Posted on 01/02/2009 10:26:54 AM PST by GVnana
Conservatives Can Unite Around the Constitution
The coalition that supported Reagan is as viable as ever.
After their dismal performance in November, conservatives are taking stock. As they debate the causes that have driven them into the political wilderness and as they contemplate paths out, they should also take heart. After all, election 2008 shows that our constitutional order is working as designed.
The Constitution presupposes a responsive electorate, and respond the electorate did to the vivid memory of a spendthrift and feckless Republican Congress; to a stalwart but frequently ineffectual Republican president; and to a Republican presidential candidate who -- for all his mastery of foreign affairs, extensive Washington experience, and honorable public service -- proved incapable of crafting a coherent and compelling message.
Indeed, while sorting out their errors and considering their options, conservatives of all stripes would be well advised to concentrate their attention on the constitutional order and the principles that undergird it, because maintaining them should be their paramount political priority.
A constitutional conservatism puts liberty first and teaches the indispensableness of moderation in securing, preserving and extending its blessings. The constitution it seeks to conserve carefully defines government's proper responsibilities while providing it with the incentives and tools to perform them effectively; draws legitimacy from democratic consent while protecting individual rights from invasion by popular majorities; assumes the primacy of self-interest but also the capacity on occasion to rise above it through the exercise of virtue; reflects, and at the same time refines, popular will through a complex scheme of representation; and disperses and blends power among three distinct branches of government as well as among federal and state governments the better to check and balance it. ..
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
We can rally around it but Barack is already on record (audio) talking about how it is a flawed document that does not consider the issues of economic and social justice.
B.O. does NOT want a blind justice system. It is about Marxist redistribution of wealth. Welcome to America 2.0.
I’m amazed that WSJ even printed this opinion piece. We dropped our subscription due to their editorial support for violating federal immigration laws (illegal aliens = no big deal!)
Supporting the Constitution means not picking and choosing which laws one decides to obey. Lawlessness results in a nation coming apart at the seams.
Why? The article is as squishy as they are.
Moreover, a constitutional conservatism provides a framework for developing a distinctive agenda for today's challenges to which social conservatives and libertarian conservatives can both, in good conscience, subscribe.
Although I largely agree with the article, I have one major disagreement.
There is no such thing as a "libertarian conservative." Libertarians essentially are people who want absolutely minimalist government while keeping some basic level of public order. A genuine libertarian is only a degree or two away on the political spectrum from being an anarchist.
In my opinion, the single biggest problem the conservative movement has is that there is no single, unifying political meaning of the term "conservative." If we don't even understand ourselves, how can we expect the general public to understand us?
However, I do agree with the article's emphasis on Constitutional conservatism, because I am a Constitutional conservative. Unfortunately, a religiously based point of view (primarily evangelical Protestant) dominates modern conservatism, and it is very intolerant of conservatives whose views are not religiously based.
So Who Is The Face ?
The Voice in The Wilderness?
The Spirit of Our Founding Fathers?
Must the Blood Shed for This Nation Rise from The Ground ?
No Face, No Voice and No Spirit but What of The Blood?
It will be tough to rally around the Constitution when at least half of the supposed conservatives won’t even talk about the natural-born presidential requirement - or lift a finger to fight the issue.
Sure, run a primary against every RINO in congress. Take them out at the source and where they are most vulnerable.
http://www.robertringer.com/declaration-of-independence.html
http://www.robertringer.com/jeffersonian.html
As president, Jefferson was the first to grow the reach and power of the federal government, particularly the presidency, in direct contravention of the Constitution.
Look around at our family members, friends, local politics, etc.
How can so many be deceived?
Because they believe they are correct in their basic ideas ... which were/are taught to them over and over everyday, in school, college, and our local TV News.
Even the majority of Russians (when they were being starved to death) believed Stalin would help them. They looked to Stalin for help.Millions deliberately starved by Stalin.
We know how well that turned out.
It is now the same. We have millions that have been taught biased education: they do not think or believe they are mistaken.
They are not open to hearing the truth.
It is a major battle: how are we going to counteract it, when ‘they’ (liberals/socialists/communists) are in control?
Really????????????
Consider union members, IE.
We have been too complacent for too long.
Never give up!
Conservatives and the Constitution are inseparable. Just like Liberals and Socialism.
Republicans lost in November, not necessarily conservatives. :)
I am a Constitutional conservative who would be happy to fight this issue if there was any substance to it. To the best of my knowledge, there is zero substance. Why?
1. The State of Hawaii has made it clear there is a duly certified birth certificate on file for Obama.2. The U.S. Constitution does not require a candidate for president to produce a birth certificate, and Hawaii law does not treat birth certificates as public documents.
As someone who respects states rights, and who values common sense, the above points rule for me on this matter.
Regardless of the birth certificate issue, people are unwilling to press Obambi on getting 1/3 of his record setting campaign contributions from FOREIGN contributors.
Divorce procedings are also private matters. It was Barack Obama who forced the courts to unseal Jack Ryan’s divorce papers and leaked them to the press.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Ryan_(Senate_candidate)
Jack Ryan (born circa 1960) is a Republican from the state of Illinois who was forced to withdraw from the 2004 United States Senate race due to an alleged sex scandal involving his relationship with his ex-wife, actress Jeri Ryan. [1][2] His eventual replacement Alan Keyes would go on to lose the general election to Barack Obama, who would eventually be elected President of the United States on November 4, 2008.
Ryan hoped to succeed retiring Republican Peter Fitzgerald in the United States Senate. On March 16, 2004, he won the Republican primary, thus pairing him against Democrat Barack Obama. However, after his divorce records containing damaging allegations were unsealed and made public, he withdrew his candidacy on June 25, 2004, and officially filed the documentation to withdraw on July 29, 2004.
Not BS at all. A genuine libertarian wants the most minimalist government possible without sacrificing civic order. Anarchy is absence of government. True minimalism and absence are only a couple of degrees apart.
The Libertarian Party's stance on illegal immigration is a good case in point. The following is a verbatim excerpt from the Libertarian Party website:
...our system offers no legal channel for anywhere near a sufficient number of peaceful, hardworking immigrants to legally enter the United States even temporarily to fill this growing gap. The predictable result is illegal immigration.In response, we can spend billions more to beef up border patrols. We can erect hundreds of miles of ugly fence slicing through private property along the Rio Grande. We can raid more discount stores and chicken-processing plants from coast to coast. We can require all Americans to carry a national ID card and seek approval from a government computer before starting a new job.
Or we can change our immigration law to more closely conform to how millions of normal people actually live.
When large numbers of otherwise decent people routinely violate a law, the law itself is probably the problem. To argue that illegal immigration is bad merely because it is illegal avoids the threshold question of whether we should prohibit this kind of immigration in the first place.
Personally, I identify significantly with libertarian points of view. I just don't go as far toward minimalism as they do.
Although the Ryan divorce papers matter has nothing whatsoever to do with the birth certificate matter, what the Obama campaign -- and the California judge who agreed with him -- did tp Jack Ryan was reprehensible in the extreme.
>Conservatives and the Constitution are inseparable.<
That only means that there are no conservatives in government because none of its members have even brought up the question of Obama and his identity.
We are no longer a sovereign nation.
The American people don’t even understand the Constitution anymore. It had nothing to do with the way they voted. The vast majority of voters had no idea where the two candidates were different except for superficial things like age difference and skin color. McCain ran on a resume, not a political vision, and Obama ran on platitudes “Yes we can!”.
We have to realize we are in the age of American Idol and we have to come up with the most attractive candidate who speaks well and can use Obama’s techniques against him the next election.
Constitutional conservatism is the only kind of conservatism there is.
If the Constitution is conserved, then the right to religious freedom has been conserved for all.
If the political discourse is dominated by one or another religion's jargon and doctrine, then the Constitution has NOT been conserved.
The same logic applies to those who claim to be "fiscal conservatives/social liberals". These are the RINO neocons who represent the pack of thieves who just raped our economy. Fiscally, they are very liberal with Other People's Money, and conservative only with their own. Corrupt frauds, all of them.
1. The State of Hawaii has made it clear there is a duly certified birth certificate on file for Obama.
Even a legitimate birth certificate from Hawaii has nothing to do with the issue. An out-of-country birth could be filed in Hawaii and a computer-based version will be printed. This does not prove or disprove "native born".
2. The U.S. Constitution does not require a candidate for president to produce a birth certificate, and Hawaii law does not treat birth certificates as public documents.
True, but the Electoral College (and Senate) must certify the candidate is eligible, and there is no evidence that anyone confirmed the "native born" requirement. I find this troublesome.
As someone who respects states rights, and who values common sense, the above points rule for me on this matter.
Sorry, but you've missed the point on both counts. Why has Obama and the DNC spent so much money, time, and effort (and at least the work of 3 law firms) to obfuscate this issue?
While libertarians would seek to shrink the federal government to be smaller than what the Constitution would provide for, their target size would be closer to the right one than the status quo. If there were any likelihood that libertarians would actually get into a position to shrink government too much, then it might be worth worrying about. As it is, if Constitution would say that the size of government should be ten (of some arbitrary unit) and it's presently much bigger, attempts to shrink it to size ten precisely will yield to "compromises"; only by trying to shrink it to something smaller (e.g. size "five") can it ever be reduced to its proper size.
That having been said, I wish libertarians and Libertarians would focus on the issues that aren't (or really shouldn't be) controversial. Whether or not drugs should be legal, I can't imagine any person arguing that the government would be unable to minimize the harm caused by drugs if it were required to punish cops who break into people's homes and kill their dogs without first confirming that they were at the right address. Occasionally I see "law-and-order" types defending such cops, but IMHO such cops do not support law and order, but rather totalitarian anarchy.
Whether or not the government should be trying to stamp out the trade in presently-illegal drugs, I see no reason why (1) good police work would not almost always require observing the comings and goings of suspects' houses before raiding them, and (2) the safety of officers, suspects, and the suspects' animals and other property, would not be maximized in almost all cases by using approaches other than no-knock raids (e.g. capturing the suspect when he's carrying groceries to his car). Is there any reason someone who truly favors law and order shouldn't be against the majority of no-knock raids?
The Constitution does require that a person must be a natural-born citizen to be eligible for the office of President. While it does not specify what is required as proof, nor does it specify that eligibility is determined by the Electoral College. If someone born in the last 200 years is not a natural-born citizen, then unless the Constitution is amended, the person cannot ever be a legitimate President, no matter what Congress or the Electoral College say or do.
IMHO, the proper course of action (at least if someone managed to request the proper remedy) would be for the Supreme Court to state that Barack Obama should not be sworn in unless or until such time as he provides at least prima facie evidence of eligibility; given that the state of Hawaii claims to have documentation which would unambiguously show Barack as either being eligible or ineligible, Barack should authorize the state of Hawaii to officially make an unambiguous and unequivocal statement of his status.
In the event that Barack fails to do so, he should remain president-Elect until such time as either he does release the documentation or Congress acts to replace him. Vice-President-Elect Biden should serve as acting President.
Such a scenario would avoid brinksmanship. If there were some difficulty in procuring documentation (e.g. if a President-Elect were born in a town whose records had been destroyed by a fire) a President-Elect could argue that despite his actually being eligible the documentation requirement would unfairly prevent him from taking office. As it is, though, I can't see how such an argument could hold. There should be no problem with Barack Obama publicly requesting that Hawaii officially release a statement to the effect that: "The official records on file in the state of Hawaii show clearly and unequivocally that President-Elect Barack Hussein Obama II was both physically and officially born someplace within the state of Hawaii, on or before January 19, 1974". Given that Barack Obama is claiming that such a statement would be true, he should have no reason to forbid its release.
As for what happens if Barack isn't eligible? I think the 20th-Amendment scenario handles it adequately. Acting President Biden mumbles the right things to the UN so they create a new ambassadorship position which is highly prestigious but needn't do much; he then nominates Barack Obama to that position and he comes up with some excuse to accept it. No need for anyone ever to reveal the real reason why Barack Obama didn't become President.
bttt
Sorry,most of those folks are dead, along with Reagan. It's like waiting for the messiah to come. We don't need to wait for a saviour, that is assinine and lazy. We either save ourselves or we will have a long time waiting.
I agree with your point above.
The same logic applies to those who claim to be "fiscal conservatives/social liberals". These are the RINO neocons...
I disagree with this point to the extent that the term "RINO" is way over-used. Republicans are Republicans. Conservatives are conservatives. Sometimes their viewpoints overlap and mesh. Sometimes they do not.
Political parties are coalitions made up of disparate constituencies. In order to succeed, there must be a healthy give-and-take between those constituencies. (See my tagline.) No political party that genuinely hopes to win elections can afford to appeal only to a fraction of their coalition. Sadly, this is a truth that too many self-professed "real" conservatives fail to grasp.
That's the problem with people pushing this phony issue. Nothing will satisfy them. Nevertheless, the both State of Hawaii's healthy director (whose dept. is reponsible for birth certificates), and the registrar of vital statistics, personally inspected Obama's birth certificate and found it to be valid. Here's a link to an article in the Honolulu paper.
But again, that won't satisfy you and your ilk.
As for why Obama doesn't release the "real" certificate, plain old pigheaded stubbornnes is the likely reason. Look at it from his point of view, which assuredly is this: "Why should I cave to a bunch of fringe right-wing kooks when even the Republican governor of Hawaii's administration verifies my birth certificate?"
See my post #31. The responsible officials from the State of Hawaii released a statement on 11/1/08. Of course, their statement will not satify those who refuse to be satisfied on this matter.
That's the problem with folks of YOUR "ilk". The link you gave does NOT say where he was born - all it says is that the registrar will not release any info and that his record is "valid". A "valid" record in Hawaii is not the same as the records they refuse to release, and certainly does not confirm he was "natural born". I suggest you read the link again - IT PROVES NOTHING and STATES NOTHING! The two hospitals where he could have been born have no records, but there are plenty of folks available to say definitively where he WAS born. Other than pigheadedness (as you state) what's to hide?
As I said, nothing will satisfy you and others with the same mindset. No matter what, Obama is going to be sworn in as the 44th president on January 20th. The smart thing to do would be to get over it and start preparing to oppose his Leftist policies.
No doubt. Both the ends and the means still stink. The fact that he was not being vetted by the media, his undisclosed past, his obfuscation on his birth records, scant records available while he was an Illinois legislator, and his un-audited $700M+ warchest are all a setup for a guaranteed 8 years of this empty suit. He has successfully thugged his way to the White House and only now you are calling for an opposition of his "Leftist policies"? Where have you been?
Early in 2007, when most conservatives were more fearful of Clinton winning the nomination, I was among the first on FR to say I was more afraid of Obama than Clinton. I have frequently made the point that Obama came out of nowhere; that he had zero achievements; that he likely is nothing more than a front man for whoever greased his climb to the top. Back then, most people around here were saying that he would be easy to beat in the general election, and it was more important to defeat Hillary Clinton.
Common sense and political smarts are in short supply around here.
Good for you. Battle on.
Uh, I think it was Ronald Reagan who said that libertarianism was the heart and soul of conservatism.
In fact, he even referred to himself as a libertarian conservative.
http://www.reason.com/news/show/29318.html
Libertarian conservatives did not leave the Republican Party; it left us.
And it took the conservative movement along with it on a bridge to nowhere.
BHO is right about the original Constitution being a flawed document.
But, as amended, it would sure beat whatever we’re governed by now.
I wish certain boomer conservatives would get off of this nostalgic pining for the Reagan era. Political messianism will be the death of the movement.
Spot on. To the Gen Y crowd, Reagan is just a dead white man they vaguely remember reading about in history. conservatives need to develop new ideas and new solutions to today’s problems.
bttt. I learned more reading the replies to this post than from the original article. It’s encouraging. Thanks for posting. ;o)
From the article you linked:
REAGAN: If you analyze it I believe the very heart and soul of conservatism is libertarianism. I think conservatism is really a misnomer just as liberalism is a misnomer for the liberals -– if we were back in the days of the Revolution, so-called conservatives today would be the liberals and the liberals would be the Tories. The basis of conservatism is a desire for less government interference or less centralized authority or more individual freedom and this is a pretty general description also of what libertarianism is.
Reagan was attempting to soften the image of modern conservatism by defining it as "libertarian," which he then identifies with 18th Century classical liberalism. He is not the first politician to attempt to do so, nor will he likely be the last. The reason why smart Republican politicians try to soften the conservative image is because millions of Americans view it as an intolerant movement grounded in fundamentalist Protestant religious beliefs.
Hence we get politicians saying "conservatism is a misnomer," attempting to redefine it as "libertarian," and calling themselves "compassionate conservatives" or "fiscally conservative but socially liberal." The last is exactly the same as saying "conservative-libertarian."
In the same article you linked, Reagan went on to say:
Now, I can’t say that I will agree with all the things that the present group who call themselves Libertarians in the sense of a party say, because I think that like in any political movement there are shades, and there are libertarians who are almost over at the point of wanting no government at all or anarchy.
Indeed. Modern libertarians do not want a smaller government. They want an absolute minimalist government. As such, they are not conservatives. They certainly are not in the Constitutional sense, which, politically speaking, is the only true form of American conservatism. In fact, the Founders of whom Reagan spoke cared so much for true political conservatism that they wrote it into the Constitution as the only required oath of office.
The root of the word "conservative" is "conserve," from the Latin conservare, meaning to keep, to guard, to preserve. A conservative is one who conserves -- keeps, guards, protects, preserves -- tradition, law, societal norms, etc.
U.S. Constitution, Article 2, Section 1, last paragraph reads as follows regarding the president:
Before he enter on the Execution of his Office, he shall take the following Oath or Affirmation:--"I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."
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