Conservative Values

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.

Marco Rubio

Cluster28 Comments

Marco is gaining in the polls and in my opinion he is exactly what this country needs. A young, committed conservative who can articulate conservative positions with the fluency and humor Reagan did, and who can galvanize the millennials and bring them into the conservative fold. I know many are hesitant because he is young and a first term Senator, a brand of which Obama destroyed, but Rubio is smarter than Obama and much more practical. I implore everyone to give him a second look, beginning with his excellent analysis of last nights speech:

The Gun Debate – Open Thread

Cluster45 Comments

Obama and Progressives are calling for “sensible gun laws” as if that is the problem. They continue to demonize the NRA as if that is the problem. They continue to conflate radical Islamists with the isolated deranged American criminal, as if that is a moral equivalency. And they dare not speak one word of condemnation toward inner city gang violence, nor judge those who perpetrate those crimes for fear of constituency backlash. In summary, Obama and Progressives are not at all addressing the actual problem, which is typical, hence the absolute mess we find ourselves in. In short, we have to stop listening to Progressives.

The problems we face in this country and in this world are due to the absence of well armed, law abiding, decent people, not the presence of them. On the world stage, the problem is that the Radical Islamic Jihadists are better armed, more focused, and more brutal than those who want a peaceful existence. The Kurds need more weapons, the peaceful Sunni’s and Shiite’s need more weapons, and countries like Jordan and the UAE need more forceful support. We need more weapons to confront and defeat the Islamists, not less. And we need to be more brutal. This is not a war where you take prisoners. This is a war where you kill as many of them as you possibly can until they realize that they can not win. You want to close Gitmo? Fine. Put a bullet in the head of the remaining prisoners and burn the place to the ground. Case closed.

Domestically, we need more weapons in the hands of law abiding Americans so that they can protect themselves from the deranged gun man, or from the increasing threat of radicalized Muslims. And we need to clean out the cesspools of our inner cities and give those people hope of a better future. Make sure that children have a stable home with two parents, make sure they have school choice and a good education, make sure they have clean and decent housing, make sure they are not living in a drug and gang infested neighborhood, and make sure they have the opportunity for a good paying job and the opportunity to lift themselves up. And these are conservative ideals, not progressive ideals, and that is why Governorships and State Legislatures have increasingly gone conservative in the last 8 years, and that is why the White House will be conservative in January 2017.

Maybe Just Be Honest?

Mark Noonan47 Comments

I’ve been seeing a lot of statements by politicians of late – naturally – and one thing is striking me: the inability of people in politics to just admit when they don’t know things. All of them appear to be laboring under the impression that they have to have a pat answer to all questions – and as it is impossible for them to do that, they hem and haw around and end up saying things which are wrong and/or stupid.

To be sure, a wise politician will prepare him or herself with answers for likely questions – for GOPers this will be genuine MSM gotcha questions on social issues designed to feed into the overall Progressive campaign themes. But one cannot know everything – it just isn’t possible. And, of course, when a GOPer heads to a conservative or libertarian media outfit, he or she better be prepared for all sorts of smart, penetrating questions – a bit of study beforehand is wise. But even then, you’re still not necessarily going to have an answer for every question. I’m pretty well informed on matters of foreign policy but I, for instance, didn’t know who was in command of Iran’s al Quds force until I read about the Trump/Hewitt fracas over the issue (which seems to be a bit blown out of proportion by anti-Trump forces). Trump didn’t know either – and he should have just admitted not knowing and moved on (one thing about an admission of ignorance is that whatever series of questions your interviewer was planning for that subject are now wastebasket material). If I were running for office and someone leaped out and asked me a question I didn’t have a good answer to, I’d just say: “you know, that is a good question and I haven’t looked into the details of that matter – next time we talk, I’ll have something to say on it. Next question?”. I’d rather take a bit of heat for saying I don’t know something – when I don’t know about it – than take even worse heat by giving an ignorant answer, or getting huffy about the question, itself; or worst of all, lying about things and then getting called out on the lies later.

The main point I’m making here is that honesty is really the best policy. Especially in politics. This might seem counter-intuitive because, well, politicians tend to be people who spread enough bull to fertilize the Sinai. But the reality is that no matter how good a lie seems to be, it never works out in the long run. Well, strictly speaking, it never works out in the long run if you’re the sort of person who cares about the country and our people – those politicians who are just relentlessly on the make find that lies work well, in a sense. But for those who are trying to do something worthwhile, never fall into the trap of thinking that anything other than truth will work. Even if it results in you getting crushed this time around, it merely sets the stage for your ultimate triumph (or the triumph of your ideals, if you don’t get a second chance) – if a politician just tells the truth then in the long run that politician will be perceived as the best person, especially in contrast to the lying opponents who used lies to beat you at the previous election.

Level with the people. Tell them what is on your mind. Admit it when you don’t have the answer nailed down at the moment. Give a precise set of actions you will take once in office. Think about the candidate who has spent the whole campaign telling the truth – and then gets up in debate with the lying opponent: it will be a beautiful moment. “You just heard my opponent tell you a pretty story about what he/she will do – but it is just a fairy tale. It isn’t true.”. It just crushes the life out of someone who lies when someone who is known to be a truth-teller points out the Emperor has no clothes. It has happened before – when Reagan did his “there you go again” in the debate with Carter, that was Reagan saying, “it is just a fairy tale”. Here, take a look:

THE PRESIDENT. As long as there’s a Democratic President in the White House, we will have a strong and viable social security system, free of the threat of bankruptcy. Although Governor Reagan has changed his position lately, on four different occasions he has advocated making social security a voluntary system, which would, in effect, very quickly bankrupt it….These constant suggestions that the basic social security system should be changed does cause concern and consternation among the aged of our country. It’s obvious that we should have a commitment to them, that social security benefits should not be taxed, and that there would be no peremptory change in the standards by which social security payments are made to the retired people. We also need to continue to index the social security payments so that if inflation rises, the social security payments would rise a commensurate degree to let the buying power of the social security check continue intact.

In the past, the relationship between social security and Medicare has been very important to provide some modicum of aid for senior citizens in the retention of health benefits. Governor Reagan, as a matter of fact, began his political career campaigning around this Nation against Medicare. Now we have an opportunity to move toward national health insurance, with an emphasis on the prevention of disease; an emphasis on outpatient care, not inpatient care; an emphasis on hospital cost containment to hold down the cost of hospital care for those who are ill; an emphasis on catastrophic health insurance, so that if a family is threatened with being wiped out economically because of a very high medical bill, then the insurance would help pay for it. These are the kind of elements of a national health insurance, important to the American people. Governor Reagan, again, typically is against such a proposal.

MR. SMITH. Governor.

GOVERNOR REAGAN. There you go again. [Laughter]

Carter did the normal Democrat thing – claim the Republican wants people to die in the streets and then promise a sack full of free stuff if you vote Democrat. But Reagan utterly destroyed it – just by saying, “there you go again”. It means, “you’re just spreading BS, Carter”, and instantly the millions of Americans watching the debate understood it – here was a hack politician promising a world he cannot possibly give, confronted with a truth-teller. Reagan went on to win in a landslide just a few days later. We’ve been hammered by lies for quite a long while now – and people are aware of the lies. In 2016, the Democrat candidate will have to defend the lies – he or she will have no choice as Democrats cannot run far away from Obama’s record (remember: $2,500 reduction in insurance premiums? Keep your plan if you like?)…and when Hillary or Biden or Sanders is up there in front of a massive national audience telling the American people how evil the Republican is and how much free stuff he or she is going to give you for voting Democrat…”there you go again”. But it will only work if the eventual GOP nominee has not spent the campaign hedging and hemming and hawing and trying to triangulate himself into favorable coverage for a news cycle. Telling the truth can make you terribly unpopular at times – you have to endure that heat; embrace it; proclaim how proud you are to be condemned for speaking the truth…and just wait for your moment to point out that the other guy is full of nonsense from start to finish.

Donald Trump, Bernie Sanders…and Jeremy Corbyn

Mark Noonan50 Comments

There is much heart ache out here in GOP Establishment-land about Trump, and I’m sure a lot among the Democrat Establishment about Sanders (though Team Hillary is still acting like her nomination is a coronation and no one need pay attention to Sanders…the GOP is being helpful by releasing videos of the massive Progressive crowds Sanders is drawing; which is encouraging, as it is actually a pretty clever move by the GOP. First time for everything, right?). But who in heck is Jeremy Corbyn, you ask?

I admit that until today I had never heard of him – he’s a candidate for the leadership of Britain’s Labour Party. Generally, when a party gets crushed at the polls in Britain, the losing side then finds a new person to lead to them victory (or, another crushing defeat…but, that isn’t the plan, at any rate). As Labour was blown out of the water a couple months back, they are casting about for someone to restore their party fortunes. Most of the people vying for the post are conventional Labour Party politicians…but Jeremy Corbyn, a backbencher of no great fame, tossed his hat into the ring…and recent polling shows him favored by 53% of Labour voters. So frightened is the Labour Establishment at this, that they even got former Labour PM Tony Blair to pen an op-ed pleading for Labour voters not to vote Corbyn. Blair warns that voting for Corbyn won’t just lead to another Labour defeat, but to the possible extinction of the party!

To be sure, I think that Blair is on to something. Corbyn isn’t just your run-of-the-mill Progressive, folks. His parents were involved on the Republican side during the Spanish Civil war, so Corbyn is a Brit version of our “red diaper babies”. Corbyn, himself, is a member of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, the Socialist Campaign Group and the Stop the War Coalition (which war? Don’t ask – just assume if you want to kill a bad guy, they’re against it). Corbyn wants to nationalize Britain’s railways, provide a “living wage” for everyone, backs animal rights, may favor turning the Falklands over to Argentina, wants to ban the importation of foie gras, and appears to join any group out there with a leftwing cause. This guys is a far left fanatic. But, he’s also a rebel – very often voting against his own party and his Parliamentary expense account is the lowest among all 650 members of Britain’s House of Commons. He’s a kook leftist – but he’s an honest one, my friends. And he looks poised to take leadership of the Labour Party (though we’ll see if the Establishment can squash his bid). Corbyn as leader of Labour would be the perfect opponent for the rather squishy, Establishment types of the Tory party. They’d love to run against him – all they’d have to do is quote him and roll up a 100 seat majority, so you can see why Blair is worried, as are all Establishment types on the left.

I bring this up because these phenomena – a huckster zillionaire, an out-of-touch Boomer socialist, a far left fanatic in Britain – are symptoms of a general rebellion growing against the Establishment. I read today that Sanders drew 29,000 people to a rally. Donald Trump does seem to have faded a bit in the polls, but he’s still riding high. True, in America it is still the silly season of politics. We’re a long way from the first primary ballots and we should all recall that in 2011 a lot of people rode high for a moment, only to flame out before the election even got rolling. But there is a palpable anger and frustration out there. People are sick to death of politics as usual – and especially for the American right, the politics as usual which means we just help the liberals get what they want. The first sign of rebellion in Britain was also on the right, by the way: in the form of the United Kingdom Independence Party – which has risen mostly out of British frustration with the Tories. And if you think our electoral system is hosed, you should see Britain’s – the UKIP got 2.4 million more votes than the Scottish National Party, yet the SNP wound up with 56 seats, UKIP with 1! But, still, the bottom line is that anger with politics as usual boosted UKIP votes by nearly 3 million over their 2010 number. The people are tired – the left want’s genuine leftism; the right wants genuine conservatism. No one wants a left which is actually a bunch of crony-capitalists, nor does anyone want a right which is also crony-capitalist, with a dash of just preserving leftwing policy failures. Left and right I think people want candidates who will fight for what the people believe in. To have it out in a genuine, head-to-head contest which will decide what course the nation will take.

I think we’ll just see more of this as time goes on – and unless the GOP Establishment wakes up, there will be an American version of the UKIP by no later than the 2024 election, with a strong possibility it’ll show up in 2020…and it’ll take out of the GOP, immediately, a couple score House members and a few Senators, likely enough to deny the GOP a Congressional majority. For the Democrats, I see a complete take over by the far left – they really can’t stop it, if the leftwing base really tries. After all, what Democrat can fight against someone shouting the slogans the Democrat Establishment cooked up to gin up their base for 2012? But it can happen that the far left splits from the Democrat party and sets up a Social Democrat Party in time for 2020 or 2024.

Hold on to your hats, folks – it is about to get very interesting.

Who is in Favor of America?

Mark Noonan30 Comments

Read a couple tweets yesterday from Charles Cooke (@charlescwcooke):

I don’t like its being done per se, but the fact that people can burn American flags with legal impunity helps to show me that I’m free. 1/2

And frankly I’m much more interested in that beautiful principle than in the people who choose to use it in a way that I dislike. 2/2

I replied:

Disagree; that we allow the burning of the American flag shows that there are people who want me unfree.

One burns what one does not want. The flag is an abstract symbol of freedom.

 

I like Cooke’s writing. I think he’s intelligent, well informed and far seeing. He’s a go-to guy for political commentary; so please understand I’m not actually going after Cooke. I get Cooke’s point – we must allow that which is disagreeable to us to ensure our own freedom. And, in fact, that disagreeable things go on proves that we are free. But is this really so?  Are we really free when we permit people to rampantly work for anti-freedom? Are we sure, that is, when we allow arguments against freedom to thrive that our freedom will survive?

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We Are Ten Years from Complete Conservative Victory

Mark Noonan19 Comments

Huh?  How’s that?  Wait a second, Noonan – are you nuts?  The Supreme Court just decreed that the law doesn’t matter. Furthermore, Hillary is the odds-on favorite to replace Obama so we’ll have four to eight more years of lawless liberalism imposed from on high…and even if we vote GOP, those spineless cretins will just roll over for it. You, sir, are ’round the bend – we are on the cusp of the Union of Socialist States of America.  Get used to it!

Well, not so fast. First off, it is well-known to all who study history (which pretty much excludes everyone on the left – but also a goodly portion of those on the right) that in human affairs what appears to be most strong is usually an inch away from crushing defeat while that which seems to be nearly extinguished is just about to flame into sublime victory. Looks are, indeed, very deceiving. The apparent triumph of liberalism ushered in on January 20th, 2009, is looking, upon close examination, rather rocky.  Think about it:  if liberalism was really the way things are going, then the Obama Administration would not have relied upon screwball re-writes by the Supreme Court to save their signature achievement – they would have brought it back to Congress, firm in the knowledge that liberalism is so popular that the Congressional GOP wouldn’t even dare tinker with it other than to enact what Obama demanded. Didn’t quite happen that way, now did it?  Liberalism can only win these days when there is a President who will just ignore the law and go ahead and do it…or when a bunch of lawyers find some way to twist the plain meaning of the law to suit their desires. People heading for triumph don’t act like that – people fighting a desperate rear-guard action to save themselves act like that.

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