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Today we continue the book series with Chapters 3 and 4. They are rather short. There will be installments that consist of only one chapter.
3 CONSERVATIVE
“Oh, there's nothing better for American conservatism than periodic examples of untrammeled liberalism. ”
- George Will, therightscoop.com, 10 Jan 14
“The difference between a liberal and a conservative is that the liberal thinks we should be equal at the finish line while conservatives think we should be equal at the starting line. ”
- Barry Goldwater, Jr., Washingtontimes.com 17 Nov 14
The world is turned upside down. Never have two opposing political camps been more inaccurately mislabeled. When you get a chance, take a gander at Merriam Webster.com. Number 5 in the expanded definition of a liberal is “: broad-minded; especially: not bound by authoritarianism, orthodoxy, or traditional forms. [Emphasis theirs]
That may be so in the long-dead, Jeffersonian sense. But in the case of the modern American liberal[1](or progressive as they love being known) there is no animal more pig-headed. No one is more enamored with the idea of big government, authoritarianism and orthodoxy than the modern American “liberal”.
And a big, fat government we do have. The Emperor FDR himself could never have imagined the reach of government into our lives that we have today. This, even as convinced as he was that he was the smartest, most evolved creature on wheels.
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Despite the fact that big-government liberalism has failed miserably at every turn, libs remain dogmatically devoted to its survival. There is no idea, other than “liberal” doctrine that is acceptable. And the only way to keep big government alive is through ever-growing authoritarianism.
Now, at the same website, look at the definition of conservative. Number 3a is almost comical: “tending or disposed to maintain existing views, conditions, or institutions. Number 3c describes me brilliantly; “taste, elegance, style…”
The fact is, those now labeled as “conservatives” have blazed the trail since the 1950’s toward equal rights, better education, responsible government and making room for the individual to thrive. Libs now like to cry about the 80s and say it was the decade of greed. But it was the very concepts put into play in the 80s that let libs graduate from dirty jeans to New York condos. By contrast, liberals in that same timeframe have destroyed education, turned equal rights into a populist ghetto, put half the population on food stamps and demanded the individual surrender to the Borg…er, uh… the collective.
Before I get into a definition of what the modern, successful, politically viable conservative is today, let me humbly suggest what he is not.
Not!
He is not a doctrinaire. Despite the label “conservative”, he is not afraid to swim against the current. Just because powerful people in his own camp cling to an idea, that doesn’t bind him. He is a freethinking, open-minded individual.
He is not male (the grammatical convenience often used here not withstanding). Look at Carly Fiorina, Nikki Haley – who should be running for the oval office, look at Megan Kelly. Look at her a lot. It’s fun.
Nor is she white. I give you Chrystal Wright, aka Conservative Black Chick, Condoleezza Rice, the most powerful woman in American History, Stacy Dash (I want to be her stalker). At the risk of sounding cliché, some of the best-informed conservatives I know are female and black. One of my favorite people in the world, Jessica Burns (gutsy entrepreneur-type), is always the smartest person in the room, if not a bit silly at times. Very conservative. And just to put a fine point on it, she is pro gay marriage.
He is not straight. We not only have Log Cabin Republicans, there are strong individual gay voices in the conservative camp. Christopher R. Barron and Jimmy LaSalvia are founders of GOProud.
He is not Christian. Although there is a part of the Conservative movement that believes their Christianity is interwoven with their conservatism, most do not conflate religious beliefs with political issues and aspirations. Conservatives come from every religious background. And get this: A lot of conservatives are Atheists “…dogs sleeping with cats! Mass hysteria!”
A conservative is NOT a single-issue voter. Scratch the surface of a “conservative” who can only vote for a candidate who sees life through one issue (gay marriage, abortion, global warming, school prayer), and you’ll find a person with a narrow mind and an overblown sense of entitlement and self. In other words, a liberal who is too dumb to know he is actually a liberal. There are exceptions to this rule. When the “single issue” cuts a swath through the very fabric on which this nation was built, like Obamacare, tyrannical behavior of the Chief Executive, or war, then you may have single issues that will withstand scrutiny.
We are not jealous of what another has. That’s petty and leads to diminishing self-respect. We celebrate the success of others and try to emulate the practices of successful people in order to be more successful ourselves. By all means, if the richest guy in town has things or does things that you’d like to have or do, let his life serve as motivation and remind you that you will be there one day as well…if you are as willing to work as hard or harder than he has. [2]
A conservative is not racist. You will see me, more than once, in this august tome, refer to Billy Bob. He’s the mouth-breathing Walmartian who thinks conservatism is a about hating minorities, lovin’ Jesus, drinking Jack Daniels, listening to country music, wishing the South had won the war, owning a Nazi flag and dating your sister. [3] This is one of the two stereotypes of conservatives invented by the media and kept alive by rich, morbid obese, ignorant, Hollywood “documentarians”. [4] The other image is that of the rich guy who loves that people suffer while he sits and counts his money over and over again.
I’m going to spend a bit of time with Billy Bob because it is important to dispel phony notions and because it’s fun.
There really are people who think they are conservative because they hate minorities (like Robert Byrd did – I know, the irony is so thick you can smell it). These are not conservatives in any form that furthers any real argument or leaves the world or a community any better off. They’re not Eisenhower conservatives. His administration authored the Civil Rights Act. Johnson finally got it passed after dragging a handful of Dems to the table kicking and screaming.
They are not Reagan types. The Billy Bobs of this world never had the guts to get a decent job, much less stake their claim in this world.
They’re not W conservatives. W’s hallmark legislation was No Child Left Behind. Billy Bobs can’t read as well as most children and don’t care to.
And the whole Nazi, skinhead thing; Christ! Hitler was first and foremost a socialist! But we have Hollywood, and Billy Bob himself, saying that Billy Bob is conservative.
Give me a break. Here’s a thought: The GOP is called the big tent. We welcome everybody. Okay, fine. Can we consider chasing Billy Bob back to the other side? He can’t read a ballot anyway. Or at least have him take a bath?
What a Conservative IS…
The following is somewhat subjective. It’s based
on years of reading the works of conservatives and liberals, judging the validity of their commentary and monitoring results. I have condensed all this into a basic, workable concept of conservatism.
A good conservative is informed. We gather information from multiple sources. We know our own camp and know our opponent. There is no way to check one’s own beliefs from inside the echo chamber. If you read the Drudge Report and consider yourself aware of your world[5], you are a lame conservative.
Along that same line, a good conservative doesn’t accept something just because a politician or celebrity says it is so.
A good conservative is responsible. If you have a family, you provide for them (that includes accidental family, even if you don’t marry the mother). You leave a place as good or better than you found it. You provide for your own retirement. You involve yourself in the community and schools.
With responsibility comes self-reliance. We are more interested in what we can accomplish, in pursuit of our daily bread, than we are having bread handed to us.
A conservative demands (or should demand) facts. These are the things we need to decide what we will support or reject. For example, there are 47 federal job training programs being paid for by productive citizens. Many have not graduated a single applicant. Most have not resulted in a single job. There are no matrices to measure the progress of these programs. Just last week the White House proposed yet another job training program. No one inside the beltway has a clue what job skills are in demand right now. This Byzantine circus is among many that have to be ended. There are no facts to justify their existence. What’s more, we have to do a better job of monitoring these and all bureaucratic boondoggles. They need to be set right, drastically cut back or shut down.
A conservative wants legislators and executives that govern according to the law. What is made legal for one must be legal for all. What is denied one (one state, one race, one school, one person) must be denied all.
A good conservative loves and understands the new blood immigration brings to the market. LEGAL immigration. “What is legal for one…” right? People who wish to come to this country are required by law to go through a process. We don’t need new laws. We just have to enforce existing law. Make the legal process as safe and effective as possible. And make life for those here illegally as uncomfortable as legally possible. The problem then solves itself.
A good conservative is a conservationist. Not the tofu and granola kind - the real kind. You take care of your world. You don’t throw your crap on the ground like they do at Earth Day rallies. You hunt and fish, but not indiscriminately. And you don’t need a beltway lawyer to define “indiscriminately” for you. The world is an asset. You didn’t have to purchase it, but you occupy a part of it. Referring back to the paragraph on responsibility, you leave your world a better place than how you found it. It is the least mark you can leave as a human being as well.
A conservative doesn’t want his representatives to “bring home the bacon”. He wants them to leave more of the citizen’s own, earned bacon at home to begin with.
A conservative absolutely understands the need for a social safety net for those on hard times. A safety net, not a pillow upon which one lounges for life. And that safety net should be sustenance and shelter. No one should be able to draw cash at an ATM with a food stamp card. They should only work at supermarkets for the purchase of critical foodstuffs. They shouldn’t finance Pringles or high-end running shoes. Wider welfare programs should work the same way.
We also believe in human dignity. That isn’t found in an unearned life, but in the value of what one does for oneself.
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4 ISSUES
Politicians trim and tack in their quest for power, but they do so in order to get the wind of votes in their sails.
-Ian Gilmour
Dump the Phony Issues
Fortunately, for the true conservative candidate, legitimate issues are few. But you wouldn’t know it looking at a modern campaign. Remember when I said that too many people in this country LOVE to be lied to? I also said many think they are electing an emperor to repair their lives for them. They’re candidate, like God, is on their side. I hate to burst your obscene bubbles troops, but neither of them is. Whatever your concept of a god, he would be a bit busy controlling a universe. It is at once petty and arrogant in the extreme to think he is out there sweating whether Al Pacino Middle School in the Bronx has school prayer or teaches evolution. The candidate is equally busy on the temporal plane. The difference is that the politician will lie and pretend he is interested. Gods tend to remain rather mute.
Now keep in mind that I am talking about candidates for federal office. They know such issues and others like local police matters, local tax issues, etc. are not things they should get involved in. The guy running for mayor or county supervisor better damned sure get involved in them. They should be the busiest officials in your life. DC legislators and the President ought to be the least known or heard from.
Federal legislators and the President are not judges. They don’t know anything about your town. They have no idea of local tradition, much less your local laws. There is a GOOD reason why the voter should embrace this reality. It is the same reason those geniuses back in 1787 limited the scope of our government. The people in South Bend, Indiana are competent enough to decide, if the issue were to be raised, whether to fly the American flag in front of their schools. If Spotsylvania, Virginia decided to enact an ordinance saying that no illegal aliens can work in their county, that’s their business. If your town says that they are going to ban multiple partner marriage, and you happen to favor that ordinance, do you want some schmuck from DC telling you it must be otherwise? Are you all such idiots that you cannot deal with these things without turning to the grand, imperial, magical gods on Mount Bullshit to wipe the drool from your chins?
Of course not!
Besides, we are often surprised by the results of such pleadings, aren’t we? Justice Roberts, just recently, stepped into the well (metaphorically speaking) and changed the Obama administration’s arguments for them. The subject was Obamacare. The pro-socialized medicine crowd had the loosing argument. Roberts, as he did when the administration’s arguments contradicted themselves the last time, changed the meaning of our language and in a tortured piece of case law, made a ruling based on his new fantasy argument. [vi]
But until that very moment, anti-Obamacare voters were saying, finally, we are saved from Obamacare because the court couldn’t possibly let this one go by. And yet they did. And so it is with social issues. You don’t want them to bubble to the surface inside the beltway. They’ll pretzel it beyond recognition and then often disappoint you. Keep local and personal issues local and personal. Don’t feed the federal pig with excuses to get into your lives.
Beyond disappointment is the fact that by dabbling in such issues, including the popular ones, they are exercising a form of tyranny the constitution intended they not. The federal government has few responsibilities; defense, foreign relations and interstate trade. They cock that up along with everything else they touch because they, with the help of the courts, have gotten their greasy meat hooks into almost every aspect of our lives. By ignoring their constitutional mandate, they have created an incompetent, overloaded leviathan. It doesn’t work and costs too much because no organization, no party, no person can involve itself in so much and succeed. So the candidate who will put the Republicans, and more importantly conservatives, on a long-term winning streak is the guy who says that he is out of the social issues business.
Who has the guts to say that if a bill is sent to the White House dealing with bullying,[vii] it will be vetoed and the authors will be called out and ridiculed? Get the cameras and microphones ready! Tune up your crybaby voice, Chris Matthews! Here’s the winning candidates take: HEY, PARENTS! RAISE BETTER KIDS! I AM NOT THE BABYSITTER-IN-CHIEF! A legislative hopeful can make the same pledge to excoriate anyone who introduces bills that are outside the scope of federal authority which assume helplessness on the part of American adults to raise their kids or live their lives.
Gay Marriage, as an Example
This is the phony issue of phony issues. It also demonstrates how shallow too many of us are in our dealings with the wider world.
Militant gays seem to get an almost erotic thrill from destroying the lives of people who don’t see life exactly as they do. A baker might say, “You know, I won’t be able to work your wedding because it is against my religious beliefs.” The normal person may take exception to being turned down by a vendor, but there are countless others out there. So finding one is a simple process.
But what did the perpetually offended do in just such a situation? They did whatever they could to ruin the livelihood and thereby the lives of the religiously conscientious baker. What lowlifes! What ass hats! And it isn’t lost on me that the whole thing might have been a setup in the first place so some activists could gain some cred with fellow crazies within the gay community. And how could they even hope to be successful at that? It is because this country has made interpersonal relationships the purview of politics and the state. If we weren’t busy codifying what a relationship is there would be no one to cry to if a person says I don’t want to participate in an activity that I strongly disagree with.
Which leads to my next point. Issues like gay marriage are where politicians go when they find that a) they don’t have any real ideas to discuss, b) want to pander to one segment of the population at the expense of another. To these politicians, specifically conservatives,[viii] may I humbly suggest you mind your own goddamn business? What the hell do you care if Maggie and Mary want to get married? The true answer is: you don’t. In a different context, you’d be kissing Maggie and Mary’s butts for votes like you would anyone else’s. So stick to the issues we’ll be dealing with in future chapters of this weighty tome and don’t muddy the waters with crap about who can make a commitment to whom.
To both sides of this argument: Marriage is a sacrament. It is a throwback to a time when the church was the government. Marriage was a tool for the church to try to cement its control over succeeding generations of their congregation. It also showed them where their new congregants would be coming from. In other words it was about maintaining power and money. And that is the reason it remained a part of the secular governments that replaced the church.
Here it comes…so you’re saying we should ignore 1000 years of tradition?
I do hear that often. Tradition is a lousy reason to make law. It is certainly NO reason for the government to concern itself with people’s personal affairs. Honor killings are a tradition. Arranged marriages are a tradition. Clitorectomies are a tradition. Does tradition make them any less stupid or uncivilized?
Traditions will inevitably give way to advancement. That is a simple fact. Some traditions are kept simply for the enjoyment of the practitioners. But they are not cast in stone. C’mon guys. Did you not see Fiddler on the Roof?
There are probably dozens of such ideas that can viewed through the same prism: flag burning, book burning, Koran burning, TV nudity, online gambling… The “Leader of the Free World” and the Congress that writes the laws he must follow, have far more important issues to deal with. Especially when you realize how many of these phony issues we need to flush out of the existing system. So grow up America and own your shit! We’re not going to deal with it for you anymore.
Take this attitude and win!
Voters: If you see this kind of a person in a candidate, vote for that person! You’ll be happier four years from now that you did.
But there is more to consider. You may see much of what is to follow in some of our candidates (if they ever emerge) so voting for them will be easy.
[1] In this book, I am referring to the liberal doctrinaire who populates the left-wing governing class. I have liberal friends who I love and respect. But they are not members of the political elite in the mold of Clinton (female half), Obama (either half).
[2] I will reject out-of-hand the typical qualifiers I usually hear at this point. Comments like, well he just got lucky, or what if he just inherited everything. Luck is how the jealous describe the success of others. And if the richest guy in town inherited what he has, find out what his parents or grandparents did. Such wealth rarely lasts three generations.
[3] For the record, I don’t own a Nazi flag and I am glad the country was reunited after the civil war. And, well, my sister is really hot.
[4] Can you guess which disgusting, two-faced, lard ass I am referring to?
[5] I read the Drudge report. It is one of my favorite websites and is an excellent source of information. But my self-confidence as a conservative comes from bouncing my arguments off of sites which do not agree with me. It is how I expand my knowledge base and check for possibilities that may exist outside my own thinking.
Ch. 4
[vi] What do they have on Roberts? Do they have video of him snorting coke, playing with hookers or taking bribes? Or his he just trying to be co-President and get his name written in bold print in the history books? Either way, he is a disgrace to the court. See Obama’s Top 50 What?! At my blog, Pedestrian Politics and Economics
[vii] Don’t laugh. There has been such legislation debated. The federal website www. stopbullying.gov says “The U. S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights has released several guidance letters on the obligation for schools to address harassment and specific considerations for sexual harassment, disability harassment, and denial of FAPE. ” So even without insane legislation regulating children on the playground and big, fat meanies on the Internet, the government is threatening schools, states and counties with keeping more of their money over this bullshit issue.
[viii] There is no point where “gay” puts you among or disqualifies you from being a conservative. So let’s not box out yet another group from our numbers.
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