Posted on 11/09/2006 11:19:29 AM PST by Ed Hudgins
(In my article on "The Battle for the Soul of the Republican Party" in the Fall, 2006 issue of The New Individualist I analyzed the likely results of a GOP turning more and more to big government, interventionist policies. In that issue TNI editor Robert Bidinotto's piece on "Back to the Future?" looked at the philosophical degeneration of the Republican Party. The results of the party's direction were seen at the polls in the 2006 elections.)
November 8, 2006 -- Months of prognostication about the predicted pitiful performance at the polls by Republicans has now given way to prescriptions about the direction of the party. Should the GOP move to the center, the right or the left? Truth be told, Republicans right now are just going around in circles. The party's own confusion and incoherence about what it stands for will ensure that it continues to wander in the political wilderness; it must take up again as its guide the principles of liberty and limited government.
How could the Republicans lose in the face of such a strong economy? Disgust over the Bush administration's confused, incoherent and unsuccessful approach to the war in Iraq certainly was a central factor in the GOP's defeat. So was the perception that the Republicans were corrupt big spenders, which many of them were. Theirs is seen more and more as the party of big government. The rejection of the party itself cut across ideological lines. Liberal Sen. Lincoln Chafee -- who got a favorable rating from 60 percent of voters in exit polls -- was defeated as was liberal Rep. Nancy Johnson. Conservative Sens. Rick Santorum and George Allen also lost, as did Rep. J.D. Hayworth. Further, many newly-elected Democrats are moderates within their party.
Of course, what is missing from the GOP is
(Excerpt) Read more at objectivistcenter.org ...
review
True, but those slightly more moderate Dems in the House know that they could be booted in two years if they are smeared with the radicalism of a Pelosi or Conyers or the criminality of an Alcee Hastings. Thus there will be at least a little discomfort among their ranks. Further, the new House Republican leadership might very well include Jeff Flake who's one of the best!
Also, note the attempt of the Randian crowd to talk about a "Goldwater-Reagan" GOP. Goldwater resisted Reagan every step of the way. Goldwater was an abortion enthusiast, publicly bragging in his dotage that he brought his daughter to an abortion mill to kill his grandchild and that anyone who did not like it could kiss the portion of his anatomy upon which he customarily sat. His first wife, Peggy, was a member of the Planned Barrenhood Board of Directors from 1940 or so through her death in the mid-1970s, right along with Mrs. Prescott Bush, grandmother of Dubya and mother of Bush the Feckless Elder.
The widow Bush was enraged when her son George the Elder (once known as Congressman Rubbers for his own PP connections) went ostensibly pro-life on the basis that being Reagan's VP was worth a switch on the issue. Dubya seems genuine on the issue and his grannie is dead anyhow.
As to Ronaldus Maximus, he did sign a pro-abort bill as California governor and the very next year tried to petition its repeal onto the California ballot. He changed the GOP and was closer to the pro-life movement than any other president.
Click on the link. The proponents of this nonsense are Objectivists, followers of the long-dead athiest serial adulteress Ayn Rand.
In 1976, la Rand, in her Ayn Rand newsletter, warned her sycophants to be sure to support liberal stumblebum Gerald Ford over Reagan because Ford could be trusted to preserve legal abortion and Reagan could not. So much for fiscal conservatism and individual human freedom. These people are about as conservative as SDS and the street revolutionary scum of the 1960s.
At least Rand herself had the minor integrity not to claim to be part of anything Reaganite. Her successors are less honest even than she.
I'm proudly not part of the religious right, as my longer analysis clearly indicates. Here's the link again:
http://www.objectivistcenter.org/cth--1794-GOP_battle.aspx
Take a careful read of the language from both the Goldwater 1964 and the Reagan 1980 platforms. That's the vision to which Republicans need to return. (By the way, Rand didn't back Reagan in 1980. I did and I thought she was wrong. I'm an Objectivist, not a Rand cultist.)
To repeat my central political point, the libertarians -- small "l" -- and traditional conservative factions of the party agreed that the rule of law, constitutionally-limited government and checks and balances were necessary barriers to the abuse of political power.
To the extended that Republicans today -- whether social conservatives or neocons -- want government to manage our lives, only from the right rather than the left, they should at least be honest like Santorum and declare themselves opponents of individual liberty. (See extended quotes from him in my longer piece.) I'd rather at least know if my liberty is being targeted from the right and the left.
These idiots need to intern for a congressman. The leadership picks the Committee Chairmen, and the Chairmen decide which legislation ever sees the light of day. If someone is a "moderate" Democrat, all it means is if it's a vote that might defeat him (say a gun control bill), he goes to Pelosi and asks permission to vote against the bill. They do a vote count, and if there's enough votes, the guy gets to take a pass, telling his constituents he "went against my party." Pelosi is already saying she is going to fire Jane Harman, the Dem congresswoman who worked with Bush on the Patriot Act, from the House Intelligence Committee chairmanship and replace her with Alycee Hastings or Reyes because Pelosi wants "party discipline."
Did you even read the article? It's not about Iraq at all. What are you talking about?
I wonder why we should read what you write. How about commenting on the article instead of rabbidly responding with little buzz phrases like "dinocon".
The real irony is that you are posting to the the correct thread and the originator of the thread doesn't know it.
The originator of the threat knows that you and perhaps the other guy don't recognize that you're being made fun of.
FYI -- Here's another perspective on the problems in Iraq and the rest of the Middle East. Not whether people in those countries deserve freedom but whether they're fit for it. Remember that Europe had centuries of religious warfare.
http://www.objectivistcenter.org/cth--883-Are_People_of_Middle_East_Fit_Freedom.aspx
There is no liberty of a non-owner to "liberate" your real estate.
There is no liberty to murder the innocent unborn.
There is no liberty to force taxpayer subsidies of the faux "marriages" of Bruce and Lance or of Bruce and Lance and Bowser or of a thirteen ring "marriage" of twelve dormitory resident college students and Puffy, the Perfect Persian Puddy.
I am generally a proponent of individual liberty. If Bruce and Lance can leave the innocent household pets alone, I have not the slightest desire to know much less to witness their perversions so long as they keep them behind closed doors and out of the public eye. Actually, I am not anxious to witness Romeo and Juliet in action either.
As Americans, we not only tolerate but protect many people whose behavior may disgust us as individuals. In her Romantic Manifesto, Rand was right to regard the comprachecos (who kidnapped and distorted the bodies of living toddlers to become circus freaks) as being less evil than those who would purposely pervert and distort the minds of children. A teacher who subverts the consciousness of students by persuading them that socialism is somehow a virtue is an evil but protected person. Not protecting that teacher paves the way for suppression of better men like Ed Hudgins who would teach others the virtues of freedom, markets, responsibility and the fact that the initiation of force or fraud against the innocent is an evil.
Regrettably, la Rand was not always so insightful. She inspired Ludwig von Mises, at his 75th birthday party, to lie in wait for her expected late arrival, to wheel upon her at a distance upon her entrance, to speak to her in a voice above the noise of the crowd and start a fifteen minute tongue lashing with: "So you are the silly woman who thinks you can be free without God!" She never attended a conservative movement gathering again and a good thing too!
I do regard myself, as a Roman Catholic, to be part of the "religious Right." This nation of ours was not founded as a Catholic friendly place but the public institutions of the US have proven hospitable to people of my Faith. We have thrived here despite the opposition of a small minded few. Likewise, other Christians and also Jews have thrived here. I don't try to make you go to Mass. Jerry Falwell does not try to make you attend the Thomas Road Baptist Church. No Jew tries to make you a Lubavitcher. Heck, no Unitarian or Universalist drafts you either. You seek to persuade but not to draft anyone into Objectivism. Well, as the saying goes, America: It's a GREAAAAT country!
I may or may not read your "longer analysis." These are initial thoughts.
It is good that you are not a Rand cultist. Barry Goldwater (using the rhetoric crafted by the late and brilliant Karl Hess) made me a Republican and a conservative when I was 17. By the time he died, I would not have voted for him for dogcatcher (and not just because dogs should be free). Killing babies is not conservatism. If they have no rights, neither do you, neither do I.
You might want to consult Doris Gordon of Maryland, the atheist who runs Libertarians for Life (assuming she is still alive) or her associate John Walker, a degreed philosopher without any religion of which I have known. They fight the lonely battle among the libertarians for innocent human life. They are my answer to anyone who suggests that I might deny that the agnostics or the atheists cannot be moral people. They can be moral and when they are, they are particularly heroic.
As a Catholic, I believe in the efficacy of grace provided by God via the Mass and the sacraments. You probably do not share that belief. That does not mean you cannot be moral but, at least in my mind, it makes it much more difficult for you and therefore more heroic.
Finally, the ritual use (actually misuse) of the term "neocons" does not assist a conservative argument. Properly speaking, neocons are a group of quite elderly or quite dead refugees from the Great Society who walked away from the Demonrat Party over its increasing McGovernism and chosen doormat status in the face of Marxism-Leninism. Jean Kirkpatrick, Irving Kristol, Sidney Hook, Alexander Bickel, Gertrude Himmelfarb, Midge Decter, Norman Podhoretz, Daniel Bell, Daniel Patrick Moynihan. They are neither their own children nor are they the PNAC. The latter group have been mislabeled "neocons" by the New Republic magazine which is scarcely conservative and by the pathetic pantywaist "paleocons" who are also scarcely conservative but in other ways similar to Neville Chamberlain or to the "blood and soil" racism that sees Monetenegro as a desirable and quaint little satrapy.
I would love to resurrect la Rand to have her debate Pat Buchanan on the question of hermetically sealed borders. I would be more likely to side with the Rand who wrote of borders in We the Living. I cannot imagine that Rand chanting "rule of law" as an excuse to shoot the would-be border crossers.
The "paleos" are irrelevant by their own hand. Guzzling port wine to excess while speculating on imaginable but not terribly likely applications of the 10th Amendment and contemplating the wonders of the foreign surrendermonkeyism of lavender Justin Raimondo and antiwar.com is NOT conservatism either. Reagan regarded them as not ready for prime time, not likely to become ready for prime time and as an embarrassment. They figured this out in year 6 of Reagan's administration and revolted at the Mont Pelerin Society meeting that year, beginning their pretense of being the "real" conservatives. They have rendered Buchanan a laughing stock.
If we need Barbara Boxer or Nancy Pelosi or John Murtha to wield "chacks and balances" then checks and balances must be vastly over-rated. I don't need to have anyone else's view of Scripture or the Constitution preached at me. I can read and I have copies of both. I'll bet you are a lot like me in those respects.
More tripe to furthur confuse the electorate.
Start taking oil to pay their tab.
Also note that Jim Webb campaigned on an "America First" economic platform. That's how he got past his primary opponent, Harris Miller, who is a lobbyist for the "export IT jobs" crowd.
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