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.

Obama's Rise and Fall-What is the key?

Click on the title above to read my latest article at WorldNetDaily.com

A Prayer for the Faithful

Like Washington's army at Valley Forge, the political forces seeking to reestablish the constitutional republic in America today suffer greatly from the lack of material resources. This is partly the consequence of the current economic squeeze being used to pressure the nation into relinquishing its liberty. But another contributing factor touches on one of the sorest points of the current situation- the fact that many well intentioned people around the country continue to give their "widow's mite" to organizations that have routinely sacrificed the moral and political causes they profess to serve.

During the 2009 election cycle these supposed champions of moral conservatism ( i.e., pro-life and supportive of the God ordained natural family, upholding the Godly principles of the American Declaration of Independence, beginning with the respect for the existence and authority of the Creator God) and Constitutional liberty (upholding the sovereignty of the American people, border security, limited government, based on representation, federalism and the separation of powers, and the private enterprise economy) betrayed the good faith of their supporters by backing for President candidates they knew to be false to these causes. Many of them have also taken positions on key issues like the judicial promotion of homosexual marriage that abandon Constitutional liberty and allow duplicitous public officials to connive at the destruction of the marriage based family using the specious argument that their actions are constrained by the force of law. (In this fashion, for example, Mitt Romney pretended to support the God ordained family while single handedly forcing the issuance of illegal marriage licenses to homosexual couples in Massachusetts. He pretended to act under compulsion from the Massachusetts high court, even though in its opinion on the matter the Court itself acknowledged that no lawful action could be taken until and unless a new law was passed by the state legislature. Thus Romney's action struck a critically damaging blow against the institution of marriage, and openly promoted the false understanding of judicial power that effectively destroys the separation of powers. Yet organizations like the Family Research Council continue to feature him as a legitimate moral and Constitutional conservative.)

After employing underhand tactics to prevent people from hearing a consistent and comprehensive conservative message during the Republican primary season, these organizations and individuals actively promoted moral relativism during the general election, relying on a lesser of evils approach to herd well intentioned conservative voters toward a candidate (John McCain) they knew to have broken faith on all the key conservative issues. Not surprisingly, their chosen champion then backed the G. W. Bush administration's bailout proposals, known then and now to be the lead leg of the leap into socialism the Obama faction now seeks rapidly to consolidate.

From my first hand experience at Tea Party events, as well as the many reports from other events around the country, I know that many good hearted Americans feel the same deep loyalty to liberty and its moral basis that I do. They are seeking a rallying point round which to unify like-minded citizens in a consistent, effective effort to pull our nation back from the abyss of unconstrained government dictatorship. There are individuals and organizations that have not bent the knee to Baal; that never surrendered to expedient moral relativism; that never sold out, for ambition or material support, their allegiance to the cause of morally principled liberty. Yet I know from firsthand experience that many of the individuals and organizations that have steadfastly supported consistent, comprehensive conservative views are languishing now on the brink of collapse.

The forces that seek to establish socialist dictatorship are shamelessly raiding the public coffers, and through intimidating displays (like the firing of the GM CEO) they are adding corporate wealth to their political reserves. Meanwhile, the economic squeeze used as the excuse for their power grab saddles the defenders of liberty and private enterprise with a shrinking base of material support. When resources are scarce, it is all the more important that people allocate them with care. Yet all too many are still willing to give what little they have to those who have and are still betraying the causes they profess to serve. Sadly, though they give until it hurts, their sacrifice will do nothing to advance their hopes.

Every day I offer my prayers to God for the good men and women I see working without fanfare or reward in the true cause of liberty. Every now and again, when the material pressures reach the point of deep crisis, one or another of them alludes somehow to that reality, but it is rare. Like heroes silently enduring torture at the hands of their enemies, they grimly soldier on. Meanwhile there rings in their ears the taunt like that which Christ heard from His tormentors: "He trusted on the Lord that He would deliver him: Let Him deliver him, seeing he delighted in Him." (Psalm 22:8, cp Matthew 27:43) It's the fate, I guess of those who will not sell out that their roofs sometimes fall in. And so, proving their faithfulness, the trustworthy languish. Meanwhile people who sigh for standard bearers they can trust continue to devote their increasingly scarce reserves to those they should know by now that they cannot. And they shake their heads, wondering why so few stand firm. Go figure.

"Who provides for the raven his food, When his young ones cry unto God, And wander about for lack of food." (Job 38:41)

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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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United by Right

"Justice is the end of government. It is the end of civil society. It ever has been and ever will be pursued until it be obtained, or until liberty be lost in the pursuit." (Federalist, #51)

My friend Tom Hoefling, National chairman of America's Independent Party, called to my attention today a thoughtful piece by Ken Blackwell (former Ohio Secretary of State and recently among the candidates for chairman of the GOP) about the "politics of division…at play within the conservative movement." In his political career Ken has shown himself to be a man with considerable respect for principle, and one who is willing to give issues of moral principle, like respect for innocent life, the priority required for our survival as a free people. In his essay, he rightly admonishes conservatives to remember their common and unifying commitment to the primacy of individual rights. "The place of the individual vis-à-vis the state is the root of commonality for all conservatives, and the basic disconnect between conservatives and collectivists. Government exists not to confer rights, but instead to secure rights." He rightly declares that "the common enemy of all conservatives is the centrality of the state instead of the individual in our political system." He admonishes conservatives to "wake up to this common opponent…"

There can be no doubt that unity is an essential ingredient for success in political, as in military, conflict. Recognizing the common enemy can certainly contribute to such unity. Of course, on the verge of route, when the forces of the enemy loom large in seeming triumph, such recognition can also be the source of discouragement and demoralization. At such times, it has often been more likely to contribute to unanimous retreat or surrender than to a determined stand against the exultant foe. But if, in the face of that exultation, one hardy soul picks up the fallen ensign of their cause, and braving the taunts and deadly missiles of the enemy lifts it again aloft, that reminder of the common good the soldiers fight for, and the common hope it represents, sometimes has been enough to turn the tide of war. People will stand, even against overwhelming odds, when roused by positive and deep commitment to the common good for which they stand.

In this regard I often think of Madison's words from Federalist #51, with their implied warning to the friends of liberty, that justice is the ultimate aim of political life, for the sake of which even liberty will be sacrificed. This should remind thoughtful advocates of individual rights that all such rights are rooted in a claim of right (that is to say, justice). If that claim is not successfully defended, rights will not be preserved.

Ironically, at least in their rhetoric the advocates of socialist collectivism seem never to forget the primacy of justice. Whatever the soporific density of his tendentious economic theories, there are passages in the writings of Karl Marx that burn hot from the fire of his outrage against the inhumane abuses of the Industrial Age. Though by and large they reject Christianity and deny divine authority any relevance to law or politics, the politicians of the left constantly appeal to the sense of justice as they demand programs for the poor, equity for the workers, and respect for the downtrodden and contemned. Leftist ideology often produces massive suffering and death precisely because it gives such weight to the political goal; the end that justifies any and every means; the requirement of justice so absolute that in its presence individual life and suffering lose any and all significance.

What has fueled the undeniable victories of the left, so costly to humanity? A false assertion of individual rights that acts without respect for the deep injustices caused by unbridled lust for wealth, pleasure and self-idolizing power. From the brutalized peasants and urban laborers carelessly offended by the old, so-called aristocracies, to the miners and industrial laborers callously abused by the builders of nineteenth and twentieth century industrial empires, the adroitly highlighted tragedy of these injustices recruited the strength of revolutionary movements around the world.

The socialist revolutionary sees government power as the only means to curtail these abuses. To end the exploitative repression of the many by the few they erect an overawing bureaucratic power that represses all equally. Those who will not conform to the paradigm of government repression, they simply eliminate. The toll goes beyond the many millions dead, however, to encompass the death of the human spirit, and the energy and creativity that fuels the search for knowledge and technological development. Government expands its control until the whole of society conforms to its requirements, and in the process becomes a cancerous mass, no longer living yet pulsating with life.

Between the extremes of dissolute individualism and cancerous government repression, the American founders made out a third alternative, a middle ground upon which individuals who respect the possibility of human community empower a government that respects the possibilities of individual existence. While admitting the necessity for government to restrain individual abuses of freedom, they respected the need for self-reliant individuals to restrain the abuses of government. The result is a form of government that relies upon the force of individual character to provide the motive power that constrains individuals from abuse. The just government of individuals (their freedom to act without abuse) achieved through self-government (their willingness to impose constraints upon themselves.)

Of course the idea of self-government makes no sense in the absence of an understanding of justice that makes clear the boundaries of freedom (that is, the actions that mark the limits beyond which freedom becomes abusive.)

The Declaration of Independence reflects the ingenious and elegant reasoning through which the founders expressed and established such an understanding. As justice is the freedom to act without fear of abuse, just government must derive its authority from a corresponding act of freedom, one that represents the pure self-determination of a will that in no way infringes upon the will of any other. But such a pure act of self-determination (acting of itself, and therefore in no way infringing upon another) is not possible for any contingent being. Only the being that is in and for itself is capable of such freedom. The conceptual possibility of justice therefore arises from our acknowledgment of the existence of such a being, authorizing the claim of freedom made by every individual. The Declaration refers to the self-subsistent being from whose existence the possibility of justice arises as the Creator. Yet because the existence of this self-determining being is essential to every individual claim of freedom, respect for the consequences of its existence becomes the limiting condition for that claim, the conceptual boundary within which every free individual must operate, or else surrender their claim to freedom. Every exercise of individual freedom must therefore show respect to and for the being whose existence accounts for the possibility of individual freedom. But where human beings are concerned, the individual is one of many, each of whom must be taken into account. The Declaration reflects the need for this accounting when it concludes that, to be legitimate, government must be based upon consent.

Of course, the Declaration's reasoning requires a concept of the Creator that goes beyond any simplistic analogy with the activity of human artisans. The Creator not only produces the result, He constitutes it, so that apart from Him its existence is inconceivable. The endowment of unalienable rights is therefore an act of sharing in a sense that goes beyond any merely objective exchange. It connotes, like all expressions of love, the active and continuous presence of the giver. But if the present in its very substance involves the presence of the giver, nothing can be made of it that is inconsistent with His being. The freedom that the Creator originates in this way continues to exist only insofar as it corresponds, in every way, to what He is. All else is not freedom, but abuse.

In light of this reasoning, freedom cannot be understood, much less respected and preserved, without reference to its source. People who say they care about freedom, but who reject the need to address the question of justice that arises from abuse open the way for leftists who exploit their apparent indifference to human misery to discredit the concern with individual rights, which they portray as a cover for greedy ambition. Such false proponents of freedom also encourage the neglect of character, and character education, which turns the dissolution of freedom from a conceptual consequence to a destructive reality.

During the Bush era Republicans suffered more and more acutely from this vulnerability, until it finally resulted in their decisive defeat. Such success as they enjoyed came mainly from the false impression that they cared about the just basis for freedom, though what they really cared for was the support they could harvest among voters who acted on their faith in the Creator God. When pushed to it, however, Republicans by and large tacitly ceded the high moral ground to the left. They do not act boldly because they cannot or will not rely on arguments that refer to and respect the origin of free will, the Creator God without whose authority human assertions of freedom are self-defeating.

Translated into common sense terms, this becomes an issue of trust. As a rule it makes no sense to trust that bad people will do good things, and this includes people who have no concept of good that goes beyond what gets them the goods they desire. In the hands of such people power is likely to be abused from the moment abuse serves their advantage, and the abuse is likely to continue until they themselves are disadvantaged by it. Under such circumstances, individual freedom seems good only to people who do not fear to suffer the tyranny of others who are sufficiently powerful to abuse it. This variety of courage is so narrowly distributed that I wonder if it has ever been displayed by the majority of any people. Most people want some assurance of security against the abuses of power. When that assurance takes the form of moral education and restraint, individual rights and liberty may flourish. When individual character is neglected, and the assumption of self-indulgence prevails, the desire for security against abuse feeds the expansion of government power and control.

Some conservatives pretend to want limited government, but reject the premise of justice that makes sense of rights and liberty. But it provides the only consistent foundation for a self-disciplined understanding of freedom that can serve as the basis for moral education. Moral education, in turn, builds the people's confidence in the prevalence of the sort of good character that, in the absence of a pervasive apparatus of enforcement, assures timid humanity against abuse.

In light of this I have understood for a long time why leftists promote every form of licentious desire and behavior. They know that the breakdown of moral constraint leads to the exultation of government power. It took longer for me to realize that conservatives who reject or downplay the importance of issues that affect moral self-discipline and character are the fifth column of totalitarian ideology among the sincere proponents of liberty. At best they see the forms of representative government based on individual rights as a pleasant mask for authoritarian paternalism: well intentioned elites nobly obliging themselves to decide what is good for the hapless masses. Where socialists aim for a world in which all adults will be slaves of the state, such so-called conservatives envisage a world in which all are its obedient children. Of course both groups exempt themselves from the perpetual dependency they will inflict on others.

There have been enough flourishing empires in human history to prove that many people are happy to be fairly well-treated slaves, and even more are pleased to live as well cared for children. Unfortunately I cannot think of one such despotic empire that did not in the end use the slaves or children as wolves use sheep. Americans have been free of the slaughter pens for long enough to be careless. They are giving in to the delusion that free individuals without moral conscience will respect those enslaved by passion or indolence, or that an all powerful government will serve rather than exploit the needs of disarmed and dependent subjects. But in a society of individuals who need such government power to control their abuses, where shall they be found who will not abuse its power, and for how long?

The crisis of our times demands that everyone think about that question. People who acknowledge the authority of the Creator should think especially hard. America's moral heart can still be rallied, but not by false premises of unity that leave the nation's standard of moral principle in the dust. Citizens must be found who will not run in the same the same direction as the pursuing enemies of freedom, whatever label those enemies claim to wear. We must turn, stand fast and rally round the standard which the Declaration blazons with God's name, for only beneath that standard may the meek rest assured that the rights we fight to save will justly serve the right He has ordained.

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Steele and the GOP- No Reason for Victory

The name of Abraham Lincoln is used and abused a good deal these days. Despite his overt rejection of the principles Lincoln strove to preserve, Obama has tried to portray himself as Lincoln's heir (probably to make up for his lack of any real connection to the heritage that includes the struggle against slavery, so important in the background of the black Americans his media claque claims he represents.) On the other hand, conservatives who adhere to the mobocratic version of states' rights (some of whom I encountered among Ron Paul's supporters in the Constitution Party) practically demonize Lincoln as the original destroyer of American Federalism. In their different ways I think both Obama and the mob rule states' rights adherents simply ignore the aspect of Lincoln's statesmanship that has always impressed me the most. Though not educated in any formal sense, he was perhaps the most profound thinker ever to participate in American politics. Certainly he was the most thoughtful man to serve as President (with proper respect and apologies to Thomas Jefferson and J. Q. Adams.)

The key to my judgment in this regard is not just what he said, but the way he presented it. All of his memorable addresses bear the hallmark of true eloquence. They are not just moving phrases but each presents an argument that appeals to common sense, that moves and seeks to persuade the reasonable mind. As I recall his biography, the foundation of this characteristic in his speeches was probably his study of Euclid's geometry. Geometric reasoning develops the faculty of mind that retains a clear grasp of first principles through all the twists and turns of subsequent reflection. This faculty led to the insights on which republican, constitutional self-government is based and it is indispensable for the preservation of liberty.

Perhaps the clearest symptom of liberty's impending demise is the almost complete absence of such reasoning from the speeches, and apparently from the thinking, of contemporary American politicians. Controversies swirl over their declarations of support for this or that opinion, without regard to any reasoning that supports their declamations or relates them to the basic premises that make sense of our still assumed claim to unalienable rights and the form of government that limits its power on account of them.

I was reminded of this deficiency as I perused, and in some cases responded to, some of the reactions to my last posting about Michael Steele's abandonment of the pro-life cause. Some people simply can't understand how I dared to question his adamant declarations of pro-life conviction. They seemed to think that I was engaging in some kind of personal attack against him, questioning the honesty and sincerity of his commitment. It seems never to have occurred to them that it's possibleto say with sincerity things that make no sense. I presented reasoning in support of the view that Steele's often repeated views contradict his claim to be pro-life. But in their reaction to what I wrote these critics took no account of the reasoning. They made no attempt to deal with or respond to its logic.

But it might be said of logic what Leon Trotsky is supposed to have said of strategy (or was it war?) You may not be interested in it, but it is interested in you. Ignore it, and you will still suffer its consequences. In this case though Steele's defenders ignore it, the pro-life cause will suffer the consequences. Except as a matter of easily defused or circumvented sentiment, the stand against abortion makes no sense without an appeal to the principles of justice on which the United States of America was founded. Though in its most extreme forms (such as the live birth abortion procedure) it offends aesthetic sensibilities, its ugliness can be camouflaged without too much difficulty, and its ugliest consequences (connected with declining respect for the mysterious subjective worth of human life) may not appear in their truly most repugnant form for one or more generations. Thus even at the sentimental level, reasoning is required to argue the pro-life position. But at this level, since they must argue on behalf human life in it most rudimentary and least recognizable form, against the articulate fear, anguish and pride of fully developed people, pro-life proponents probably face a losing battle. It reminds me of the statement Tocqueville made about the difficulty of arguing justice for enslaved blacks when other Americans were accustomed to see their physical appearance as repulsive and barely human. However false, the perceptions of prejudice have real consequences.

In the American context the antidote to this prejudiced sensibility involved the mobilization of reason and common sense based on the appeal to just principles of liberty. The political effectiveness of this appeal depended on the respect people had for reasonable argument, and on their emotional attachment to what they rightly perceived as the blessings of liberty. Neither can simply be taken for granted. It's hard to imagine that Lincoln's statesmanship would have succeeded had the eloquence of someone like Daniel Webster (ironically arguing in apparent support of forbearance in dealing with the slave states) not roused and cemented the sense that liberty and union were wedded and bound together, one and inseparable.

If they bother to acknowledge that it has any place in politics at all, today's politicians generally treat the work of preserving our attachment to liberty and justice as a secondary matter. Yet when the emotional attachment to these real though abstract goods shrivels away, what is left to do battle against the strong passions of lust, greed and selfish interest which move people to trample on those whose appearance, unpopularity or material condition make them contemptible in the eyes of the majority, or of self-serving elites acting in its name? Many Republicans still claim that their Party's principles embrace the idea of limited government. But they blindly follow leaders like Steele who do not remember the limitation that ultimately matters most: the sense of justice and decency, grounded in reason, common sense and emotional conviction, that stands in the path of the mobocratic impulse, whether it seeks to despoil the rich or murder the poorly regarded.

I believe that there are times when the need to remember and articulate this limitation becomes the paramount task of American politics. Every aspect of the crisis we are in suggests that we are living through such a period. Some say our economic crisis is the greatest challenge we face. But isn't it rooted in our willingness to crush the welfare of our posterity with a burden of unlimited debt, in order to serve our own ambitions? Isn't this an aspect of the same ruthless selfishness that moves us to pretend that it's right physically to sacrifice our offspring everyday in the womb? In the past people died for the sake of offspring that had no life except in their heart's imagination. Today our living children die for the sake of a generation that seems to have no heart except to pursue its present vain imaginings. With the greatest chance any people ever had to secure a strong foundation for future human justice and dignity, we stand on the brink of losing all such hopes because we haven't the patience to think through and act upon the principles on which they depend.

Isn't this our greatest crisis? Do you really believe we can withstand it behind leaders who will not truly acknowledge its existence? Michael Steele says that his job is to work for his Party's victory. What good are Party victories if they are gained by casting aside the discipline, heart and spirit of our present and future liberty? I know that conservatives want to thwart Obama's marxist schemes. I share that goal. But I will not join with people who are seeking to defeat one false hope with another. Rather I think we should have the courage to understand and articulate the real hope, the moral hope that our nation is supposed to represent. Then, trusting in the strength that it bestows, we will be able to do what Americans have done before- against all odds we will conserve our freedom for new generations to come.

Steele Slips Again, But America Should not Fall for it

Once again we are supposed to believe that Michael Steele had a slip of the tongue. This time in an Interview with GQ magazine which included the following exchange:

"The choice issue cuts two ways. You can choose life, or you can choose abortion," he said. "My mother chose life. So I think the power of the argument of choice boils down to stating a case for one or the other."

Interviewer Lisa DePaulo asked: "Are you saying you think women have the right to choose abortion?"

Steele replied: "Yeah. I mean, again, I think that's an individual choice."

DePaulo: "You do?"

Steele: "Yeah. Absolutely."

DePaulo: "Are you saying you don't want to overturn Roe v. Wade?"

Steele: "I think Roe v. Wade — as a legal matter, Roe v. Wade was a wrongly decided matter."

DePaulo: "Okay, but if you overturn Roe v. Wade, how do women have the choice you just said they should have?"

Steele: "The states should make that choice. That's what the choice is. The individual choice rests in the states. Let them decide."

Twice before on this site (look under the topic GOP failure) I have discussed Steele's departure from the pro-life stance. Yet in a way not clearly in evidence before, this interview reveals the insidious character of the argument Steele represents. According to this argument, individual choices are not subject to interference by the Federal government. Rather you state the case for one side or the other, and let the individual decide. The problem is, of course, that matters of justice, of right and wrong, always involve individual choices. The choice to rob, lie, cheat and murder are all individual choices. The choice to rape, kidnap and enslave another is an individual choice. The choice to serve or not to serve someone in a restaurant, on account of their race, is an individual choice. Obviously the real issue is not whether individuals are free to choose between right and wrong. That's been clear since Eve made her fateful decision to eat the forbidden fruit. The issue is when and whether they have the right to choose as they do.

American liberty is founded on the premise that we are all created equal and endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights. This premise is not a statement about human aspirations. It's a statement about right and wrong. An unalienable right can be transgressed by individuals and governments, but the premise of liberty forbids the assertion that those who transgress they have the right to do so. Right is not on the side of government when it commits or tolerates murder, theft and terror against the innocent. Individuals and laws that do so are inherently unjust, and powers used in this way are not lawful powers.

Steele consistently maintains that issues, like abortion, that involve respect for unalienable rights, are properly decided at the state rather than the Federal level. But the premise of liberty makes no such distinction. Respect for unalienable rights is required of human governments at any and all levels, because the just powers of all such governments are derived from the people's exercise of those rights. As the Federal government only has the powers delegated to it by the states, so the state governments only have the powers delegated to them by the people. But the "unalienable" aspect of each person's rights means that such rights cannot be given away, not under any circumstances. What the people cannot rightly give, the states cannot rightly claim.

But the premise of liberty includes the notion that "to secure these rights governments are instituted among men." Though government cannot claim the power to transgress against unalienable rights, the foundational purpose of government entails the obligation to preserve and respect them. No government powers are just except those derived from the only source consistent with this obligation, which is the consent of the people. Clearly however, the idea of consent based on respect for unalienable rights does not mean that the people have the right to do whatever they please, since they cannot rightly do anything that alienates (contradicts or surrenders) their unalienable rights. In this sense, government of by and for the people, is limited government: not only limited by the terms of its constitution, but by the purpose and terms of its institution or establishment. Liberty therefore is not identical with a simply unlimited freedom to choose. Individuals are free to choose actions that violate unalienable right, but they cannot claim the right to do so.

When, in their individual or collective capacity, people choose to violate unalienable rights they transgress liberty. Since liberty is its essential characteristic, this transgression effectively abandons the republican form of government. When an individual commits this transgression, it is a criminal act. When a government commits this transgression, it is an unlawful government. Under our constitution the supervision of this transgression when committed by individuals, has been left to the states. But if and when a state or states neglect this supervision, the U.S. Constitution (Article IV, section 4) explicitly requires that the government of the United States guarantee a republican form of government in each of the states. Like the guarantor of a loan, it must intervene to make good any deficiency in the states' respect for its requirements. Michael Steele's assertion that the states have the exclusive right to decide the issue of abortion is therefore incorrect. They should have the opportunity to decide it (which is one of the reasons the Roe v. Wade decision was prudentially wrong) but if they decide, by action or neglect, in favor of committing or allowing the violation of unalienable right, the Federal government has the Constitutional obligation to intervene. On abortion it may be sensible, after so many years of misplaced respect for the unlawful Roe v. Wade decision, to make this obligation clear to all the states by Federal legislation in some form. This could help to avoid miscalculations that might disrupt our civil peace. For this reason I think that such legislation, including a Constitutional amendment may be prudent. However, our reasoning here makes clear that it is not legally or Constitutionally necessary.

Finally, I think it's time we all stopped pretending that Steele's persistent advocacy of the "pro-choice" position is an accident, or a slip of the tongue. I believe these episodes are purposeful. His actions are meant to assert the fallacy that it is pro-life to be pro-choice. But this means accepting the position that at some level the choice to murder an innocent human being is consistent with respect for the unalienable right to life. Except we embrace the noxious position that right and wrong choices are equally just, this is not and can never be a pro-life view. Except we abandon the whole idea of unalienable right, this is not and can never be a view consistent with American liberty.

I think that Steele and the people he represents have gotten away with this disingenuous effort to warp, distract and mislead the pro-life movement for long enough. This issue is vital to the survival of America's free institutions. People of conscience deserve a frank and purposeful debate about it, not a sly attempt at argument by inadvertence. To that end I challenge Michael Steele to face me in such a debate, in a venue open to scrutiny by the general public. Though the courage to debate is not the test of truth, it may be a test of true conviction. I claim to be pro-life because I have stood that test, against Barack Obama, Alan Dershowitz and others. Why should pro-life people accept Steele's protestations of pro-life conviction if he refuses to do so?

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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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Can Bunning Make Good on Resignation Threat?

Jim Bunning (R, Ky.) is one of the most conservative members of the United States Senate. Unlike so many who wear the conservative label to get votes, but betray conservatives when called upon to vote, Bunning stands tall on issues like the defense of innocent life, the preservation of the natural family, and the paramount importance of securing our borders and enforcing our immigration laws. Mind you, I'm not saying I think he's perfect. (Not unlike myself some years back, he hasn't yet figured out the connection between so-called free trade and the surrender of American sovereignty to international socialism, for example. But given his otherwise consistent opposition to the socialist agenda, there's reason to hope that he can be persuaded by the facts just as I was.) But his overall performance earns him a 2008 conservative MVP nomination at the very least. The clincher: he had the good sense and courage to vote against the $700 billion dollar leap into socialism (the so-called bank bailout). Understanding its true import, he also anticipated its now generally admitted failure to produce adequate results.

Now Michael Steele's wannabe hip-hop Republicans (including Bunning's Kentucky teammate, Senator Mitch McConnell) reportedly want Senator Bunning taken out of the game. They pretend it's because of his age, his alleged gaffes, and his electoral vulnerability. We're supposed to think it's just a co-incidence that he's the exact opposite of the Whitman (Meg or Christine Todd)-Romney anti-conservatives Steele has been bboyin' with over the past few years. These powerheads mean to smack real conservatives like Bunning. Unlike in R Kelly's classic video, they're not even trying to keep it on the down low. Why? I think they want to demoralize conservative voters. Keep enough of them away from the polls, and elections will be decided by gotcha leftists (Democrat or Republicans) and their gimme constituents. This would redefine the political spectrum: Obama's well-tailored, ruthless but soft-spoken communism on the left; Godless, boisterously greed driven Republican materialism on the right; with Mitt Romney's pseudo-(that's Greek for lying) conservatism claiming the middle ground. Sincerely pro-life conservatives who believe in God ordained unalienable rights, the Republic and truly free, private enterprise economics are to be stigmatized as senile, belittled as whack jobs, and generally set up to be talked down and driven out. This strategy similarly centers the cross hairs on the voting majority of the Republican electorate, not to mention the working majority of the American people. Tageting your own forces hardly seems like a good way to victory, which may be why people who refuse to put partisan blinders on have reached the conclusion that the Republican Party is wack (to put it in terms Steele Republicans want "the young people" to believe they understand.)

It doesn't seem fair, though, to be so hard on the Republican leadership for using these tricks, and not say a word about the conservative donors and grassroots voters who are still willing to be taken in by them. As the RINO Republicans reposition the party to be the second head on the socialist body politic, these co-dependent conservatives need to stop co-operating with their abusers and file for divorce. Of course political parties aren't really like marriages. Nobody should even pretend the association has to last a lifetime, and the only kids involved are the children and grandchildren the two-party socialists mean to crush under a load of debt, despotism and depravity.

The report has it that Bunning has threatened to resign if the Steele Republicans insist on coming after him. If he means to resign from the U.S. Senate, and let the Democrat governor of Kentucky give Senate Democrats a filibuster proof majority, that's bad for America and would be hard to excuse. Instead he should just resign from the Republican Party. Given his brand of sincere, proven conservatism, there's a growing constituency ready to rally to his support. It's being organized in Kentucky and elsewhere, from the grassroots up, and is already by registration the third largest political party in America.

If I had the chance, I would suggest to Senator Bunning that while he's thinking things through, it might be worth it to pay a visit to http://aipnews.com. Make the acquaintance of America's Independent Party. Senator, you're an incumbent with a staunch commitment to do right on issues many conservatives care about deeply. Unlike Michael Steele and other Republican Party figureheads of the moment, you don't have to apologize for breaking faith with your constituents on these issues. In a three way general election contest, pro-life, secure borders, private enterprise loving, God fearing conservatives who are loyal to liberty and the Constitution, have the winning bloc of votes. Your proven good faith should give them a compelling reason to resist letting the Steele Republicans play their intended game of drive out, psych out and sell out against the conservative base. What's more, in a U.S. Senate where so much rides on a one or two vote difference, think what an Independent sincerely conservative Senator might achieve.

AIP is appropriately dubbed the new home of American conservatism. This could be the chance for a conservative home run from a veteran pitcher who has what it takes to make it happen. Resign? Maybe. Just don't give in.

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The Republicans: A Curious Response

Gregory (Scotland Yard detective): "Is there any other point to which you would wish to draw my attention?"

Holmes: "To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time."

Gregory: "The dog did nothing in the night-time."

Holmes: "That was the curious incident."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silver_Blaze

Aficionados of the Sherlock Holmes stories know that the dog didn't bark because the supposed culprit in the night was well and favorably known to the pooch. In fact the murderer in the Silver Blaze story wasn't a wrongdoer at all but a horse, who kills its trainer in furious reaction to his attempt to nick its tendon just enough to prevent it from winning an important race the next day.

For all his phony posturing, Obama's actions seem calculated to drive the United States over the cliff of bankruptcy, while leaving us defenseless against our enemies. Just when we thought the race was over, Obama and his cronies come along to make sure we lose forever. We're headed for a day of reckoning alright, and he's been raised up to make sure we show up on time.

As he leads us to the slaughter, here comes the Republican party- the one a lot of people have been feeding with their votes at election time in hopes that it will at least bark loudly when danger threatens. Instead, the only sounds we hear are the typical yaps and whimpers a dreaming watchdog makes in its sleep. Socialism is on the march. Soviet style one-party rule has already turned the corner. The Constitution is being prepared as tomorrow's trash can liner. Yet all we hear in the Republican response are the usual bleats about spending and irresponsibility, along with the quiet acknowledgement that the Republicans have no right to talk. "I guess that'll show those burgerglers."

Of course Obama's media claque would pounce if anyone whispered words like socialism, communism or despotism. No gulag yet, but they'll laugh and ridicule. They'll mention you in the same breath as (God forbid) Alan Keyes, a sure sign that the owners of the two-party system have taken you off the roster and posted you off the premises.

If you had your eye on the Republican nomination in 2012, would you risk that? Leave aside the fact that your cowardice, and that of all the Republicans like you, guarantees that the Republican nomination will be as worthless to liberty in 2012 as it was in 2008. Politics isn't about making choices that are good for the American people, just those that avoid the wrath of their now unchallenged keepers. ("There used to be a home for the brave around here somewhere, but I think it finally went back to the bank. Couldn't make the payments, I guess. Nice folks, but mortgaged way over their heads.")

Worth considering? Then don't forget to DIGG IT!!!!

The GOP: Steel is lacking

At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.

 
 

 
 

Abraham Lincoln spoke these words to the Young Men's Lyceum of Springfield, Illinois in 1838. They have been much on my mind lately. The election victory of a man like Barack Obama, with views that contradict all the self-evident truths our Constitution is based upon, portends the suicide of democratic self-government. Now the Republicans have elected a national chairman whose utter indifference to those same principles confirms the suicide of the Republican Party. Consider the following exchange:

 

WALLACE: You are one of the co-founders of something called the Republican Leadership Council...

STEELE: Yep.

WALLACE: ... which supports candidates who favor abortion and gay rights.

STEELE: Yep.

WALLACE: Does the GOP need to do a better job of reaching out to people who hold those views?

STEELE: I think — I think that's an important opportunity for us, absolutely, because within our party we do have those who have that view as well as outside.

And my partnership with Christy Todd Whitman was an effort to hopefully build a bridge between moderates and conservatives in the party. I'm a pro-life Roman Catholic conservative, always have been.

WALLACE: You also support a constitutional amendment against gay marriage.

STEELE: That's right. And the reality of it is this, because I don't think we should muck around with the Constitution. We can deal with that at the state level, OK? That's my personal view.

But the reality of it is the party has to recognize the diversity of opinion that's out there. And we're not going to get everyone to agree with the — Ronald Reagan said it best. If you agree with me 80 percent of the time, I think that's good enough. I mean, I think we can move forward on that 80 percent.

So there are some 80-percent issues out there that we can work with those within our party and outside our party and create a new bridge and a new opportunity. That was my involvement with the RLC, and I'm very happy about that.

WALLACE: But just to press on this...

STEELE: Yep.

WALLACE: ... if you believe — if someone believes in a woman's right to choose, if someone believes in gay civil rights, where's the 80 percent agreement with the Republican Party?

STEELE: It could be — it could be on our — on economics.

WALLACE: No, but I'm talking about on those issues.

STEELE: Well, you know, see — now, Chris, you've just defined — you've just defined the world in which there are issues. You've just narrowed — you've just narrowed my scope to two issues.

WALLACE: No, I'm just saying on those issues, is there 80 percent agreement?

STEELE: Well, if there — if that's the 20 percent they disagree with us on, let's work on the 80 percent where they agree with us. That's my point.

I'm not going to allow anyone to define the issues for us and say, "Well, these are the only two issues that really matter." There's a whole range of issues out there in which we can address the American people and the American people can come to our table.

 
 

Michael Steele proudly proclaims his role in founding an organization dedicated to supporting candidates who favor abortion and gay "rights." Though he calls himself a "pro-life Roman Catholic conservative" the new GOP chair shows no sympathy with the reasoning that justifies the moral views associated with the label. In his world, some people feel one way, some people another, with no sense or reason for what they do. Though he later declares "you don't give up on your basic principles," and speaks of "the core principles of this party" he cavalierly belittles the issue of respect for the unalienable right to life, an issue that directly involves the core principles of justice the United States is founded upon. Steele speaks of the deepest issues of moral concern with all the blithe indifference of a confirmed moral relativist. This attitude is characteristically liberal, not conservative. Its appearance in him tends to destroy the credibility of his conservative claims.

Are no issues more important than others? Was Abe Lincoln wrong when he broke with the Whig politicians who professed to oppose slavery, but supported slaveholders' rights? Was he wrong when he opposed the U.S. Supreme Court's Dred Scott decision depriving enslaved black Americans of the right to escape their oppressors? Would Steele chide Lincoln for wanting to "muck around with the Constitution" rather than "deal with that [slavery] at the state level." How can it be that the black American's unalienable right to liberty must be decided as a matter of national principle, but the unalienable right to life of every mother's child can be left to the will and whim of majorities at the State level?

Lincoln thought the issue of unalienable right involved in slavery so important that it justified a grievous war, even if that war continued "until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid with another drawn with the sword." What then of the unalienable right to life, and the millions of lives taken by gruesome abortion? Michael Steele apparently thinks that such issues of principle aren't worth losing a vote over. So Lincoln must have been mad or evil to ask so many to risk and lose their lives.

But if Lincoln was wrong, what about G. W. Bush? After 9/11 he embarked on a war against the practitioners of terror declaring that "It will not end until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped and defeated." He said that the terrorists "hate our freedoms -- our freedom of religion, our freedom of speech, our freedom to vote and assemble and disagree with each other." He saw them as "the heirs of all the murderous ideologies of the 20th century. By sacrificing human life to serve their radical visions -- by abandoning every value except the will to power -- they follow in the path of fascism, and Nazism, and totalitarianism. And they will follow that path all the way, to where it ends: in history's unmarked grave of discarded lies."

Bush appeared to believe, as Lincoln did, that the defense of unalienable rights deserves the highest priority, especially against those who are "sacrificing human life to serve their radical visions." But now it seems the Republican Party has abandoned that sense of priority. Now it seems, the rows of white crosses in our military cemeteries do not mark the graves of those who gave all for truths that deserved their all. Rather they mark the graves of patriot suckers who went all in with the odds at twenty percent, for issues that shouldn't stand in the way of winning the next election.

The Republican Party was once the party of national principle, rallying those who sought to preserve the truthful sense of justice that gave every person a claim to government based upon consent, government constrained to act within limits defined by right, not might. Contrary to the malicious caricatures used to malign their positions, this was the source of the Republican preference for limited government, not greedy selfishness and calculation. Politicians lie when they promise a government that provides for our needs. But even if they could fulfill the promise, the concentration of power and control assembled to achieve such a result would crush the rights and therefore the initiative and enterprise of the people. Consider the devastating effects of welfare on the family structure, work ethic and general moral character of the communities government claims to help. (I do this at length in my book entitled Masters of the Dream.) Is it an accident that politicians seeking that kind of pervasive control over the nation take positions on critical moral issues that encourage selfish hedonism and moral lassitude? People preoccupied with themselves, and their endlessly clamoring passions, give up the firm character needed to sustain their liberty. They then pose few obstacles to ambitious elites who manipulate their fearful desires in order to distract from the degradation of their spirit, fortitude and courage. Thus does government of, by and for the people perish from the earth.

The people who claim to agree with the Republican preference for limited government, but who reject the moral principles that justify it, are either woefully ignorant or skillfully disingenuous. The experience of the last twenty years suggests that it's the latter. The very people who abandoned the principles of liberty when it comes to protecting the unalienable right to life have now supinely surrendered to the march of socialist economic policies that will consolidate government control of the economy and put liberty on the path to extinction. They falsely declare their readiness to defend every leaf and branch of economic freedom while quietly collaborating with the liberal assault on our national principles, an assault that will destroy such freedom at its root.

Michael Steele represents and speaks for them. Even their supposed pragmatism is deceptive. Steele quotes Reagan about people who "agree with me 80 percent of the time." Steele says "I think that's good enough. I mean I think we can move forward on that 80 percent." But what people is he talking about? On the immigration issue, for instance, 80 or ninety percent of the American people oppose the amnesty approach and want our borders secure and our immigration laws enforced. But in 2008 the Republican Party chose a standard bearer who disagreed with them, siding instead with globalists and economic special interests, who doubtless agreed with McCain on this "80 percent issue" though opposed by 80 percent of the people. A similar majority of the people opposed the failed 700 billion dollar bank bailout, but the Republicans in the Congress abandoned them, siding instead with the globalists and economic special interests who doubtless agree with the Congress on this "80 percent issue" though opposed by 80 percent of the people. Steele speaks for the 80 percent, alright, but its 80 percent of the arrogant, self-serving power and money elite who seem intent on toppling government of by and for the people.

The bailout represented a giant leap into socialism for America, but the Michael Steele Republicans hadn't the backbone to stand against it. Now that socialism is underway, they hope to win votes by posturing as the opponents of the pork-laden stimulus plans intended in fact to consolidate the dependency of our people upon government largess. But when the real crunch comes, I suspect the "80 percenters" will once again find a way reluctantly, regretfully, predictably to surrender. Steele says his business is winning, but how can the GOP win when it refuses to fight for and represent a winning majority of the people on issue after issue? There is a victory to be won, but only by leaders who will stand 100 percent for America's principles, America's sovereignty, and American freedom.

The Michael Steele Republicans are the obstacle to this victory. How long shall we indulge them with this two-party charade? The two parties actually cooperate to serve one goal- a controlling power elite that can run rough shod over the majority on any issues that contradict its will to power. Though the Republicans claim to battle for the things so many believe, their purported display of political martial arts has become a predictable routine of bluster, retreat and surrender. Tragically, steel is exactly what they lack. They're not fighting the Democrats. They're dancing with them, and it's a dance of death for liberty, for conscience and for truth.