An Apology to the Curmudgeon Emeritus, and Fran Porretto: A Sunday Rumination

Francis Porretto, a writer whom I admire, and whose blog Eternity Road is on my regular reading list, wrote to say that I mischaracterized libertarians the other day in my post entitled Why I am a Constitutional Conservative.  He took some umbrage from that, and from several other things I wrote, or that the featured writer that day, Ann Coulter had written. Frankly, he was right to call me out on it.  I tried to respond to Mr. Porretto in comments, but Blogger kept sending me through a do loop that prevented me from posting. In short, I sent an e-mail. There followed a short exchange, but concluded with gracious reply at the Eternity Road website.

Now, I will admit that in answer to why limiting government is right, I did give a Christian response. There is great power in this particular argument. The Declaration of Independence says we are endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable Rights. If our Creator gave us our Rights, who indeed is anyone to take them away? Since the Declaration has stood now for 235 years without being successfully disputed, that makes the argument pretty solid.  Now, most libertarian thought that I am aware of starts on a similar premise, but makes the assertion that we each own ourselves. Either starting point eventually can yield the rightness of a limited government. Either assertion can be dismissed by those who wish to do so. But I admit that those who do not already believe will have less patience for the argument from religion.

I believe my friend, Francis, believes, as I do, in the fallibility of man.  But what of libertarian anarchists, and libertarian minarchists like Murray Rothbard?  At core, they must believe in the essential goodness of man, for how else are these philosophies supposed to work in the real world?  Then there are those who claim the title libertarian who believe that property and resources should be owned in common.  Frankly, I have no idea how that is derived from the premise that we each own ourselves, and I suspect the title libertarian is a false flag flying for Leftists pure and simple.  In many ways, the term has lost its meaning.  On the other hand, the word "conservative" has been abused and misused to the point where I am sometimes afraid to use it.  Conservatism grew out of the old Classical Liberal movement.  Conservatives wanted to conserve the gains made by the Revolution and the Constitution in human liberty.  Pretty unimaginative, these conservatives.  They were the guys standing athwart history and yelling "slow down, analyse the consequences both intended and unintended of what you are doing!"  But then there started to be fiscal conservatives (who were social liberals), and social conservatives (some of whom believed in big government programs), religious conservatives, neo-conservatives (communists who got mugged by reality and came in from the cold) and of course the ultimate betrayal, compassionate conservatives.  The KKK, skin heads, and neo-Nazis have been described as conservative, but actually are collectivists and belong on the Left.  Now everyone running for office as a Republican wants to call themselves a conservative.  The term has lost its meaning as well.

Fran, and you too Curmudgeon, I propose we call ourselves simply Constitutionalists. Oh, and yes, I have yet to find a point of disagreement between us.  Finally, I will try to do better the next time.

God bless and keep you,
PolyKahr

Why I Am a Constitutional Conservative, and not a Libertarian

A commenter once asked me how I am not a libertarian, considering my many libertarian leanings. I suspect that in this commenter's mind is the notion that you have authoritarian figures on the right and left, but libertarians in the middle. So, it was with some interest that I read Ann Coulter's article this week entitled Get Rid of Government-But First Make Me President! I had to laugh at the title, but a little thinking about it seems to take all the merriment out of the laughter.  What Ms. Coulter is doing is making the argument for a small, defined government to oversee those duties that no other institution can practically fulfill.  It is why I am a Constitutional Conservative, and not a libertarian (much less a Libertarian.)  A conservative believes in the fallen nature of man.  No man can avoid sinning, though many are able to live good lives as we on earth define "good."  At the heart of libertarianism is an unspoke philosophy that men are essentially good.  If true, then there is no problem, but if it is not true, and human history tells us it is not, then we need to build checks and balances into government to make it as difficult as possible for someone to obtain concentrated power.

A few weeks ago I had a discussion with someone in which I explained my theory of government. Government started out among our earliest ancestors as the biggest, most ruthless and meanest thug saying to the other members of the tribe "If you pay me, I'll protect you from guys like me." It is no different than a mob protection racket, and things at heart haven't changed in the interim. The thug gets paid, alright, but his protection seems to be at his discretion whenever he decides to bestir himself. A Leftist "friend" immediately drew the wrong conclusion, and blurted "So, you want to get rid of government, huh" It was a statement.

Hmmmmmm.

The point I thought I was making is that because of this tendency of government to promise things it can not deliver, and to intervene where it does not belong, we should keep government small, and confined to those things for which there is no other solution.  In other words, write a Constitution that defines very rigidly the duties of each branch of government, then constantly force the people we hire to run it to stay within those bounds.  Everything else should be left up to other arrangements.  As mortal men (and women), prone to all the sins of men, we need to govern ourselves in some way.  We have tried kings, Pharaohs, sultans, emperors, and the like: the "strong man" theory.  The problem with these forms of government is that they were all composed of men (and women.)  The Left still believes in the idea of the "Right People," a theory that is little different from the "strong man" theory. To the Leftist mind, if they could just find the "right people," then their Utopian ideas would finally be executed as intended.  So, the human race has been treated to a gruesome spectacle of blood and gore caused by dictators of various stripes attempting to force people into a mold of their own dreaming.

Our Constitution was, and remains the first really new idea in governance to come along in history.  As brilliant as it was, however, it has been breached, quite on purpose, by both the Left and the Right in seeking more power over others.  It has become so distorted and so bloated with unnecessary programs that I suspect it could stand a great deal of chopping by Libertarians without doing much damage to the core ideas it embodied.  Cowardly people have failed to utilized the means provided by the Constitution itself to check the other branches of government.  The American people themselves have too often been off watching March Madness or American Idol, while things went awry under their noses.  What we need is to actually remove a president or two for overstepping his Constitutional authority.  That is the way the Constitution is designed to work.  Only two presidents have been impeached, and none has been removed.  If we did remove a president or two more frequently, we would not now find ourselves in this lawless state.  If everyone took his position in Congress seriously, more of them would also be removed.  But because people remain that are vain, venal, and power hungry, does not mean I am willing to abandon the idea of our Constitutional Republic.  While I partially support many libertarian ideas because they make a sense, I am still a conservative working for a restoration of our Constitution.

Mordor has Awakened

Thanks to Kevin of the Smallest Minority for point me to the Forbes piece by Jerry Bowyer entitled American Nomeklatura. The whole article is good, and you should read all. I wanted to highlight this though:

“The new order articulated in [the Pentateuch] stands in contrast to a primary socioeconomic structure prevalent … throughout … the ancient Near East: the divide between the dominant tribute-imposing class and the dominated tribute-bearing class… These two groups, the exploiters and the exploited, are opposite sides of the same coin. The dominant tribute-imposing class consists, in short, of the political elite…This class includes not only the nobility but all who benefited by association with it: administrators, military and religious retainers, merchants, and landowners who directly or indirectly benefited from state power. What all of these have in common is that they all participated in the extraction of produce, or surplus, from the dominated tribute-bearing class: agrarian and pastoral producers, slaves, unskilled workers … Their production was drawn as surplus in the form of taxation, slave labor, rent, or debt service…”

Reading about dominant tribute-imposing tribes and their exploitation of dominated tribute-bearing classes by means of debt, tax and mandated labor, seemed strangely similar to modern times. It seems that Washington is not as far removed from Ur, Nineveh, Cairo or Babylon as we would hope. It seems also that our emerging system of central control is not what its advocates claim: It is not new; it is ancient.

There is a point that I have been making as well: that far from being new and improved, original, fresh, innovative, the latest thing! and whatever other buzzwords you want to use, Marxism is just the same old dusty politics of the past dressed up in class envy clothing.  Tribal chiefs, kings, emperors, tyrants, dictators, and whatever title they ascribe to themselves have been around since man first walked the earth.  It is the strong man theory.  The strong man, no matter his initial intentions, always ends up taking your wealth and your freedom, but doesn't fulfil his end of the bargain, which is to protect the freedom of those under him.  Even the ancient tribes of Israel living under the Judges, did not achieve freedom and liberty for the people, though I suspect they had more of it than when they petitioned Samuel for a King.

The first "new thing" under the sun in terms of a system of governance was the Constitution of the United States.  It was the practical working out of nearly 1800 years of Christian philosophy.  For the first time in history, and apparently the last, the philosophical roots of the Constitution set the individual above the collective, and made the government the servant of the citizen.  But what we have going on today, and for almost a century now, is a reversion to older ideas.  Boyer points out that there is little difference between Socialism and Crony Capitalism in practice.  I would also note that there is little difference between these two systems and the old idea of the King's friends getting the Royal franchise, and everyone else gets out of the business.  These are not new ideas.

People are impressed by the Roman Empire.  My high school Latin teacher was mightily impressed, but should have known better.  People are impressed with the roads, the aqua ducts, the stadiums, the imposition of Roman culture, and the Pax Romana.  But if I were to pinpoint the time that the Roman Empire began to crumble, it would be when Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon.  All of the wealth of Rome, you see, was stolen wealth.  When the Empire could no longer extract enough tribute, the Roman Empire began to die.  The truly remarkable thing about Rome wasn't the Empire, but the Republic that preceded it.

A somewhat longer, and I think somewhat angrier argument can be found at the American Thinker yesterday entitled Obama, Islam, and the Forcible Virginity Test by James Lewis. In the opening paragraphs, Lewis gives us some insight into the Egyptian revolution by noting that some of the unmarried women protesting were arrested, and then forced to undergo a "virginity test," without anything being said by various womyn's groups. There should be outrage, but there is not. Then comes this part:

The United States Constitution is still by far the most successful political outcome of the Enlightenment. Nothing else comes close. Constitutionalism is the only successful political tradition that has ever been designed to deal with the disease of abuse of power. If you want an image of raw abuse of power, think Tahrir Square and the forcible virginity test.

Apparently the White House and every liberal looneytunes airhead in the West is stunned, just stunned, m'dear, by the Muslim reactionaries who are grabbing power all over the Arab world. Who coulda thunk? Obama meant so well. All the good libs are eager to vote for him again in 2012, 'cause of all the good intentions and lovely words he has brought to our foreign policy. Liberal delusions are always stronger than reality. If reality had anything to do with it, they would have dumped their dysfunctional beliefs fifty years ago.

Conservatives have known about the threat of Islamic fascism for 30 years, ever since Jimmy Carter let "some kind of saint" Ayatollah Khomeini assume absolute power in Tehran in 1979. When Carter stopped Iran's military from supporting the Shah, Khomeini promptly had assassinated, imprisoned, and tortured the Shah's supporters, plus any democratic opposition groups, plus the Communist faction of the Mujahhedin Khalq, plus anybody else who stood in this way -- including those American diplomats he kept locked up at the US Embassy for a year until Ronald Reagan got elected.

Lewis is angry because time, after time, after time the Left attempts to put its schemes into place, and time after time, after time, they fail. But the Left never sees the failures as a reason to rethink their position. No, instead they begin working on the next moonbattery. They always think the last one didn't work because they didn't have the right people in power.  Hitler, Mussolini, Lenin and Stalin, Castro, Pol Pot, Mao-they all just weren't the right people, but this time we'll get it right.

No kidding. Really?  It is just the strong man theory wrapped up in appealing language.

Another thing Conservatives have known, and are constantly telling Leftists is there are no "the right people." Give a person power, and he will inevitably be corrupted by it. Give a person absolute power, and he becomes a tyrant, a "President for Life," a Dictator, or whatever he wants to call himself.

The New York Times reports that the Egyptian Bros and the military are now allied to take over. Right at the start the Bros called for war with Israel, because it was their enemy Mubarak who kept the Egyptian-Israeli Peace treaty going for three decades. The Bros also brought back from exile their own Ayatollah Khomeini, Al Qaradawi, and celebrated with their own Million Muslim March in Tahrir Square. They also threw out the Google twitter mobster who helped make the revolt happen.

Which brings us full circle. Let me ask this, have you ever wondered why a so called "Abrahamic Religion" which is founded on the same Pentateuch that Christians also use as the Old Testament, hates Jews? Not just hates them, but wants to savagely exterminate them? Are not the Jews God's chosen people to be a light to the nations? Note the word, Light. Christians are also called to be a Light? Islam? Not so much:

Islam came straight from the Arabian desert of the 7th century. It reflects the lives of desert pirates, robbers, rapists and genociders, which was perfectly suited to nomadic life in the desert. That's how tribes conquered each other, as Lawrence of Arabia found out again in World War I. Desert Arabs literally took no prisoners -- except for women and children, who became slaves. Lawrence was a British romantic who hero-worshipped the desert Arabs, and then, after putting King Faisal into power, he decided to disappear forever, in deep disgust with his own romance with murderous primitives.

Wherever reactionary Islam takes over it re-creates the 7th century desert. Since the breakdown of the Ottoman Empire at the end of World War I, the Muslim world has been zig-zagging between modern values, like equality for women, and medieval desert values. Iran was a great victory for the reactionary throwbacks, and Obama has just tipped the balance in that direction again.

Something ancient is stalking the land again. Mordor has awakened.

The End of the Republican Party

I had to cool off before I could get my thoughts together about the lame duck session of the 111th Congress. So many things that needed more time, more debate, were hurriedly passed, such as the START treaty, DADT Repeal, and others. Frankly, I don't know why there is a lame duck session. These people have lost the confidence of voters, so having them decide issues seems unethical at best, actionable at worst. In any case, the Republican party did not cover itself in glory during the lame duck session, caving to the Democrats time and time again, when they should have used the filibuster to delay as much as they could. The American Thinker has a piece up entitled Is the Republican Party Finished? by Michael Filozof. Mr. Filizof believes that we conservatives are in the same position today as were leftists in the 1960s. He argues that we need to take to the streets, and take over a party as the leftists did in 1968.

Not so fast there, agent provocateur.

I have argued for some time that one of the distinguishing characteristics of Progressive/Socialist/Marxist/Leftists/Fascist/Communists is a certain lack of emotional maturity. There are means that are repugnant to a moral understanding of life, no matter how noble you think the ends may be. Peacefully rallying as Glenn Becks 8/28 rally are good. Rioting as...well take any riot you can think of from Los Angeles, to Chicago, to the Seattle, is not good. Property damage, people injured and arrested without a tangible goal being accomplished.  Oh, everyone knows you threw a tantrum alright. But what actually changed? The Left didn't take over the Democrat party as a result of the 1968 riots in Chicago. In point of fact, they took over, and purged the party of the moderates in 1972 under the banner of George McGovern. It was politics, not riots that got them there. It was also then that they began the Long March through the institutions. It is the Leftists of 1972, not the Leftist of 1968 that we must emulate.

Thanks to Dave Hardy, Stephen Holbrook, David Kopel and others, Second Amendment research and scholarship took a great leap forward over the last 30 years.  The Heritage Foundation, the American Enterprise Institute and others have advanced conservative scholarship in other areas as well.  Books like Liberal Fascism by Jonah Goldberg have been coming out to wide audiences, and people are reconnecting with the real history of the United States. That needs to continue. We have made progress with our media on the Internet and talk radio. Our next mission, should we decide to take it, would seem to be to re-infiltrate colleges and universities.  Finally, one of the things we must do is commit to Constitutional governance.  The Left claims that we just want to tell them how to live.  For example, if we were following the Constitution, Roe v. Wade must eventually be overturned.  But we can not put in a Federal law that makes abortion illegal either.  The Constitution does not deal with that, instead leaveing such matters up to each individual State.

Let the Left flail and burn.  We have more important tasks to do to get the country back on the right track.

New Golden Rule: Do Unto Others Before They Do Unto You?

Ol' Remus has a post up at Eternity Road entitled Default that Francis Porretto is at pains to have us read. So go read it.

One of the things that struck me in this post, something I have long known, but haven't spoken about out loud is:

At present, complexity is yielding ground to adaptability. We're well into it. We are no longer a nation of laws, we are a nation of men, especially those men who were the first to figure out there is no legitimacy on offer, and where there is no legitimacy there are no restraints. Surely you have noticed that all enterprises are, or are becoming, criminal enterprises. Absent legitimacy, it's a race to the bottom—that eternal, irreducible power center. Here the violent will prevail over the merely criminal, and the homicidal will prevail over the merely violent. Mexico is a nearby example.

I feel like a broken record here, or maybe like a lone nut standing between a sandwich board trying to tell my fellow citizens something they just don't want to hear: if our government acted solely within the bounds prescribed by the Constitution, we would not be in this mess.  Our Federal Government would not have a Department of Energy, or a Department of Education.  We would not have Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid,  Aid to Dependent Children or any of the other things weighing our system down.  The EPA would not be writing regulations, because that would be the job of our legislature, not the executive.  The executive, freed from writing legislation, could concentrate on doing its job in protecting our borders and defending us from foreign enemies.  And maybe, just maybe, the Courts could be dissuaded from trying to "interpret" our Constitution into oblivion.

Well, one can wish...

If only we returned to Constitutional governance.

The Liberty Sphere: 10 Key Conservative Principles#links

The Liberty Sphere: 10 Key Conservative Principles#links

I have tried, several times, to put down in an organized way what I think are the key principles of conservatism that everyone who claims to be conservative must follow. I have failed. But Anthony Martin over at the Columbia Conservative Examiner has done a good job. Go check it out.

In my formulation, the Constitution takes a starring role.  But if you had Constitutional governance, all ten items would be fulfilled.

On American Conservatism

Over at the American Thinker today is an excellent piece on the nature of American Conservatism and its counterpoint, that goes by many names including "liberalism," progressivism, Marxism, Fascism, Socialism, Communism, and whatever they are dreaming up at the moment to try to hoodwink us. The piece, by Joel F. Wade is entitled Yes, in Fact, We Are Radical. It's a theme I have brought up occasionally several times, but I haven't seen an extended article before that makes the point. Conservatives in America are not the same as conservatives in the old world. Old world conservatives are trying to conserve the ancient regime, whether it be the monarchy, or some other autocratic thugocracy. In America, on the other hand, we are trying to conserve a radically new method of governing ourselves.  Yes, the Constitution represents the latest thing in government.  It was such a radical idea, that it was born only because of a fortuitous confluence of men and events, that was never seen before, or will be again.  Indeed, the founders thought of it as Divine Providence.  Almost on its heels, the French revolution fought to replace a monarch with a dictator.  They placed their trust in a man, we placed our trust in God.  But, in Mr. Wade's words:

As conservatives in America today, we seek to conserve our founding principles. This is fundamentally different from, say, a Russian conservative who seeks to conserve the traditional state power of mother Russia, or an Iranian conservative who seeks to conserve his theocracy, or a North Korean conservative who seeks to conserve his communist dictatorship.

In this sense, to be a conservative in America is to be misunderstood. Seeking to conserve our radical founding principles is linguistically confusing. In the same way, to be liberal in America today is philosophically tangled -- they seek to liberalize America by imposing more stringent controls and regulations upon her citizens?

Which gets us to why so-called "liberals" can never say what they are thinking or planning in plain, straight forward language. Because if they did, they know we would react in horror. When Glenn Beck exposed Anita Dunn saying that one of her greatest philosophers was Mao, and knowing what Mao did and stood for, did you not react in horror? When Hilary Clinton says she admires Margaret Sanger, (if you don't know who Sanger was, see here and here.) do you not react in horror. Such people were evil, and anyone who admires them is either terribly misguided, which means they should not be near the reigns of power, or they are evil themselves.

Again, in Mr. Wade's words:

So it's true: we are radicals. Our founding principles -- the vision of our Declaration of Independence and the structure of law based on practical idealism contained in our Constitution, ideals which are consistent with human nature and which transformed the ancient principles of human government at the root -- are the most radical political principles in existence today.

Those who have worked for the past hundred-plus years through progressive policies to undermine and replace our radical vision and structure of human governance are not radicals. They are conservatives of the worst sort. In common parlance, they are control freaks. They have brought political ideals from nineteenth-century autocratic Germany to America and fashioned them as some kind of visionary blueprint for bringing out the best in people.

So the next time someone calls you a radical, you now know what to say. Oh, and by the way, if you are a young man looking to become involved in a radical cause, here ya go.  There is none better.

Update:  On the other side of the coin is the Marxist/Progressive/Fascist/Socialist/Communist or liberal ideal of life, Life under communism by Charlotte Cushman. Go read the whole thing. It made my blood run cold.  This is what you get if you go down the "liberal" route.

Fool Me Once, Shame on You, Fool Me Twice...

Lee Cary has an article up at the American Thinker today entitled How A GOP November Victory Could Bring Its Death. The piece says what many Conservatives and Constitutionalists are feeling right now:

Still feeling betrayed by the GOP's failure to live up to its promises going back to soon after the Contract with America, conservative voters are preparing to march to the polls in decisive numbers, but not with wild-eyed enthusiasm for the GOP. As they vote to oust the current Democrat Congress, under their breath, they'll be muttering the warning, "This is your last chance, Republicans."

I am already thinking that if the Republican running for State Representative doesn't look sufficiently conservative, rather than vote for the lesser evil, I will not vote at all in that race. I am tired beyond tears at so called "conservatives" who want to get along with the left. Note to Conservatives and Constitutionalists: you can not get along with Leftists. It's not that these people are bad people in the traditional sense. But as Reagan said, "it's that they know so much that ain't so," and feel a huge need to impose it on the rest of us. While Leftists may be charming and personable, their policies can not be reconciled with ours. It is like oil and water. To continue the analogy, there is no emulsifier to bring them together. Either you are for big government, or for limited government. Either you believe in a fixed Constitution, whose meaning can be changed only through the amendment process, or you believe in a "living document." Either you believe in individual rights, or you believe in positive rights. There is no middle ground.

The other thing that the Republicans will have to realize going in, and steel themselves against.  The Left will whine and cry, and call them the vilest names over even the most innocuous proposals.  They will accuse you of hating children, of being racist, of hating poor people, or whatever.  It isn't true, so just get used to it.

I just hope the Republicans I am supporting get it.

The Liberty Sphere-RINOs

Anthony Martin, over at the Liberty Sphere, has a post up to day naming the RINOs in the Senate who will not support a filibuster of Elena Kagan's nomination to the Supreme Court.

Elena Kagan is one of the worst threats to liberty to come along in many years. If the Progressive/Marxist MSM had an ounce of integrity, they would recognize that Kagan should be given the Palin treatment. While Palin at least had been a mayor and a State governor, palin has not even been a trial lawyer, let alone a judge. While I do not think such experience is necessary to high office, I would like to point out that much of the criticism of Palin was on just that point.

The Senate now has 41 people with an 'R' after their name. They could mount a successful filibuster of Elena Kagan, forcing the Administration to choose another candidate. Why don't they? What are they waiting for? The ability to filibuster is an important tool and the right should use it as much as the left does. Kagan should be Borked. But we have Progressives in the Republican party who are, frankly, sympathetic to the collectivist idea. We must get rid of these RINOs at the nearest opportunity, starting with McCain.

Is Civic Duty an Option?

An interesting, and hopefully thought provoking article by "Bargain Citizen" in today's American Thinker. Bargain Citizen asks the very relevant question Is Civic Duty an Option? A quote:

Then there are those who waste countless hours absorbed in things which matter not. Don't get me wrong, life requires a healthy balance. Indulging in relaxation or entertainment is great. Over-indulging while not bothering to lift a finger on behalf of one's civic duty is a different story. For those who are lost in today's proverbial circuses - be it Oprah, American Idol, People magazine or an ever-growing variety of sports and video games - they merely contribute to our collective problems.

This is the very reason I started this blog, and others have done something similar as well: to wake up my fellow citizen. There are many things you can do depending on your time and talents. You can work for a candidate. You can be a precinct person for your party. Indeed, precinct jobs often go begging, but will allow you to begin burrowing into the party and influencing party decisions. You can become an INFORMED voter. Talk to your friends and co-workers. Volunteer to stuff envelopes, or address mailing labels, or...well...there are literally hundreds of things you can do. But don't be one of those who distract themselves with what I call circuses. Keeping abreast of your teams, or of popular culture is entertainment, but don't engage in too much of it. Don't let it become more important than your very liberty.

Charity vs. Entitlements

Today's American Thinker has an article, by Roger Banks entitled Obama and Charity that expresses very well what I was trying to say in a one sided debate with my wife yesterday. Go read the whole thing, then come back.

Read it? Good.

Continuing his lament over what he calls an "erosion of civility in the public square," President Obama chose the setting of this year's national prayer breakfast to admonish his ill-mannered opponents. "Surely you can question my policies," he said, "without questioning my faith."


However noble the spirit to rebel against a directive that so brazenly chills the content of political speech -- scolding those who "poison the well of public opinion" while seeking to purge from that well opinions not to the liking of the lords of decorum -- responding impulsively proves unnecessary.


It's unnecessary because Obama himself, in the same speech, raises the question for us, by linking his faith to his policies. "God's grace," he said, "is expressed through ... the efforts of our entire government."

This little attempt at rhetorical blackmail conflates government entitlements with true charity, and does not reflect God's grace, but rather pure power politics. Let's take a look at it shall we? Every time Obama sends out a check for a welfare payment, he uses taxes. Taxes are payments taken out of the hands of productive citizens at the point of a gun. Oh, sure, some may give it up "voluntarily", but if they did not, you can be sure that force would be used to obtain it anyway, so that the analogy of a gun is indeed appropriate. If anyone else obtained funds from a person by arms, or the threat of arms, that person would be considered an armed robber, and be accused of theft. So, Obama uses stolen money to pay off some of the electorate for votes, then accuses the productive citizens who rightly complain of being uncharitable. Worse still, Obama now claims credit for being charitable, while using stolen money from other people to do it. I think I have read this before...oh yes, it was called Robin Hood.

And what of the person receiving such payments? Are they grateful? Are they inspired to change their ways, pull themselves up by their boot straps, and become productive citizens themselves? Sadly, the answer is often, no. You see, these welfare payments are not marketed as "charity" but rather as entitlements, something owed to these people, for what is never said. Nobody wants to hurt any one's feelings by calling it charity, you understand. Thus, by making welfare an entitlement, Obama creates a permanent dependency class, while denying people the opportunity to realize their dependency and do something about it.

Now, compare that to true Christian charity. In Christian charity, the giver gives of his own free will and accord, from his own substance, after praying and deciding for himself how much to give, and to whom. The giver could have used those funds for anything, but chooses to give to the particular person or program, so feels his money is well spent. The person receiving the funds is grateful, precisely because the person giving could have spent his funds elsewhere. Interestingly, the one who gives is also grateful for having had the opportunity to have the kind of wealth that makes giving possible in the first place. Gratitude generates more good will, which causes more giving.

Perhaps, Mr. Banks sums it up best:

At best, entitlements are based not on faith, but on fear -- fear that love and charity are not enough. Yet for people to give more, government must tax less. Now, there's a policy that really would require faith...even faith in the miracle of Scrooge on Christmas morning.

Glenn Beck at CPAC

Glenn Beck gives the Keynote Speech at this year's CPAC. It is really worth watching it. The talk about what the Statue of Liberty really represented to the French moved me to tears. Go and watch the whole thing.

Throwing Snowballs is a Felony?

This is something I have been meaning to put into a post for a while now, but it's not an easy subject, or one that is easily defensible. I have been bothered for some time by the spread of what I call the "felonization of living." Ayn Rand had a belief that innocent men could not be controlled, and therefore the State would try to make as many things criminal as possible, in order to control people. It often seems to be a prophetic thought in today's world. The latest example comes by way of a post by Kurt Hoffman of Armed and Safe and seems truly outrageous-throwing snowballs. Go read the report at The Smoking Gun. If convicted, these two young men will have their rights to vote and to own or carry weapons taken away for the rest of their lives, all over throwing snowballs, an activity engaged in by youngsters from time immemorial.

Felonies used to be serious crimes, like murder and manslaughter, rape, armed robbery or theft of truly large monetary amounts. Minor crimes and misdeeds were punished by fines, or a month or two in a local jail. Of course, there were no drug crimes legal or illegal, before the early part of the twentieth century. Any firearm could be legally owned by anyone who had the funds to buy it until 1934 (excluding unfortunately, Blacks, who were subject to the "black codes" which still haunt us today.) During the course of the Twentieth Century and continuing into the Twenty-First, more and more stuff has become a crime, and "felonious" has been defined down.

Martha Stewart is a felon. Let us suppose that she has a stalker, a rabid fan who wants to know the secret of making a lace doily that sits flat. If Martha Stewart felt a need to defend her life from her rabid stalker, she would be prohibited from carrying a gun to do so. Do you think Martha Stewart is a danger to herself or others if she had a gun? How about an average person who happens to have jumped through all the hoops to have gotten a concealed handgun license. Is a licensed concealed carrier a danger to you or anyone else if he carries his weapon into a Post Office? What magic does the Post Office posses that makes him a danger there, but immediately outside renders him harmless? Similarly, one could ask about all the other prohibited places North Carolina lists such as restaurants, theatres, banks, etc.

I ask you to consider that perhaps the course we have been taking has made matters worse, not better. More people today are in prison, yet we feel less safe than ever before. The felonization of living has not worked to make us a better people, but only proved the Founders of our Republic right. David Codrea has a saying that if I may paraphrase, if a man can not be trusted with a gun, then he shouldn't be allowed to walk among us without a keeper. That is part of the answer. The other part is to stop making things illegal. If a crime is serious, then it should be punished seriously. If a "crime" is only so because someone has defined it as such, repeal it. If a crime is a minor misdeed, then lesser measures should be taken. Throwing snowballs certainly fits the one of the latter categories.

GOP Should Present the Conservative Message

As is often the case, Jonah Goldberg has hit the nail squarely on the head in his Townhall.com article today entitled What the GOP can learn from a Pizza Chain. Goldberg's prescription is not to try appealing to moderates and independents, as the GOP has been trying to do. Rather, admit, as Domino's Pizza is doing, to losing their way, and then propose bold, conservative policies. As Rush Limbaugh is fond of saying, they work every time their tried.

RNC Proposes Conservative Litmus Test

Jillian Bandes reports on a proposal that represents a pretty good start in today's Townhall.com. The start? The GOP is proposing a conservative litmus test for candidates to receive party funding.

The right to keep and bear arms is number 10 on the list. That is fine as far as it goes, but as David Codrea has pointed out, even Obama supports the "right to keep and bear arms" while his policies would deny arms to almost every American. What is needed is further probing to determine such things as what Unconstitutional laws would a candidate be willing to work to repeal? Still, I am happy to see at last that the RNC has decided it wants our votes after all, even if we are an embarrassment.

Conservatism, Revealed for Newt

Michelle Malkin has an article today on Townhall.com explaining just how the folks that came up with the Bogus Death Statistics that Won't Die did it. It is, in short, a case study in the making up of the hysterical numbers that are thrown about by the left. First, the left takes a legitimate study with modest goals. Often, these studies are from Government sources, giving them the patina of unbiased professionalism. Then they fraudulently mischaracterize the statistics in order to create as large a number as possible. Next, they go before the cameras and proclaim their sad tale to a press that never checks to see whether there just might be an agenda here. Never the less, it is an interesting case study, for those who may have never seen the strategy before.

The more interesting piece from Michelle Malkin comes from her website here. Conservatives are disgusted with the GOP in the 23rd District of New York. Scozzafava is not a real Republican in any sense of the word, and would probably have been happy running as a Democrat, but she lives in a majority Republican district. The party pooh bahs think she is "electable" and have put their money behind her. Conservatives rallied around Doug Hoffman, who as Glenn Beck says, seems to say what he means, and mean what he says. The GOP is naturally worried that in a three way race, the Democrat will win, and are pushing hard for their gal. It is true that Hoffman, running as an independent, will likely take away votes that might otherwise go to Scozzafava, but whose fault is that? The GOP pooh bahs are the ones who solicited Scozzafava without any consideration that the principles she espouses are not the principles of the Republican party. It does us little good to have a so-called Republican in Congress who always votes with the Democrats. If we are going to have that, may as well have a Democrat.

Micheal Steele, Newt Gingrich, Lindsay Grahmnasty and others have been pushing conservatives to try not to be so...well...conservative, or at least to shut up while they go and grab some voters more to their taste. The GOP seems to be genuinely embarrassed by us. Perhaps they have been reading the WaPo and the NYT too much. It's true that if you read those papers, the impression of conservatives you get will be a bunch of racist, xenophobe, homophobe, government hating flat earthers who thinks the only good woman is barefoot and pregnant, reads the bible absolutely literally, and is huddled in his bunker with his arsenal of assault weapons. Well guess what Newt, your reading these things because that's the opposition paper. Try switching to the Washington Times. Try reading some vintage Buckley, or Jonah Goldberg, or Thomas Sowell, or Walter Williams, or Michelle Malkin or....There was a time when there were few such writers, but we have been building our intellectual base. There are now a lot of them.

No, the real problem Newt et. al. is that conservatives hold certain principles, expressed in the Founding documents, that ground their lives. These principles do not change over time. Oh yes, new technologies come along, new materials make new methods manufacturing and transportation possible. But while a chair that used to be made out of wood, by a very skilled cabinet maker, spending hours of time can now be turned out by a factory at the rate of several hundred a day, it still has to conform to human dimensions which do not change. The hipsters on the Left, always seemingly on the cutting edge of whatever is new, think each new thing or idea is somehow different, and gosh, we need to throw the baby out with the bathwater, and start from scratch to build a new society around whatever new idea they are hawking. But as I say, the principles don't change, only the circumstances of the application. Freedom of speech is freedom to speak out whether it is standing on a stump, or writing this blog. Freedom of the press exists whether someone is handing out pamphlets or commenting on the news on a blog, or a corporation that has a multi-million dollar organization to gather and report the news. They should all be protected. The Second Amendment applies whether we are talking flintlock muskets or Star Trek Phasars. The Left has been violating our principles by dint of "interpretations" of the Constitution for 100 years now, and you, the GOP have gone along with it. You have become the Democrat-lite party. Conservatives are tired of you taking us on the same road as the Democrats only slower.

Michael Steele, Newt et. al., if you want to get conservatives back again, your candidates need to stand up and declare conservative, Constitutional principles, and when elected apply them rigidly. No more compromise. We have compromised too much, and are in danger of losing our country. Besides, the McCain debacle should have showed you that if you offer up a Democrat-lite candidate against the real thing, he will lose to the real thing every time. None of the candidates running in the Republican primaries for President was a true conservative (though Ron Paul was closer that the others.) Sarah Palin, on the other hand, is looking like exactly the kind of candidate that would fire up the conservative base. You would be wise to embrace her.

In Defense of Rush

David Limbaugh writes a defence or his brother, Rush, in his column today on Townhall.com entitled This Isn't About Rush. A quote:

And what was it about Bush that led Rather to the conclusion that he possessed such low character? In Rather's eyes -- though many conservatives would strongly dispute this -- he was a conservative and conservatives are evil.

The parallel with Rush's leftist slanderers is striking. It's one of the first things that occurred to me as I heard their sniveling responses, one by one refusing to utter a syllable of apology and instead using the occasion of being caught red-handed in malicious lies as a further opportunity to reiterate their libel.

"How dare you suggest that we have done anything wrong in attributing statements to Rush he never uttered? Even if he didn't say those words, you know he was thinking them or something much worse."

On what basis do they make such preposterous statements? Purely and simply for the reason that Rush is an unabashed conservative and unabashed conservatives are presumptively racist.

Yesterday, on his program, many callers were urging Rush to sue Sharpton, Jackson, CNN and the twit commentator who repeated the statements into oblivion for slander and libel. Rush though, urged his callers to cool down, and look at it from a bigger picture. He even acknowledged that it might work out in his own favor. I agree with Rush, here, but don't think I am willing to so easily turn the other cheek. You see, when they call Rush a racist, they are also mischaracterizing all of us who call ourselves conservative as racist too. But this name calling has been used so frequently, often casually by the Left to avoid arguing the actual facts, that it is losing its power. The Left has wallowed so long in the idea of Mythos, that they can just tell stories, and even if they aren't true, they illustrate what they believe to be true, that they have totally lost sight of the Logos, that the facts on the ground don't bear out what their stories portray. But rather that change their beliefs, they just screech all the louder. But fewer are listening.

Political Cartoon

I got a kick out of this cartoon by Chuck Asay in today's Townhall.com. Go check it out.

Selfish Bastards

Maybe I am selfish. I give at church, and on occasion to the Boy Scouts and to others who appeal, and who I can plainly see are in need. But governments use of my hard earned tax money for providing what would otherwise be provided by private charities offends me like nothing else. Ben Hand gives vent to the many who feel the same way in his piece today in the American Thinker entitled Just Leave Me Alone. As Walter Williams has so often pointed out, taxing people to provide what would otherwise be charity is frankly legalized theft of your and my property. He points out the difference between a parent asking her children to share, and when bureaucratic scolds play on the same emotions for their own aggrandizement:

Now let's shift focus to the thought that if we don't share, then we are evil. Well, this is true in some instances, but the problem arises when some unknown party forces us to share with someone that is also unknown to us. The concept was fine when it was Mom making us share with our younger brother something that she had bought both of us with her money. But for someone with the force of military, jail or other extreme threat takes from us and gives to another, then we have glorified theft under the guise of sharing. And because we were taught as little kids to share, we are ashamed to speak out differently in fear of the dreaded "selfish" word being foisted upon us.

You see what is happening here, right? The people advancing these proposals take a legitimate childhood emotions, and subtly change the subject so that at the end, you feel you have been had somehow. It's not that you have worked hard to achieve what you have, but that you are one of the lucky in life's lottery. You should share with others who haven't been so lucky. You don't want to? You selfish bastard.

Well guess what? You have been had.

When someone decides to reach into his own pocket and give money to another, that is charity and is noble. When someone reaches into another's pocket, takes that money and gives it to somebody else, that is theft and it is ignoble. When someone reaches into another's pocket, takes that money and gives it to somebody else, then crows about it, that is despicable. It doesn't matter whether the giving is to the poor, or as foreign aid, or grants, or anything else they may call it, it is always despicable.

Our founders gave us a Constitutional Republic with limited powers. We have allowed it to grow out of all bounds because in many instances our own emotions and our better angels were used against us. It's time to take back our Republic and accept the name calling that inevitably will follow. Selfish? Maybe I am, but no. Racist? Maybe I am, but no. Xenophobe? Maybe I am, but no. Practice it; it becomes easier over time. However, you may not be invited to as many parties.

Is there Hope?

Scooter Schaefer has an interesting take on The New Face of Student Activism today over at Townhall.com. Go check it out. The part I find most hopeful is this:

What is missing from this traditional mold of campus activism on the right is a clear and defined ideology that provides a rallying cry for students equal or greater to those on the left. Liberalism on college campuses is not adequately challenged unless by direct confrontation and contradiction. Consider that liberty, although opposite of socialism is similar in its appeal to students. Both are an uncompromising ideology, impassioned cause, and call to action, and therefore can equally resonate with students.

It's about time, and past time, really. I don't necessarily like the idea that Conservatism is being defined as being like your father's Oldsmobile. But I could live with it. Conservatism in this country does not mean the same thing as conservatism does in Europe, a fact lost on the MSM. Conservatism there means to be authoritarian, even monarchical. In this country, though, conservatism seeks to conserve the precious gains made in the Founding; Constitutional principles, radically limited government, respecting equal rights under the law (not equal outcomes, not even equal opportunities) and a rule of law that applies to everyone equally no matter ones station in life. It means that government is there to uphold our individual rights to life, liberty, and property. Government is not there to perform experiments in social engineering. Indeed, social norms should respond to society and is none of the government's business, other to insure official nondiscrimination.