend a lot, but not as much as the Democrats because we're small government people!"--they lose. But they don't seem to get that.

House and Senate members of both parties understand that earmarks and pork barrel spending for their districts is a way to buy votes and make constituents dependent on them and their built-up seniority and committee membership spots. If all you want to do is win elections, you know that's a tool in your toolbox, and both parties partake generously.

But you have to understand, as well, that high spending and low congressional restraint are exciting on an intellectual level for the Democrats' liberal electoral base. On the other hand, high spending is fundamentally demoralizing to the Republicans' conservative electoral base. So if this is your chosen strategy as a Republican, there's a built-in disadvantage in it if you have an R next to your name.

This is precisely what we're seeing: Republicans are not excited about this election. Why should they be? We have a presidential candidate who is to the left of every presidential candidate we've run since Nixon and Ford. We have a president who defends conservative principles only when convenient, and otherwise seems to take a default welfare-state tack--think No Child Left Behind, on which he worked closely with Senate Democrats, or the Medicare prescription drug benefit, or countless other bills. We have a congressional caucus that punishes members for being too conservative fiscally: Jeff Flake is likely the nation's staunchest and most courageous opponent of congressional largesse, and is deliberately kept out of the party leadership.

Meanwhile, Democrats are winning with very little pandering to political opponents; in fact, they've espoused a platform that is likely more left-wing than any platform since Woodrow Wilson promised to remake American society in 1912. (Perhaps even more left-wing than that.) Why? That is a subject for tomorrow's post.

Political Philosophy Matters

John Hinderaker of PowerLine posted this attack on John McCain made by Iowa Democratic Senator Tom Harkin:

Republican presidential candidate John McCain's family background as the
son and grandson of admirals has given him a worldview shaped by the military,
"and he has a hard time thinking beyond that," Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Ia., said
Friday.

"I think he's trapped in that," Harkin said in a conference call with
Iowa reporters. "Everything is looked at from his life experiences, from always
having been in the military, and I think that can be pretty dangerous."

Harkin said that "it's one thing to have been drafted and served, but
another thing when you come from generations of military people and that's just
how you're steeped, how you've learned, how you've grown up."

Hinderaker notes that this comment functions to exclude any military volunteer--much like all of our currently serving soldiers--from political discourse. Fair. But there's a bigger point to be made here about how Leftists think, what their philosophy is.

I once had a friend tell me that I wouldn't oppose government social spending if I was poor. This argument always takes me aback, a bit, but that's because it doesn't adhere well to rules of logic. (It's a sort of ad hominem fallacy.) But the entire Leftist philosophy is based on ad hominem fallacies that come down from such thinkers as Karl Marx. Socialism, Feminism, and Critical Race Theory all depend on a sort of identity politics: You can't understand racism, sexism, or class exploitation unless you're an oppressed person. You're an oppressed person by belonging to a certain group. Not in that group? Don't think oppression exists? Well, you just can't see or understand it because of who you are. It's easy to see the epistemological problem here; is the Emperor really wearing clothes?

One of the favorite oppressed underclasses of Democrats is military draftees who oppose(d) the war they participated in. American war heroes are in precisely the opposite camp. The only truly legitimate voices, to the modern liberal, are those of select "oppressed" groups--oh, and the modern liberal himself, since he/she is their protector and spokesman. It should never be a surprise that a war hero is denigrated for being a war hero.

To the modern liberal, the United States is often symbolic of imperialistic, racist, sexist, and capitalist hubris--bear with my caricature--and in a similarly symbolic way, those who fight us are the heroes. Thus Che Guevara--now-famously honored with a poster in a Houston campaign center for Barack Obama--and Alger Hiss are idealized and romanticized, while true heroes like John McCain and Oliver North are despised.

Falling Off Of...THE CLIFFS OF INSANITY!

In keeping with DBD's Princess Bride theme for the day.

Chris Arndt's blog, Apologies Demanded, has led me to a fantastical land of global warming craziness exposed for the entertainment of--hopefully--increasingly many. Global Warming Insanity documents the crazy things people do and say about the upcoming secular apocalypse and the Green code of conduct. (Think the Jesus statue from Scrubs, only with global warming instead of abortion. "No candescent lights!" "But what about our freedoms?" "Oh, yeah, I forgot. That's different then." "Really?" "NO CANDESCENT LIGHTS!" And so on.) Anyway, without further ado, the relevant story that I couldn't keep myself away from posting even though I promised to start a series about the Republican Party's future:

On Monday, Dr. Arthur Robinson of the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine will release the names of 31,000 American scientists who are skeptical about global climate change. There will be a statement attached to their collected signatures, the result of OISM's Petition Project.

Consensus: WHY WON'T YOU DIE!? Anyway, there will be a follow-up post to...follow. Darnit, now I've started on a different movie theme...

Can't Touch This

Obama cannot be touched, apparently.

It's not okay to hint that Barack Obama is an appeaser, even if you're really suggesting that about Jimmy Carter. Even if it actually makes a good point.

It's not okay to say that Barack Obama won't do a good job of protecting the nation. That would be an unacceptable personal attack.

There are other examples--including the racism column from The New Republic that I linked to a few days ago--but the fact is that any attack on a black politician (as long as he's a Democrat) is either a thinly-veiled appeal to Americans' supposed subconscious racism or an irresponsible lowering of the level of discourse, even when the attack is a legitimate issue.

This isn't a new politics; it's the old politics of manipulating public opinion by trying to form a certain image of yourself and a certain image of your opponent. Barack Obama is fashioning himself as the candidate who is above it all, who can work on a bipartisan basis (to enact strongly partisan legislation, shhh!), and, on a deeper level, who can absolve us all of guilt about the racial discrimination in our past. John McCain, on the other hand, represents the old way of politics (hehe, he's old!): personal attacks--how dare he say I'm less than fully qualified to run for president! for example--and the like.

Okay, end rant. My next post will be the first in a series, hopefully, about the future of the Republican Party. You stay classy, small number of readers.

Choose Your Oppressed Minority

One of the delightful features of the current Democratic primary is the battle between Democratic gender pandering and race pandering. Two columns today highlight the issue.

First, The New Republic's John Judis writes about implicit racism against blacks hurting Obama in the Democratic primary and the general election. Here's a bit of it:

What role, exactly, will that be? No one knows for sure, but the field of political psychology offers some clues. In recent years, scholars have been combining experimental findings with survey data to explain how race has remained a factor in American elections--even when politicians earnestly deny that it plays any part at all. In 2001, Princeton political scientist Tali Mendelberg summarized this research in a pathbreaking book, The Race Card. Her provocative analysis is hotly debated and far from conclusive; political psychology, after all, is not a hard science. Still, her ideas and those of other academics help to shed light on what has happened so far in the primaries and what might unfold once Obama wraps up the nomination. Their findings suggest that racism remains deeply embedded within the psyche of the American electorate--so deep that many voters may not even be aware of their own feelings on the subject. Yet, while political psychology offers a sobering sense of the difficulties that lie ahead for Obama, it also offers something else: lessons for how the country's first viable black presidential candidate might overcome the obstacles he faces.

You can read it yourself--though it's very long--but I can sum it up for you. Before 1970, there was explicit racism on bipartisan lines. After that, there was mostly only implicit racism all from Republicans...why, after all, did they oppose busing and affirmative action? Now, all Republican politicians that attempt to portray a Democratic opponent in a negative light are using racial code words to exploit voters' unconscious prejudices. Barack Obama will have a difficult time overcoming those Midwestern rednecks who don't even know they're racist. (By the way, how come those white blue-collar voters don't see how in-touch the Democrats are?) We've heard it all before, but this time it's backed up by university researchers whose tenured jobs are based entirely on the idea that blacks are systematically oppressed and prove it using experiments with severely flawed methodology and the useful recourse of calling your detractors racists.

What do the feminists have by way of response? Marie Cocco, writing for RealClearPolitics, decries the sexism that she says has ruined the Clinton campaign. She writes about all the things she won't miss, providing a hilarious litany of past anti-Hillary shenanigans. Then, this:

Most of all, I will not miss the silence.

I will not miss the deafening, depressing silence of Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean or other leading Democrats, who to my knowledge (with the exception of Sen. Barbara Mikulski of Maryland) haven't uttered a word of public outrage at the unrelenting, sex-based hate that has been hurled at a former first lady and two-term senator from New York. Among those holding their tongues are hundreds of Democrats for whom Clinton has campaigned and raised millions of dollars. Don Imus endured more public ire from the political class when he insulted the Rutgers University women's basketball team.

Here's the gist of this shorter article: Pundits and politicians are using sexist images like a scolding mother or a nagging wife to exploit voters' implicit biases, and they're getting a pass for it. In fact, they're betraying Hillary Clinton, a distinguished stateshuman who has done a lot for make benefit of glorious party of Democrats. (Instead, her campaign is not success, and she will be execute.) The truth of the matter, of course, is that the Democrats are understandably sick of the Clintons' politics of personal destruction--a tactic which, unlike what Dems would have you believe, was perfected by the pair's machine during the Nineties, long before the name Monica Lewinsky became widely known. But the dark secret that the DNC doesn't want you to know is this: the Democrats have long based their tactics on pandering to demographic groups, and they think they can afford to offend women, but not blacks. They don't think feminists will riot at the convention, the way an Al Sharpton might. (Those racists! Or are they sexists?)

This is the true greatness of this primary season. Clinton and Obama barely differ in their policy stances. They're both richer-than-rich folks who grew up as children of privilege, now trying to use their gender and race identities to appeal to regular Americans. And, magically, it's tearing the Democratic party apart.

Here's to you, Operation Chaos.

global warming is not great

John Hinderaker at PowerLine Blog posts about the inconvenient fact that the Earth has not warmed since 1998.

He also brings up the Argos temperature buoys. You know, the ones that discovered a slight cooling in the Earth's oceans over the last five years, and whose accuracy was therefore questioned because it didn't fit the capital-T Truth.

I graduated from Michigan State University last week. At our convocation, the speaker was Gro Harlem Brundtland, a former prime minister of Norway; she came into our country, received an honorary degree from one of our universities, and denounced an official of our government (the great Antonin Scalia, to be precise) for being a "denier." Some of my fellow students snorted in disgust as she tickled their stereotypes--that evil genius Antonin Scalia! Of course he wouldn't listen to a sainted former head of state of the enlightened nation of Norway!--but I refused to clap. This intellectual thuggery is embarrassing, but not unexpected. If we needed any proof that society needs religion, this is it: what happens when an entire continent embraces atheism? They find some other faith to grab onto and bash people over the head with.

Indoctrination High

(I'm back! Sorry for the long cessation of blogging, but I've been extremely busy post-graduation. I should now be back for regular blogging.)

This one really burns me.

My sister, a junior in high school, was watching another of our sisters in her spring play, when a classmate started goading her about why she didn't believe in global warming. After giving an answer, several other students started berating her about it. Finally, when she tried to leave, one asked her, "Why are you a Republican?" Sick of the whole thing, my sister said--awesomely--"Because I have eyes to see!" They continued to accost her, and she said that she'd tried to explain it to them for years. The teacher who was in charge of the play walked in at that moment and said, "That's the problem with rational arguments; you can't stand up under them."

This is a fantastic statement considering the anti-rational means of spreading the religious faith and zealotry of liberalism employed by this guy: a few students boisterously gang up on another--and, by the way, much better--student, then a teacher walks in and backs up those other students without recourse to rational debate. This is the same teacher that has been spouting his opinions and (often wrong) facts in class as though they were true: global warming is real, corporations are evil, religion's got it all wrong, and Alger Hiss was innocent. (That last one is especially hilarious, considering that the great Whittaker Chambers used Soviet documents to prove that he was in fact guilty of spying for the Soviets.)

This sort of behavior--and, to be completely frank, historical ignorance--is unacceptable in a high school teacher.

Blogging WILL Be Back!

Hey all. I know I've been lax lately, but hey...I'm busy! I carried the College of Arts and Letters banner at convocation at the Breslin Center on Friday then checked out and left to visit some very dear relatives in Spring Arbor around 9:30 PM. Saturday, we made it back to East Lansing and I went to the Classical Studies graduate reception at 10:00 AM, then I graduated at 1:00 in the MSU Auditorium. On Sunday I began a major organization project in my old room at my parents house in Newaygo--where I shall summer, once again--and didn't manage to finish. Today, I am in Madison Heights, visiting my girlfriend and her family before she leaves for Ecuador to study at the University of St. Francis in Quito. This is why blogging has been down, and will continue to be so for the next few days.

However--and this is a veritable promise--I shall return. Stay tuned.

Musings From The Center-Right Coalition, April 30, 2008

The Center-Right Coalition meetings are off the record, so the following is simply a series of observations and opinions about some of the issues raised today.

First, Michigan Right to Life. Soon-to-be-former House Speaker Andy Dillon (D, Redford) is a pro-life Democrat, but (surprise!) he's helping to delay an important vote to ban partial-birth abortion in the state of Michigan. Now, partial-birth abortion is a hideous procedure that even nihilistic Europeans find disgusting. Should be easy for one of the leading states in pro-life legislation to ban it, right? Wrong--and not just because the governor is pro-abortion. You see, it seems that (surprise!) the Democratic caucus doesn't really want to pass a partial-birth abortion ban. Look...I know there's nothing sexier to a conservative issue advocacy group than a Democrat who happens to stray from the party line on their issue. But the party's caucus is extremely important to them. That's why Michigan Right to Life needs to make sure that they're looking at the big picture and favoring pro-life Republicans.

Second, the Michigan Business Tax. We replaced the Single Business Tax, a horrifyingly complicated tax system for businesses that made doing business in Michigan a high-risk affair. This replacement was the Michigan Business Tax, which was supposed to be simpler and more favorably structured for investment. It turns out that they created a horrifyingly complex system that made doing business in Michigan nearly impossible unless the government picked you to win. Except this time the taxes were higher. The question here isn't how we can tweak it to make it better for businesses, or how we can make it stop hurting Michigan businesses; the idea isn't to try to make things better for businesses. The idea is to get a simple, fair, LOW tax system and then let the market chips fall where they may. In other words, let consumers decide who wins and who loses. Isn't the point to get consumers what they want?

CSW Dinner For Bloggers

So, now that I have some time...

Last night I attended a dinner at La Senorita restaurant in Lansing to hear Paul Chesser, the director of Climate Strategies Watch, talk about an organization called the Center for Climate Strategies. Basically, what this group does is go to state governors--they've gotten to about half of them already--and offer to put together an action plan for climate change. They can do this at almost no cost to the state, because they're funded by left-wing foundations like the Rockefeller Brothers Fund. CCS tells the governor to declare climate change a crisis and use an executive order to form a panel dominated by global warming alarmists that is structured to put together a platform that is nearly the same for every state: costly new regulations that hurt the state's economy. All the policies advocated for are considered to be endorsed at the outset; in other words, you have to actively disagree with the platform items. Mr. Chesser notes some of the interesting procedural rules for the panel: "participants will not debate the science of climate change," "participants are expected to support the process and its concept fully"... This is a back door attempt to force costly legislation on a state already reeling economically based on inadequate scientific data with no hint of cost-benefit analysis.

Let your state representative and state senator know!

As for the rest of the dinner, it was fantastic. I met some very nice folks who are also passionate about freedom, including Jason Gillman, Sr., the author of Michigan Taxes Too Much (soon to be included on the sidebar), as well as his son, Jason Gillman, Jr., whose blog is entitled Random Rants From An Airline Employee (also soon to be included). My buddy Chris Arndt of Apologies Demanded was there (already on sidebar!), as well as my friend Karen Post--soon to join the blogging community, and updates on that will be forthcoming. Rose Bogaert of the Michigan Taxpayers Alliance attended; she is the one responsible for the appearance of the Boss Hogg video on my website. (Which: Watch!) Lastly, Representative Jack Hoogendyk, the impressive candidate against U.S. Senator Carl Levin this fall and writer of Core Principles Blog, attended as well. The event was held by the indispensable Mackinac Center for Public Policy, whose director of communications, Michael Jahr, helped host the event.

More later about the CSC; also more about the Center-Right Coalition meeting I attended this morning, though since it's off the record, strictly opinion from TW2!

The Boss Hogg of Redford Township

This truly wonderful video was brought to my attention yesterday at a fantastic event that I will post about later. For now, enjoy and learn:

At Least The Dems Make The Trains Run On Time

Captain Ed Morrissey--he'll always be "Captain Ed" to me, by the way--writes in his post "The Nanny State, Explained" about some of Hillary Clinton's more frightening comments that have been overlooked. Here's the gem that he notes: "We can talk all we want about freedom and opportunity, about life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, but what does all that mean to a mother or father who can't take a sick child to the doctor?" His response:

I just finished watching the excellent HBO series John Adams last Sunday. It tells the story of our nation’s birth and the sacrifice many of our founders made to create a free nation. They wanted a nation with government limited to just enough power to keep the peace and defend the nation. They didn’t conceive of the idea that a free people would trade their fortunes and freedom to create a government that would dictate choices to them in a manner far more egregious than George III.

*nodding* Actually, freedom meant a great deal to a large number of people who did not have access to the sort of medical care available to even the poorest in this nation. It meant enough that they fought and died in the war that killed the largest percentage of Americans ever against a people to whom they were intimately related. But it seems that the days are gone when the majority of Americans strongly believed there was anything more out there than life and comfort. And with the passing of those ideals, the courage of a nation is passing, as well.

Gone are the days of "ask not," replaced by the days of "you deserve." (What do people really deserve, anyway? Of course it will be more popular to enact policies based on the idea that you deserve everything the world has to offer; the only problem is that it isn't true.) The party of John F. Kennedy died with him; the commitment to freedom is no longer a bipartisan effort.

An Important Point, And An Elaboration

A couple posts ago I wrote about the infiltration of socialist philosophy into our schools of education and thence to our primary schools. My buddy Keith had a fantastic point to make, and I'd like to re-post it here and offer an elaboration of its themes from my perspective:

I don't see why this 'revolution' is a bad thing, though. I think, in a sense, it is good for students to be taught to be passionate about the inequalities in the world. Especially for those who are Christians and are instructed that true religion is to look after those less fortunate (widows, orphans) and to love those that may not be loved by others, I think it would be good for kids at a young age to understand that affluence should not be looked at as entitlement but as a privilege and see their roles not as self-indulgent capitalists but stewards of gifts that they did not receive as a result of their well doing.

In short, I agree with these statements per se. Now, in the context of Bill Ayers, the word "revolution" is scary; it doesn't mean what Christians mean by "revolution," especially considering that Bill Ayers not only bombed government buildings in the Sixties in order to usher in this "revolution,' but declared the day before September 11, 2001, that he wishes they'd bombed more buildings than they did. This man's revolution is an atheistic one, absolutely opposed to God's plan for the world and dedicated to a powerful humanistic government. In fact, this is what modern liberalism is really all about, and I am not being hyperbolic.

I believe we should teach our children to use their gifts, both talents and material wealth, to help others who are less fortunate. We should teach them this at home and in church. Maybe we should even be teaching them these things in school, though I think we should just stick to the three R's. But that's not what this is about. This is about teaching these kids that rich people are evil and poor people are good, that all inequities are caused by the free market (a laughable idea, to those studied in economic history), and that we need more government involvement to solve the problem.

When a politician utters the words "social justice," it's time to pick up the children and run. All that is is a code phrase for more and bigger government. Government initiatives to fight poverty have done nothing but cause more of it; from a pragmatic point of view, such initiatives are beneath worthless. But from a moral point of view, government anti-poverty programs are much, much worse. First, government redistribution means that people are turning for help not to churches or to neighbors, but to government. It means people give less to charity, since the government takes money from their paychecks for charity anyway. Second, and more importantly, it is a fundamental abdication of the church's responsibility in that area. It is the church, not the government, that should be in charge of such things, and as the government has taken over the job of helping the poor, the church has done it less and less. This is a predictable result, and in many ways these programs were originally designed to make sure churches have less influence in people's everyday lives. Lo and behold...

While I have the utmost respect for the motives behind any brother or sister's support of government handout programs, I think that those programs are morally repugnant and ought to be opposed by every member of the body of Christ.

ADDENDUM: I'd also like to speak up for self-indulgent capitalists everywhere. Well, okay, that's sort of a joke, but I think the "self-indulgent capitalist" is more of a trope or a stereotype than a real thing. Americans are often caricaturized as materialistic--although Americans who say this should look at Europe if they want to see materialists--but the truth is that although Americans can get caught up in celebrity hype and the biggest flat-screen TV, we are also a deeply spiritual people. Very few people here raise their children to think that material happiness is all there is. Whatever the prevailing opinion is, the truth is that the times when this country truly had economic freedom were also the times of our greatest religious and spiritual growth. Material wealth is not what stops religious growth; large earthly governments are what stop religious growth.

Yes, But WHY Are Food Prices So High?

The Detroit Free Press reports today that U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has declared the rising price of food to be a global crisis:

A sharp rise in food prices has developed into a global crisis, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said today.

Ban said the United Nations and all members of the international community are very concerned, and immediate action is needed.

Action! Yes! Wait...how did we get here in the first place? The Freep is not kind enough to let us in on the secret, but Captain Ed Morrissey confirms what everyone already knew--at least, those who are paying attention to the current global climate hysterics:

In a way, the entire concept of biofuels as currently applied makes no sense at all. Instead of using food to actually feed people or even animals, we use it to feed our cars. Ethanol has suddenly lost its luster as an alternative energy source as food prices have skyrocketed, including in global-warming-sympathizing Europe

Who could possibly have predicted that these sorts of policies would be bad for poor countries? Hmmm. Captain Ed talks about the ethical issue of "feeding cars, not people," but the fact is that the real issue here is the power of the free market. Using corn-based ethanol to power cars is so ludicrous a way to help the environment that even college students don't support it. (Of course, considering the power of the agricultural lobby, led by Archer Daniels Midland, it was inevitable that increased government power to interfere on behalf of the environment would lead to absurd new agricultural policies.) Nothing enhances efficiency like the free market, which has already been bringing automobiles to higher and higher standards of fuel efficiency. If there is an economically viable alternative, let it flourish on its own. As it is, if people thought land use issues were important now, just wait until millions of new acres are used exclusively for corn now that prices are skyrocketing.

But instead, the government will simply wash its hands of this experiment in economic management and move onto the next failure. Wait and see.

The Revolution Comes To Your Schools

Michelle Malkin notes that Bill Ayers is not just a former terrorist who wishes he would have blown up more American buildings. He is also a professor of education in Chicago, and the readings he assigns borrow heavily from Marxists of all stripes. He himself models his political beliefs on such humanitarians as Ho Chi Minh and Che Guevara, and talks openly about going to the anti-war Camp Casey because he thought that might be the site of the beginning of the "revolution."

This shouldn't be surprising. It isn't just Bill Ayers who is pushing Marxism on future educators; every single education school in the country--Michigan State's is no exception--indoctrinates prospective teachers to believe that their job is to mold students' ideologies and to fix social inequities between classes, races, and genders. No wonder the quality of our education is declining--teachers aren't being taught that their main job is to teach. If you don't think that there is a concerted effort to use schools to indoctrinate students, well...you just aren't paying attention.

What can we do? Well, first and most basic, participate in your local school board meetings and elections. Best of all, run for that office yourself. Pressure your congresshumans to eliminate the requirement that teachers join the local teachers' union, as these unions are working to promote this agenda. We need to dismantle a significant portion of the current education establishment, including the Department of Education. There should be no more government money for schools of education that promote radical left-wing indoctrination of future teachers.