E!! The True Conservative Story™

From one of my faves, Thomas Sowell:

Socialists believe in government ownership of the means of production. Fascists believed in government control of privately owned businesses, which is much more the style of this government. That way, politicians can intervene whenever they feel like it and then, when their interventions turn out badly, summon executives from the private sector before Congress and denounce them on nationwide television.

Read the whole thing here.

Where’s the outrage from all the liberals who were screaming “fascism” every time George W. Bush stepped up to the podium and twitched the wrong way? 

Nothing Bush did ever disturbed me as much as the thought of the federal government – the most incompetent, inefficient bureaucracy in America – controlling private banks and corporations.

So, about that CPAC speech and the subsquent dust-ups over Rush Limbaugh.

Rahm Emanuel and Robert Gibbs’ comments were obviously calculated.  Declaring Rush the de facto leader of the GOP put every elected Republican on the spot.  To agree was to admit taking your talking points from a radio talk show host.  To disagree and disparage Rush was to alienate his twenty-two million listeners, as Michael Steele so handily did on CNN.  Why so few Republicans went the obvious third way – giving Rush his just due as one of our country’s strongest, loudest traditional conservative voices while also pointing out that he is not running for office (or running the RNC) – is a mystery.

Unfortunately, some conservatives failed to love-their-neighbor and even went as far as to accuse Rush of being “bad” for the Republican party.  And many of the anti-Limbaugh comments were harsh.  David Frum got particularly personal and nasty, and I like him the less for it.  Why is Frum so concerned with policing conservative talk radio?  Is he now the self-appointed Roger Ebert of the airwaves?  Frankly, I find it silly that Frum would even enter the fray.  He made himself smaller in the process, and millions who had barely heard of him (and quite a few who had) now think he’s a royal jerk.

Some conservatives enjoy Limbaugh’s in-your-face style.  Not everyone does, and that’s fine.  It doesn’t burn a lot of calories to turn a radio dial.  As for Rush’s personal failings and struggles, we ought not to judge him by these things – lest we, too, be judged by our worst mistakes and most obvious flaws. 

What is important in the context of this intramural competition for The Party is that Rush is a (not “the”) star player who brings in the crowds.  He is unapologetically passionate re: his traditional, Constutionalist views; he swings his bat hard; and he is well loved for it.  At this point, there’s no doubt that El-Rushbo’s personality and following are Babe Ruth big.  His three hours a day on the field does far more good than harm for the conservative cause, if only to please the fans by kicking some dirt on the shiny shoes of an obviously biased referee:  the mainstream liberal media.

He ain’t high fallutin’, but I see no crime in that, nor any harm to The Party.  To my mind, and the minds of many conservatives with whom I talk from week to week, there is no real party at present. Indeed, while we argue amongst ourselves over What Happens Now, it seems to me that Rush is the glue holding together nearly half this country’s post-election conservative voters when they might otherwise have gone their separate ways in rank disgust.  As for the other half, if they want the reform and moderation the two Davids – Frum and Brooks – are selling, and if they like the pretty package it’s wrapped in, let ‘em have it.

For many of us, cow-towing to creeping social progressivism and big bureaucracy, advocating compromise on core conservative principles that must be unbending if they are to mean anything, and “reforming the message” by echoing White House attacks on widely-liked conservative personalities are vices far worse than any Rush has yet displayed – and are far more harmful to The Party.

One of my favorites over at The Corner, Victor Davis Hanson, explains:

When Obama said he would restore our image in the world, few were mature enough to realize that there were already sympathetic governments in Europe, India’s billion people liked us, and all of Africa was appreciative of what Bush had done. Fewer still accepted the fact that, given the sorry state of the world, the United States faces a awkward choice: It can either be largely disliked for taking a principled stance in support of constitutional government and open markets, or it can be liked for being unprincipled.

We seem to have forgotten that those who most hated the Bush-Cheney administration were Putin, Chávez, Assad, the Castro brothers, Kim Jong Il, Ahmadinejad, Hamas — and European intellectuals. So, yes, we can be liked in the age of Obama, and the way to do it is to give up Eastern Europe to Russian concerns, be praised by Chávez for our newfound socialism, drop sanctions against Cuba, talk to Iran and Syria without preconditions, ignore Korean missiles, rebuild Gaza (though I hope that does not include restoring the depleted rocket inventory), tack hard to the left of the salons and coffee houses of the EU, and drop all that bothersome talk about democracy and constitutional government.

In other words, the way to be liked is to become like those who don’t like us. Who knows — maybe the U.S. will now be asked to chair the U.N. Human Rights Council?

I wouldn’t normally congratulate myself, but “40″ is a milestone and invites comment.  Or so I rationalize…

In the tradition of self-indulgent celebration, a few of my favorite quotes by some of my favorite thinkers:

“The liberties of our country, the freedom of our civil Constitution, are worth defending at all hazards; and it is our duty to defend them against all attacks. We have received them as a fair inheritance from our worthy ancestors: they purchased them for us with toil and danger and expense of treasure and blood, and transmitted them to us with care and diligence. It will bring an everlasting mark of infamy on the present generation, enlightened as it is, if we should suffer them to be wrested from us by violence without a struggle, or to be cheated out of them by the artifices of false and designing men.”

— Samuel Adams

“I will not cede more power to the state.  I will not willingly cede more power to anyone, not to the state, not to General Motors, not to the CIO. I will hoard my power like a miser, resisting every effort to drain it away from me. I will then use my power, as I see fit. I mean to live my life an obedient man, but obedient to God, subservient to the wisdom of my ancestors; never to the authority of political truths arrived at yesterday at the voting booth.”

— William F. Buckley, Up from Liberalism (1959)

“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”

— C. S. Lewis, God in the Dock (Grand Rapids: W.B. Eerdmans, 2002), p. 292

“Oppressors can tyrannize only when they achieve a standing army, an enslaved press, and a disarmed populace.”

— James Madison

“Laws that forbid the carrying of arms…disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes. Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man.”

 — Thomas Jefferson

“Gentlemen may cry, “Peace, Peace” — but there is no peace. The war is actually begun! The next gale that sweeps from the north will bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms! Our brethren are already in the field! Why stand we here idle? What is it that gentlemen wish? What would they have? Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!”

— Patrick Henry

“I wish that I may never think the smiles of the great and powerful a sufficient inducement to turn aside from the straight path of honesty and the convictions of my own mind.”

— David Ricardo, The Works and Correspondence of David Ricardo, Vol. VII, p. 372

“Curiosity is one of the permanent and certain characteristics of a vigorous intellect.”

— Samuel Johnson

“Courage is the first of human qualities, because it is the quality that guarantees all the rest.”

— Winston Churchill

“You and I have a rendezvous with destiny. We will preserve for our children (America), the last best hope of man on earth, or we will sentence them to take the first step into a thousand years of darkness. If we fail, at least let our children and our children’s children say of us we justified our brief moment here. We did all that could be done.”

— Ronald Reagan

Blessings to all…

E!!

New Hampshire has the best state motto, don’t you think?

And now four of its state legislators are living up to it.  HCR 6, a bill borrowed mostly from “Jefferson and Madison’s Kentucky Resolutions of 1798,” is quite an interesting piece of work.

Here’s one of my favorite parts (emphasis mine):

That the several States composing the United States of America, are not united on the principle of unlimited submission to their General Government; but that, by a compact under the style and title of a Constitution for the United States, and of amendments thereto, they constituted a General Government for special purposes, — delegated to that government certain definite powers, reserving, each State to itself, the residuary mass of right to their own self-government; and that whensoever the General Government assumes undelegated powers, its acts are unauthoritative, void, and of no force; that to this compact each State acceded as a State, and is an integral party, its co-States forming, as to itself, the other party: that the government created by this compact was not made the exclusive or final judge of the extent of the powers delegated to itself; since that would have made its discretion, and not the Constitution, the measure of its powers; but that, as in all other cases of compact among powers having no common judge, each party has an equal right to judge for itself, as well of infractions as of the mode and measure of redress….

Dear Reader:

Study this.

Cordially,

E.

The Conservative Muse amuses with a clever poem entitled “An Open Letter to Comrade Obama.”

In the midst of all the in-fighting over whether social conservatives and the religious right have ”ruined” the Republican party, the American Conservative Union has re-published an interesting piece by Randall Hoven (originally printed at American Thinker).

I don’t talk much about my faith here on E!!  but as a Christian conservative with a libertarian streak, I am always interested in these kinds of debates.  Generally speaking I’m a social and cultural conservative, but I am cautious about state-mandated morality (because it can cut both ways) and often find myself defending freedom itself as an important right and virtue.

This is because I believe that (1) God grants us freedom and free will, (2) God grants us free will for a reason, and (3) Jesus Christ was not an Authoritarian. 

Free will is meaningless if people aren’t free to choose wrong as well as right, evil as well as good.  (Please don’t interpret this to mean I support anarchy; I don’t.)  We can and should legislate behavior to keep people from unduly harming one another, but we really can’t legislate matters of morality and conscience and spirit.  A man’s heart and mind cannot be taken by force; he must give it freely.

Jesus never strong-armed or forced anyone into listening to him, following him, or believing in him.  He spoke the truth with grace, closed his remarks with something pithy like “go and sin no more,” and that was basically it.  You were either touched and moved by what he said or not – but he didn’t chase you down the street, and he didn’t appeal to Rome to turn the Beautitudes into the law of the land. 

Anyway, check out Hoven’s piece and let me know what you think about his views.  I’d be interested to hear from so-cons as well as libertarians.

Geoff Lawrence at the Nevada Policy Research Institute forwarded me this 64-question quiz that evaluates your Libertarianism. 

Answers are “Yes” or “No” and the questions are very simple.

I scored an 82 which apparently makes me a “medium-core” libertarian.  (Exactly what I would have expected.)

Geoff scored 144 and challenges anyone (who is being honest) to score higher.

Take the test and report back in the comments; I’d love to hear how some of you do on this (you know who you are)!

This test is pretty interesting.  (Thanks goes out to Dr. Michael Clifford for pointing me to it.)

I’ve taken the Pew Research Center political spectrum test and others in the past, but this one is a little different.  This not only shows you where you are on the Left/Right axis but also charts you on the spectrum between Authoritarian/Libertarian.  (You’ll see what I mean after you take the test and have your “dot” plotted.)

You can also see where other famous and notorious persons fall on the chart, which is interesting in and of itself.  (For example, I would have thought I was sort of a Maggie Thatcher type, but it turns out I am way more libertarian than she.  I am at exactly the midpoint between the two extremes; she was more to the authoritarian side.)

I’d love to hear where everyone ends up (especially those of you I know either personally or via the blogosphere).  Takes 5 to 10 minutes to answer the questions and the results are instant.

UPDATE:  Getting lots of feedback that people are dissatisfied with the quality and/or clarity of the questions in the test.  The Venerable Mr. Crum says he came out a “centrist” on both the “x” and “y” axis – but rightly points out that on the issues he is often more to the right than me (who came out 6 squares right of center).