WND reports that "A school district in Arizona has come under fire after a newspaper columnist highlighted the district's newly adopted racial policy and called it a "two-tiered form of student discipline: one for black and Hispanic students; one for everyone else." According to the columnist [Doug MacEachern] "TUSD [Tucson Unified School District] principals and disciplinarians…are being asked to set two standards of behavior for their students…Some behavior will be met with strict penalties; some will not. It all depends on the color of the student's skin."
School district officials claim they are just trying to correct racial discrimination in disciplinary practices. They set "the goal of reducing suspensions and expulsions of minority students to reflect "no ethnic/racial disparities." As evidence of these disparities, their plan cites "statistics that while American Indian students make up only 4 percent of the student body, they account for 20 percent of the suspensions across the district. And while black students make up 7 percent of the student body, they account for 16.3 percent of out-of-school suspensions."
Unfortunately, as is so often the case with so-called "liberal" arguments as to racial discrimination, the cited statistics don't necessarily prove their point. An Arizona Star editorial, written with sympathy for the school officials, points to the fallacy involved. "One explanation is that some kids are misbehaving more often than others, while another could be that minority kids are written up for the same actions more often than Anglo kids or that minority kids are given harsher punishments. The reasons are myriad and probably a mix of the above." Apparently the school district officials also recognize the possibility that the overall statistical disparity may be related to the behavior of students rather than discrimination against them. Their new policy promises that "School data that show disparities in suspension/expulsion rates will be examined in detail for root causes, …Special attention will be dedicated to the data regarding African-American and Hispanic students."
Here's the obvious question: Why implement a policy based on the assumption of racial discrimination before analysis of the data has confirmed it as the cause of the statistical facts? When dealing with a malfunctioning piece of equipment, it may be reasonable to take precautions against possible causes before determining the actual one. But people aren't machines. The policy being implemented in this case has the quite possibly slanderous implication that teachers and school administrators are racist bigots. It quite possibly encourages misbehaving students to lean on the crutch of racial resentment, rather than accept full responsibility for their own actions. With teachers afraid to discipline because they'll be perceived as racists, and students emboldened to misbehave because they're just getting their own back for racist treatment, the policy seems likely to worsen behavior rather than improve it.
The default of reason here isn't just logical. It arises from the predisposition to define problems in racial terms, rather than in terms that take seriously what ought to be the essential goal- the development of students' moral character. The school officials appear to have some sense of this. "TUSD Assistant Superintendent Jim Fish told the Star that MacEachern had misunderstood what is meant by the board's plan to adopt a more "restorative" culture and that seeing a two-tiered system of discipline was "far-fetched." "This would apply to all children," Fish said. "There is no such thing as treating one class of students differently….We're teaching kids about the mistakes they've made….If you're out of school 10 days or 45 days and you're not dealing with the infraction, you haven't changed your thoughts or behaviors or actions."
There is something sad (pathetic in the non-pejorative sense) about Fish's effort to make the simple point that punishment alone doesn't build character. There's something pathetic about the fact that the school district obscures and distorts their desire to address what ought to be a pervasive common sense goal of every aspect of education by presenting it in the context of 'politically correct' but irrelevant racial rhetoric and statistics.
This failure of common sense actually encourages insensitivity to the differences between one ethnic community and another, differences that have a bearing on the task of character development. Ethnic communities are in fact not defined by physical differences, but by the different paths, institutions and behavior they use to convey moral truths and priorities. Willingness to see and try to understand these aspects of a student's ethnic background, and to understand as well the strain placed on their effectiveness by the cacophony of contemporary life, should be part of the make-up of teachers and administrators trying to play their part in the task of character formation. Instead of putting this ethnic aspect of the task in the context of unproven and destructively inchoate assumptions about racial discrimination, school officials would do better to begin from the straightforward premise that education requires and must be based on responsible cooperation between the institutions of family, school and moral understanding (religious/ethical institutions). Disciplinary procedures would then be developed with a view to assuring the responsible involvement and cooperation of these institutions in achieving the positive goal of good character. It's old fashioned language. It implies respect for things the "liberal" leftists (whose initials are NEA) regard with hostility and contempt. But it might just work better than policies hampered by the strait jacket of the "liberal" obsession with race.
[This post begins a series on Foreign Policy and National Security issues that I'll add to periodically over the next two weeks. I will call the series "Liberty for All", for reasons made clear below. By the way, when I settled on the title of today's post, I had the species in mind.]
"It has been frequently remarked that it seems to have been reserved to the people of this country, by their conduct and example, to decide the important question whether societies of men are really capable or not of establishing good government from reflection and choice, or whether they are forever destined to depend for their political constitutions on accident and force….a wrong election of the part we shall act may, in this view, deserve to be considered as the general misfortune of mankind." (Alexander Hamilton, Federalist #1)
Over the years I've noticed that many black Americans seem to regard their ethnic identity as a bitter burden. I know that from time to time I've certainly felt the way. But I have also felt it to be a special responsibility. That's probably because, when I was growing up, my parents found ways to make that responsibility clear to us, especially when it came to speech and behavior. What we said and did reflected on the family. It affected what people would think of black folks in general. It would shame or encourage others. I have learned over the years that this sense of responsibility for the good or bad name of the community is part of what it means truly to belong to a community, because human communities form in light of common moral ideas and sensibilities. As we embrace the communal identity, our respect for that common sense of right and wrong affects what we say and do. In the way that we carry ourselves, we acknowledge that we carry the community as well.
Obviously, in some respects this has to do with incidental things- eating habits, accents, patterns of speech and expressions that by themselves may have no moral significance. But it can also have to do with how we treat other people; how we assess the impact our words and actions have on them; whether we feel bound, as we set goals and priorities, to take account of the contribution we make to their welfare or misery.
Since the United States first emerged as a nation, its best statesmen have found ways, as they dealt with its affairs, to make it clear to the American people that they have a special responsibility to humanity as a whole. Though many of the Founders thought and wrote in the context of an English heritage, during the Revolutionary period they consciously chose to frame their arguments for independence in terms of unalienable human rights, rather than the rights of Englishmen. In such terms they enunciated the founding principles stated in the Declaration of Independence. In such terms they debated and framed the provisions of the Constitution.
They consciously chose to accept their responsibility for the welfare or misery of the human race, not just their own. These days shallow politicos from left and right just as consciously reject the choice they made. On the left, they reject the moral concept of our humanity in favor of a materialist conception that literally dehumanizes everyone, beginning with human posterity in the womb. On the right, they reject the comprehensive moral concept of our nation in favor of a narrowly ethnic conception that betrays the special American responsibility to humanity heretofore acknowledged, in some way, by each new generation, sometimes at the cost of much blood, treasure and sacrifice.
The tragic consequence of their abandonment of the principled American commitment to do right by humankind is an approach to foreign and national security policy that abandons the challenge of prudently thinking through a global strategic vision; prudently maintaining international relations that serve and support the prospects for liberty; and prudently using the strength and resources Providence has granted to our labor and ingenuity to safeguard and promote the moral ideas, practices and institutions that have been recognized as the special trust of the American nation since it first resolved to establish for itself a free and independent state.
Not coincidentally, this abandonment of strategic vision leads to policy decisions that damage the national security of the country. The original sense of acting on behalf of all humanity has encouraged the true statesmen in each succeeding generation to see America in the context of the larger world for which its ideas and actions can serve as inspiration, encouragement and aid. Long before we actually had the power to make good on our intentions, the most prudent American leaders took an interest in the fate of other people, starting in our own part of the world, but extending with our commerce to faraway places as well. Great ideals and good intentions were by no means always the motives. In fact, in ordinary times Americans were prone to fall into the selfish, narrow minded patterns of ordinary nations. But like the outwardly cynical, self-serving heroes common in our books and movies, the hard-boiled everyday exterior harbored a persistent sense of humanity, lurking to surprise the oppressors and enslavers of mankind in the periodic crises when injustice comes to a head, and the human path is decisively marked out for good or ill.
The point is that we never lived permanently with the delusion that we could cultivate our happiness in our own little corner of the world and let the rest be saved or damned as may be. Even in the midst of continent subduing self-absorption; even in the grip of fanciful isolationism and post-war traumatic withdrawals, voices were always raised on behalf of our commission for humanity, even when they dared recommend as policy little more than the good wishes we could convey by our example. And when the great crises came the American people rose time and again to the occasion. Whatever the demoralizers may try to argue, people don't suddenly conjure up from nothing the willingness to sacrifice and die for supposedly noble ideals they never really cared for. They sustain hardship; they endure to victory precisely because somewhere in the midst of their ordinary selves they doubted that the satisfaction of their own needs and material desires fulfilled the whole meaning of their existence as individuals or as a nation. Something in them waited for the call, and knew it when it came as the echo of a truth that whispered in their spirit all along.
Whether it's Barack Obama's treacherous apologies, retreats and clear betrayals, or Ron Paul's rhetorical surrender to cynical misinterpretations of our willingness to care for the fate of liberty throughout the world, from right and left the mere politicians of our times willfully ignore this spiritual dimension of the American identity. Sadly, those who will not, for popularity's sake, mimic their willful ignorance, gain favor from neither extreme. Unlike Obama, I will not surrender my allegiance to America's special vocation, its responsibility to uphold the moral ideas that define justice for humanity; its record of service and sacrifice in the name of those ideals. For these reasons, I believe we need apologize to no one.
But unlike the supposedly conservative or libertarian purveyors of a cynically narrow nationalism, I cannot forget that America's liberty is not now and never was properly defined as the possession of one community, race or nation. The freedom we assert, the liberty we conserve, is rooted in the nature we share with all human beings. It calls to them as to us with the quietly powerful voice of our Creator God. We love, serve and conserve it more for His sake than for our own, fully becoming Americans only when we act, as He does, not for ourselves alone but for all the world.
Some readers have probably noticed that pondering the political scene in the US has lately brought to my mind Machiavelli's unscrupulous advice to princes, those pesky paragons of perilous ambition whose 'Caesarism" the American founders often warned against. (As a torch is to the flame, so is Machiavelli to Lucifer. Though we hear a lot about Saul Alinsky these days, he could barely hold a candle to Machiavelli. So, when Alinsky dedicated the now infamous book, Rules for Radicals to Lucifer, he looked back at him over the shoulder. When Machiavelli finished writing The Prince, he could have done so without turning his head.) In Machiavelli's writings the Caesar in question is often Cesare Borgia, the Italian princeling whose ultimate failure is the analytical rubric for the thinking on which Machiavelli bases his plan for humanity's strategic assault on the sovereignty of 'Nature and nature's God'.
As I reflect on the supposed disgrace and collapse of ACORN, I can't help thinking of the fate of Cesare's faithful lieutenant, Remirro de Orca. Cesare sent Remirro to deal with the situation when his province of Romagna suffered from rebellious lawlessness and unrest. Remirro was a man who apparently richly deserved the accolade Machiavelli bestows on another, whom he described as a man of "cruelty and infinite other virtues". With bloody execution, Remirro brought the province to heel. However when his terrorist regime threatened to stir the people of Romagna to united rebellion, Cesare paid him a visit. One morning not long after the visit began, the people of Romagna were treated to what was for them evidence of a morbidly satisfying surprise attack. They awakened to see the hated henchman's body, sliced in two halves, decorating the public square.
Remirro served Cesare with single-minded fidelity. So the duplicity represented by his divided body was, of course, that of his master. It also represented the restored unity of Romagna under Borgia's rule. De Orca's death was therefore a political resurrection. (This is profoundly appropriate since Machiavelli's use of the story reveals how much he studied and intended others to learn from Jesus Christ, the Prime Minister of his greatest enemy.)
ACORN appears to have fallen prey to a similarly unexpected and spectacular execution. But as we consider it, we should keep in mind that we live in times greatly influenced by the strategic lessons Machiavelli intended to teach with his Cesare Borgia stories. Though in one form Remirro de Orca appeared to die, his death in fact confirmed the new order Cesare Borgia intended, by his cruel administration, to impose on Romagna. This suggests that ACORN is not dead, nor even sleeping.
The whole thing reminds me of those who, when Van Jones was driven from his post, celebrated the departure of that communist from the White House. But Obama is still in the White House, benefiting from the impression that the communist is no longer working there. Talk about hiding in plain sight! It's almost as effective as that other form of duplicity we've been talking about- the so-called two-party system. But that's an whole other story, isn't it?
One of my Facebook friends thought the title of my last post better suited to a discussion of the H1N1 vaccine. That called for a bittersweet chuckle, as it reminded me of the analogy I frequently draw between the effect of leftist Republicans and what I learned during a WHO briefing years ago about the way the AIDS virus affects the body's immune system. As I recall, the virus takes control of cells that perform critical immune system functions. It recodes the infected cells so that the body reacts to them as if they were still healthy. Its as if the troops assigned to guard a city were replaced by a gang of shrewd impostors whose only interest was to get the free food, clothing and shelter the city provides for its soldiers. Their successfully masquerade leaves the city gates and walls unattended. First the enemy's agents, and then its troops can enter at will. In biological terms, the body falls prey to opportunistic infections.
In the political debates and discussions that took place during the founding period, people often drew parallels between the body politic and the individual organism. As I put it to my FB friend yesterday, "In those days people discussed remedies for the body politic with the fervor some now reserve for their individual bodily ills. That may be why they established this historically unique constitutional republic, and we are well on the way to losing it." Be that as it may, I think the GOP leaders who pretend to be conservative while giving preferential treatment to socialists in maschera could easily pass the audition for starring roles in an Advise and Consent style political drama about an elite secret society called AIDS (the Association for the Incognito Development of Socialism.)
This elite secret society would of course include many of the Judas goat talkers and media pundits now busily hawking the "80 percent/20 percent", put Party above all voting fallacy. This fallacy, the logical counterpart of a chemical solution, is eight parts sophistry and two parts pure deception. It reminds me of Sherlock Holmes's famous seven percent solution of cocaine, only instead of speeding up the body's metabolism to cure boredom it is employed during the delicate and lengthy procedures that remove a growth of political liberty from the body politic. The intended effect is to tranquillize those conservative members of the body apt to react most vigorously to the symptoms that accompany the return to historical normalcy, i.e., a state of speciously legitimized elitist tyranny.
The fallacy goes something like this. It makes sense to lend political support to leaders you agree with on eighty percent of the issues, rather than refuse them your support (on account of the twenty percent where you disagree) in situations where that means victory for someone you disagree with on eighty percent of the issues. When dealing with matters that are properly subject to quantitative analysis, this seems fair and logical. Who would refuse someone offering cash and stocks worth eighty percent of their asking price when their stubbornness leads to a leveraged buyout of their assets in which they end up with only twenty percent?
But what if the 'asset' involved was your children? Charles Manson style home invaders offer to leave your home and all your material possessions unharmed in exchange for letting them satisfy their blood lust by killing your two children. The money value of the children's bodies may be around $9.00, depending of course on economic conditions at any given time. Let's say the value of your house, car and other material possessions on hand is around $300,000. If you accept the home invaders offer, you lose only .03% of your possessions. If you reject it, they'll destroy your material goods, and probably kill you and the kids anyway. By refusing, therefore, you end up with less than nothing. Do you let them kill the kids?
Many decisions (more than 80%?) involve keeping, adding to, or giving up what's in your hands. A few (far less than 20%?) involve cutting out your heart. Are they all equal?
Machiavelli recounts the story of a city under siege ruled by a woman with several children. The besiegers manage to capture her son and heir. When they offer to release and spare her offspring in exchange for surrendering the city's liberty, she mounts the walls. Exposing herself with a lewd gesture she refuses their offer, declaring "See what is here. I can bear more sons." The complex moral of that story offers comfort to those readers inclined toward the view (hypothetically of course) that their children are disposable goods. Those incapable of such facile moral relativism (formerly regarded as hardness of heart) at least take away from the story a sense of the difficulties that arise when using quantitative analysis to make decisions about human affairs.
In mathematics, we have no problem accepting the idea that for each system of measurement the unit of measurement derives its meaning from the context and in that context no 'one' has a meaning all its own. That's not so easy to accept when dealing with human beings. We can't simply be indifferent to the qualitative difference between issues that deeply involve and affect our sense of worth and true identity, and those that deal mainly with the material conditions in which we live. It means above all that we can't pretend such indifference when dealing with matters that go to the heart of the emotional, intellectual and spiritual reasons whereby we recognize the moral difference between a human being and a stone, or a house, or a hammer.
It's no coincidence that the 'eighty percent' issues referred to by the Judas goats and other hawkers of the 80/20 fallacy always center on money; the procurement and distribution of material goods; or the pleasures derived from them. The 'twenty percent' issues, on the other hand, mainly involve matters that accept or deny the intrinsic worth of individual human life, and the principles of judgment and conduct that support laws and policies requiring respect for it. Encouraging people to be obsessed with material goods is one of the key components of the procedure required to eliminate their liberty. People who fall prey to this obsession take it for granted that better and worse are measured in material terms. Everything becomes a matter of more or less, focused on the quantity of 'goods', without any thought or regard for the standard that makes them so. Moneymaking is the perfect sacrament of this obsession, since it takes as the measuring standard of good an accumulation of merely abstract units.
But as we have seen, this standard fails when applied to human beings. Most people boldly testify to this failure the moment someone treats them like dirt, or a dog or even yesterday's news. The 80/20 fallacy achieves plausibility by mimicking quantitative analysis. But like the sophists of ancient times, it uses the outward form or appearance of logic in order to divert attention from a deceptive premise, in this case the assumption that it is humanly acceptable to use the same method to take account of human beings and material goods. Thus we are distracted into believing that we get part of what we want, while being gulled into accepting a method of reasoning that denies more than all of what we are.
In the current debate among conservatives, this is literally the effect the fallacy achieves. The conservative identity, and indeed that of Americans in general, involves respect for individual rights and responsibilities. Such respect makes no sense if human beings are not individuals but interchangeable units that have no meaning in and of themselves (no intrinsic value.) Considered en masse it's easy enough to accept the idea that people in society are no more than pebbles in a jar. But when individuals are treated in this way, they generally resent the lack of consideration for what they feel and know themselves to be on the inside, whatever their outward appearance or circumstances. Anger and indignation naturally result, fueling conflicts that eventually lead to war. That's why human justice has to take account of individual worth. Unless individuals are given their due, their society lacks humanity. That deficiency eventually dissolves both its integrity and its cohesion.
This is the moral basis for conservative opposition to socialism. Whatever material good socialism aims to achieve, it does so by sacrificing respect for the distinctively human understanding of good that allows us to recognize the difference between human individuals and the merely material objects that have a form of unity but lack the inward knowledge of its worth. This inward knowledge manifests the soul of all humanity; the subjective certainty that we matter. But what we appear to be in material terms matters precisely because it represents more than we can ever know from its appearance alone. This is why our understanding of justice appeals to the existence and will of the Creator God.
Human affairs require wisdom that goes beyond what can be known by any quantitative analysis or method. Such wisdom takes account of the fact that all human beings know directly from their own nature what cannot be known from observation: the intrinsic value of one. Such wisdom impelled America's founders to realize that laws and judgments that deny unalienable rights strike at the heart of what it means to be treated with just regard for humanity. So do proposals that treat human beings as ciphers to be discarded when some bureaucrats or their quantitative formulas claim they are too old or infirm or irrelevant to justify the expense of caring for their health.
There was a time when we could count on something like this wisdom from people who call themselves conservative. Whatever they call themselves now, the ones willing to accept the 80/20 fallacy are much like the argument they make: they adopt the name and outward appearance of conservatism, but betray its substance. In our present crisis, conservative voters who follow their advice will be doing the same to their liberty.
As conservative voters approach the 2010 elections, they might consider heeding the wisdom of this simple slogan: Don't trust the Party label. In particular, the Republican Party label is being abused as part of a conscious effort to deceive them.
Consider as evidence yesterday's report by Josh Kraushaar at politico.com. Under the direction of Senator John Cornyn (R-TX), the GOP's National Senatorial Committee is backing a slew of left-leaning candidates for the 2010 primaries. The plan is to give them special advantages in the primaries, while bad mouthing the prospects of conservative candidates.
The best, and perhaps most controversial, example of the NRSC's muscle-flexing is in Florida, where Cornyn quickly got behind the campaign of popular moderate [sic] Gov. Charlie Crist, despite growing conservative resentment over Crist's support of [alleged] President Barack Obama's stimulus plan and environmental policies.
The NRSC's open support for the governor has stifled the fundraising ability of former state House Speaker Marco Rubio, an attractive candidate in his own right who has been winning the support of conservative activists across the state.
"The speed with which the national party and national Republicans took sides in this race has presented challenges," said Rubio spokesman Alex Burgos. "Speaker Rubio never envisioned a day that a conservative in the Republican primary would be the underdog―and wouldn't be given a chance by the national party.
Conservatives considering Rush Limbaugh's contention that there's no hope outside the GOP need to ponder deeply the significance of this fact: the GOP leaders won't give a conservative a chance. Their excuse for stacking the deck against conservatives is that they are backing "electable" candidates. But they consistently define "electable" as "moderate" or "not conservative." According to the politico.com piece this logic "makes perfect sense to GOP strategists, who view it as a necessary exercise in political Darwinism.
"The job of the party committee is to help people with an 'R' next to their name; it doesn't matter what their ideology is," said Carl Forti, who headed the National Republican Congressional Committee's independent expenditure efforts in 2006 [with such good results]." "That's the mentality Cornyn has now―you want to find people that can win, and if you cater to much to the extremes, you'll be in trouble."
In fact Cornyn's intervention in primaries isn't about helping people with an 'R' next to their name. It's about making sure that in the general election those people aren't conservatives. As for the claim of electability, the notion that conservatives won't win is a purposely self-fulfilling prophecy.
The conservative heart of Americans everywhere is being roused by Obama's push to overthrow Constitutional government and install a national socialist regime in its place. But this is simply an accentuation of a longstanding reality. Consider the Battleground polling data reported by Bruce Walker in this article at americanthinker.com.
The Battleground Poll is different. It is bipartisan. A Republican polling organization, the Terrance Group, and a Democrat polling organization, Lake Research Partners, collaborate in picking the questions, selecting the sample population, conducting the surveys, and analyzing the results. The Battleground Poll website, along with the raw data, is "Republican Strategic Analysis" and "Democratic Strategic Analysis." There are few polls that are bipartisan. No other polling organization asks the same questions year after year, none that reveal the internals of their poll results so completely, and none ask anything like Question D3 in every survey. What is Question D3 and what were the results to Question D3 in the August 20, 2008 Battleground Poll? It is this:
"When thinking about politics and government, do you consider yourself to be...?
Very conservative
Somewhat conservative
MODERATE
Somewhat liberal
Very liberal
UNSURE/REFUSED"
In August 2008, Americans answered that question this way: (1) 20% of Americans considered themselves to be very conservative; (2) 40% of Americans considered themselves to be somewhat conservative; (3) 2% of Americans considered themselves to be moderate; (4) 27% of Americans considered themselves to be somewhat liberal; (5) 9% of Americans considered themselves to be very liberal; and (6) 3% of Americans did not know or refused to answer.
Sixty percent of Americans considered themselves conservative. Does this mean that most Americans do not know what "conservative" means? No: The question specifically provides an out to people who are not sure about their ideology; it provides an out to people who want to be considered "moderate." Americans reject those choices. They overwhelmingly define themselves as "conservative." This is a huge political story - except that it is not "new" at all. Look at the thirteen Battleground Poll results over the last six years, and how do Americans answer that very question? Here are the percentages of Americans in those polls who call themselves "conservative" since June 2002: 59% (June 2002 poll), 59% (September 2003 poll), 61% (April 2004 poll), 59% (June 2004 poll), 60% (September 2004 poll), 61% (October 2005 poll), 59% (March 2006), 61% (October 2006), 59% (January 2007), 63% (July 2007), 58% (December 2007), 63% (May 2008), and now 60% (August 2008.)
The percentage of Americans who define themselves as "somewhat liberal" or "very liberal" has always been puny. In thirteen straight polls, this percentage has never been higher than 38% (June 2004) and it has usually been much lower. The gap between self-defined conservatives and self-defined liberals has been as high as thirty percentage points and as low as twenty-one percentage points. What does that translate into in electoral politics? If conservative presidential candidates simply got all the conservative votes - if virtually all moderate voters, uncommitted voters, and liberal voters went for the liberal candidate - then the conservative candidates would win a landslide bigger than Ronald Reagan in 1988. Have you ever wondered why liberals like Obama never call themselves liberals? Maybe their advisers have read the Battleground Poll internals.
Are these remarkable results skewed? This has always been the argument, but it is a hopelessly flawed argument. The poll results are incredibly consistent over time. These results are the same when President Bush has poll numbers at rock bottom and when Republicans were facing electoral disaster, like in October 2006 when 61% of Americans called themselves conservatives. The very consistency of these percentages is powerful evidence of their inherent validity….
Voters heavily identify themselves as conservative. Only a miniscule percentage of them identify themselves as "moderates." Yet in primary elections the GOP leaders now stack the deck in favor of so-called "moderates." This isn't a hard-boiled preference for winners. It's an ideological preference for left-leaning candidates. Once the leftists win the GOP nomination, the leftist GOP leaders exploit the conservative cachet of the Republican label (carefully bolstered and preserved by media Judas goats) in a conscious effort to deceive conservative voters into supporting people who will surely betray them. In effect, the GOP leaders do exactly what the leftist Democrats do. They hide or lie about their candidates' left-leaning views in order to hijack the seats of power. And they've been doing so at least since Ronald Reagan left office. If a conservative chances to get a GOP nomination, the same GOP forces usually go to work behind the scenes to insure the nominee's defeat in the general election. Their claptrap about uniting to defeat the leftist Democrat bogeyman only matters to them when there's another leftist bogeyman behind the Republican mask. Though they pretend to be all about winning without regard to ideology, they are in fact committed to the leftist ideology and working to assure the victory of national socialism. They therefore don't disagree with Obama's leftist goal. They disagree with his up front and hasty pursuit of it.
I have to hope that people like Rush Limbaugh are not consciously part of this national GOP strategy of deception. The currently roused conservative heart of America could lead to a restoration of the Constitutional Republic. This could usher in an era of revitalized strength and renewed dedication to the principles and practices of liberty. Or it will again be hijacked by a conscious strategy intended to assure that Americans who love liberty and the constitutional sovereignty of the people are once more deceived and betrayed. Given that the leftist elite faction thinks it has already pushed America irretrievably over the cliff into national socialism, this time may be the last time. Conservative voters beware. The byword of the day is clear:
DON'T TRUST THE PARTY LABEL
My last posting has sparked numerous and thoughtful responses, as well as lively discussions, in many quarters. Reading them I think the following analysis may be worth sharing.
Some people adamantly make arguments based on the notion that we presently have a two party electoral system. This phrase purports to refer to a system in which people freely select from amongst a wide range of different possibilities, two alternatives, and then choose freely between them. My knowledge of the facts, as well as extensive firsthand experience, have forced me to conclude that this is simply not so. There is no such 'two party system'. The American people are presently suffering under a 'one faction' elite political monopoly reflecting the collusion of powerful elites across different sectors of our national life. These elites share a common spirit, one that rejects the basic premises of constitutional self-government, i.e., the principles of just government articulated in the American Declaration of Independence. Because they differ as to the alternative that should replace the form of government required by those principles, real disagreement and competition exists among them. But they agree in accepting the unspoken premise that government of, by, and for the people was never more than a half-truth, and is now at best an (arguably) useful fiction.
In terms of the elite political spectrum, toward the right are those more inclined to believe the fiction is tolerably useful, toward the left those more inclined to regard it as an intolerable and unnecessary imposition. The right leaning elite (exemplified by the Bush wing of the Republican Party) go through the motions required to maintain the fiction with a sense of noblesse oblige. The appearance of serving and catering to the will of their inferiors actually feeds and strengthens their sense of superiority to the masses. The left leaning elite (exemplified by the Kennedy/Clinton Democrats) maintains the façade more grudgingly, with an angry resentment just below the surface occasioned by the constant sense that every gesture of subservience disparages their status and achievements. In the strict sense, both sides are studiously hypocritical, though with none of the pejorative implications Christian sensibility associates with the word. For these self-aggrandizing elites, hypocrisy is one of the essential performing arts. The skill and power of the individual performers is measured by their ability to maintain a reassuring façade that projects an appearance of respect for their inferiors, while actually cultivating perfect freedom from any real sense of their intrinsic worth.
From the elite perspective, the so-called 'two party system' functions as a series of auditions in which performers seeking key roles in the political arena prove that they are masters of the hypocritical arts. Elections are like applause meters. But applause alone cannot be permitted to decide the outcome. Sincere advocates of positions and views that reflect the egalitarian principles of morality and justice are likely to win the greatest applause from the masses. But their sincerity violates the key prerequisite of the hypocritical profession. Therefore those guilty of sincerity must be painstakingly eliminated from the competition. The actual 'one faction' elite political system maintains its control through a host of informal arrangements and decisions meant to assure that sincere advocates of the people never appear on the political stage (except occasionally to be ridiculed in order to chasten and discourage the just convictions of the people.) Manipulation of the so-called 'mainstream' media is part of this. So is the tangled skein of rules and regulations imposed under the specious guise of 'campaign finance reform'.
Since the left leaning Democrats ultimately move along a spectrum that ends in one-party dictatorships such as those in the old Soviet bloc, the one faction reality of the present political system poses less of a problem for their support amongst the people than it does for the Republicans. The Democrats promote control, regimentation and regulation in almost every sphere of life. They are now quite openly the party of Chicago style bossism and political/economic slavery. (The sexual freedom they seem to promote actually encourages people to become slaves to their physical passions.) But the Republicans purport to favor free enterprise, competition and limited government. But without political free enterprise and competition the people cannot enforce constitutional limitations on government power. The Republican Party's collusion with the elite 'one faction' political system therefore contradicts the views that have recruited a substantial majority of its electoral base of support.
It's striking that the Republican apologists who argue most adamantly that there is no alternative to the 'two party system' are the very people who place the highest priority on the elements of the Republican platform that favor economic liberty. Now, they make these arguments in the name of political victory for Republican candidates. They seek unity for the sake of political success. They pretend that third party efforts must necessarily hand victory to the Democrats, the leftists, the Obama faction bogeymen. But from the viewpoint of the people, what good are Republican political victories when the Republicans collude in maintaining a system that screens out sincere advocates of the constitutional sovereignty of the people? No matter who wins such elections, the people lose. At best, they act as the manipulated, powerless chorus in a stage play meant to procure their docile acceptance of a form of government based on the self-righteous exercise of elite power instead of the people's exercise of their unalienable rights.
The fate of the recent 9-12 March on Washington is a good example of how this system operates. Many Americans reject Obama's hasty putsch toward national socialism, and the open consolidation of elite control it implies. Large spontaneous gatherings of the people have occurred all over the United States. At many of these gatherings, both in their homemade signs and in the speeches they most heartily applaud, people have made clear their strong sense that both hitherto dominant political parties are implicated in the surrender to socialism that aims to destroy the sovereignty of the American people. The 'tea party' movement is proof that the resilient spirit of self-government and constitutional sovereignty remains vibrantly alive in the hearts of a majority of the American people. Aside from demonstrating the existence and size of this spontaneous uprising for liberty, what good can be expected to come from these gatherings?
They are in fact informal opportunities for people to review and select those who best represent and articulate what is on their hearts and minds. Unfiltered by the structures of elite control, they can lift up representatives to hold up a banner emblazoned with their concerns so that others who share those concerns will see, take heart and join in the movement that acts to address them. Apart from crowd size, media attention or anything else, the identification of such effective and truly representative leaders does more than anything else to consolidate the strength and ongoing effectiveness of a populist movement, particularly at the national level. It is both tragic and profoundly informative that no such leaders emerged from the 9-12 March. No 9-12 Martin Luther King strode onto this page of history to crystallize the people's fervent hope for the restoration of their sovereignty, their liberty, and the responsible fulfillment of their obligation to posterity. A gaggle of Republican front groups managed to turn the podium into a parade of organizational memos, whose content and delivery carefully avoided anything that would really correspond to the crowd's love of liberty and the Constitutional Republic, or their angry, impartial resentment against the elitists of all political stripes who have betrayed them both.
This reality of the 9-12 March on Washington epitomizes the function and effect of the so-called 'two party' system. Ancient tyrants would carefully identify and somehow eliminate potential representatives of the people's love of liberty. They aimed to eliminate the poles round which opposition to their tyranny could crystallize and grow. With the 'two party' system, control minded elites take this shrewdness a step further. Like modern scientists, they construct a system that encourages the growth of leadership crystals, but only those that favor and increase their power. Thus they aim to turn every spontaneous movement of the people into a new locus of control.
Those who argue that there is no alternative to the 'two party' system are in fact part of this controlling process. Even though people by the millions have mobilized, on their own, in search of the opportunity to raise up new leaders who will not betray their decent love of freedom; these Republican apologists want us to believe that they are helpless to reclaim their sovereignty. But there is a sure sign that this is not so; a sure sign that the elites already fear for their control. It is their willingness openly to attempt the suppression of widely known facts and information about what millions of people are doing. Their naked exercise of raw, collusive power casts aside the discipline of their hypocritical professions. But even as it discredits the media outlets they control, it offers them up as an absorbing target for the anger people feel. The media's Judas goats are already striving to lead the people to vent their anger against these targets, so as to dissipate their energy in fruitless prayers to the false gods of the 'voodoo' media. Such prayers are a blasphemous waste of time. People should disregard the Judas goat apologists, talkers and pundits whose function it is to discourage and distract them, diffusing their energies and turning them from the only actions that can in fact serve and reclaim their sovereignty.
The people themselves are the only media that counts. Instead of begging the false media gods please to let them see better leaders, they should draw on the self-confidence that best comes from their faith in the one true God, and produce and lift up better leaders of, by, and for themselves. They should continue to band together. They should consciously go on the hunt for those who represent their hearts. The controlling elites have falsely amassed great power in the name of the people. They will not surrender it because we ask, no matter how many millions we gather. We must build a new ark to house the covenant of our liberty. But we don't need a new party so much as a new politics, based first of all on fulfilling the responsibilities of sovereign citizenship rather than exclusively pursuing government power . We will not restore the sovereignty of the people until we have once again become individuals willing and able to exercise it.
I think this ark is already under construction. You can find one example of what is involved if you visit the AIP website. To paraphrase the poet (with a little help from the company whose name means victory), "Do not send to know what is to be done, go out yourself and do it."
I hear that Rush Limbaugh is telling people that they have no choice but to drink the Republican Kool-Aid in the 2010 elections. Given the track record of the forces still in control of the Republican Party, this is tantamount to saying that we let the American republic go gently into the dark night of National Socialism. It also implies surrendering the sovereignty of the American people on the altar of the economics-without-borders money powers whose machinations terrorized the nation into the arms of the Obama faction in the fall of 2008 (with a telling, indispensable assist from G. W. Bush.)
Now Obama's socialist putsch is rousing the conservative instincts of the American people. The Bush-Michael Steele Republicans see it as their job to exploit this reaction for political purposes, but without letting power fall into the hands of any true conservatives. It's a delicate maneuver, in which media Judas goats have an indispensable role. (Wikipedia has an excellent definition of Judas goat that's worth reading at this point. In essence, "The Judas goat is trained to associate with sheep or cattle, leading them to a specific destination. In stockyards the Judas goat will lead sheep to slaughter, while its own life is spared.")
Predictably, Rush Limbaugh (like the media personalities at the supposedly conservative Fox news network) is going about the work of herding angry grassroots Americans into the Republican sheep-pens, where they will be shorn of their character and liberty more slowly, but just as surely, as at the hands of the Obama faction. To accept his analysis, however, requires that we forget that G. W. Bush's surrender to socialism in 2008 was the culmination of years of missed opportunities and betrayals by Republicans to whom well intentioned conservative voters delivered control of the White House or the Congress (or both) from 1994 to 2006.
I know that some of these well intentioned conservative voters want desperately to believe that it was the bad old media or the wily bad Democrats who not only kept the Republican leaders from making good use of those years, but forced them to preside over the biggest spending spree in the nation's history up to that time. The Bush Republicans threw fiscal conservatism to the winds and paid no more than incompetent lip-serve to the agenda of restoring the nation's moral principles. Meanwhile, in the critical areas of education and national sovereignty they betrayed bedrock conservative principles by promoting the national government's liberty destroying control of our schools and colluding in the sovereignty destroying neglect of its Constitutional responsibility to secure our national borders.
Is the charitable view of the Republican leadership's sins justified? It might be, if we could believe that the violation and neglect of conservative ideas and principles was unintentional. Knowledgeable People have a hard time doing this, however, since they know that the Bush wing of the GOP has a long and consistent history of opposition to conservatism. In light of that history the failure to respect conservative ideas and principles during the years of Bush ascendancy looks suspiciously like reversion to type.
I was reminded of this today as I read this piece by Byron York on the washingtonexaminer.com website. York reports about "a revealing moment in a new book, scheduled for release next week, by former White House speechwriter Matt Latimer."
Bush was preparing to give a speech to the annual meeting of the Conservative Political Action Conference or CPAC. The conference is the event of the year for conservative activists; Republican politicians are required to appear and offer their praise of the conservative movement.
Latimer got the assignment to write Bush's speech. Draft in hand, he and a few other writers met with the president in the Oval Office. Bush was decidedly unenthusiastic.
"What is this movement you keep talking about in the speech?" the president asked Latimer.
Latimer explained that he meant the conservative movement -- the movement that gave rise to groups like CPAC.
Bush seemed perplexed. Latimer elaborated a bit more. Then Bush leaned forward, with a point to make.
"Let me tell you something," the president said. "I whupped Gary Bauer's ass in 2000. So take out all this movement stuff. There is no movement."
Bush seemed to equate the conservative movement -- the astonishing growth of conservative political strength that took place in the decades after Barry Goldwater's disastrous defeat in 1964 -- with the fortunes of Bauer, the evangelical Christian activist and former head of the Family Research Council whose 2000 presidential campaign went nowhere.
Now it was Latimer who looked perplexed. Bush tried to explain.
"Look, I know this probably sounds arrogant to say," the president said, "but I redefined the Republican Party."
This suggests that G. W. Bush prided himself on the fact that the Bush ascendancy in the Republican Party eliminated the conservative movement as a viable force in American politics. Now, with so many Americans boisterously asserting their belief in conservative ideas and principles, the apologists for the Republican Party would surely prefer that this intended aspect of the Bush legacy be locked out of sight for safekeeping. "We're your only hope against Obama," they proclaim. "Give us the power." In true Machiavellian fashion they won't say to conservative Americans "Give us the power; we want to continue destroying you." They just say "give us the power."
Through fear of Obama some conservatives will follow the Judas goat media leaders into the political slaughter pens one more time. Like the panic of a drowning victim, their fear actually makes them fight against those who try to offer them real aid. It blinds them to the fact that the Republicans now promising deliverance set conservatives up for failure in the first place. They don't really oppose Obama's goal. They just think he's moving toward it too hastily.
Keeping all this in mind, I must disagree with Rush Limbaugh. I see a desperate need for a third alternative for America. Whether you call it a party or not is immaterial. My advice is to put no faith in the Republican Party label, the Republican Party leaders, or the Republican Party candidates. That doesn't mean voting against all Republicans. It just means voting for no one just because of the Republican label. Right now, if the label says anything to conservatives, it reeks of duplicity and betrayal. The election of 2010 should be like the Passover recounted in the Bible. Only the politicians bearing the mark of true conservatism should be passed over by the conservative angel of political judgment.
But what will signify, like the lamb's blood that marked the dwellings of the Israelites, the presence of a commitment to conservative ideas, principles and policies? For my part, I look for a proven dedication to the principles on which the United States of America was founded, starting with the self-evident truth that we are all endowed with unalienable rights by the will of the Creator God. Every element of real conservatism can be deduced and articulated as a logical consequence of that truth. So by looking for the people determined to conserve American liberty I will find the only conservatives worthy of the name. What about you?
Posts
