Conservative Values

The Death of Free Speech (And How to Restore It)

Mark Noonan32 Comments

Mark Steyn takes note of an outrageous event in Germany – satirist writes an insulting poem about Turkey’s President, German government decides to prosecute the guy under an obscure law which prohibits insulting heads of State:

…A free society does not threaten a guy with years in gaol for writing a poem. If you don’t know that that’s wrong, you should just cut to the chase and appoint yourself mutasarrıfa of Erdogan’s neo-Ottoman sanjak of Berlin.

What a disgraceful person (Merkel) is, the worst German chancellor since …well, I don’t want to go all Godwin’s this early in the piece. But a few years ago, when Maclean’s and I had our triple-jeopardy difficulties with the Canadian “Human Rights” Commission, the Ontario “Human Rights” Commission and the British Columbia “Human Rights” Tribunal, the response of many of my fellow Canadians to the eventual outcome was along the lines of: “Well, I don’t know what Steyn was making such a fuss about. The process played itself out and he was acquitted. So the system worked.”

Some of these people were genuine innocents who’ve never been caught up in a time-consuming seven-figure legal battle before. But many others were making the argument cynically. They know that, if you can tie up a book or a magazine article in court, then there will be fewer books and magazine articles…

As Steyn says, “the process is the punishment”. Now, in the United States our Founders wrote the First Amendment and so it is vastly more difficult to erect speech-suppressing “human rights laws” as they have in the rest of the Western world…but even here in the United States people self-censor in order to just be sure they won’t be the target of a howling mob of Progressive Social Justice Warriors. Remember, one ill-advised Tweet and you can lose your job – but even if you prevail, who wants to put up with that? Better to just keep silent.

It is time to put a bit of teeth into the First Amendment. I suggest a Free Speech Restoration Act.

1. No employer shall in any way sanction an employee for any act of speech made outside of work time. Religious bodies may terminate an employee for acts of speech which deny any of the clearly expressed dogmas of the religious body.

2. Social media companies which allow the exposure of private phone numbers and addresses without a person’s consent may be held liable for civil damages.

3. Persons who spread false statements about private individuals may be held liable for civil damages. Social media companies must provide relevant information upon court order to identify any person who may have spread false statements about a private individual. Private individuals for the purposes of this law are persons who are not an officer of a corporation, an elected or appointed official of government, an employee of a government agency or the employee of any news media entity.

4. Congress shall appropriate a sum not less than $5 billion per year to provide free legal representation to any citizen who needs such representation in order to recover damages resulting from actions taken by employers, social media companies or persons who in any way sanction or cause sanctions to be applied to a citizen for acts of speech. Private individuals who are accused of spreading false information are also entitled to free legal representation.

That should do it. The most important thing is that you can’t lose your job over what you say outside your job. While at work, you do have to toe your employer’s line and if you don’t like it, you can find other employment…but once you clock out, you can say whatever you please and there is nothing your employer can do about it. This, in and of itself, would cure most of the self-censoring which goes on. The second important thing is to provide economic sinews for those who are victims of mob action for stating unpopular opinions…and the fact that such sinews exist, once a few examples are made, would greatly curb social justice mobs. And by excluding those who are in power from protection under this law, everyone is still free to go after the powerful with gusto.

We on the right have a vested interest in this. On the whole, we don’t engage in activity which seeks to suppress anyone’s speech. The left, of course, makes it their business to shut up everyone they disagree with. If we don’t swiftly find some means of ensuring our right to speak, then soon we won’t be able to speak, at all. And I think such a law could garner popular support – certainly the legal industry won’t be against it! But the basic concept of privacy and not lying about other people will be in line with general American ideas of what is right and just. All we have to do is find a candidate who would be willing to run with it.

Can There be a Conservative Majority in America?

Mark Noonan18 Comments

Because right now there clearly isn’t. The Trumpocalypse is upon us and while there still is a slim chance that Cruz can derail it, what Trump has revealed is that the Republican Party is not, itself, a Conservative party…some of us (definitely myself, included) figured America to be a center-right nation and thus open to Conservatism on the whole. Turns out, we were quite wrong. Between Trump and Sanders, we’re seeing that very large blocs of the American electorate are not remotely interested in Conservatism. Sanders and Trump supporters both share a similar dream – though both sides would reject this idea with fury – and that is a dream of an America with an all-powerful government. Trump and Sanders people just have slightly different ideas of who is the enemy and who gets bashed – and who gets the government goodies. Conservatism has nothing in common with that.

This is because Conservatism isn’t about political power as such. Trump and Sanders supporters have grand dreams of what the government will do as soon as their guy gets in. Conservatives have grand dreams of government doing little – certainly little that interferes with people just living their lives. National defense; just laws equitably enforced; basic services provided in an efficient manner. That is pretty much all a Conservative asks of government. And therein lies the fundamental weakness of Conservatism – it doesn’t offer goodies nor does it propose to punish groups or classes of people. It speaks to neither base political desire of humanity – greed for gain or joy in revenge. So, as we offer nothing – as it were – how can we gain a majority? How do we campaign, that is, on a platform of “we’re going to help you if you’re in a real bind but for the most part we’re going to just leave you alone”? Rather tricky business, right?

But it can be done. You see, even though the ultimate aim of Conservatism is limited government presiding lightly over free, independent people who look after themselves, there are dragons to slay and rewards to offer. There are, that is, things to offer people in return for their support. We just have to figure out how to offer them in a manner which appeals to them. I’ve been talking it up for years now – though my audience here is small, and even among my fellow Conservatives, much dissent from my views has been offered. But it is time to think anew and act anew – we don’t want to partner up with people like the Trumpsters (though we do eventually want the large majority of them to come our way – but only after they are properly instructed and understand what we’re doing) and we sure as heck can’t partner up with Socialists (though, once again, we want a large majority of them to come our way, eventually). Going into partnership – alliance – with Trumpsters or Socialists means we have to give in to their views and that can’t be done if we are to remain Conservative. They have to give up some of their views – and we have to convince them that doing such is wise and in their best interest.

Here’s my Three Point Plan for building a Conservative Majority. It is rather thumbnail at the moment and can certainly be fleshed out – but as I recently condemned a guy for not having a plan for making a Conservative Majority, I think it incumbent upon me to at least provide some bare-bones framework:

1. Stop being contemptuous of others. I’ve seen it for years but the Trump and Sanders phenomena has written it starkly: plenty on the right (the left, as well, but we’re not the left so I don’t care what they do) have monumental contempt for people who don’t just “see” things their way. Not everyone has the time or inclination to learn what others learn. But this doesn’t make them stupid or even uneducated – it just makes them people with a different set of knowledge and thus a different perspective. Of course, ignorance of some facts can lead people quite astray – but even if they are lead astray the way to reach them and get them on the right path isn’t by insulting them or being condescending.

2. Don’t denigrate their fears, either. Lots of people have lots of fears and some of them are entirely divorced from reality. From people who think that the Koch Brothers are conspiring against the people to others who think the UN is about to land blue-helmeted soldiers in America to confiscate our weapons and every possible combination in between. The fears may well be based upon false information, but they are none the less real to those who have them. Don’t insult the fears – acknowledge them. Find ways to turn those phantom fears towards real, concrete problems we have. If their fear is the Koch Brothers then propose ways and means to improve the relative power of the people against those who have a great deal of money. If the fear is foreign tyrants imposing their will on the United States then propose ways American sovereignty can be strengthened. But whatever you do, don’t just dismiss the fears as absurd – all you’ll get is a person who is now impervious to your pleas.

3. Substitute false enemies and false promises for real enemies and real promises. As you are now humbly trying to explain yourself and acknowledging their fears (real and imagined) of your audience you have a chance to start inserting into their minds who is really against them and what rewards they can really obtain by following your lead.

The real enemy of the United States is not a proposal to make something legal or illegal, but lawlessness. Solzhenitsyn pointed out that the real problem with the Communist government in Russia was not that it was tyrannical, but that it was arbitrary. Soviet Russia was chock full of laws from end to end, but no one in the Soviet Union had the least idea of what was really permitted or what was really prohibited because regardless of what the written law said, any trumped-up Communist party official or KGB officer could arbitrarily imprison you at any time. Over time it must be carefully explained to the American people that their great danger is not any particular set of political ideas, but the fact that our government is simply not under control of the people and is not abiding by the law. Right now in America no one can be certain, day by day, they are obeying all applicable laws – there are so many of them and so badly written; and that leaves out the fact that the government has proven itself highly selective in which laws it will enforce, and whom it will enforce them against. We are also in a state where we don’t know if something we’d rather not do will be made mandatory on the morrow by the merest whim of a bureaucrat. Big Government is incapable of being lawful because once it grows beyond a certain point, no one is really minding the store – and people with power who are not responsible to the will of the people tend to become more arbitrary all the time, even without the added inducement of people bribing the government to do this or that particular act outside the law. By telling tales of people who innocently ran afoul of laws – or who were ground up in the system for comparatively small offenses which snowballed – we can explain to the people that Big Government is necessarily against them, and thus grow the number of people who want government curbed.

Trump says he’s going to kick those foreigners out and get our jobs back and Make America Great Again. Sanders says he’s going to rake those Millionaires and Billionaires over the coals and thus provide everyone with free college, free healthcare, free etc, etc, etc. These are nonsense promises but people listen to them because people have a natural bent to believe it when someone is offering something swell with no personal sacrifice. You can’t beat something with nothing and so we have to contradict the false promises with real promises. This is the harder task than getting people to identify the real enemy, by the way. It is hard to argue against free stuff and nearly as hard to argue against “we’re gonna be great if you just give me power”. But I do believe the trick can be done. It is a matter of holding out in front of the people the real rewards of a Conservative government – personal safety; law and order; justice; peace; prosperity. And with this cachet – people like a challenge. They really do. Sure, they also like promises of free stuff, but if you promise blood, sweat, toil and tears in the right way and with the right vision of a broad, sunlit uplands, then people will sign on to your movement. Its a matter of going to Detroit and telling the people there that they, the people currently living there, will soon be living in a revived Detroit; telling people in a dying rust-belt town that with hard work and sacrifice that dying town will be revived…and not with slick deals for connected lobbyists and contractors, but with actual good things for the people there, today.

Anyway, that is what I’ve got right now – I’ll likely have more on it over time. But to build a Conservative majority will clearly take doing things different than we have. There’s really no other choice – we either adapt to current conditions and start moving the ball our way, or Conservatism is finished. And I think we can do it – if we but try.

Kevin Williamson to Working/Middle Class: Go Die in a Fire

Mark Noonan11 Comments

Saw this excerpted at Hot Air earlier today and I was astounded by it. I wanted to get the whole article from National Review, but something was screwy with the website and it wouldn’t take my 25 cent payment for it, so I have to go on what is quoted rather than being able to read the entire article. At all events, Kevin Williamson over at National Review has this to say of the sort of people who are backing Trump – and how they view the world:

It is immoral because it perpetuates a lie: that the white working class that finds itself attracted to Trump has been victimized by outside forces. It hasn’t. The white middle class may like the idea of Trump as a giant pulsing humanoid middle finger held up in the face of the Cathedral, they may sing hymns to Trump the destroyer and whisper darkly about “globalists” and — odious, stupid term — “the Establishment,” but nobody did this to them. They failed themselves.

If you spend time in hardscrabble, white upstate New York, or eastern Kentucky, or my own native West Texas, and you take an honest look at the welfare dependency, the drug and alcohol addiction, the family anarchy — which is to say, the whelping of human children with all the respect and wisdom of a stray dog — you will come to an awful realization. It wasn’t Beijing. It wasn’t even Washington, as bad as Washington can be. It wasn’t immigrants from Mexico, excessive and problematic as our current immigration levels are. It wasn’t any of that.

Nothing happened to them. There wasn’t some awful disaster. There wasn’t a war or a famine or a plague or a foreign occupation. Even the economic changes of the past few decades do very little to explain the dysfunction and negligence — and the incomprehensible malice — of poor white America. So the gypsum business in Garbutt ain’t what it used to be. There is more to life in the 21st century than wallboard and cheap sentimentality about how the Man closed the factories down.

The truth about these dysfunctional, downscale communities is that they deserve to die. Economically, they are negative assets. Morally, they are indefensible. Forget all your cheap theatrical Bruce Springsteen crap. Forget your sanctimony about struggling Rust Belt factory towns and your conspiracy theories about the wily Orientals stealing our jobs. Forget your goddamned gypsum, and, if he has a problem with that, forget Ed Burke, too. The white American underclass is in thrall to a vicious, selfish culture whose main products are misery and used heroin needles. Donald Trump’s speeches make them feel good. So does OxyContin. What they need isn’t analgesics, literal or political. They need real opportunity, which means that they need real change, which means that they need U-Haul.

If you want to live, get out of Garbutt.

I don’t know quite where to begin with this from a man who, to this point, has been one of the more intelligent observers of politics. Garbutt, for those who don’t know, is a small town in upstate New York. It’s main product in the past was gypsum – a material used in such things as plaster and drywall boards. Williamson’s point is that it is the fault of the people of places like Garbutt that their lives are miserable. They were morons who didn’t realize you can’t make a living out of gypsum and so should have just moved somewhere else and learned a new trade…like, I guess, moving to New York City and becoming investment bankers, art critics or, well, writers for major national publications. Here’s the thing, though: China produced 132,000,000 metric tons of gypsum in 2015. I have a guess that China would not produce that much gypsum if there wasn’t a market for it. Meanwhile, the United States produced a mere 11,000,000 metric tons of the stuff in 2015…but there lies the tiny town of Garbutt, sitting atop a mountain of gypsum and no one is mining it. Garbutt could be a fine, prosperous community based upon gypsum mining but for some reason we just don’t mine it there any more.

The exact why of it all is beyond my immediate knowledge. I’m sure it was a slow decline of the industry over time and a host of factors provided the reasons for the decline. Could have been bad business practices. Maybe labor troubles played their role. The mining companies might not have installed the latest and most efficient means of mining. Wouldn’t be at all surprised if taxes and regulations made it increasingly difficult to mine at a profit. But I’ll also bet that our various “free trade” agreements opened up our gypsum market to foreigners who sweat their labor and don’t give a darn about worker safety or environmental concerns. But whatever the reasons for the cessation of mining in Garbutt, we should be working to restore it – we use gigantic amounts of gypsum in the United States every year and as we clearly have lots of gypsum in our soil, it is pure idiocy to not take advantage of what we have. Why send our wealth to China for something we can obtain right here at home? And don’t try to lay on me a bunch of globalist nonsense about how China’s gypsum has to be cheaper and it is the mere workings of the free market which dictate gypsum comes from China and Garbutt becomes a dead town. It isn’t the blind hand of market economics which makes this happen – but the warping of economic life by government policy that does it; and warping which is often as not done at the behest of big business which isn’t at all interested in wise policy but in just getting a slightly larger profit.

Because we do, as a matter of fact, produce gypsum in the United States. Nevada produced just under 2.3 million metric tons of the stuff in 2014, representing a 40% increase over the year before. Clearly, good profits are available within the United States in gypsum mining. The conditions which allowed Nevada to produce that much gypsum could obviously be duplicated in New York – but they aren’t. Those jobs are gone, boys, and they ain’t coming back – so goes the old Springsteen song and so go plenty of people in the United States…curiously enough, it is always people who don’t do the jobs that ain’t coming back who assert in forthright terms they ain’t coming back. I wonder if we advised Mr. Williamson that his job is being sent to a guy in China who will do it for 40% of Williamson’s wages how he’d feel about it? After all, I’m sure we can get plenty of Chinese who are just as willing to tell large swaths of the American population they are just miserable failures. It’s just economics, Williamson – the blind hand of a completely free market, you dig?

But what about the immorality Williamson notes? True, our moral failures are all our own. We are created by God with free will and everyone is ultimately responsible for their own choices in life. But it wasn’t the people of places like Garbutt who demanded sex, drugs and rock and roll. That demand was created in places like New York City and Los Angeles by bored, rich people who wanted to spice up their dead, empty lives – and woe to anyone in Garbutt who even made a peep about not wanting it in their community. It is a curious thing we’ve seen for well more than a century – the least eccentricity of the rich must become a requirement among the poor. The rich wanted to live in Babylon, and so everyone must live in Babylon as well. Can’t have some rich guy being held up to moral censure, right? So, the vices a rich man can afford because of his wealth must also become vices among those who can’t afford them, at all. Think of it – the Hollywood producer who puts out pop culture garbage which glorifies bad choices can afford to send his drug addicted son to rehab and bail him out of jail time and again…but the poor slob in some small burg? Can’t do it – his son dies of a drug overdose, or becomes a serial jail bird. But let’s not have any nonsense about calling the purveyors of popular culture to account. After all, no one will want to censor it – but it’s not even that; we can’t even call it wrong to do…that would make people feel bad and, worse, it could lead to a drop off in sales of popular culture products. That, of course would be the worst possible thing – a lowering of profits in the corporations making the product.

Understand this – the support for Trump is precisely among those who have been victimized by a system they don’t control. No, there isn’t a Conspiracy making it happen – just rank immorality, as is always the case when things in human life go wrong. A host of factors have all played their role in destroying communities both economically and morally – and our job is not to arrogantly say, “too bad, so sad” but to identify where we went wrong and then fix it. It is not stupid to want small and mid-sized communities of hard working people. It is the only thing a Conservative should want, for crying out loud. What the heck does Williamson want to conserve? Manhattan? Sweated labor and bribery in the People’s Republic of China? What? Trump is, as I’ve said again and again, no answer to anyone’s problem but he or someone like him will continue to garner support as long as people who should have answers don’t provide them. And as 2016 has gone on, I’ve come more and more to the conclusion that a very large number of people on the alleged right don’t even want to try for an answer – they’ve got swell lives as it is and don’t want to rock the systemic boat which allows them to maintain their swell lives. But grab a clue – there are many, many more millions of people who are shut out than doing well…their numbers grow. Many of them have been suckered into voting Democrat because at least the Democrats say they care…but even that is wearing thin. Trump likely won’t get anywhere, even if he did manage to win the White House but if we on the right don’t start thinking about how to fix this broken nation then mark my words, some sort of authortarian dictator who says he or she will fix the problem will gain majority support in the United States.

And fixing this broken nation means, precisely, finding dignified, profitable work for people who are now out in the cold…and not just in dead mining communities like Garbutt, but in the hollowed out cities like Detroit. People don’t want to live without hope – either we give them real hope, or a tyrant will give them false hope. You can say all you want that the feeling of betrayal by Trumpsters and BLM people is based upon falsehood. It doesn’t matter – it is what they believe. And, truth be told, even if the over-arching narrative such people have is false on many points, it is based upon a true enough situation. A working or middle class African-American man can easily feel that the system is against him; that the cops are unfairly targeting him; that he can’t get out from underneath a byzantine set of laws. A working or middle class white man can also feel that the system is against him; that his job was sent to China for no good reason; that Corporate and government bosses are living high while he’s left with scraps. The two men live it, every day – telling them they are wrong to even think that way just insults them.

I think our best bet is to go to people where they are – listen to them, acknowledge their grief and propose solutions to the problems they think they have. I was out and about among the people today – just regular folks at the swap meet. Working people; people with families to support. If I’d been taking a poll, I bet I would have found two men who would be spoken of most highly among these people: Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders. Neither Trump nor Sanders are what these people need – but they are what these people are going for, because no one else is even giving them the time of day. What’ll it be, folks: leave these people to demagogues who will use their rage as the path to personal power, or will we step up and provide them something better? It’s our choice, for now. Very soon, if we do nothing, it will be taken forever out of our hands and we’ll just have to endure what is chosen with no reference to us. One thing is certain in my view, if we just yell about how stupid they are for believing as they do, we’re going to lose.

UPDATE: After I had written this and pondered it for a while, it occurred to me just what I was trying in my very poor way to say – and then I recalled where I had read it before. Below the fold you’ll find it:

Continue reading →

Ain’t No Trump Gonna Get Me Down

Mark Noonan15 Comments

I just refuse that office – that is, the Office of Being Hysterical About Trump and the Mortal Absolute Danger He Poses to All That is Good and True. Trump is what Trump is. Yes, he’s clownish. Yes, he’s vulgar. Yes, he is bringing out some bad elements. But it is not like Trump created the overall situation – that has been created, rather relentlessly, by others over a 50 year or more period. Trump is the result of our national infirmity, not the cause of it.

Over Friday night I watched as Twitter became ever more absurd – to the point where Conservative posters were lauding the likes of Rachel Maddow and MoveOn!. I admit I was shocked by all that – if there’s anything a Conservative should know it is that it is very risky to ally with the left. They’ll take our help in destroying part of us…and then when that is done, they’ll just turn around and destroy the non-left which just helped them out. What I’m waiting for now is for some of my fellow righties – those who, say, hold that “social issues” are bad for Conservatism to emphasize – to simply join up with the left. I’ll be watching and waiting, because I know it will eventually happen. They’ll join, they’ll be lauded by all their swell, new friends…but then the Leftwing Party Line will require EVERYONE to assert a certain false thing as true, and they’ll be caught in a vise…they’ll have to assert what they know is false, or lose all their nice, new friends. My bet is that those who ditch the right over Trump will be found to be willing pawns of the left – if you can’t see who your opponents are, then your opponents will eventually take you over.

This is not to say that all the Trumpsters are with the right – in fact, a very large portion of them are distinctly non-right. They are, in just a slightly different way, as much authortarian Statists as the avowed left. In the end, it matters not to me if you’ve identified foreigners or devout Christians as your “other” that has to be suppressed…that line of thinking always ends badly and I’m absolutely, foursquare against it. Those who want to get the foreigners out or get the Christians out are, in my view, just arguing for different forms of tyranny.

And that brings me back to the vitriol emanating from Trump/Trumpsters and flowing back towards same. This isn’t new, guys. The only thing new about it is that someone is pouring out vitriol and it is being reported on – and it is being reported on because the person doing it has put an “R” after his name. If Trump were running in the Democrat primary you simply wouldn’t be hearing about it (unless it was temporarily needed to ensure that Hillary gets the nomination). What, after all, is the slogan “no justice, no peace” but a threat of violence unless the protesters chanting it get their way, law be damned? And that is one of the more calm and reasonable slogans of the left. “Get in their face”. “Bring a gun to a knife fight”. “The police acted stupidly”. “If I had a son…”. These are rancorous, inflammatory words just as bad as anything Trump has said…and they have encouraged other people on the left to get more and more extreme in their actions and demands over the past 8 years…and all of them are from President Obama…and he’s just repeating what has been said on the left since the 1960’s.

You can’t give those who are anti-freedom so much as an inch. And I was happy to see some people do the right thing on Friday – that is, defend Trump’s right to speak whatever he wants to say. As I’ve said before, I don’t care what a person says – if it ever comes to pass that some words are considered out of bounds, then it is certain that eventually merely stating Catholic dogma will also be out of bounds. I defend everyone’s right to speak for my own sake – and so should everyone else who has the least understanding of what human liberty actually is. And you who read here know that I also condemn asinine speech…while the world as all “je suis Charlie” after the Paris massacre I was saying that it was wrong for Charlie Hebdo to print pictures disrespectful of Muslim beliefs…and also wrong for them to print pictures disrespectful of Christian beliefs (which now they will keep doing – but have decided, out of an abundance of understandable caution, not to print any more anti-Muslim pictures). You should never write, say, print, paint, sculpt or sing anything which is insulting – fine and dandy to launch valid, informed criticism of the beliefs of others, but crude insults are a negation of liberty…but we must allow them because the entirety of the human race is incapable, individually and in toto, of deciding just where the line is between criticism and insult. Once try to do that, and all you’ll do is set up a situation where those who are most easily offended will have a veto over all speech. Nothing doing. Everyone gets to say what they want. Period. End of story.

But on Friday, plenty on the right – including, no doubt, many who were “je suis Charlie” a short while before – were out there applauding the shut down of Trump’s speech. This isn’t about whether or not people should protest Trump – heck, if you want to protest Trump I might even show up for your demonstration. But if you want to shut down Trump, you’re opposed to freedom. Once again: period. End of story. I understand a deep, visceral dislike of Trump – but now that some on the right have joined in the effort to shut down Trump, all the anti-freedom left (which is, these days, most on the left) has to do (and they’ll do it, endlessly, for the next 20 years) is claim that any non-left speech is Trumpism and thus illegitimate. The cure for Trump is to talk about Trump – not to shut him up. Even if you happily then get rid of Trump, you’ll just find yourself in a position where certain speech has been deemed (with your joyful cooperation) entirely illegitimate and where is you defense when your erstwhile allies turn on you and call your speech illegitimate? You have none – you’re naked, and probably alone. Good luck with that.

As I said in the title, I’m not going to allow myself to get worked up over Trump – in the United States in 2016 after 50 years of our political life being poisoned by anti-freedom fanatics, Trump is just a ripple is a rather noisome ditch. I’d like to drain the ditch – but the plumbing contractor necessary for the job can’t include those who filled the ditch and made it nasty. I had a little debate last night with a very dear friend who is pretty darned liberal – but we’re friends and it’s all ok. After all, if Justices Scalia and Ginsburg can be friends, anyone can be friends across the political aisle. I will, actually, accept help in restoring freedom from anyone interested in the project – but it has to be an all-in sort of thing. Not even the slightest dissent from liberty. I don’t care if you are in favor of a completely socialist society – if you are also bound and determined that everyone shall be free to say and think what they want, then I’m on your side as far as that goes. But if you are in favor of the most Conservative policies imaginable but harbor even the least trace of a desire to suppress “bad” speech, then you are no ally of mine. Freedom first – because if I have that, then eventually (I believe) my views will prevail…but even if they don’t, then at least I’ll be able to safely be entirely out of step with everyone, and that is ok, too.

I Think I’ve Figured This Out

Mark Noonan3 Comments

On Wednesday I was driving around and I had on the radio the Rush Limbaugh Show. I don’t listen too often because, well, Rush usually doesn’t tell me anything I don’t already know; his opinions that I agree with are already internalized and those I don’t agree with never shake me from my views. But, there he was, happily talking away. And then he said it – he asserted that it is absurd to think that we can get Apple to return I-phone manufacturing to the United States…I can’t remember the exact words, but it was something along the lines of there are 500,000 people working for Apple in China with a built infrastructure for the entire manufacturing process and we just can’t duplicate that in the United States. It infuriated me to hear anyone say that the United States can’t do a thing – and then later that day I happened to run across several other people making the same assertion. And said assertion is nonsense.

I know – labor costs. I realize that China pays it’s workers nearly nothing. I also realize – though our Capitalist Captains of Industry never like to mention it – that to do business in China requires massive bribery…but with that bribery you can pretty much do as you like. No need to trouble yourself too much over environmental regulations, safety measures or other trivia like that. But even with that, I just don’t buy the notion that you can’t make something better and cheaper in the United States.

Go to a hardware store and look for a hammer – I’ll bet dollars to donuts that almost all you find are made in China. What is a hammer? Just a piece of steel fashioned in a certain shape. It isn’t rocket science. It isn’t a complex device. I defy anyone to tell me that we can’t replace that Chinese factory using 500 workers to make hammers with a factory in the United States employing 50 workers in a highly automated manufacturing system…and by using our ability to automate along with our superior infrastructure to make that hammer cheaper than the Chinese can, especially as they then have to ship it thousands of miles before it even arrives in the American market. Oh, I realize that right now – at the moment – we can’t because our tax and regulatory system makes it exceptionally difficult to build and open a factory. But don’t tell me it can’t be done. It darn well can be – as soon as we want to do it. It just takes the political will to say “screw you” to people raking in profits off of sweated Chinese labor.

And thinking all that over, it occurred to me – there is the appeal of Trump in a nutshell. Lay aside for a moment the nauseating racists and anti-Semites who have latched on to him, solely on the strength of his early immigration comments. Such people are numerous, but not all that much – remember, we live in a nation of 317 million people, if even 1% of them hold to a particular view it can seem like a lot – especially with Social Media to magnify their voices (Twitter seems gigantic, until you realize that every day 83.31% of Americans don’t use Twitter, at all). A guy getting Trump’s vote totals – and goosing up GOP turnout numbers to some-times record levels – isn’t getting that because a few people like his Great Wall of Trump idea. He’s getting that level of support because a lot of regular folks are moving his way. And my view is that they are turning out for him because he says we can be great.

Keep in mind when someone says, “those jobs aren’t coming back”, it is invariably someone with a well-paid gig that isn’t affected by jobs moving to China. Lawyers, bureaucrats, corporate executives, consultants, MSMers, professional politicians…it is that sort of person who tells the blue collar slob that his blue collar job is gone for good…and even if he takes a job at Disney at 60% of his previous factory wage, he’ll have to train a foreign replacement, brought in quite legally via the H-1B visa program. Meanwhile, China doesn’t seem to want us to outsource our army of consultants and lawyers probably because the Chinese are smart enough not to want such people in large numbers lawyering and consulting an economy into ruin. An army of experts will rise to ridicule the idea that we can make things in the United States better and cheaper than foreigners can – and I’ll bet not one in a thousand of the people telling us such things have ever made one thing in their whole lives. And the people who do make things are rather angry that they are reserved for the “short end of the stick” portion of American life.

This is the United States of America! We’re the people who in just over a century rose from a colonial backwater to the most powerful nation in human history. We went to the Moon! And someone is going to tell me that this nation that did all that can’t make a hammer? Can’t even make a belt or a pair of shoes? Nonsense! It is our economic policies which have priced American manufacturing out of world markets, not some fundamental inability of Americans to compete. And let me tell you, if you really hold the view that we can’t out build and out compete every nation on Earth, then we might as well close up shop as a nation – allow ourselves to be annexed by some other nation with a bit more grit and determination. Grab a clue – a nation which can’t make things eventually can’t buy things, either. American consulting isn’t going to be enough on the global market to satisfy our demand for consumer goods, folks – in order to continue to get, we’re going to have to give. For 50 years we’ve just been giving money – magically printed up for the occasion by the Federal Reserve…but eventually you can’t print enough money to convince people to provide your needs and desires. Eventually they will want something and your degree in business management won’t be it.

I have been saying for a while now that the way to beat Trump is to out-Trump him – not in the vulgarity, but in the gut…where people live and feel. People who back Trump rather absurdly believe that Trump is on their side even though there is zero evidence that he is actually on their side…but he’s saying he is, and it is working with large numbers of people. So, beat him at it – say you’re on their side, as well…assert that the United States will be the manufacturing leader of the world; the export leader of the world; the agricultural leader of the world; the mining leader of the world; the energy production leader of the world…that we’ll clear out of the way every last tax and regulation which makes it hard for Americans to build and grow. Leave it to the Democrats to tell their voters that they’ll manage the decline and provide a bit of welfare and job training for non-existent jobs…we take the path that says, “we’ll reform things so that there will be X Million new manufacturing jobs by 2020”.

Of course, results will matter – once you promise, you’d better deliver. But if all you’re promising is low-rent stuff like “improving opportunity” then you’re not saying anything at all. What is “improving opportunity”? It is a meaningless phrase which makes it sound like you’re going to do something, maybe. Tell people you’ll bring the jobs back from China and it sounds much more vigorous…and as you’re not Trump, you can actually come up with some plans which will do just that. Part of our problem, of course, is that Rubio and Cruz are both lawyers…lawyers have a hard time understanding regular folks (so, too, do real estate tycoons like Trump…but somewhere along the line he found out that people at least want to hear that something concrete is going to get done for regular folks which doesn’t amount to a government poverty hand-out). Come on, Ted and Marco – think about it! And then go out and say it. Sure, those invested in the current system will rise in fury and scorn over any promise to bring jobs back…but you can see how much such words work regarding votes. And you guys needs some votes – the only way to really stop Trump is to get more delegates than he does, and time’s a wasting.

Anyways, that is how I see it right now – Trump is at least speaking to desires; Rubio and Cruz are speaking to theories and playing around with “vote for me because Trump sucks”. That won’t do the trick…might deny Trump a first-ballot nominating majority, but it won’t actually stop him, nor get either Cruz or Rubio in to the White House.

The Noonan Party Line

Mark Noonan6 Comments

So just what, bottom line, do I want in a political party? Well, it’s really not all that much because, you see, politicians are, well, politicians and I’m not about to suddenly start expecting them to be worth much. Every now and again a nation hits the jackpot and gets a great leader who is also, at bottom, a good person…it is rare and it is just as rare in democratic or non-democratic government. It seems that rolling the dice with genetics or votes works out about the same (so, rare birds like Abraham Lincoln and Empress Maria Theresa are once in a couple century things…while we’re chock full of leaders like Richard Nixon and Nicholas II). But we live, pro-tempore, in a democratic republic and so it is with votes that we’ll determine which pack of fools governs us. That being said, what do I vote for?

1. First and foremost, got to be pro-life. Yeah, I’ve heard all the pro-choice arguments from rational to downright stupid. None of them matter – at the end of the day, an elective abortion kills a kid for no reason, at all. There are no conceivable effects of having a child which are worse than killing the child…as the child, you see, winds up dead. If you can’t at least get this basic thing right, then I don’t want any part of you.

2. Freedom of conscience is non-negotiable. If a person cannot say and write what he or she thinks true regardless of the place it is said or written then no one is free, at all. Other than obvious things like immediate incitement to violence everyone must be allowed to hold in public whatever opinions they want without suffering even the least bit of social or official sanction. I don’t care what your views are – I only care what your concrete, physical actions are, and then only if they affect others.

3. Property rights have to be respected. Every person has an absolute and unalienable right to the fruits of their labor, as well as the fruits of the labor of their forebears. Taxes we must have, but once a tax is paid that is the very last claim anyone has on your property. Only in the rarest of instances can I see a credible reason for a government to take a person’s property for public use and then, of course, just compensation must be paid…but we must also be sure that every other possible alternative is searched out prior to taking private property for government use.

4. All concentrations of power are wicked. Anyone proposing to create, preserve or expand concentrations of power is an enemy of justice. And power is two things – government power to compel and money power to corrupt. The ability to decide must be retained at the lowest level possible.

5. The right of the people to defend themselves with arms, if necessary, is absolute.

6. Elected government service is the duty of citizens, not the sinecure of professional politicians. Terms limits on office holders is a must.

And that is really about it – you’ll notice that I didn’t get into tax rates, what to do with Entitlements, social issues (other than abortion; but even there it isn’t abortion so much as a respect for each, individual human life that motivates my vote). As readers here know, I’ve got my opinions on such things and these things do move me to vote one way or another – but in the crucial aspects, those six points are what I’m about.

And right now, neither major political party is doing all six things. The GOP is at least pretending to do some of the six, Democrats aren’t even pretending to do any of them. I’m kind of politically adrift right now. For the moment, I’ll remain a registered Republican – though if Trump does become the nominee I’ll have to think long and hard on that. I can’t go over to the Democrats because they hold in explicit contempt everything I hold dear. I won’t go Libertarian, either, because while I admire them for their spirited defense of liberty, I suspect that in matters of religious liberty they’ll prove unwilling to fight vigorously for me. Perhaps if I saw them engaging the left on things like the absurd attempts to remove crosses from public lands, I’d have more faith in their alleged commitment to liberty.

I’m hopeful that true Conservatives out there are also thinking long and hard about all this. I’ve been drifting towards the idea of a new party for a while – not with any thought (at least initially) of such a party becoming the majority, but of a party which would hold the balance of power between the two major parties. A party which would speak for me and those like me and could extract concessions from either or both party’s in return for temporary political alliances for this or that particular issue (so, if the GOP had 210 House seats and the Democrats 205, a Conservative party could throw its 20 seats into the balance…ok, Ryan, you want to be Speaker? Ok, we want a Freedom of Conscience Act and a termination of funding for PP; and if the GOP proves unwilling, I’m sure the Democrats would throw us a bone in return for Committee chairmanships…but the ultimate idea is to slowly move the ball our way…and if things crater, then this new party is clear of all blame, and maybe a majority eventually turns towards it). I think in 2017 or 2018, such a party could be formed, and probably obtain immediately a significant number of adherents among those already in the House and Senate, and in State legislatures – and by being freed from the Republican/Democrat dichotomy, it would be free to run varied types of candidates in both GOP and Democrat districts as best opportunities present themselves.

At any rate, that is how I see things and how I see myself in the political spectrum.

Understanding the Left/Right Divide: Truth and Lies

Mark Noonan18 Comments

This is actually one of the easier things to get hold of. The divide here is between Progressives who don’t believe in objective truth, and Conservatives who do.

Donald Trump caused a bit of a ruckus during the recent GOP debate when he opined that former President Bush lied to get us into Iraq. This, of course, was a standard talking-point of the left – “Bush lied, people died”. A host of reasons were put forth for just why President Bush lied, but the absolute assertion, regardless of reason, is that he lied. A lie, of course, is this: a deliberate misstatement of fact, or a withholding of vital information about your plans. If you believe that Fred is at the store, but Fred is actually at the bar, then you making a statement that Fred is at the store isn’t a lie. If, however, you know that Fred is at the bar and you tell someone he’s at the store, then you have lied. The difference is not in the information related but in the intent on your part – are you trying to deceive someone? If you are, then you are lying. If you aren’t, then you aren’t lying even if the facts you relate are 100% incorrect. If you say you want to borrow $100 and imply that the $100 will be to feed the kids, but you blow $50 of it at the track, then you have also lied – you failed to tell your lender just what your full plans were; and revelation of a trip to the track might well have convinced your lender not to lend you the money.

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Just What is Left and Right Politics, Anyway?

Mark Noonan

Tuesday on Twitter the trend #SocialismChecklist was trending. Naturally, I joined in the fun – my best contribution to the effort (13 retweets, 10 likes) was “1. 100 million political murders in 20th century. 2. Don’t learn history. 3. Lather, Rinse, Repeat. #SocialismChecklist”. But it was my 2nd most popular entry which got the most actual comments back:

1. Nazis aren’t socialist. 2. Why are they National Socialists, then? 3. Shut up! #SocialismChecklist

A bunch of our Progressive friends didn’t like that bit, at all – Nazis, of course, are of the right in the Progressive view. Nazi are just extreme rightists – and even a few on the conservative side of the aisle went along with this. I disagree most emphatically with that idea. There is, indeed, a left/right divide in politics but for one to really understand the divide, history has to be consulted.

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Best of Enemies

Cluster14 Comments

Nearly 50 years ago William F. Buckley and Gore Vidal squared off in a series of debates that cemented the divide between conservatives and progressives, a divide that continues today. There is a very interesting documentary on Netflix called Best of Enemies that covers those 10 very contentious debates and the political environment of the time. Here is an excerpt of one of those debates:

Ironically, many of the issues covered in these debates are many of the same issues the left continues to fight over to this day – equality, the police state, and American Imperialism abroad. One would think that the intellectual might of the left would have resolved these pressing issues by now had they have been of paramount concern, but much like today, I believe these are issues the left needs to promulgate throughout the generations in order to create the societal divide their electoral victories depend on.

In one debate Buckley had a brilliant line on equality that invoked dismay and outrage from the progressive Vidal. Buckley stated that “freedom breeds inequality”, a simple truth about human nature that the left cannot comprehend, or simply does not want to admit. In fact there is much about human nature that the left does not want to admit, and unfortunately spends an inordinate amount of legislative time trying to deny. The ACA is a good example. What could possibly lead one to believe that a perfectly healthy 20 year old would purchase health insurance with high deductibles in order to off set the health care expenses of their less healthy and older citizens? Granted it would be noble of them but it defies their financial self-interests and the reality is that they are not complying, and Buckley defined this ideological disconnect dynamic very well in the video above.

In re: to the police state, is this not reminiscent of the black lives matter movement? Are the accusations leveled at the police then, the same accusations we hear today? And re: American imperialism, Vidal laid down the progressive foundation of moral equivalency that continues today by equating American military interactions with that of the Soviets, a paradigm the left uses at every opportunity to this day. Gore Vidal is unquestionably the father of today’s progressive movement, while Buckley is unquestionably the standard bearer for today’s conservative movement. Many of these debates are found on YouTube and the documentary on Netflix is a must see. I found these debates to be extremely interesting and look forward to reading others opinions.