Posts with the tag 'political ideology'
This is what gets serious discussion on the left, as NRO’s The Corner points out:
At the Netroots Nation gathering in Austin, Texas last month — that is the successor to YearlyKos — Dahlia Lithwick, of the Washington-Post-owned website Slate, did an interview with the Talking Points Memo site in which she described a panel discussion she had just taken part in on what is known as the “first 100 days of accountability.” Among Lithwick’s observations:
We’re already falling into this trap of either positing Nuremberg-style war crimes tribunals, or nothing, immunizing everyone from John Yoo up and down…but everybody says there’s a lot of gray area in between that, and that accountability doesn’t necessarily mean Nuremberg, it doesn’t necessarily mean nothing, it means possibly a truth commission, possibly appointing a special prosecutor to look at it…
Lithwick recommended a massive retrospective investigation of the Bush administration, going through every piece of paper, before moving forward:
Certainly long before we make a decision to do what Stuart Taylor suggested this week, which was immunize everybody in advance, or alternatively make a decision to trot them out before a war crimes tribunal before the whole world, we should really find out what happened…
But Lithwick recognized that there are those who argue such an action might be divisive:
We talked a lot about this notion that it’s bad for America, that it will rip America apart if we have hearings or we have criminal trials or if we have war crimes tribunals. And I think it’s really worse for America if we don’t…
The level of insanity here is breathtaking - and while one can attempt to dismiss this as the paranoid ravings of screwball lefties, the problem is that these screwball lefties will have a large say in any potential Obama Administration. These people appear to be quite serious in thinking of President Bush and his Administration (a moderate, center-right, constitutional American government) as akin to Nazi Germany. And do keep in mind that by implication those of us who support President Bush are criminals, too - at least in the minds of the left. These are not people who view me as a fellow American - they view me as a pestilence to be at least thwarted, and destroyed if possible.
It is imposisble for us to reach these people, but we can rest completely assured that we must stop them from gaining power - the plans they have, the lunatic assumptions they hold, are the stuff with which civil wars are made. Essentially, the left wishes to criminalise non-leftist actions and ideas, and as we on the right won’t ever agree to that, push may very well come to shove if the left gains power and seeks to prosecute us for what they consider to be crimes. I wish never to see anyone who is a fellow citizen of the United States as an enemy - but anyone who thinks putting President Bush et al up on war crimes charges - or even attempting to set up a truth commission - is someone who has definitively set themselves up as my enemy. Not a fellow citizen with ideas I think wrong, but an enemy I’ll fight.
Tags: Afghanistan, Conservatism, FISA, Gitmo, Iraq, liberal lies, political ideology, Signals Intelligence Program
August 7th, 2008
From Victor Davis Hanson:
Our 21st-century paralysis is surprising. The United States is not materially exhausted. We sit atop trillions of dollars worth of untapped oil, gas, coal, shale and tar sands.
America could mine more uranium, and reprocess fuels to build hundreds of nuclear plants. American agriculture is blessed with the world’s best soils, most developed irrigation systems, and most productive and astute farmers.
There is as much sun and wind in the western United States as anywhere in the world. We have plenty of natural resources and the know-how to make all the wood, steel and cement products we need.
A new, hungrier generation of Americans will have to want to reclaim our pre-eminence and change the national attitude. It must be ready to pay off generations of debt rather than borrow, build rather than sue, and drill rather than whine.
It’s time to honor rather than avoid and outsource physical labor. Our children are healthy enough to cut our own lawns and pick our fruit. Let’s also hope they want to hear a lot more about Gen. David Petraeus’ success, and a lot less of Madonna’s latest psychodramas.
But just as importantly, what Americans need now is leadership to get moving again — rather than more platitudes about hope, squabbling about race and gender, and endless rhetoric about who is really a maverick or a true conservative or the most liberal. What we need to know from our two presidential candidates are specifics about how to jumpstart America.
So, how many more barrels of oil, refineries and megawatts will America produce –and when and how? How much debt will the next administration retire — and when and how. How and when will our schools return to knowledge-based rather than the present (and failing) therapeutic curriculum?
Americans, in short, should be tired of hearing that we are a post-industrial, postmodern, post-anything society. Instead, we want to be known again as a can-do producer nation that sweats as much as it thinks. And the confident presidential candidate who can best assure us of that will surely win this election.
My answer, naturally, is that McCain is the better man to do these things - and, indeed, McCain has been tacking towards a new understanding of American strength, and the real point of American conservatism (it isn’t just a powerful military and low taxes - those are incidental to conservatism, not central). While there is a rank foolishness in Democratic class war rhetoric (especially when at least a plurality of the rich back the Democrats - and its probably an absolute majority), no conservative can view corporate America with anything other than dismay at the way they’ve made of mess of things in housing, automobiles and finance. We’ve been so busy, on the right, fighting the War on Terrorism and fighting off socialism that we’ve forgot that a two by four needs, at times, to be directed at corporate America, too. All conservatives, schooled as we are in understanding the inherent weakness of large bureaucracies, should understand almost instinctively that a large corporate bureaucracy is only slightly better than a large government bureaucracy.
It is time for us to really get America moving again - a comprehensive insistence that government get out of the way, but corporations be held to the highest possible standards of honesty; an insistence that the lawsuits stop; a demand that NIMBYism on things like oil drilling and refineries be slammed hard; a realistic approach which gathers our immense strength and applies it to our pressing problems. And, most importantly, a rigid defense of the family - against intrusive government bureaucrats and corrupt teacher’s unions, to be sure, but also against corporate greed which views the family 14 year old as a prime target for sex and violence marketing.
Its all of a piece - for many decades we were focused on defeating the USSR. Lately we’ve been concentrating on the War on Terrorism - but its does us no good to win the war abroad only to lose it at home. What America needs, from top to bottom, is conservatism - conservative economics, conservative morals, conservative government. McCain may be the man to do it, but Obama is definitely not the man for the hour. This is no time for intra-movement fights over alleged purity, but it is the time to fight it out on each issue for what is really best for America - conservatism.
Tags: John McCain, political ideology
July 18th, 2008
Peter Wehner over at Real Clear Politics give some sage advice:
Senator McCain’s line of attack against Senator Obama, should Obama become the Democratic nominee, ought to be on Obama’s liberal stands. As best as I can ascertain, apart from calling for merit pay for teachers, Obama is a conventional liberal on every significant national issue. Senator McCain needs to focus like a laser beam on that fact.
I should add an important caveat: invoking the liberal label is not enough. Especially against Obama — who is skilled, dexterous, and projects a sense of being non-ideological — much more will be necessary. Senator McCain needs to make deep, sustained arguments on behalf of liberty, limited government, constitutionalism, the family, and American strength and military power (from prosecuting the Iraq war to a successful conclusion to effective terrorist surveillance policies) in confronting militant Islam. He then needs to lay out a robust governing agenda based on those governing principles. And he needs to present himself as a reformer of our institutions, which is something that does come easily to McCain.
Making the case against Obama’s liberalism will bring howls of protest from reporters and columnists who once held McCain up as a courageous “maverick” and who took particular delight when he antagonized conservatives. John McCain’s days as the mainstream media’s favorite Republican are about to end. One can already anticipate the avalanche of columns denouncing McCain as a flip-flopping, unprincipled panderer.
The mainstream media will insist that using the liberal label is so 1980s. Such name-calling, we will be told, is anachronistic, “old and tired,” simple-minded, and a sign of desperation. It may have worked against Michael Dukakis in 1988, they will argue, but we are a better and wiser nation now.
McCain should reject such counsel.
If Obama should win the Democratic nomination, John McCain should go straight at his record — with precision, without rancor, and relentlessly. John McCain will not win a personality contest against Barack Obama; no political figure in America could. McCain will have to base his campaign on a set of creative, forward-looking ideas that meet the challenges of our time. He will have to make this a race about ideas and about ideology.
In making the race about ideas and contrasting center/right, bedrock Americanism against Obama’s ultra-liberalism more in step with Europe than Mainstreet, USA, McCain would not only give himself his best shot of beating Obama, but also do a service to the nation by laying out clearly just what the issues of 2008 are. For Obama, the key to victory in 2008 (should he beat Hillary - and that isn’t a done deal yet at all) is to cloud the issues and keep the debate to airy platitudes about hope and change. In other words for Obama - like all liberals running a national campaign - the key to victory will revolve around how successful Obama is at hiding just what he believes from the American people. It is McCain’s job to force Obama to declare himself.
There is no need to get down and dirty with Obama - we only need describe his record (which is very thin, but which is also extraordinarily liberal - like it makes McGovern seem conservative by comparison) and lay out just what sort of America we’ll have if Obama’s liberalism triumphs: an America of high taxes, high spending, out-of-control government, military weakness, social decline and America subordinate to UN and EU apparatchiks. Obama still might win even if exposed as the ultra-liberal he is - its clear that he has become a political phenomena not often seen, and which is not entirely subject to normal political realities - but the fight is still worth having, and even if we lose we’ll have laid down the marker against which Obama and the Democrats will be judged in 2010 and 2012.
As for me, I look forward to this fight - I love a battle of ideas; the sharp contrast between liberal and consevative is where I love to be debating, all the time and everywhere. And, of course, if Hillary does win the nomination, then such a battle will work even better against her. So, lets have at it with gusto and with confidence that the fact that we are right will make all the might we need.
Tags: Barack Obama, Conservatism, John McCain, liberalism, political ideology
February 19th, 2008
It was given by Ronald Reagan in the closing days of the 1964 campaign between Lyndon Johnson and Barry Goldwater. I happened to catch it on Mark Levin’s radio show as I was coming home this afternoon…and, man, do we need a Ronald Reagan in 2007!. Here’s a quote:
It’s time we asked ourselves if we still know the freedoms intended for us by the Founding Fathers. James Madison said, “We base all our experiments on the capacity of mankind for self-government.” This idea that government was beholden to the people, that it had no other source of power except the sovereign people, is still the newest, most unique idea in all the long history of man’s relation to man. For almost two centuries we have proved man’s capacity for self-government, but today we are told we must choose between a left and right or, as others suggest, a third alternative, a kind of safe middle ground. I suggest to you there is no left or right, only an up or down. Up to the maximum of individual freedom consistent with law and order, or down to the ant heap of totalitarianism; and regardless of their humanitarian purpose those who would sacrifice freedom for security have, whether they know it or not, chosen this downward path. Plutarch warned, “The real destroyer of the liberties of the people is he who spreads among them bounties, donations, and benefits.
Today there is an increasing number who can’t see a fat man standing beside a thin one without automatically coming to the conclusion the fat man got that way by taking advantage of the thin one. So they would seek the answer to all the problems of human need through government. Howard K. Smith of television fame has written, “The profit motive is outmoded. It must be replaced by the incentives of the welfare state.” He says, “The distribution of goods must be effected by a planned economy.”
Another articulate spokesman for the welfare state defines liberalism as meeting the material needs of the masses through the full power of centralized government. I for one find it disturbing when a representative refers to the free men and women of this country as the masses, but beyond this the full power of centralized government was the very thing the Founding Fathers sought to minimize. They knew you don’t control things; you can’t control the economy without controlling people. So we have come to a time for choosing. Either we accept the responsibility for our own destiny, or we abandon the American Revolution and confess that an intellectual belief in a far-distant capitol can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves.
Where is the man (or woman) who will stand up and say such things in 2007? We’ve lost a lot of political courage in the 43 years since that speech was given, and we’ve got to get it back - because this 1964 speech even speaks to our current difficulties in the War on Terrorism:
The specter our well-meaning liberal friends refuse to face is that their policy of accommodation is appeasement, and appeasement does not give you a choice between peace and war, only between fight and surrender. We are told that the problem is too complex for a simple answer. They are wrong. There is no easy answer, but there is a simple answer. We must have the courage to do what we know is morally right, and this policy of accommodation asks us to accept the greatest possible immorality. We are being asked to buy our safety from the threat of “the bomb” (Ed.Note: in 2007, “the bomb” has been replaced by “terrorists”) by selling into permanent slavery our fellow human beings enslaved behind the Iron Curtain (Ed.Note: in 2007, those ruled by Islamo-fascists), to tell them to give up their hope of freedom because we are ready to make a deal with their slave masters.
“We must have the courage to do what we know is morally right”. President Bush has shown this courage since Septemer 11, 2001 - will any of the Presidential candidates, Democrat or Republican, have the courage to do the right thing? On the answer to that question will turn the fate of America is 2008. Now, go read the whole thing and become a Reaganite.
Tags: political ideology, Ronald Reagan
December 21st, 2007
As readers know, I’m still undecided in the GOP primary - I wish Giuliani were more in tune with Catholic morals; I wish McCain would drop CFR; I wish Huckabee would call for some advice on foreign policy. I’m not going to get all that I want, of course. But I do have some desires:
1. Again and again submit a Human Life Amendment - time to end the barbarism of abortion, and the best means to do this is to debate it hotly in the public square; my view is that the more people know about abortion, the less they’ll support it. Also, would it really hurt a GOP President to actually attend a pro-life march from time to time?
2. Replace free trade with freedom trade. I once was a staunch free-trader, but no more - oh, I want there to be lots and lots of foreign trade, but I want to be a bit selective in whom we invite to participate in the world’s largest and most dynamic economy. Bottom line, I’d embargo trade with any nation not clearly under democratic governance - if we’re going to buy cheap manufactured goods on the world market, why not buy them from our fellow free men, rather than from de-facto slaves who only work to add power and wealth to their masters?
3. Going along with point 2, I’d like to have the UN put on notice - remove all non-democratic States from any position of authority in the UN, or the United States pulls out. We can’t have a concern for human rights if we allow violators of human rights to participate in our monitoring of human rights.
4. Go flat out on bringing on the new ship designs for the US Navy. And then build a lot of them - lets get that 600 ship navy. Why? because when you control the oceans, you fundamentally control the world. If we have overwhelming seapower available simultaneously for all the world’s major ocean trade routes, then we’d be in an unassailable diplomatic position to get our way, if push comes to shove.
Just a few ideas - things I’d like to see happen. My biggest fret for 2008 is that none of the candidates has articulated a clear vision of what they want for America. This nation of ours is so incredibly powerful, so incredibly wealthy; we have the power in our hands to reshape the world - what would the candidates do with this power? Small beans stuff like Bill Clinton did, or the grand challenge, such as President Bush has mustered?
This nation of ours, also, suffers from some deep social pathologies - what are the plans to deal with them? More welfare state mush? Indifference? Or is there someone out there who will cut through the utter nonsense on issues such as abortion, pornography, drug abuse, depraved popular culture, etc and actually make a move to improve things? In the grand scheme of things, we need a grand scheme - a President who will see the whole picture and chart a course for great deeds.
I’m still waiting for a candidate to come along with that sort of fire.
Tags: political ideology
December 20th, 2007
What is A Common Word? An open letter penned by some Moslem scholars detailing some of the similarities between Islam and Christianity and asking that we all come together for the peace of the world? It is an admirable statement in every sense of the word. What is the common cowardice? This response by some Christian scholars:
As members of the worldwide Christian community, we were deeply encouraged and challenged by the recent historic open letter signed by 138 leading Muslim scholars, clerics, and intellectuals from around the world. A Common Word Between Us and You identifies some core common ground between Christianity and Islam which lies at the heart of our respective faiths as well as at the heart of the most ancient Abrahamic faith, Judaism. Jesus Christ’s call to love God and neighbour was rooted in the divine revelation to the people of Israel embodied in the Torah (Deuteronomy 6:5; Leviticus 19:18). We receive the open letter as a Muslim hand of conviviality and cooperation extended to Christians worldwide. In this response we extend our own Christian hand in return, so that together with all other human beings we may live in peace and justice as we seek to love God and our neighbours.
Muslims and Christians have not always shaken hands in friendship; their relations have sometimes been tense, even characterized by outright hostility. Since Jesus Christ says, “First take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your neighbour’s eye” (Matthew 7:5), we want to begin by acknowledging that in the past (e.g. in the Crusades) and in the present (e.g. in excesses of the “war on terror”) many Christians have been guilty of sinning against our Muslim neighbours. Before we “shake your hand” in responding to your letter, we ask forgiveness of the All-Merciful One and of the Muslim community around the world.
It is, indeed, right and proper that we ask our Moslem brothers and sisters to forgive us for any sins we have done against them - but the open letter from the Moslems wasn’t asking for us to beg forgiveness, and neither did the Moslems beg forgiveness for their many sins against Christians. It was a manly (if we’re permitted to use such a word in 2007), straightforward appeal to shared values…and it was responded to in the manner a lickspittle slave would use towards his master. Any wise Moslem - like any wise Christian - knows there are unsettled accounts between Christianity and Islam; but it is not a requirement that anyone deal with them. If we owe an apology for what happened in Jerusalem in 1099, Islam owes an apology for what happened in Constantinople in 1453 - and so on and on and on. Offering their absurd apology up front entirely defeats any real good designed by A Common Word. There will be a curl of contempt on the lips of Islamo-fascists everywhere as they see Christians abase themselves before even moderate Moslems…the Islamo-fascists can dream about what we’ll do for them when they become our masters, as they are sure they’ll eventually be, given our unwillingness to be forthright about ourselves.
This is the time for real men and real women to act properly and as is fitting for stern times - it is time we firmly set aside the soft sludge of late 20th century political correctness. Our brothers and sisters in Islam don’t want to deal with slaves, they want to deal with men and women who have some spirit in them. If we’re to act like slaves, then we might as well become slaves - but if we act like we’ve got some guts, then the people of the Moslem world will meet us on the level and, differences aside, we’ll find a way develope a workable relationship. I hope some Christians who are better grounded in Our Lord’s teachings will re-respond to those fine Moslem scholars, and let them know that we’re not entirley a bunch of milksops over here.
Tags: Christianity, Islam, political ideology
December 3rd, 2007
Mark Steyn points out that when you come right down to it, in the GOP people have a wide variety of choices while in the Democratic party the debate ranges from “Bush is stupid” all the way over to “Bush is evil”:
as National Review’s Jonah Goldberg pointed out, the mainstream media are always demanding the GOP demonstrate its commitment to “big tent” Republicanism, and here we are with the biggest of big tents in history, and what credit do they get? You want an anti-war Republican? A pro-abortion Republican? An anti-gun Republican? A pro-illegal immigration Republican? You got ‘em! Short of drafting Fidel Castro and Mullah Omar, it’s hard to see how the tent could get much bigger. As the new GOP bumper sticker says, “Celebrate Diversity.”
Over on the Democratic side, meanwhile, they’ve got a woman, a black, a Hispanic, a preening metrosexual with an angled nape – and they all think exactly the same. They remind me of “The Johnny Mathis Christmas Album,” which Columbia used to re-release every year in a different sleeve: same old songs, new cover. When your ideas are identical, there’s not a lot to argue about except biography. Last week, asked about his experience in foreign relations, Barack Obama noted that his father was Kenyan, and he’d been at grade school in Indonesia. “Probably the strongest experience I have in foreign relations,” he said, “is the fact I spent four years overseas when I was a child in Southeast Asia.” When it comes to foreign relations, he has more of them on his Christmas card list than Hillary or Haircut Boy.
Sen. Clinton was gleefully derisive of this argument. “Voters will have to judge if living in a foreign country at the age of 10 prepares one to face the big, complex international challenges the next president will face”…
…
When I mentioned on the radio how much I was enjoying the Hillary/Barack snippiness, I received a lot of huffy e-mails from Democrats saying, “Oh yeah, well, how much foreign policy experience do Romney or Giuliani have?” Sorry, but you’re missing the point. On the GOP side, the debate isn’t being conducted on the basis of who was where in fourth grade.
Steyn also goes on to note that no matter how infuriating various McCain or Giuliani opinions might be for some, they are at least willing to stick to their opinions, even in the face of a party base which overwhelmingly believes otherwise (immigraiton for McCain, abortion/gay marriage for Giuliani, eg). The oddity of American political life is that the standard line is “if only we had politicians who were honest and willing to stick to what they say”…in the GOP, from George Bush on down, we’ve got precisely that. You don’t have to agree with them, but any honest appraisal would have to be one of honest men who stand foursquare for their beliefs.
Because the GOP is a party filled with honest men and women willing to stand tall for core beliefs, the GOP is a party of immense diversity. This is different from the Democratic party - which is a party of faction. Diversity, in politics, is where you have people with a common goal but different ideas on how to get there…faction is people who don’t give a two penny damn about whether there even is a goal, but are bound and determined that their faction get what it demands.
Giuliani tells me we’ll get to a reduction of abortion without necessarily putting legal restrictions on it. McCain tells me that a central plank in cleaning up politics is his CFR. Romney says a main part of dealing with Iran’s nuclear program is attempting to isolate Iran in the international community. Thompson has as part of his effort to secure the borders a demand that we make English the official language of the United States. I want a reduction in abortions; I want corruption cleaned up; I want Iran’s nuclear program ended; I want our borders secured - Giuliani, McCain, Romney, Thompson and I all have common goals - but for each of these proposed tactics I find things to take exception to. None of these four proposals puts the candidate making it out of the realm of possibility for me - as a GOPer, I won’t demand that it be all or nothing for me.
Over on the Democrat side, the special interest factions rule the roost. You must be opposed to the campaign in Iraq - you can be outright opposed like Edwards, or opposed with some reservations, like Hillary; but opposed you must be. You must be in favor of abortion on demand - you can make all the rhetorical statements about making it “safe, legal and rare” you like, but when push comes to shove each and every action and appointee which has anything to do with abortion better be a something or someone committed to abortion on demand. You must be opposed to SDI - call for a strong national defense until the cows come home, but at the end of the day you’d better have nothing but contempt for the very concept of shooting down incoming ballistic missiles. You must be a complete advocate of the most definitive anthropogenic global warming theory - you can dance around the edges on what you would do about it, but you’d better not breath even the slightest doubt on any aspect of global warming theory.
On and on it goes - and the people who are most interested in opposing Iraq don’t particularly care about what you would do on abortion. The people who are most concerned with keeping abortion on demand don’t particularly care about your SDI position…on and on, each faction only concerned with itself and demanding rote recitation of their core beliefs, or you’ll be cast into political outer darkness…as Joe Lieberman found out; even a lifetime of supporting liberalism didn’t protect him from those liberals who decided that ending Iraq was the paramount issue of our times.
So, if you want diversity and a real debate about how to attain shared goals, the GOP is the only place to be. Sure, the party has its screw ups and, given that it is stafffed with people, it does do the boneheaded thing from time to time - but, at bottom, there is a spirit of open inquiry and a willingness to tolerate dissent in the GOP which is sadly lacking in the Democratic party. As we move into 2008, I believe the ideological rigidity of the Democrats will end up being their undoing - that they will, in the end, decide to lose the election rather than risk offending even the least of the factions which make up the Democratic party.
Tags: Conservatism, liberalism, Mark Steyn, National Review, political climate, political ideology
November 25th, 2007
Mona Charen writes a piece taking Ron Paul to task over various issues, Ron Paul’s communications director, Jesse Benton, fires back. After reading both pieces and Ms. Charen’s response to the rebuttal, I can only feel sympathy for Ms. Charen. Ron Paul might be the nicest guy in the whole world, but his people are, at best, tiresome. Earlier today, I received this in my in-box:
That is why there is an ever-increasing amount of independents. They are tired of the lies, the empire building, censored press, fascism and corruption. Who should we support then? The GOP? The DFL? Only a blind, deaf and dumb idiot might.
That is the way to win friends and influence people - call them idiots. While I have, like Ms. Charen, received well-reasoned emails from Paul supporters, the general run is like the quote - a rant about how everyone is evil except for Ron Paul. The question which immediately comes to mind is that if we GOPers are so idiotic and/or evil, why seek the nomination of our party? Why not seek the Libertarian party nomination for President? I’m sure they’d be delighted with the increased press, if nothing else.
Whatever the motivations of Paul’s supporters, I will have to say clearly that I cannot support Ron Paul for President of the United States. The more I’ve heard of Paul’s positions, the less I find them in accord with my Republicanism, my conservative beliefs and my Christian morality. As a for-instance from Mr. Benton’s email to Ms. Charen:
If Charen paid much attention to the campaign, she would know that Dr. Paul never utters the word “isolationist” except to explain why he is not one. He believes in the foreign policy of the founders: peace, commerce, and open friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none.
Indeed, we want peace, commerce and open friendship - but one must choose one’s friends carefully, and there is no way the United States can be actual friends with the likes of Venezuela’s Chavez, or Iran’s Ahmadinejad. Sure, Paul can say we won’t be friends with them, but friends with the people of Venezuela and Iran…and that is a nice concept, but also quite foolish…any commerce and friendship we give to Venezuela and Iran will merely strengthen Chavez and Ahmadinejad to the detriment not only of the United States, but the people of Iran and Venezuela. Isolationism is not an option for the United States, but its opposite is not open embrace of all and sundry.
The Republican party stands for things - respect for human life, respect for liberty, among them…we cannot be people of life and liberty if we in any way help those who deny life and liberty to others. Conservatism also stands for things - respect for inherited tradition, understanding that our duties to our fellow men far outweigh our rights vis a vis them…we cannot be conservative if we throw away tradition in favor of the latest fads, nor can we be if place the individual as the be-all and end-all of existence. Christianity stands for things - love of our fellow men, understanding of our fallen nature, among them…we cannot be Christians if we turn a blind eye to the sufferings of our brothers and sisters in the name of commerce, nor can we be if we pretend that human beings, unfettered by rules of right conduct, will do other than make a mess of things.
Ron Paul stands for a species of liberty which is actually license. For a version of free markets which is actually just permission for the rich to grind the faces of the poor. For a version of society which is every man for himself.
I can’t back that - not now, not ever.
Tags: Conservatism, political ideology, Ron Paul
November 21st, 2007
