Blogs For Victory

Right now the liberals and the establishment GOPers are both warning that the shut down risks the future of the GOP – that this fight may backfire on us, causing the Democrats to regain control of the House in 2014, thus entirely shutting us out of power and ensuring a completely socialist/crony-Capitalist America in the future.  This is, indeed, a genuine risk – but what the liberals and establishmentarians aren’t realizing (or, at least, not admitting) is that if we don’t fight, then we lose anyway.  If the only purpose of having GOPers in power is to slow down the drift to the left, then there’s no point in having a Republican party.  The future of our nation is at stake – we will either become socialist/crony-Capitalist, or we will remain American; there is no half way house.

We on our side prefer to remain American.  One thing lost in the shuffle by most people is the way that the TEA Party has broken the power of corporate donations over the GOP.  To be sure, a lot of GOPers still count on Big Corporation, but more and more GOPers are free of it – especially people like Ted Cruz and Rand Paul.  The TEA Party has injected a strongly populist strain in to the GOP which rejects both Big Government and Big Corporation.  Because the TEA Party has done this, we can really see the battle lines clearly, now.  Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi and John McCain and Lindsey Graham are all united against us – people who are supposedly entirely at odds on ideological grounds make the same sort of complaints about us.  Doesn’t that tell you something?  Barack Obama, et all represent the establishment – the establishment which controls the government, the universities and the media.  The establishment which has bankrupted the United States.  Gravely damaged our ability to make, mine and grow things. Fastened upon us nonsense like “affirmative action”, “political correctness”, and all the fascist apparatus needed to force us to agree to the nonsense.  And the establishment is very mad that we are challenging them and are determined to destroy us.

And maybe they will.  We might lose this fight, good people.  We might live out the remainder of our lives in a socialist/crony-Capitalist America where the rich get richer, the poor get poorer, poverty spreads, the American dream dies, citizens become mere serfs of the government and the whole thing eventually falls apart (don’t worry too much about foreign conquest resultant upon this collapse – the rest of the world is also dying off, some for the same reasons we are, others for different reasons…but all because of sheer human folly).  A century ago some were wondering what the collapse of civilization would be like:  well, here it is!  On the other hand, we might win this fight – but we’ll only win if we do, indeed fight.

I believe that there is still a majority in America which wants to live free – which wants to work for itself, take care of itself, defend itself against all comers.  A majority which figures that getting married is superior to shacking up; that men and women are different and bring different things to the table; that believe in God and the life of the world to come.  A majority which despises financial sharks but who also want very much to help those on the dole become free, independent citizens working for themselves.  But how is this majority to be found except by someone raising the flag and calling all to rally around it?

That is what we’re doing.  When Paul did his filibuster against government spying and then Cruz made his statement against ObamaCare, the lines were drawn – we don’t want to merely tinker around the edges of the leviathan State, we want to fundamentally transform it back in to what our Founders intended.  Such a re-formed State would have no place for time servers like McCain and Pelosi; no place for financial sharks like Soros and Buffet; no place for ideological thugs; no place for those who grow fat off of government contracts.  In short, no place for those people who are doing very well these days.  And so those elements which are doing well are fighting hard against us – they know that if we win, they lose, and lose completely.

Majorities are not built overnight and, indeed, when a new force comes on to the field, it usually appears weak.  Often, it appears weakest and nearly defeated on the eve of its final triumph.  We do appear very weak right now – but here’s the thing: we are setting the debate.  The establishment is actually dancing to our tune:  forced by us to defend the indefensible, they have given up on that and are merely hoping to frighten us in to surrender.  Maybe it will work – maybe the American people really has, by a majority, decided that being serfs and waiting for crumbs from the master’s table is best.  So be it.  But I don’t think it will work – and I think we will win.

But, meanwhile, we fight.  We fight today.  We fight tomorrow.  We fight all the time and on every issue.  We will not stop fighting until we are totally victorious or totally destroyed – knowing, because we do believe in God and the life of the world to come, that even if destroyed by human forces in this life, we will triumph in the next.

UPDATE:  Much talk today about an impending deal on the CR and the Debt Limit, with plenty of TEA Party people grousing about a “surrender”.  Knock that stuff off – let’s see what the deal is.  Remember, given that we have a Democrat President and Senate, we never were going to get much – and as far as de-funding ObamaCare, that was never really a possibility (delaying the individual mandate for a year was – and remains – a possibility, and Obama might sign on for that given the clusterfark roll-out…he needs a year to fix it and, also, it gets it off the agenda until after the 2014 mid-terms).  But we needed to fight, as I said; we could not just roll over.  So, we fought – now we’ll see what the GOP leadership can give us (and trust me on this, they will try to give us something to be happy about…they know that a raft of primary challengers awaits them if they don’t bring us home something).  The most crucial thing is to get something which doesn’t allow Obama to “crisis” his way through 2014 – aspects of the deal must box the Democrats in to actually coming up with a budget for the remainder of FY 2014 and for FY 2015, which starts just over a month before the 2014 mid-terms…and a deal to actually have a budget would then keep Obama from distracting us from his increasing failure and give us a handy campaign issue if Democrats break faith (which is almost a certainty).  Keep calm, stand firm – we are winning this.

Roger Kimball – a genuinely smart guy and a great writer – has a long article up over at Pajamas Media entitled The Anglosphere and the Future of Liberty.  It is a good article and well worth reading, but I do think it misses a very important point.  The gist of it is that the Anglosphere – those nations which share the English language and precepts of English law and government – have led the world in to liberty and are likely to save and restore liberty in the future.  In as much as it asserts that the English-speaking world has had a unique desire for liberty, it is correct.  It is also correct in the assertion that it is the English desire for local rule which is the basis for this liberty.  But if anyone is thinking that because of this heritage that there is a future for liberty in the world, then he’s gravely mistaken.

Kimball is smart enough to out a large “if” on the whole concept – if we do what is right and necessary, then we may save and restore liberty.  But I believe that most in the Anglosphere don’t understand fully what is right – what, that is, needs to be done.  And this is because we fail to understand why liberty is dying: it is dying because people work for others, rather than themselves.

Liberty is not an outgrowth, tyranny is.  Liberty is the natural condition of all mankind, until the corruptions of the world come along and wreck it.  We don’t actually run from tyranny to liberty, but it is always from liberty to tyranny.  You can’t have a revolution – a real one, that is, as opposed to the mere replacing of one tyranny with another – without there being a democracy; without, that is, a free people who are possessed of liberty and thus willing to fight to preserve it.  The Founders were not slaves – they were free men, and so fought when they perceived that someone was proposing to take their freedom away.  And here’s the thing – you can’t have a democracy unless a majority of the people are independent of all others.  For there to be liberty, most people must be able to take care of themselves without let or hindrance from anyone else.  

In olden times, this was done by trying to have at least a majority be free farmers, working their own land.  That is not terribly practical today, but the fact of the matter is that liberty started to atrophy in the Anglosphere at the same time that a majority of people stopped being owners of the means of their own livelihood.  As we were ever more crammed in to cities to work in factories and offices owned by others, we became unfree – and ever more willing to listen to people who proposed to take from some and give to others.  It made more sense, don’t you see?  When you’re a free man or woman working your own farm you know what “re-distribution” is – it is the taking of what you’ve worked very hard for and giving it away.  When you’re a drudge in a factory or an office cubicle, it becomes less clear…its a matter of taking away from the rich SOB who runs the factory or office and, presumably, giving to you, the worker.  That it doesn’t work out like that doesn’t take away from the appeal of such a scheme in a society which has become unfree – most of the money taken from one group of rich people is just passed over to the group of rich people currently favored by the government, of course, but the rhetoric of re-distribution appeals to a sense of justice in the wage-earner.

And this is where we conservatives have failed for so long – we don’t accept that socialism has an appeal, let alone an appeal to an actual, genuine sense of justice.  But, it does.  Deep in the hearts of all men and women is a notion that you really shouldn’t have too much – certainly not too much of wealth you clearly didn’t earn by the sweat of your own brow.  This is why there is little hostility to someone who builds up even a quite successful small business and becomes a millionaire, but there is resentment against a financial shark who made his billions by sharp practice.    The socialists twist this rational sense of justice, of course.  No socialist has ever really figured out what the problem is, but they have figured they can make hay by playing upon rational resentments and twisting those emotions in to a scheme whereby the socialist now becomes the owner (as it were) of the un-earned wealth – the distributor of the fat, and thus the tyrant of society.  But for all their twisting, we must not loose sight of the fact that there is a real basis here. 

If there is to be a future for liberty we won’t find it in appeals to a Constitution that most Americans only have a hazy idea about.  We won’t find it in a rigid defense of what is called Capitalism but which has completely degenerated in to a State-run, crony-Capitalism.  If there is to be a future for liberty it will only come by a revolutionary movement determined to set up a system which will in short order get a solid majority of the people owning their own means of livelihood.  Either directly as individuals, as part of family enterprises, or as worker-owned and managed cooperatives.  Once we get 50% plus 1 of the American people working desperately hard for themselves and only enriching themselves, then all appeals to socialism will die off…people are able to be suckered in to thinking that stealing from others is a good idea until they realize the person being plundered is themselves. 

All our proposals must advance this cause.  We must seek to tear down regulations which hamper business formation.  We must reform the tax code so that it doesn’t punish someone who wants to work.  We must provide financial backing and incentives via the tax and regulatory code to make it ever more appealing for people to set up on their own.  And we must campaign among the propertyless with a vision of them owning property and working for themselves – not because we’ll get all of them, all at once, to join us, but because we’ll get some of them…and any addition to our ranks of free and independent citizens means that genuine democracy has spread, and our side is one step closer to victory.  Our campaign must be of Freedom against Slavery…while making it clear we mean real freedom: the freedom to work for one’s self and take care of one’s own. 

There is a future for freedom, IF we understand what freedom really is and then go out and fight for it.