The 80/20 fallacy ignores the intrinsic value of one

One of my Facebook friends thought the title of my last post better suited to a discussion of the H1N1 vaccine. That called for a bittersweet chuckle, as it reminded me of the analogy I frequently draw between the effect of leftist Republicans and what I learned during a WHO briefing years ago about the way the AIDS virus affects the body's immune system. As I recall, the virus takes control of cells that perform critical immune system functions. It recodes the infected cells so that the body reacts to them as if they were still healthy. Its as if the troops assigned to guard a city were replaced by a gang of shrewd impostors whose only interest was to get the free food, clothing and shelter the city provides for its soldiers. Their successfully masquerade leaves the city gates and walls unattended. First the enemy's agents, and then its troops can enter at will. In biological terms, the body falls prey to opportunistic infections.

In the political debates and discussions that took place during the founding period, people often drew parallels between the body politic and the individual organism. As I put it to my FB friend yesterday, "In those days people discussed remedies for the body politic with the fervor some now reserve for their individual bodily ills. That may be why they established this historically unique constitutional republic, and we are well on the way to losing it." Be that as it may, I think the GOP leaders who pretend to be conservative while giving preferential treatment to socialists in maschera could easily pass the audition for starring roles in an Advise and Consent style political drama about an elite secret society called AIDS (the Association for the Incognito Development of Socialism.)

This elite secret society would of course include many of the Judas goat talkers and media pundits now busily hawking the "80 percent/20 percent", put Party above all voting fallacy. This fallacy, the logical counterpart of a chemical solution, is eight parts sophistry and two parts pure deception. It reminds me of Sherlock Holmes's famous seven percent solution of cocaine, only instead of speeding up the body's metabolism to cure boredom it is employed during the delicate and lengthy procedures that remove a growth of political liberty from the body politic. The intended effect is to tranquillize those conservative members of the body apt to react most vigorously to the symptoms that accompany the return to historical normalcy, i.e., a state of speciously legitimized elitist tyranny.

The fallacy goes something like this. It makes sense to lend political support to leaders you agree with on eighty percent of the issues, rather than refuse them your support (on account of the twenty percent where you disagree) in situations where that means victory for someone you disagree with on eighty percent of the issues. When dealing with matters that are properly subject to quantitative analysis, this seems fair and logical. Who would refuse someone offering cash and stocks worth eighty percent of their asking price when their stubbornness leads to a leveraged buyout of their assets in which they end up with only twenty percent?

But what if the 'asset' involved was your children? Charles Manson style home invaders offer to leave your home and all your material possessions unharmed in exchange for letting them satisfy their blood lust by killing your two children. The money value of the children's bodies may be around $9.00, depending of course on economic conditions at any given time. Let's say the value of your house, car and other material possessions on hand is around $300,000. If you accept the home invaders offer, you lose only .03% of your possessions. If you reject it, they'll destroy your material goods, and probably kill you and the kids anyway. By refusing, therefore, you end up with less than nothing. Do you let them kill the kids?

Many decisions (more than 80%?) involve keeping, adding to, or giving up what's in your hands. A few (far less than 20%?) involve cutting out your heart. Are they all equal?

Machiavelli recounts the story of a city under siege ruled by a woman with several children. The besiegers manage to capture her son and heir. When they offer to release and spare her offspring in exchange for surrendering the city's liberty, she mounts the walls. Exposing herself with a lewd gesture she refuses their offer, declaring "See what is here. I can bear more sons." The complex moral of that story offers comfort to those readers inclined toward the view (hypothetically of course) that their children are disposable goods. Those incapable of such facile moral relativism (formerly regarded as hardness of heart) at least take away from the story a sense of the difficulties that arise when using quantitative analysis to make decisions about human affairs.

In mathematics, we have no problem accepting the idea that for each system of measurement the unit of measurement derives its meaning from the context and in that context no 'one' has a meaning all its own. That's not so easy to accept when dealing with human beings. We can't simply be indifferent to the qualitative difference between issues that deeply involve and affect our sense of worth and true identity, and those that deal mainly with the material conditions in which we live. It means above all that we can't pretend such indifference when dealing with matters that go to the heart of the emotional, intellectual and spiritual reasons whereby we recognize the moral difference between a human being and a stone, or a house, or a hammer.

It's no coincidence that the 'eighty percent' issues referred to by the Judas goats and other hawkers of the 80/20 fallacy always center on money; the procurement and distribution of material goods; or the pleasures derived from them. The 'twenty percent' issues, on the other hand, mainly involve matters that accept or deny the intrinsic worth of individual human life, and the principles of judgment and conduct that support laws and policies requiring respect for it. Encouraging people to be obsessed with material goods is one of the key components of the procedure required to eliminate their liberty. People who fall prey to this obsession take it for granted that better and worse are measured in material terms. Everything becomes a matter of more or less, focused on the quantity of 'goods', without any thought or regard for the standard that makes them so. Moneymaking is the perfect sacrament of this obsession, since it takes as the measuring standard of good an accumulation of merely abstract units.

But as we have seen, this standard fails when applied to human beings. Most people boldly testify to this failure the moment someone treats them like dirt, or a dog or even yesterday's news. The 80/20 fallacy achieves plausibility by mimicking quantitative analysis. But like the sophists of ancient times, it uses the outward form or appearance of logic in order to divert attention from a deceptive premise, in this case the assumption that it is humanly acceptable to use the same method to take account of human beings and material goods. Thus we are distracted into believing that we get part of what we want, while being gulled into accepting a method of reasoning that denies more than all of what we are.

In the current debate among conservatives, this is literally the effect the fallacy achieves. The conservative identity, and indeed that of Americans in general, involves respect for individual rights and responsibilities. Such respect makes no sense if human beings are not individuals but interchangeable units that have no meaning in and of themselves (no intrinsic value.) Considered en masse it's easy enough to accept the idea that people in society are no more than pebbles in a jar. But when individuals are treated in this way, they generally resent the lack of consideration for what they feel and know themselves to be on the inside, whatever their outward appearance or circumstances. Anger and indignation naturally result, fueling conflicts that eventually lead to war. That's why human justice has to take account of individual worth. Unless individuals are given their due, their society lacks humanity. That deficiency eventually dissolves both its integrity and its cohesion.

This is the moral basis for conservative opposition to socialism. Whatever material good socialism aims to achieve, it does so by sacrificing respect for the distinctively human understanding of good that allows us to recognize the difference between human individuals and the merely material objects that have a form of unity but lack the inward knowledge of its worth. This inward knowledge manifests the soul of all humanity; the subjective certainty that we matter. But what we appear to be in material terms matters precisely because it represents more than we can ever know from its appearance alone. This is why our understanding of justice appeals to the existence and will of the Creator God.

Human affairs require wisdom that goes beyond what can be known by any quantitative analysis or method. Such wisdom takes account of the fact that all human beings know directly from their own nature what cannot be known from observation: the intrinsic value of one. Such wisdom impelled America's founders to realize that laws and judgments that deny unalienable rights strike at the heart of what it means to be treated with just regard for humanity. So do proposals that treat human beings as ciphers to be discarded when some bureaucrats or their quantitative formulas claim they are too old or infirm or irrelevant to justify the expense of caring for their health.

There was a time when we could count on something like this wisdom from people who call themselves conservative. Whatever they call themselves now, the ones willing to accept the 80/20 fallacy are much like the argument they make: they adopt the name and outward appearance of conservatism, but betray its substance. In our present crisis, conservative voters who follow their advice will be doing the same to their liberty.

THE LABEL PROMISES REMEDIES, BUT THE BOX CONTAINS POISON

As conservative voters approach the 2010 elections, they might consider heeding the wisdom of this simple slogan: Don't trust the Party label. In particular, the Republican Party label is being abused as part of a conscious effort to deceive them.

Consider as evidence yesterday's report by Josh Kraushaar at politico.com. Under the direction of Senator John Cornyn (R-TX), the GOP's National Senatorial Committee is backing a slew of left-leaning candidates for the 2010 primaries. The plan is to give them special advantages in the primaries, while bad mouthing the prospects of conservative candidates.

The best, and perhaps most controversial, example of the NRSC's muscle-flexing is in Florida, where Cornyn quickly got behind the campaign of popular moderate [sic] Gov. Charlie Crist, despite growing conservative resentment over Crist's support of [alleged] President Barack Obama's stimulus plan and environmental policies.

The NRSC's open support for the governor has stifled the fundraising ability of former state House Speaker Marco Rubio, an attractive candidate in his own right who has been winning the support of conservative activists across the state.

"The speed with which the national party and national Republicans took sides in this race has presented challenges," said Rubio spokesman Alex Burgos. "Speaker Rubio never envisioned a day that a conservative in the Republican primary would be the underdog―and wouldn't be given a chance by the national party.

Conservatives considering Rush Limbaugh's contention that there's no hope outside the GOP need to ponder deeply the significance of this fact: the GOP leaders won't give a conservative a chance. Their excuse for stacking the deck against conservatives is that they are backing "electable" candidates. But they consistently define "electable" as "moderate" or "not conservative." According to the politico.com piece this logic "makes perfect sense to GOP strategists, who view it as a necessary exercise in political Darwinism.

"The job of the party committee is to help people with an 'R' next to their name; it doesn't matter what their ideology is," said Carl Forti, who headed the National Republican Congressional Committee's independent expenditure efforts in 2006 [with such good results]." "That's the mentality Cornyn has now―you want to find people that can win, and if you cater to much to the extremes, you'll be in trouble."

In fact Cornyn's intervention in primaries isn't about helping people with an 'R' next to their name. It's about making sure that in the general election those people aren't conservatives. As for the claim of electability, the notion that conservatives won't win is a purposely self-fulfilling prophecy.

The conservative heart of Americans everywhere is being roused by Obama's push to overthrow Constitutional government and install a national socialist regime in its place. But this is simply an accentuation of a longstanding reality. Consider the Battleground polling data reported by Bruce Walker in this article at americanthinker.com.

The Battleground Poll is different. It is bipartisan. A Republican polling organization, the Terrance Group, and a Democrat polling organization, Lake Research Partners, collaborate in picking the questions, selecting the sample population, conducting the surveys, and analyzing the results. The Battleground Poll website, along with the raw data, is "Republican Strategic Analysis" and "Democratic Strategic Analysis." There are few polls that are bipartisan. No other polling organization asks the same questions year after year, none that reveal the internals of their poll results so completely, and none ask anything like Question D3 in every survey. What is Question D3 and what were the results to Question D3 in the August 20, 2008 Battleground Poll? It is this:

"When thinking about politics and government, do you consider yourself to be...?

Very conservative

Somewhat conservative

MODERATE

Somewhat liberal

Very liberal

UNSURE/REFUSED"

In August 2008, Americans answered that question this way: (1) 20% of Americans considered themselves to be very conservative; (2) 40% of Americans considered themselves to be somewhat conservative; (3) 2% of Americans considered themselves to be moderate; (4) 27% of Americans considered themselves to be somewhat liberal; (5) 9% of Americans considered themselves to be very liberal; and (6) 3% of Americans did not know or refused to answer.

Sixty percent of Americans considered themselves conservative. Does this mean that most Americans do not know what "conservative" means? No: The question specifically provides an out to people who are not sure about their ideology; it provides an out to people who want to be considered "moderate." Americans reject those choices. They overwhelmingly define themselves as "conservative." This is a huge political story - except that it is not "new" at all. Look at the thirteen Battleground Poll results over the last six years, and how do Americans answer that very question? Here are the percentages of Americans in those polls who call themselves "conservative" since June 2002: 59% (June 2002 poll), 59% (September 2003 poll), 61% (April 2004 poll), 59% (June 2004 poll), 60% (September 2004 poll), 61% (October 2005 poll), 59% (March 2006), 61% (October 2006), 59% (January 2007), 63% (July 2007), 58% (December 2007), 63% (May 2008), and now 60% (August 2008.)

The percentage of Americans who define themselves as "somewhat liberal" or "very liberal" has always been puny. In thirteen straight polls, this percentage has never been higher than 38% (June 2004) and it has usually been much lower. The gap between self-defined conservatives and self-defined liberals has been as high as thirty percentage points and as low as twenty-one percentage points. What does that translate into in electoral politics? If conservative presidential candidates simply got all the conservative votes - if virtually all moderate voters, uncommitted voters, and liberal voters went for the liberal candidate - then the conservative candidates would win a landslide bigger than Ronald Reagan in 1988. Have you ever wondered why liberals like Obama never call themselves liberals? Maybe their advisers have read the Battleground Poll internals.

Are these remarkable results skewed? This has always been the argument, but it is a hopelessly flawed argument. The poll results are incredibly consistent over time. These results are the same when President Bush has poll numbers at rock bottom and when Republicans were facing electoral disaster, like in October 2006 when 61% of Americans called themselves conservatives. The very consistency of these percentages is powerful evidence of their inherent validity….

Voters heavily identify themselves as conservative. Only a miniscule percentage of them identify themselves as "moderates." Yet in primary elections the GOP leaders now stack the deck in favor of so-called "moderates." This isn't a hard-boiled preference for winners. It's an ideological preference for left-leaning candidates. Once the leftists win the GOP nomination, the leftist GOP leaders exploit the conservative cachet of the Republican label (carefully bolstered and preserved by media Judas goats) in a conscious effort to deceive conservative voters into supporting people who will surely betray them. In effect, the GOP leaders do exactly what the leftist Democrats do. They hide or lie about their candidates' left-leaning views in order to hijack the seats of power. And they've been doing so at least since Ronald Reagan left office. If a conservative chances to get a GOP nomination, the same GOP forces usually go to work behind the scenes to insure the nominee's defeat in the general election. Their claptrap about uniting to defeat the leftist Democrat bogeyman only matters to them when there's another leftist bogeyman behind the Republican mask. Though they pretend to be all about winning without regard to ideology, they are in fact committed to the leftist ideology and working to assure the victory of national socialism. They therefore don't disagree with Obama's leftist goal. They disagree with his up front and hasty pursuit of it.

I have to hope that people like Rush Limbaugh are not consciously part of this national GOP strategy of deception. The currently roused conservative heart of America could lead to a restoration of the Constitutional Republic. This could usher in an era of revitalized strength and renewed dedication to the principles and practices of liberty. Or it will again be hijacked by a conscious strategy intended to assure that Americans who love liberty and the constitutional sovereignty of the people are once more deceived and betrayed. Given that the leftist elite faction thinks it has already pushed America irretrievably over the cliff into national socialism, this time may be the last time. Conservative voters beware. The byword of the day is clear:

DON'T TRUST THE PARTY LABEL

The ‘Two Party’ sham-the mask is slipping

My last posting has sparked numerous and thoughtful responses, as well as lively discussions, in many quarters. Reading them I think the following analysis may be worth sharing.

Some people adamantly make arguments based on the notion that we presently have a two party electoral system. This phrase purports to refer to a system in which people freely select from amongst a wide range of different possibilities, two alternatives, and then choose freely between them. My knowledge of the facts, as well as extensive firsthand experience, have forced me to conclude that this is simply not so. There is no such 'two party system'. The American people are presently suffering under a 'one faction' elite political monopoly reflecting the collusion of powerful elites across different sectors of our national life. These elites share a common spirit, one that rejects the basic premises of constitutional self-government, i.e., the principles of just government articulated in the American Declaration of Independence. Because they differ as to the alternative that should replace the form of government required by those principles, real disagreement and competition exists among them. But they agree in accepting the unspoken premise that government of, by, and for the people was never more than a half-truth, and is now at best an (arguably) useful fiction.

In terms of the elite political spectrum, toward the right are those more inclined to believe the fiction is tolerably useful, toward the left those more inclined to regard it as an intolerable and unnecessary imposition. The right leaning elite (exemplified by the Bush wing of the Republican Party) go through the motions required to maintain the fiction with a sense of noblesse oblige. The appearance of serving and catering to the will of their inferiors actually feeds and strengthens their sense of superiority to the masses. The left leaning elite (exemplified by the Kennedy/Clinton Democrats) maintains the façade more grudgingly, with an angry resentment just below the surface occasioned by the constant sense that every gesture of subservience disparages their status and achievements. In the strict sense, both sides are studiously hypocritical, though with none of the pejorative implications Christian sensibility associates with the word. For these self-aggrandizing elites, hypocrisy is one of the essential performing arts. The skill and power of the individual performers is measured by their ability to maintain a reassuring façade that projects an appearance of respect for their inferiors, while actually cultivating perfect freedom from any real sense of their intrinsic worth.

From the elite perspective, the so-called 'two party system' functions as a series of auditions in which performers seeking key roles in the political arena prove that they are masters of the hypocritical arts. Elections are like applause meters. But applause alone cannot be permitted to decide the outcome. Sincere advocates of positions and views that reflect the egalitarian principles of morality and justice are likely to win the greatest applause from the masses. But their sincerity violates the key prerequisite of the hypocritical profession. Therefore those guilty of sincerity must be painstakingly eliminated from the competition. The actual 'one faction' elite political system maintains its control through a host of informal arrangements and decisions meant to assure that sincere advocates of the people never appear on the political stage (except occasionally to be ridiculed in order to chasten and discourage the just convictions of the people.) Manipulation of the so-called 'mainstream' media is part of this. So is the tangled skein of rules and regulations imposed under the specious guise of 'campaign finance reform'.

Since the left leaning Democrats ultimately move along a spectrum that ends in one-party dictatorships such as those in the old Soviet bloc, the one faction reality of the present political system poses less of a problem for their support amongst the people than it does for the Republicans. The Democrats promote control, regimentation and regulation in almost every sphere of life. They are now quite openly the party of Chicago style bossism and political/economic slavery. (The sexual freedom they seem to promote actually encourages people to become slaves to their physical passions.) But the Republicans purport to favor free enterprise, competition and limited government. But without political free enterprise and competition the people cannot enforce constitutional limitations on government power. The Republican Party's collusion with the elite 'one faction' political system therefore contradicts the views that have recruited a substantial majority of its electoral base of support.

It's striking that the Republican apologists who argue most adamantly that there is no alternative to the 'two party system' are the very people who place the highest priority on the elements of the Republican platform that favor economic liberty. Now, they make these arguments in the name of political victory for Republican candidates. They seek unity for the sake of political success. They pretend that third party efforts must necessarily hand victory to the Democrats, the leftists, the Obama faction bogeymen. But from the viewpoint of the people, what good are Republican political victories when the Republicans collude in maintaining a system that screens out sincere advocates of the constitutional sovereignty of the people? No matter who wins such elections, the people lose. At best, they act as the manipulated, powerless chorus in a stage play meant to procure their docile acceptance of a form of government based on the self-righteous exercise of elite power instead of the people's exercise of their unalienable rights.

The fate of the recent 9-12 March on Washington is a good example of how this system operates. Many Americans reject Obama's hasty putsch toward national socialism, and the open consolidation of elite control it implies. Large spontaneous gatherings of the people have occurred all over the United States. At many of these gatherings, both in their homemade signs and in the speeches they most heartily applaud, people have made clear their strong sense that both hitherto dominant political parties are implicated in the surrender to socialism that aims to destroy the sovereignty of the American people. The 'tea party' movement is proof that the resilient spirit of self-government and constitutional sovereignty remains vibrantly alive in the hearts of a majority of the American people. Aside from demonstrating the existence and size of this spontaneous uprising for liberty, what good can be expected to come from these gatherings?

They are in fact informal opportunities for people to review and select those who best represent and articulate what is on their hearts and minds. Unfiltered by the structures of elite control, they can lift up representatives to hold up a banner emblazoned with their concerns so that others who share those concerns will see, take heart and join in the movement that acts to address them. Apart from crowd size, media attention or anything else, the identification of such effective and truly representative leaders does more than anything else to consolidate the strength and ongoing effectiveness of a populist movement, particularly at the national level. It is both tragic and profoundly informative that no such leaders emerged from the 9-12 March. No 9-12 Martin Luther King strode onto this page of history to crystallize the people's fervent hope for the restoration of their sovereignty, their liberty, and the responsible fulfillment of their obligation to posterity. A gaggle of Republican front groups managed to turn the podium into a parade of organizational memos, whose content and delivery carefully avoided anything that would really correspond to the crowd's love of liberty and the Constitutional Republic, or their angry, impartial resentment against the elitists of all political stripes who have betrayed them both.

This reality of the 9-12 March on Washington epitomizes the function and effect of the so-called 'two party' system. Ancient tyrants would carefully identify and somehow eliminate potential representatives of the people's love of liberty. They aimed to eliminate the poles round which opposition to their tyranny could crystallize and grow. With the 'two party' system, control minded elites take this shrewdness a step further. Like modern scientists, they construct a system that encourages the growth of leadership crystals, but only those that favor and increase their power. Thus they aim to turn every spontaneous movement of the people into a new locus of control.

Those who argue that there is no alternative to the 'two party' system are in fact part of this controlling process. Even though people by the millions have mobilized, on their own, in search of the opportunity to raise up new leaders who will not betray their decent love of freedom; these Republican apologists want us to believe that they are helpless to reclaim their sovereignty. But there is a sure sign that this is not so; a sure sign that the elites already fear for their control. It is their willingness openly to attempt the suppression of widely known facts and information about what millions of people are doing. Their naked exercise of raw, collusive power casts aside the discipline of their hypocritical professions. But even as it discredits the media outlets they control, it offers them up as an absorbing target for the anger people feel. The media's Judas goats are already striving to lead the people to vent their anger against these targets, so as to dissipate their energy in fruitless prayers to the false gods of the 'voodoo' media. Such prayers are a blasphemous waste of time. People should disregard the Judas goat apologists, talkers and pundits whose function it is to discourage and distract them, diffusing their energies and turning them from the only actions that can in fact serve and reclaim their sovereignty.

The people themselves are the only media that counts. Instead of begging the false media gods please to let them see better leaders, they should draw on the self-confidence that best comes from their faith in the one true God, and produce and lift up better leaders of, by, and for themselves. They should continue to band together. They should consciously go on the hunt for those who represent their hearts. The controlling elites have falsely amassed great power in the name of the people. They will not surrender it because we ask, no matter how many millions we gather. We must build a new ark to house the covenant of our liberty. But we don't need a new party so much as a new politics, based first of all on fulfilling the responsibilities of sovereign citizenship rather than exclusively pursuing government power . We will not restore the sovereignty of the people until we have once again become individuals willing and able to exercise it.

I think this ark is already under construction. You can find one example of what is involved if you visit the AIP website. To paraphrase the poet (with a little help from the company whose name means victory), "Do not send to know what is to be done, go out yourself and do it."

Conservatives should make 2010 the ‘Passover’ election

I hear that Rush Limbaugh is telling people that they have no choice but to drink the Republican Kool-Aid in the 2010 elections. Given the track record of the forces still in control of the Republican Party, this is tantamount to saying that we let the American republic go gently into the dark night of National Socialism. It also implies surrendering the sovereignty of the American people on the altar of the economics-without-borders money powers whose machinations terrorized the nation into the arms of the Obama faction in the fall of 2008 (with a telling, indispensable assist from G. W. Bush.)

Now Obama's socialist putsch is rousing the conservative instincts of the American people. The Bush-Michael Steele Republicans see it as their job to exploit this reaction for political purposes, but without letting power fall into the hands of any true conservatives. It's a delicate maneuver, in which media Judas goats have an indispensable role. (Wikipedia has an excellent definition of Judas goat that's worth reading at this point. In essence, "The Judas goat is trained to associate with sheep or cattle, leading them to a specific destination. In stockyards the Judas goat will lead sheep to slaughter, while its own life is spared.")

Predictably, Rush Limbaugh (like the media personalities at the supposedly conservative Fox news network) is going about the work of herding angry grassroots Americans into the Republican sheep-pens, where they will be shorn of their character and liberty more slowly, but just as surely, as at the hands of the Obama faction. To accept his analysis, however, requires that we forget that G. W. Bush's surrender to socialism in 2008 was the culmination of years of missed opportunities and betrayals by Republicans to whom well intentioned conservative voters delivered control of the White House or the Congress (or both) from 1994 to 2006.

I know that some of these well intentioned conservative voters want desperately to believe that it was the bad old media or the wily bad Democrats who not only kept the Republican leaders from making good use of those years, but forced them to preside over the biggest spending spree in the nation's history up to that time. The Bush Republicans threw fiscal conservatism to the winds and paid no more than incompetent lip-serve to the agenda of restoring the nation's moral principles. Meanwhile, in the critical areas of education and national sovereignty they betrayed bedrock conservative principles by promoting the national government's liberty destroying control of our schools and colluding in the sovereignty destroying neglect of its Constitutional responsibility to secure our national borders.

Is the charitable view of the Republican leadership's sins justified? It might be, if we could believe that the violation and neglect of conservative ideas and principles was unintentional. Knowledgeable People have a hard time doing this, however, since they know that the Bush wing of the GOP has a long and consistent history of opposition to conservatism. In light of that history the failure to respect conservative ideas and principles during the years of Bush ascendancy looks suspiciously like reversion to type.

I was reminded of this today as I read this piece by Byron York on the washingtonexaminer.com website. York reports about "a revealing moment in a new book, scheduled for release next week, by former White House speechwriter Matt Latimer."

Bush was preparing to give a speech to the annual meeting of the Conservative Political Action Conference or CPAC. The conference is the event of the year for conservative activists; Republican politicians are required to appear and offer their praise of the conservative movement.

Latimer got the assignment to write Bush's speech. Draft in hand, he and a few other writers met with the president in the Oval Office. Bush was decidedly unenthusiastic.

"What is this movement you keep talking about in the speech?" the president asked Latimer.

Latimer explained that he meant the conservative movement -- the movement that gave rise to groups like CPAC.

Bush seemed perplexed. Latimer elaborated a bit more. Then Bush leaned forward, with a point to make.

"Let me tell you something," the president said. "I whupped Gary Bauer's ass in 2000. So take out all this movement stuff. There is no movement."

Bush seemed to equate the conservative movement -- the astonishing growth of conservative political strength that took place in the decades after Barry Goldwater's disastrous defeat in 1964 -- with the fortunes of Bauer, the evangelical Christian activist and former head of the Family Research Council whose 2000 presidential campaign went nowhere.

Now it was Latimer who looked perplexed. Bush tried to explain.

"Look, I know this probably sounds arrogant to say," the president said, "but I redefined the Republican Party."

This suggests that G. W. Bush prided himself on the fact that the Bush ascendancy in the Republican Party eliminated the conservative movement as a viable force in American politics. Now, with so many Americans boisterously asserting their belief in conservative ideas and principles, the apologists for the Republican Party would surely prefer that this intended aspect of the Bush legacy be locked out of sight for safekeeping. "We're your only hope against Obama," they proclaim. "Give us the power." In true Machiavellian fashion they won't say to conservative Americans "Give us the power; we want to continue destroying you." They just say "give us the power."

Through fear of Obama some conservatives will follow the Judas goat media leaders into the political slaughter pens one more time. Like the panic of a drowning victim, their fear actually makes them fight against those who try to offer them real aid. It blinds them to the fact that the Republicans now promising deliverance set conservatives up for failure in the first place. They don't really oppose Obama's goal. They just think he's moving toward it too hastily.

Keeping all this in mind, I must disagree with Rush Limbaugh. I see a desperate need for a third alternative for America. Whether you call it a party or not is immaterial. My advice is to put no faith in the Republican Party label, the Republican Party leaders, or the Republican Party candidates. That doesn't mean voting against all Republicans. It just means voting for no one just because of the Republican label. Right now, if the label says anything to conservatives, it reeks of duplicity and betrayal. The election of 2010 should be like the Passover recounted in the Bible. Only the politicians bearing the mark of true conservatism should be passed over by the conservative angel of political judgment.

But what will signify, like the lamb's blood that marked the dwellings of the Israelites, the presence of a commitment to conservative ideas, principles and policies? For my part, I look for a proven dedication to the principles on which the United States of America was founded, starting with the self-evident truth that we are all endowed with unalienable rights by the will of the Creator God. Every element of real conservatism can be deduced and articulated as a logical consequence of that truth. So by looking for the people determined to conserve American liberty I will find the only conservatives worthy of the name. What about you?

The 9-12 March- the power elites don't count people because to them the people don't count

On September 12, 2009 a very large crowd gathered from all parts of the country to manifest grassroots anger against the Washington politicians who are betraying the liberty of the American people. In my lifetime I have never known such a large manifestation of public feeling to pass with so little notice or discussion in the so-called "mainstream" media outlets. This absence of coverage obviously tells us very little about the event that took place. However, it tells us all we need to know about the people who control the so-called "mainstream" media. They believe the people of this country no longer matter.

The confusion over how many people attended what its organizers called the 9-12 March indicates that, at least since 1995, the supposed representatives of the people in Congress have shared this belief. That's when they allowed the National Park Service to forgo any effort objectively to estimate attendance at events along and around the Capitol Mall. If the people in Congress still respected the authority of the people, then when people around the country care enough to converge on Washington in large numbers, their representatives would care enough to assure accurate information about how many they are. Today's Washington pols obviously don't. It doesn't matter whether people are accurately counted, because the people don't count. (Counting them might also interfere with the elitist agenda these supposed representatives of the people now actually serve.)

This lack of interest in accurately counting people has disturbing implications. Anyone who really cared for the sovereignty of the American people would care deeply that their gatherings be accurately assessed.

After all, the Constitutional liberty of the American people depends on periodic elections. What are elections? They are gatherings at which people cast their votes. The vote itself resolves into gatherings of the people around this or that proposal or candidate for office. Though only the gatherings carefully organized to respect the requirements of the Constitution officially express the authority of the people, it was once the case that prudence obliged actual or aspiring political leaders to show some respect for unofficial gatherings as well. This was especially true when the gatherings were large, and represented heartfelt views. Whether the feelings were for or against the views and prospects of such leaders, they mattered because the actions of the people still mattered (and might actually affect those views and prospects.)

What has changed? What leads Washington politicos to shrug off gatherings of the people as effortlessly as they do their own camera smiles? In this regard the fate of the 9-12 march is revealing. Uncounted thousands made a determined effort to attend. Instead of going to the Little League game, visiting the mall or watching some sporting event on TV, they preferred to exercise their citizen rights. But to the self-worshipping political and media elites, they did not exist. Their heartfelt efforts were of no significance. Their choice to demonstrate concern for their liberty and their country was beneath contempt.

These elites count on the assertion that has become a mantra of their power: Perception is Reality. The so-called "mainstream" media governs perception. Since they ignored the event, it wasn't real. It didn't exist.

People who resent this arrogant dismissal of their actions and feelings need to face a hard reality. As things stand right now in this country, the dismissive, self-worshipping, haughty elites have every reason to conclude that their attitude is justified by the facts. Many of the people who attended the 9-12 March couldn't wait to get to a television set to see whether the so-called "mainstream" media covered the event. Many couldn't help feeling diminished and crestfallen when they looked in the media mirror and found no reflection of the reality they had experienced. Consciously or not, they doubted what their eyes had seen, what their ears heard, what their hearts felt. Even now they wonder. Even now they hesitate to give full credence to what they know from firsthand experience.

Too many people have fallen prey to the mental illness that presently impairs the public's consciousness of people and events. They neurotically refuse to believe an event is real until they see it on TV, even when they themselves have been involved in it. They feel discouraged and crestfallen when something that deeply affects and moves them isn't validated by the brightly lit images projected onto the walls of their electronic caves.

The effect this has on the confidence and morale of people suffering from it reminds me of the effect certain voodoo charms and rituals are said to have on those who expose their minds to its power. Will and physical energy can be influenced, for better or worse, simply because people assign the voodoo priests and priestesses an indispensable role in shaping their perception of reality.

Americans are addicted to the voodoo media personalities who inform their public consciousness, much as voodoo followers are addicted to the priests or priestesses who inform their private hopes and dreams. Contemporary power elites believe they can control people by manipulating the media witch doctors, much the way tyrants and rulers manipulated the oracles and soothsayers of the ancient world. One important effect of this manipulation is to discourage people from believing in the power of their own preferences and inclinations. People whose faith and convictions depart from the path that serves the power elites are made to feel isolated and alone. Even when they gather by the thousands or many tens of thousands, they look into a media mirror that says the crowd did not exist.

Though the power elites act as if they believe this is a godlike power, they are mistaken, for they cannot conjure something out of nothing. But they can make large gatherings of the people disappear. They did it on 9-12. They do it periodically on some key dates in November as well. No, I don't mean that they somehow physically change vote totals. They don't have to erase votes at the ballot box when they have already erased candidates from the mind and will of manipulated and demoralized people. ("I'd vote for people who really represent my beliefs, but they can't win," they say. And they blink.)

If people who believe in American liberty are ever to see it reclaimed, they will have to do something many will find far more difficult than coming to a march in Washington. They will have to break their addiction to the voodoo media cult that is sapping their will to act on what they know is right for their country. The first step: turn off the voodoo media. Go cold turkey. Give up the pathetic belief that you'll miss something if you don't tune into the self-confessed 'story-telling' they pass off as news and information.

Those who are loyal to liberty and the Constitution should pick a day, let's say November 11. It is already set aside for remembering the extraordinary deeds of everyday Americans who helped to defeat threats to freedom in the twentieth century. What better way to honor them, than to do something to defeat the most insidious threat to freedom in this first decade of the twenty-first. We should pledge not to watch the voodoo media priests and priestesses; not to think about them; not to care even for a moment what they say or do. We should forget that they exist. We should lay down our remotes, as the combatants of WWI laid down their arms.

Instead of being absorbed by the fabricated public reality they use to manipulate us, we should gather in our Churches, our schools, our playing fields and other public venues, and let our remembrance of the citizen-soldiers who served freedom in our military remind us of the public reality we can forge with our own hands, and with the faith that founded and preserved this nation free. And instead of looking with pathetic hope to see if the voodoo media has acknowledged our existence, we should look to our own hearts. We should there seek confirmation that what we do has pleased the Creator God, who first informed our nature with its unalienable rights, even as His power shaped and informed the rules for all the universe.

Think about it: a day without the media; a media free day. It could be the first day of solid hope for American freedom we've seen in a long time. Once we get the hang of it, who knows? It might just become a habit, along with thinking, and voting, for ourselves.

In 2010-A legion of Joe Wilsons who won't apologize

For a moment last night something unprecedented, unheard of, indeed almost unbelievable happened while Barack Obama was giving one of his televised, teleprompter specials: his audience actually heard the truth.

Of course they didn't hear it from Obama. "A republican House member shouted, "You lie" during [alleged] President Obama's health care speech to Congress on Wednesday." As we sadly would expect from the gutless gaggle of Obama lickspittles that dominates Congress at the moment, "members of both parties condemned the heckling." Thanks I'm sure to this pressure "After the speech, South Carolina Rep. Joe Wilson issued a statement apologizing for his outburst."

Poor Mr. Wilson! He dared to say what is on the hearts of a growing majority of Americans sick to death of the boldfaced prevarication now worshiped and glamorized as masterful oratory. He violated two of the unwritten rules of order that now govern the sick bipartisan dictatorship that presently masquerades as the U.S. Congress. He spoke the truth. He dared to represent the views and convictions of his constituents. I'm sure that millions of informed voters felt a lately unaccustomed surge of respect and gratitude for that singular voice speaking with laconic eloquence the very words they were repeatedly shouting at their television screens.

I will admit it. Such viewers are hardier souls than I. I know that actually listening to so many lies, spoken with the arrogant self-assurance of a master, is more degradation than my free citizen heart can bear. I know that, like Joe Wilson, I would "let my emotions get the best of me." But years of academic discipline have accustomed me to read all kinds of groundless stuff and nonsense on the printed page without prejudicial emotion. So I wait to read such speeches in print. (By the way, those who know me at all well know that, with the exception of the speeches like the one G.W. Bush gave in the wake of 9/11, I generally took the same precaution with every speech Bill Clinton or either of the Bushes gave when they were in office. God knows, I haven't risked listening to a speech by the sitting occupant of the White House since Ronald Reagan left office.)

So I admire the informed viewers who suffered through the faux decorum of last night's oppressive caricature of the solemn moments for which such joint sessions of Congress were once reserved. Obviously, Obama's speech didn't bring to mind FDR's stern request for a declaration of war against the Japanese empire. No, it was a painstakingly assembled repetition of the oft refuted lies and false promises Obama has relied upon to promote his faction's proposed government takeover of the health sector- a scheme that is itself an assault on truth, conscience and the survival of American liberty.

Though I understand the pressure that led Joe Wilson to repent of his clarion moment of truth, it disappointed me, as I'm sure it disappointed voters in his district who had just about decided to make him an exception to the "throw da bums out" tidal wave rising to sweep aside this forgettable Congress of socialist toadies and tut-tutting fellow travelers in 2010. Where are the sturdy tribunes of the people who had the courage to speak the truth and let the votes fall where they may? Where are the frontier spirits that would brave the lions of Washington corruption, relying on their faith in the decent voters who elected them to defy its pressures? I guess they've all moved to the DC suburbs and forgotten their way home.

Rather than accept the pretense that civility and politeness require that we patiently suffer the arrogant lies of would be tyrants bent on finalizing the destruction of our sovereignty, I think it's long past time for Americans who understand and love their liberty to remind them of the first rule of civility when addressing the sovereign body of the people- Don't throw proven lies in our face and expect us to grovel and applaud. You address the Congress of the United States, not the servile bipartisan Congress of some Communist People's Republic. Not yet, anyway. And not ever- not once we get the chance to trump your false promise of socialist utopia with this true promise we now make solemnly to ourselves and for our liberty- We promise to send a legion of Joe Wilsons to Congress in 2010, who will speak the truth and make you apologize for trying to enslave us with your lies.

Town Hall Uprisings-Busting the Political Con?

One thing is becoming increasingly clear: the forces seeking to destroy constitutional self-government and impose socialism on the people of the United States appear to have underestimated the intelligence and will of the American people. The town hall uprisings have roused an arrogant, angry reaction from the Obama faction's political and media hacks. It reeks of surprised indignation. 'How dare these people prove more intelligent and feisty than we expected?' they seem to say. Their surprise more and more appears to be the only thing about them that is not insincere; that and their hunger for power.

It appears that many successful public figures in America have a quiet but deep contempt for the people whose support and adulation makes their apparent success possible. People who reach for fame and public applause often seem to suffer from a stubborn sense of vulnerable inferiority. They need public attention as an antidote to their own feelings of worthlessness. But as they receive the attention they crave, those feelings lead them to regard their own lives as a skillfully executed con game, in which they have sold hapless suckers stock in what they themselves feel to be a worthless enterprise. This leads them to conclude that people fool enough to be manipulated into supporting and admiring them will fall for anything.

A manipulative mentality dominates the competition for public power that today we mistakenly refer to as 'politics'. It affirms and feeds this contempt for 'the public'. Fortunes are made selling wealthy elites on the notion that, using the right polls and focus groups, expert consultants can figure out the goads and spurs of public reaction. Then they can package malleable individuals into candidates who will achieve the desired electoral response. The package may be empty, or its contents diametrically opposed to any real public good. But in this scheme of things, the outward appearance is all that matters, though it be entirely fictional.

So far the political result suggests that the consultants have delivered on their promises. People at the town meetings may raise chants intended to remind officeholders that "You work for us." But given the way politics works these days that makes no more sense than it would for the clay to tell the pottery "We made you what you are." In contemporary politics, the money powers, and the media they manipulate are the hands that mold the body politic until it accepts an image of leadership that no more serves the people than the pottery serves the clay.

In order to escape the domination of these manipulative forces, people will have to rediscover the resources that allow them to fashion- of, by, and for themselves- a political leadership that serves their common good. But what resources exist that allow people to resist the manipulation of their apparent desires and remember instead the goods that correspond to their true selves? The answer: resources that lie beyond manipulation because they reflect a standard of good that does not depend on malleable passion; resources that arise in connection with our respect for truths that confirm a source of meaning for our existence that subsists beyond the perishing satisfactions of the moment, but not beyond the reach of our conscience or goodwill. Content to judge leaders by the empty rhetoric they use to titillate our selfish passions, we will end up being judged, by those very passions, as fit only for slavery. But if we judge instead in light of the standard established by the Creator God who fashioned us for liberty, the discipline we accept in the judgment will help to keep us truly free; that and the faith that makes it possible.

Parties of A Different Kind

Yesterday I returned home at the end of a week of travel and speechifying that took me to several Tea Party events, starting with the April 11th gathering in Pittsburgh posted previously, and continuing on to Washington, D.C.(April 15), across from the Treasury Building and the White House. I also spoke at events in Hazleton, Pennsylvania (April 15) and Fort Wayne, Indiana (April 18). Contrary to the hate filled slanders being perpetrated by the character assassins in Obama's servile media claque, the people I met were not racists or greed driven rich people; nor were they phony throngs fabricated by Republican media hacks. What impressed me most about them, in fact, was that they are not mainly driven by selfish fears and desires, clamoring against some real or imagined harm being done to themselves alone. The present economic situation of the country, and the orgy of debt financed spending in Washington certainly precipitated their involvement in the rallies, but the predominant reaction was one of angry and indignant shame over the oppressive burden it implies for their children and grandchildren, future generations whose representatives were plentiful in all the crowds.

At the rallies I addressed, the attendees responded with cheers and applause to denunciations of the greedy bankers and self-serving politicians whose dereliction helped produce the financial crisis that provides the excuse for abusively squandering the faith and credit of the American people. But they also gave sober and heartfelt affirmation to words that laid a fair share of the blame at their own feet- as members of what is supposed to be the sovereign body of the people of the United States. In their response to such clearly reproachful words, and in many of the comments they made to me afterward, people shared their feeling of shame that somehow, through their inaction, indifference or preoccupation they had failed to understand and act against what has been happening to our country, with all the misery it implies for their posterity.

Though the economic implications of the skyrocketing national debt helped to trigger this shame, at bottom it seemed to reflect a sense that moral decay is killing America's liberty and prosperity. Though many media figures and self-serving political types have articulated mainly money focused outrage, the people I spoke to, and the homemade signs many of them carried to the rallies, focused on the threats to our constitution and form of government. They pointed to the need for the restoration of moral standards and self-discipline. They fervently expressed the truth that the strength of America comes from our faith in God, not in government or even in ourselves alone.

I doubt that the rallies, or the state of mind clear in the people who organized and attended them, gave unequivocal encouragement to partisan hacks, seeking to exploit the situation for narrow political ends.

My speeches reflected the thoughts I have shared on this site in recent weeks. I pointed to the role that both "major" parties played in the leap into socialism. I pointed to the phony show of opposition that I have likened to two heads on the same body, vociferously engaged in mock combat while its feet move steadily, consistently toward socialism and the surrender of America's sovereign liberty. It was clear that I simply gave voice to thoughts and feelings that were deeply a part of the indignation, anger and grief for America that impelled many of the participants to join in the rallies. They feel threatened and betrayed, not just by Obama, but by all their supposed leaders, especially those who have taken their votes and then betrayed them by leading or joining the move to surrender the liberty and independence of their country.

I was surely not alone, therefore, when I raised the hue and cry against incumbents implied in the famous phrase "Throw Da bums out." Of course, people aren't so thoughtless as to neglect the obvious fact that you can't fight something (even something bad) with nothing. They know the present party system has not only failed them, it has failed the Constitution and our very existence as a free people. But the causes and methods of its failure have produced, among the people themselves, a sense of helplessness when it comes to thinking about any alternative. They are like families after several generations have come up within the welfare system, in which children grow up so accustomed to waiting on the government that they can't imagine doing anything on their own. Many Americans have a concept of political action that depends on leaders served up on some Party platter. They have accepted the essentially passive and slavish role assigned to "the people" by a party system that offers leaders the way a restaurant offer items for lunch and dinner. They have forgotten how to cook, how to shop for food, and certainly how to hunt for, gather or grow their own. People have actually come to accept the notion that their role is to choose among leadership grown, bought or prepared by others. They no longer remember that any leadership they do not have the whip hand in cooking up cannot truly represent who they are. Couch potato, consumer politics destroys representative government. (Potatoes are, after all, really meant to be consumed not consumers. Think about that.)

In a republic such as ours the people must be both the matter and the maker of government. Isn't this the clear implication of Lincoln's famous description of the American republic as "government of the people, by the people, and for the people?" I am praying earnestly that the Tea Party Events will be the beginning of a return to the activist understanding of politics without which there can be no hope of restoring the sovereignty of the American people, and the republican form of constitutional self-government that establishes and sustains it. As part of that prayer, I will continue to use this blog to flesh out the possibilities of citizen activism, so that people will understand and follow through on the necessary implication of the move to "Throw Da Bums out." Like the wise general of a victorious army, we must realize that it will not be enough to drive from the field those who have plotted and connived at the overthrow of the constitutional republic. We the people must occupy anew the ground they thus sweep clean. If you're willing to be part of that effort, you'll find some good principles, tools and ideas at http://aipnews.com. Go there and check things out. Then come back here to help me think them through.

Time to Throw Da Bums Out!

On Saturday I gave the keynote speech at the Pittsburgh Tea Party Event where several thousand people gathered to protest the spending frenzy in Washington, the leap into socialism and the destruction of our constitutional liberty. Ted Voron was good enough to post video of the speech on YouTube, embedded here below, in four parts.












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Revealing Hang-ups

Among people who think of themselves as conservatives there are few names better known than Ann Coulter's. Through her successful books and frequent media appearances she has built a solid reputation for mercilessly exposing the illogic, inconsistencies and dangerous foolishness characteristic of liberal policies and personalities. Like many of the pundits in what I think of as the "Rupert Murdoch School" of media conservatives, her conservative credentials have more to do with her highly visible assaults against the opposition than with any renown for articulating conservative principles, or using them to develop and justify public policy. However, during the Republican primaries before the 2008 general election, her endorsement of Mitt Romney invited people to look beyond her proficient jabs at those she stands against, in order to consider who she stands for.

People who followed my participation in the 2008 Republican primaries already know that I emphatically critiqued the conservative claims of all of the so called "first tier" candidates touted by the media propagandists.

With his unabashed advocacy of the "right" to abortion, Giuliani proved his disdain for the moral principles of conservatism.

Mike Huckabees pro-life record offered hope as far as conservative moral principles are concerned. But inconsistently with those principles, he neglected the fundamentally moral nature of the educational task in a republic such as ours; in both education and economics he was content with government dominated approaches; and when it came to immigration and border security, he stood with those, like John McCain who abandon the strong defense of American sovereignty. They also neglect our responsibility to preserve the liberty, prosperity and decent order that draws immigrants to America in the first place.

John McCain offered better chances than any Democrat for national security policies that maintained an aggressive stance against fanatical Islamic terrorists, but in every other respect he has long since abandoned the conservative cause, in principle and practice.

I might have seen some hope in Mitt Romney, especially when I saw reputedly conservative organizations like the Family Research Council give him so much play, or when icons like Paul Weyrich and Ann Coulter endorsed his bid. However, I have worked with beleaguered, pro-life moral conservatives in Massachusetts such as those who alerted parents to the promotion of the "gay" agenda in Massachusetts schools and who mounted determined opposition to the push for "gay" marriage in the state. I had reasons, based on my own experience, to doubt the politically convenient "conversion" on the moral issues that ostensibly permitted some conservatives of large reputation to ignore Romney's otherwise clear and oft stated adherence to the other side. I told audiences that I thought the choice between Giuliani and Romney was a choice between evil with its mask on and evil with its mask in place, using the first to drive well intentioned people into the camp of the second.

During the primary season people I know well worked tirelessly to communicate the facts about Romney's record of promoting abortion and the "gay" agenda (even after his supposed conversion on the moral issues) and his direct responsibility for the unconstitutional issuance of Massachusetts marriage licenses to "gay" couples. Their work eventually led the late Paul Weyrich to repent of his endorsement for Romney. Ann Coulter, however, continues to this day staunchly to defend her action.

She may reflect the ongoing effort to remake the Republican Party in the image of Romney's "false face" conservatism, in the hope that with his money leveraging the effort, the Party can do with Romney in 2012 what it failed to do with McCain: gull moral conservatives to go to the polls in sufficient numbers to beat the Democrats in the race for the White House. Of course, given his willingness to disregard republican constitutional principles, and his penchant for government centered policy solutions, a Romney victory would produce this result without altering the post-Constitutional socialist destiny that the elitist forces manipulating both Parties have mapped out for the future.

Whatever her reasons, Ann Coulter's failure to follow Paul Weyrich's courageous example has left her to confront continued criticism from people who firmly believe that truth must trump political convenience if we are to have any hope of restoring the American republic to its true foundations.

The video below is a compilation of several such confrontations. It must cause severe discomfort to people like me, who have been both encouraged and entertained by Ann Coulter's sturdy forays deep into the discomfiting rear echelons of liberal posturing and delusion. I don't agree with every point made by her questioners in this video. But I'm sure that their questions need to be answered with more than evasion and name calling.

More than ever before it's clear that America's liberty will not be restored until its advocates realize that what we fight for is ultimately more important than who we fight against. Leaders like Romney, who treat the moral substance of conservatism as convenient fodder for their ambition, cannot and will not persuasively reassert America's founding principles. As it did in 2008, in 2012 the well acted offer of (false) hope and (destructive) change that Obama uses to mask his power grab will triumph over false posturing like Romney's. We need leaders who will, like the bulk of the American founders, hold with true conviction to the truths that make us free. Unless we seek out and back such leaders, America will be in for a much harder time than Ann Coulter has in these encounters. I am indebted to my friends at American Right to Life for making this video available.



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Real Change-Rejecting the Politics of Submission

[This is a further installment of the series Real Change. For the previous post in the series visit Real Change-Replacing the Federal Reserve. To read the whole series from the beginning click on "Real Change" under Topics in the sidebar.]

Though for the time being we still maintain the institutional semblance of constitutional self-government, the United States no longer has a political process consistent with its survival. This isn't a matter of structural features (two-party vs. multiparty, proportional vs. winner-take-all representation, regional vs. group representation and so forth.) Rather it has to do with what we understand to be the purpose of politics; the nature of citizenship in light of that purpose; and the means and methods most likely to produce actions consonant with good citizenship.

As things stand today, the only purpose of politics is to get elected. In order to get elected, you must get more votes than your opponents. The most efficient way to achieve this result is to find out what people want to see and hear, then fabricate and project an image that corresponds to their desire. The electoral process has become an information exchange between self-centered hedonists and self-promoting liars: people willing to expose their selfish desires choose from a menu of fictional satisfactions offered by candidates pursuing their own selfish ambitions. On Election Day the electorate selects the candidate whose fabricated image most effectively seduced their self-serving judgment.

Prior to Election Day the focus of the political process is on the candidates. The term politics is therefore used to refer mainly to the activities undertaken by and on behalf of those competing for political office. Besides the candidates themselves, the people involved in politics, are the pollsters and analysts of opinion who figure out what the people want to see and hear; the media consultants whose work is to produce and project an image of the candidate that corresponds to their preferences; and the money people who gather from every possible source the funds needed to pay and equip the rest. But there are obviously two other groups of people who actively participate in the process: those who control access to the media, and those who control access to the money. They have become the only electorate that really matters, the praetorian guard, as it were, whose choice ultimately determines which candidates shall be lifted up for the adulation or opprobrium of the selfish rabble. I say they are the only electorate because the people who determine the choices actually determine the choice. This paradigm of politics therefore effectively abandons the idea of government of by and for the people. Instead we have government over the people, manipulated by the media, who are owned by money powers that therefore control both the process and its results.

For our present purposes two things are especially noteworthy in this political paradigm. The first is the essentially passive, and ultimately superfluous, role of the people as a whole; the second is the concentration of political activity in the hands of a relatively small group of elite participants who in effect become the only real citizens. This paradigm represents the end of the democratic era in human affairs, and a return to the oligarchic rule (using those words to refer to government by the few, but with the usual implication of power in the hands of the wealthy) characteristic of societies before the institution of the American republic. As long as this oligarchic paradigm predominates, the American experiment is suspended. Once the paradigm has been consolidated, it will be over and done.

If this analysis of our present political process is accurate it means that as far as truly representative government is concerned American politics has become an imaginary exercise. Candidates for office have essentially been degraded into mere images. The final choice made by the people is also imaginary, since they select from alternatives predetermined by an exclusively elite process in which they play no active role. The aim of the imaginary process is to determine which representatives of the elite powers project an image more likely to mollify people, and make them less resistant to the will of those who in fact now exercise sovereign control. Though imaginary in its outward form and content, the process therefore aims at a very real advantage. It is less expensive (both in material and emotional terms) to control a people induced to vent its frustrations and ambitions in what amounts to a virtual reality. Such virtual politics adds the finishing touch to the welter of preoccupations and distractions offered by technological toys and sexual hedonism (keeping in mind, of course, that much of that is also virtually enacted, through internet pornography, and such vicarious satisfactions as following the antics of "stars" in the entertainment and information media.)

At the moment, this imaginary political process appears to serve the goal of establishing a system of global governance that will ultimately eliminate the need for the charade of representative institutions (or at least make it entirely optional.) From the oligarchic point of view, the advantage of such a global system lies in the concentration of sufficient power in the hands of a global elite to deter, co-opt or suppress opposition. This requires that a background network of globally minded elites becomes, in effect, the last remaining superpower, with no lesser power capable of standing alone against it. The American union has the wherewithal to be a lasting superpower, but on a national basis incompatible with the globalist principle of the New World Order. Therefore, the continued existence of the United States is an obstacle which must be removed by reducing the power and destroying the unity of the nation.

Whatever his rhetoric, the policies being pursued by Barack Obama are intended to achieve this deflation of the relative power and cohesion of the United States.

His critics have been quick to see the destructive implications of his agenda, especially in the economic realm. But few if any have seen, or at any rate been willing to articulate, the purposeful intention behind it. The two party system effectually dampens any inclination toward such candor, since it represents an imaginary (or virtual) opposition of elements with no more real difference between them than two heads on the same body, or two eyes in the same head. However different they look, they move together and in the same direction. Though Democrats pretend to care deeply about the welfare of the people, Democrat policies increase the power of controlling elites with little net benefit for the people at large. Though Republicans pretend to care deeply about the liberty and opportunity available to individuals, their policies tend to increase the freedom of controlling elites, with little net benefit for individual liberty on the whole. The telltale sign of the agenda common to both parties is their actual indifference or hostility to the effects of programs and policies on the characteristics that are the essential bases of the people's ability to think and act for themselves: self-discipline, self-sufficiency and self-government.

Self-discipline clearly depends on the formation and encouragement of certain moral characteristics. Self-sufficiency requires economic approaches that preserve and enhance opportunities for individual income and wealth creation. Self-government demands political processes that depend on, and respond to individual initiative in the development and mobilization of representative political networks. Clearly these three components of self-government are interdependent. Unless they control material resources that exceed the bare necessities of life, individuals are unlikely to show much political enterprise. Without a sense of their own worth, and the significance of their own abilities and actions, people are unlikely to see or take advantage of economic opportunity. Even when they do, without a sense of responsibility for the management of their impulses and passions, they are unlikely to focus on and sustain effective action long enough to produce results. Finally, without the self-confidence and courage that arises from the sense of personal responsibility, individuals become the passive subjects of the actions and intentions of others, incapable of the initiatives required 0f true citizens.

In their different ways, both the Democrat and Republican parties advance policies that promote mentalities and ways of life that directly attack or persistently erode one or another of these components of republican citizenship. The Democrats consistently champion undisciplined sexual lust. The Republicans routinely cater to the lust for money and material goods. Both alike agree to serve as masks for the unbridled lust for power. In the more general sense of the term, therefore, lust is the whole purpose of the political system they comprise. It represents the implementation of an Hobbesian vision of human nature as an endless effort to satisfy unquenchable desire, a tyranny of domineering passions, in which the appearance of choice simply registers the prevalent passion of the moment. But Thomas Hobbes reasoned logically to the conclusion that absolute despotism is the political system that corresponds to this vision. He would not be at all surprised to see that both major Parties to the politics of lust tacitly agree on a path that leads humanity under the yoke of global tyranny.

The American republic was not founded upon a simply Hobbesian concept of human nature. The American founders acted on an understanding (profoundly influenced by Christian and Biblical precepts) that saw natural right, rather than passion, as the ruler or measuring rod of choice. This different conception of nature leads to a different conception of choice. Rather than arising from the welter of competing passions, it reflects the possibility of deliberation, the process whereby one consciously chooses which passions shall be constrained, and to what degree. But such deliberation assumes a standpoint not subject to passionate forces, an eye in the storm of passion, free in some sense from its prevailing winds because it represents the point of origin from which passion itself derives substance, force and meaning. In the understanding articulated in the American Declaration of Independence, this is the standpoint of the Creator. The concept of right arising from the authority of the Creator assumes that this original position represents more than the sheer force of real existence. It represents an intention, an inwardly formed purpose that foresees, and at every moment constitutes, the destination of existing things. The assertion of right represents the presence of this intention in action, along with just the force needed to carry it out. From this juxtaposition of intention and forcefulness arises a concept of justice that supplies the reason for constraining and ordering the passions, a reason that looks beyond the prevalent disposition of passion itself.

It may accurately be said that the people most responsible for the American founding were obsessed with justice. They saw it as the overriding purpose of political life, to which the freeways of passion would ultimately be forced to submit. But if, by deliberation, people recognize and submit to its requirements, their freedom of choice becomes the basis for government, rather than forced submission. The extent and degree of their self-determination with respect to the requirements of justice establishes the extent of individual freedom in their society. In this respect, the more good individuals are willing to do of their own volition, the less the force of government will be called upon to do for them. Conversely, the less justice they reflect in their individual choices, the more the force of government will be called upon to dictate and impose upon their actions. Freedom depends on individual responsibility.

The politics of lust (using the term in its general sense, as we have in this essay) represents the complete abandonment of this responsibility. Because we have accepted it, our freedom is being overthrown. If we wish to save and restore our freedom, we must become, like America's founders, partisans of justice; people willing to answer in word and deed for the right use of freedom in our own lives and the life of our nation. But we cannot restore the concern for right if we abandon the standpoint from which the concept of right arises: the standpoint of the Creator and of respect for the authority implied by His intention for our lives. This is the true fault line along which shall be determined the fate of American liberty. On one side move the forces that reject the premise of the Creator's will. On the other those firmly committed to its defense. And in between, so many who shift to and fro between the false promises of unbridled passion and the common sense of justice that inclines them toward the path of responsibility and true liberty. Though the partisans of justice cannot pander to the falsehoods, we can do our best to make clear the solid happiness that can only be achieved through liberty. This is the practical challenge that our derelict elites have brushed aside, but which those who are loyal to liberty must be ready to address. To see their work in progress, visit AIPnews.com. Then look for my further description of the real change they are working for in the next installment of this series, Real Change- Restoring the Politics of Justice.

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Slouching Towards Rama

In Rama was there a voice heard, lamentation, and weeping, and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children, and would not be comforted, because they are not. (Matthew 2:18)

The past few days brought news of deeply disappointing decisions by two supposedly pro-life Republicans, Kansas Senator Sam Brownback and Alaska Governor Sarah Palin. Both seem intent on proving, in their different ways, my contention that the Republican Party's wrongheaded commitment to unprincipled electioneering turns potentially good leaders into bad ones. Senator Brownback stunned and outraged his pro-life supporters by announcing his intention to vote to confirm Kathleen Sebelius as the new Secretary of Health and Human Services. She is notorious for her ruthless advocacy of abortion including the very late term abortions that properly defame her friend and financial backer Dr. George Tiller.

Given Barack Obama's infamous willingness to countenance infanticide (the murder of infants who have the temerity to survive an abortion attempt), it's no surprise that he would think her an appropriate choice to head the Department that will implement his plans for the government induced abortion of the U.S. health care sector. But because of his strongly professed personal conviction and his newly professed Catholic faith, Senator Sam Brownback was expected to be in the forefront of efforts to derail the Obama-Sebelius death train. But he has his eye on the gubernatorial seat Sebelius is planning to vacate. With the obtuse logic that typically prevails in Republican circles these days, he appears to have decided that the surest way to win it is to show his contempt for the faithful people who worked their hearts out to carry him to an overwhelming (69%) victory in his 2004 re-election bid. He could have invested some of that political capital to make a strong stand for innocent life. But in tune with what appears to be the Republican ethos of our times, the Senator seems now to believe that a good politician uses principles to get votes. He doesn't risk votes for the sake of principle.

What a contrast with the Democrats who worked over Robert Bork, Clarence Thomas and others who refused to tiptoe gently around their immoral sensibilities. How is it that those who advocate the murder of innocents stand with passionate conviction to denounce anyone who questions their depravity, but those who claim to champion God's command that we respect innocent life seem ready to back off the moment some excuse is available for their retreat, or a little opening is offered to their ambition? It seems that Yeats had it right. "The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity."

In the same vein we see Sarah Palin elevating a former member of the board of Planned Parenthood (America's chief purveyor of abortion) to the Alaska Supreme Court. She wins headlines from the media claque for bucking the pressure from the faithful pro-lifers whose applause for her supposed pro-life stance helped to overcome that same media's ridicule and contempt in the recent national election. This marks at least the second time she has used her gubernatorial position to take a step that contradicts her supposedly conservative moral stance. When she vetoed a bill passed by the Alaska legislature that would have preempted regulations extending benefits to the same-sex partners of state employees, she mistakenly claimed she had no choice but to obey the liberal Judges who purported to order the change. Now she says that Alaska's constitution left her no choice but to accept the objectionable candidates the Alaska Judicial Council handed her. Unlike her predecessor, Governor Frank Murkowski, she apparently couldn't be bothered to make a fight of it, much less take that fight to the people.

We're told of course that politics is the art of the possible, but that seems to mean only what makes political advancement possible, rather than what might possibly advance the things these politicians pretend to believe. Once upon a time, it was the vocation of political leaders to use their talents and abilities to champion new and better possibilities. That's what Lincoln did as he developed the arguments that attacked indifference to the injustice of slavery. That's what Teddy Roosevelt did as he raised his voice to promote the importance of virtue and decency in America's public life. It's what set Reagan apart in the years when he refused to back away from his rejection of socialist big government policies, or his staunch opposition to communism.

Today we recognize that statesmen like these stand head and shoulders above the crowd of timid timeservers all too common in every generation. Unfortunately, despite what we should learn from them, we are too willing to accept media profile as a substitute for real character and conviction. Whatever their talk, whatever the facade created for them by media consultants and sixty second spots, actions still offer the acid test of political leaders. When push comes to shove, these so-called Republicans disappoint, retreat and betray again and again. Yet judging by the reaction of some of the die hard defenders of their unprincipled (lack of) leadership, it's less objectionable for them to abandon their posts than it is for folks like me to point out that they have abandoned them.

In the end we are forced to accept the possibility that they have taken conservative stands because they thought it would be good for their election chances, not from a sincere conviction that it is vital for the good of the nation whose people they are supposed to serve. The tragedy is that we are in the midst of the kind of crisis, of liberty and economic survival, which cannot be met except by leaders of true conviction, the kind of conviction that inspires people to stand firm against the blandishments and threats of those who are the enemies of both liberty and survival. It is clear we shall not find such leaders any longer in the party that twice raised up their kind to save first the Union and then our free economy, for a time. Those who have the will to conserve the now imperiled principles of liberty must think anew, and act anew to create a political vehicle that will call forth from amongst the people themselves steadfast and truly faithful representation. This alone will revive the hope of lasting freedom, not only for us but for the generations yet unborn whom their pretended political advocates have betrayed more than once too often.

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Real Change: Rebuilding the Dream (Part 1)

In the 2008 Presidential election, America's so-called two-party system offered the voters no real choice. Obama offered empty rhetoric that masked a lifelong commitment to the treacherous allure of shiftless communism. McCain offered empty rhetoric that masked his total abandonment of the American principles the Republican Party pretends to uphold. Both candidates joined in support of the so-called bank rescue package that is now acknowledged by all to have been America's fateful leap into full fledged socialism. (As usual, when we said so at the time, people like me were ridiculed by the thought enforcers in the media, who exist to make people timid and ashamed of their own common sense.) The election was a stage play of phony fisticuffs, like some of the wrestling matches we see on TV. The two parties are like baseball teams or racing cars held by the same owners. Despite the appearance of competition, they are two puppets moved by one pair of hands, sharing a common goal- to maximize profits for the self-serving special interests that pull their strings. America doesn't have two parties, but one party with two heads. Their lips feign disagreement, but they sit atop a body whose feet move only one way- toward government dictatorship that once and for all overthrows the sovereignty of the people.

Of course, many people who support the Democrats have no problem with this outcome, so long as the government dictators promise a job (though for all too many a reliable handout will do), a roof over their heads and the freedom to fornicate in whatever manner they choose. They even applaud mass slaughter, so long as it's directed against human life in a way that flatters their timidity and pride to exempt them from immediate harm ("not to worry, you're in no danger, only your inferiors"). But some Democrats and a large number of Republicans have enough self-respect to reject the small pride that fearful prejudice makes possible. They want to feel part of something noble, something that invokes a better destiny than survival, a better hope than simply being spared the butcher's knife. Some of these give in with pleasure to empty words of hope and change, spoken in tones that smack of something grand, they know not what. Some surrender to slogans that exalt liberty; promise greater responsibility; that even (dare we say it) mention God and imply that yes, there's more to life than passing fantasies of never lasting pleasure. These latter mostly vote Republican. They long for the real substance of that old American dream, our liberty. I like to believe that there are still enough of them to constitute a governing majority, if ever they would come together in earnest to vote for what they say they long to see. But even now, faced with the prospective triumph of everything they profess to deplore, they remain passive, hesitant, divided, confused- filled with noble appetites but all unwilling to risk moving toward the highlands where nobility can be satisfied. They hear with pleasure the echoes of Ronald Reagan, calling to America as that 'city on a hill'. But mired by love of pleasure in their suburbs on the plain, though they hear, they will not climb.

Such people have a decision to make, not unlike the one that faced Lot's congregation when the Lord gave them leave to escape the fate of Sodom and Gomorrah. Will they be Lot or Lot's wife? They must choose between the steep path to hope that dwells in the highlands, or the memories of pleasure tugging at their heartstrings, pulling toward the plains and hope's destruction. It is of course only the memory of pleasure that beckons: a vain delusion. For us the surest indication of this is the little grain of truth in the alleged usurper's State of the Union address. Amidst improbable promises of future messianic wonders, he admitted that the likely and immediate prospect was one of debt, dearth, and government inflicted discipline. The real question therefore is not whether we will suffer, but whether we will do so to help Obama overthrow our liberty or to help ourselves restore it.

In slavery times some masters' prized possession was a dark skinned overseer whose appearance lent some color of legitimacy to the brutal reality of enslavement. Their greatest nightmare was one who rose to be a rallying point against this clever deception. Against this nightmare, the most clever and enslaving deception of all was the preacher who appealed to the longing for freedom in order to enmesh the enslaved in a soulish disposition that sings hymns to freedom in the land of bye and bye, but does nothing here and now to assert or pursue that freedom. Such was the caricature of Christianity often encouraged amongst their "chattel" by skillful slaveholders. Such sadly is the role the Republican Party now plays in the drama that depicts the fate of America's liberty.

Happily, the best antidote to the false Christianity used to facilitate the tyranny of earthly masters, is the true faith that represents the liberty of God's creation. God's liberty offers every human being the chance to be their own master with no provision except that they respond to the goodwill that God offers them by accepting it themselves and extending it to all others. In doing so they constitute a self-governing community for which God's goodwill becomes the law. This is the clear, straightforward vision of republican liberty that America's founding generation sought to implement. In the Declaration of Independence they eloquently set forth its principles. In the war for Independence they proved their dedication to its truth. In the Constitution of the United States they strove, as best they could, to fashion a framework for its construction.

Abraham Lincoln's legacy has been falsely played upon and manipulated a good deal in recent weeks. But are there really any Americans left truly committed to government of, by and for the people, the form of government to which Lincoln dedicated all the sacrifice, suffering and death of the American Civil war? If so, the most critical and desperate need of our times is a vehicle for their action that is truly, faithfully, wholeheartedly committed to its preservation. Yet, though by name the Democrats invoke the people's strength, they embrace an ideology that betrays that strength for the sake of government power. Though by name the Republicans invoke the common good that is the people's liberty, they have sold out the faith and fear to act on the creed that is the foundation of our free republic. If we mean to restore it, then we must reject the betrayal of the Democrats and the sold-out timidity of the so-called Republicans. We must cease to be the consumers of their political lies, wallowing in the throes of the nightmare they have brought upon us. We must become instead the re-builders of a fresh republican hope, the real American dream.

In light of this challenge, it is surely providential that contemporary science and technology now offer tools exactly suited to the practical challenge at hand. Next, we'll take a look at the characteristics of a structure of political action that makes use of these tools. It must be designed from the ground up to be consistent with the goal of rebuilding the ark of liberty. Otherwise it will not survive the flood of lies, debt and delusions that now threatens to overwhelm our freedom. As background for this discussion, pay a visit to http://AIPnews.com. Explore what you find there. After all, the old saw is sometimes right on. A good illustration saves more than a thousand words.

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