Why We Fight

American Thinker ^ | October 17, 2010 | Christopher Chantrill

[neverdem]

November 2, 2010 will go down as the biggest repudiation of liberalism in our lifetime. As many as eighty Democrats may go down to defeat in the House of Representatives. But for what?

None of this will be due to the brilliance of conservative ideas. Most Americans don't care about ideas. Voters are turning away from liberal government because it seems that President Obama and the Democratic Congress have run the S.S. America onto the rocks.

Conservatives always knew this day would come: our faith requires it, and our conservative ideas predict it. Still, the debacle of Obamaism is shocking. Who knew that a cranky grassroots rebellion was possible in this surface-smooth media age?

In the next few years, conservatives will get a chance to reverse the mistakes of Obama. The new Congress can roll back spending; a new president can repeal ObamaCare and start to deal with the entitlement train wreck.

But is that all there is? Do we just fight for a modest roll-back of liberal folly? Surely we must reach higher.

Before Ronald Reagan ever ran for any political office, he called the American people to something higher in "The Speech."

You and I have a rendezvous with destiny.

We'll preserve for our children this, the last best hope of man on earth, or we'll sentence them to take the last step into a thousand years of darkness.

That was in 1964. Twenty-four years later, in his farewell address to the nation from the Oval Office, an avuncular President Reagan talked to Americans about the "shining city upon a hill":

And how stands the city on this winter night? More prosperous, more secure, and happier than it was eight years ago. But more than that: After two hundred years, two centuries, she still stands strong and true on the granite ridge, and her glow has held steady no matter what storm. And she's still a beacon, still a magnet for all who must have freedom, for all the pilgrims from all the lost places who are hurtling through the darkness, toward home.

What is our rendezvous with destiny, our shining city upon a hill? What is it that animates us as we fight to save America from the squalid power politics of interest-group liberalism?

The First Conservative, Edmund Burke, defined the conservative vision for us 220 years ago. It is a trust, "an entailed inheritance derived to us from our forefathers, and to be transmitted to our posterity." We conservatives believe in society as a web of trust, a web that begins with those we love and extends to all those we serve, and beyond them to those "hurtling through the darkness" without even a hope of home.

This trust is not something that can be written out onto a tabula rasa by sophisters, economists, and calculators. It is not a government program or a three-thousand-page bill; it is something bigger than technical expertise or a government program. It is a social virtue; it describes the necessary culture of free men and women living in liberty.

Why do we fight? We fight for a culture of trust, in which ordinary people are connected by their actions and their characters into a vast social network of reciprocal and friendly relations. In this society of trust, ordinary people can live a companionable life of moral obligation and exchange, a life that seldom hits the wall of legal obligation and government compulsion. In Trust: The Social Virtues and the Creation of Prosperity, Francis Fukuyama calls this "spontaneous sociability." Whatever you call it, it comes down to trust, service, love, exchange. These are the qualities of the conservative society to come.

Here is a report on how this culture of trust can actually work here in America. It is from Michael Novak in The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism. He is writing about a memoir written by his wife's ancestor, a preacher who journeyed westward from upstate New York in 1842 and became the first Baptist missionary in Iowa territory:

One of the most stunning features of his memoir is that nearly all the daily activities he reports were cooperative and fraternal.  Families helped each other putting up homes and barns.  Together they built churches, schools, and common civic buildings.  They collaborated to build roads and bridges.  They took pride in being free persons, independent, and self-reliant; but the texture of their lives was cooperative and fraternal.

What made this cooperative and fraternal society possible? Obviously, it had to be many things. But the unique characteristic of America is its Anglo-Saxon Protestant culture. That culture asserts that everyone stands before God as the sole judge of his or her life. 

This idea of a direct relationship with God is a reckless notion that, anyone would think, had to be a recipe for atomism and anarchy. Instead, in America, it spawned a miracle. In liberating ourselves from the shackles of conformity and subjection to moral and political elites, we freed ourselves into something else: a free society of voluntary association and rapidly expanding trust. In the old country, you trusted people only as far as the limits of blood, kin, or village. But in the American civilization, we extend trust to the community of all those who can be trusted. 

Here's another testimony to trust from the aftermath of a financial meltdown, the Crash of 1907. Banker J.P. Morgan is being interrogated on Capitol Hill about the "money trust," and staff counsel Samuel Untermyer is asking about credit and collateral. Credit is about character, Morgan insisted, not about collateral. Never mind if a borrower had tons of collateral in government bonds when he came to borrow money:

Mr. MORGAN. Because a man I do not trust could not get money from me on all the bonds in Christendom.

Mr. UNTERMYER. That is the rule all over the world?

Mr. MORGAN. I think that is the fundamental basis of business.

For some people, this culture of trust is a sham, a conjurer's trick. They know that spontaneous sociability is a delusion, that underneath all the cooperation of small-town America and imperial bankers is a fever swamp of injustice and marginalization that only a strong centralizing force directed by an educated elite can control and mitigate. You know who these people are. We call them liberals.

Our liberal friends are against moral freedom, for they wish to judge America. They are against spontaneous sociability, for they wish to rule America. They wage war on trust, for they wish to compel America. Why do they do this?

Let us give our liberal friends the benefit of the doubt. Back in the old days, an educated youth could have argued plausibly that the new democratic capitalism was a danger to society. Young Karl Marx, aged 30, and Friedrich Engels, 28,  in 1848:

The bourgeoisie ... has put an end to all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations ... In one word, for exploitation, veiled by religious and political illusions, it has substituted naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation.

The young Fabian, Sidney Webb, age 30, had a similar take in 1889:

The result of the industrial revolution ... was to leave all the new elements of society in a state of unrestrained license ... Women working half naked in the coal mines; young children dragging trucks all day ... these and other nameless iniquities will be found recorded as the results of freedom of contract and complete laissez faire in the impartial pages of successive [government] blue-book reports.

These young activists were telling us that you can't trust capitalists. The "invisible hand" of Adam Smith is a myth.

The issue is clear. If you believe that people can be trusted, then you think that most problems can be solved through peaceful resolution; you will vote for limited government. If you think that the untrustworthy people are going to take over, then you will want them restrained by government force.

The conservative culture of trust unites conservatives into a single big tent. Social conservatives believe that we should increase the bonds of trust between the sexes, in marriages and families. Economic conservatives believe we should increase trust in the economic sector and structure the economy to reward trustworthy people. National-security conservatives believe we should trust Americans more than thug dictators. Second-Amendment conservatives believe we should trust Americans with guns. Conservatives are united by our faith in trust.

The argument of the left, ever since Marx and Engels and Webb, is that you cannot trust society. You can trust only the state. You can't trust the mediating institutions between the individual and government. You can't trust families, for they are patriarchal. You can't trust businesses because they are exploiters. You can't trust churches because they are bigoted. But you can trust government, led by educated youth -- men like Joseph Stalin, seminarian; Fidel Castro, lawyer; Pol Pot, technical student.

The experiment of the last two centuries is now over, and the results are in. If you expand the zone of trust with economic freedom and limited government, you get prosperity and happiness.

But we also know what happens when you contract the zone of social trust by trusting in big government run by educated youth. Whenever peoples have lived for a considerable time under a strong centralizing government, the web of trust between people is frayed and broken. For centralizing government always declares war on spontaneous sociability and the mediating structures of trust and voluntary association. Just ask the Chinese and the Russians, ruled for centuries by centralizing bureaucracies. 

The best recipe for a free and sociable society is a mixture of Protestant moral liberation and its high-trust social culture, as practiced in the 18^th century by Britain and in the 19th century by the United States.

In the United States, we now suffer under a strong, centralizing government, and we have seen the old web of trust fray and disintegrate. Our centralizing rulers are, fortunately, not a clique of bureaucratic Mandarins or totalitarian Maoists. They are just liberals. They wanted to give the poor a helping hand. They wanted to help everyone with education, to give us access to health care, to provide old people with pensions, to relieve poverty in the sprawling cities. They just didn't believe that Americans could be trusted to do it on their own. So they built and directed a vast edifice of big government and enticed millions of people away from the American birthright of sociability into the dead end of dependency. This is why we fight.

Fifty years ago, President Eisenhower warned us against the danger of a centralization in a military-industrial complex, and our liberal friends have never forgotten his warning. Or have they? Today in the United States, according to usgovernmentspending.com, we have a health-industrial complex costing $1.1 trillion a year, a pension-industrial complex costing $1.0 trillion a year, an education-industrial complex costing $1.0 trillion a year, and a welfare-industrial complex costing $0.8 trillion a year. It's a pity that the pension-industrial complex has cheated a generation out of honest saving, that the health-industrial complex has made health care unaffordable, that the graduates of the education-industrial complex need remedial instruction at college, that the welfare-industrial complex has destroyed the low-income family. Other than that, the government-industrial complex works pretty well. The old military-industrial complex? It now costs $0.9 trillion a year.

Government is force, so the government-industrial complex necessarily socializes people into a culture of mistrust and compulsion, for you need compulsion only for people you do not trust. The private sector, on the other hand, socializes people into a culture of service. An entrepreneur proposes, and the customer disposes. Businesses compete to earn the trust of the consumer.

Between the conservative nexus of sociable trust and the liberal culture of compulsion is a great gulf. In the conservative narrative, society builds a culture of trust from the ground up, slowly persuading people of the benefits of a high-trust society and sanctioning the abusers of trust. In the liberal narrative, the only people to trust are the progressive educated elites, the ruling class directing a strong, centralized administrative state. 

Today in America, the centralized administrative state wants to centralize and administer America's health care. Do liberals really understand what they are telling us with ObamaCare? They are saying that Americans cannot be trusted to obtain health care for themselves or produce it for others without minute supervision from liberal experts and activists. They are saying that Americans, known as the most charitable people in the world, cannot be trusted to share, out of their own earnings, a decent provision for those who cannot provide, or foolishly choose not to provide, for their own health care. They are saying that there is no alternative: Americans must be forced to do the right thing because Americans cannot be trusted. This is why we fight.

We fight against the dead hand of liberal political centralism, and we fight for the practical American culture of spontaneous sociability. Our faith is a new faith in a people freed from subjection to the liberal ruling class. It is still, as it ever was, a faith in freedom and an ennobling instinct for free and voluntary association. And that is why we fight.

But we must lift our eyes from practical reforms to the horizon and search for a new way to institutionalize our vision for America. The tools are at hand: the separation of powers doctrine as enshrined in our Constitution and extended in the Bill of Rights. 

In The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism, Michael Novak describes the United States as a society differentiated from the compact pre-industrial world into three equal and free sectors: political, economic, and moral/cultural. Each sector contributes to the whole, but none should rule over the others.

In the Bill of Rights, the founding fathers extended the separation of power principle from a mere separation of powers among the three branches of government. They declared a distance between the political sector and the moral-cultural sector: the separation of church and state. Now it is time to take another step in the separation of powers and create a distance between the political sector and the economic sector. The economy is the realm of wealth; government is the realm of power. Mix wealth and power, and they corrupt each other. It is time to demand the separation of economy and state. 

We must create a Greater Separation of Powers to rule the relations between the great institutional sectors of society. The political sector is the realm of force, the moral/cultural sector the realm of persuasion, and the economic sector the realm of service. Collapse them into a totalitarian unity, and the result is misery. Free them, separate them, and limit their powers, and the result is happiness. With the powers of the great institutional sectors limited, the personal sector of face-to-face relations, the sector of trust, can flourish and expand. Here is an America for conservatives to love. 

This American proposition, writes Francis Fukuyama, is "subversive," for it gives any single person, or a whole Tea Party, the authority to decide for herself that she lives under intolerable injustice, and can do something about it. To proud elites down the ages, this has seemed a recipe for anarchy. But that is not how it has played out in the United States of America, and that is not how it will work out in the new America. When we liberate Americans from their moral subjection to liberal shibboleth, we will free the nation into the fraternal arms of spontaneous sociability. And that is why we fight -- to renew our rendezvous with destiny, to show to each other that a free people deserves to show its goodness. It deserves the freedom to demonstrate the miracle of turning the water of moral independence into the wine of universal free community and trust.

But what of our liberal friends? For a century they have held themselves proudly above and apart from the rest of us, determined to update institutions ill-adapted to the modern age, embarrassed and ashamed of the great unwashed flyover country, the ordinary America of spontaneous sociability. Anticipating their humiliation in November, we conservatives could even now be planning to convert the liberal diversity training industry into a new school for spontaneous sociability, to teach those wayward liberal souls the error of their ways. But we cannot do that; we must not do that.

What we must do is welcome, with open arms, each and every liberal who experiences the epiphany that The American Thinker's own recovering liberal, Robin of Berkeley, experienced in the fall of 2008, when the election of Barack Obama changed her life. Recently she told us how liberalism had kept her in a kind of limbo, forever condemned to a life of guilt. It all began when her mother threatened her as a five-year-old: "If you keep doing things like that, I won't love you anymore." Robin's solution to this threat was to become a perfectionist, forever terrified of making a mistake. But then came the day when "[t]ruth came knocking on my door." Forgiveness for mistakes and bad behavior would be between her and God, for "in the end, it is only His judgment that matters." That is the Anglo-Saxon Protestant proposition: a direct relationship between you and God. No priests, no gatekeepers, no angry mothers, and especially no liberals in between.

Let us show our liberal friends true conservative magnanimity as they hurtle through the darkness towards home. Let us show them how to trust. Because the shining city on the hill belongs to liberals, too, and that is why we fight.

Christopher Chantrill is a frequent contributor to American Thinker. See his usgovernmentdebt.us and usgovernmentspending.com. At americanmanifesto.org he is blogging and writing An American Manifesto: Life After Liberalism.

[J Edgar]

Hear, Hear Say I - great exposition reflecting upon Our on heritage and ensuing duty!

[Deagle]

We used to fight for freedom and the Rule of Law! These days, it seems that we are mainly fighting for our Freedom from Government. The Rule of Law seems to be falling by the wayside - ie. laws for us and NOT laws for lawmakers...

Combine that with laws don’t apply to those that enforce the laws and soon, you will have no laws. They do seem to be pushing the envelope.

[conservatism_IS_compassion]

Hear, Hear Say I - great exposition reflecting upon Our on heritage and ensuing duty!

Seconded, bookmarked, and pinged.

A most excellent article.

[rlmorel]

Another good thread, neverdem...thanks!

[E.G.C.]

BTTT

[Bender2]

I posteed this on my FR homepage () nearly 10 years ago and it still makes sense:

Why Do We Fight?

by Danny Clay Lee

During World War Two, Hollywood produced a series of films titled Why We Fight produced by Frank Capra. Shown in theaters across the nation and to every soldier, sailor, airman and marine, few if any questioned why we fought. In this second round of the Gulf War, Hollywood has produced mainly protests.

During the Second World War, many Hollywood stars enlisted in the armed services to fight for their country. Jimmy Stewart, Clark Gable, Tryone Power and David Niven, to name just a few, not only enlisted, but went into combat. Today's Hollywood stars, for the most part, don't have the time nor the inclination to do anything for their country. Their biggest apparent fears are the war disrupting the Oscars, their latest filming schedule or their court-side seats at the Final Four.

Most have forgotten the words of one of their revered heroes, John F. Kennedy who intoned, "Ask not what your country can do for you, ask why you can do for your country."

So much for the Hollywood Left's memory.

The Hollywood Left claims their protests are patriotic and their right. Yet when hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of Country Music fans protests the anti-war words of Dixie Chicks Natalie Maines, the Hollywood Left shouts, "Foul!" Not buying the Dixie Chicks' CDs or asking C&W radio to suspend Dixie Chick songs from stations' playlist is not a right according to the Hollywood Left. That is persecution, they claim, an illegal boycott fostered by yet another vast Right-Wing Conspiracy.

When Martin Luther King called for boycotts in the 1960s, the Hollywood Left and many Americans of good conscience marched arm-in-arm with him. It was their right to do this. Now The Hollywood Left denies those rights to anyone opposed to their thoughts. Selective memory strikes again.

So, with the majority of Hollywood movers and shaker against serving in any capacity other than to protest, one may ask: why do our troop fight? With the majority of the Democratic Party leadership against the war, one may ask again: why do our armed services fight?

The young men and women who are now engaged in combat in Iraq, why do they fight? It is not plunder or booty. They seek no territorial gain nor gold or silver. It is not blood lust as their Rules of Engagement are the strictest in all human history ever placed on any fighting force going into battle. They will not rape and maim, nor loot and torture. No civilians will be taken as hostages nor will any be summarily executed by American or British troops.

These troops carry no chemical or biological agents to loose upon the Iraqis, civilian or military. The offer humane care to any POW and all refugees. None will be turned away or beaten up. None will be raped.

Now, consider the track record of the Iraqi troops we face commanded by Saddam Hussein. In the past twenty odd years he and his military and secret police have plundered for booty. They have invaded for territorial gain. They have looted both gold and silver. They have gassed their military foes and civilians who opposed them. They have raped and maimed. They have raped female POWs.

Their Rules of Engagement is carte blanc for the Iraq military, the ends justify the means. Nor is any act too despicable nor beyond the pale for success in battle or in control of their objectives. Hostages are taken and either killed out right or just simply disappear off the face of the earth. They care not for the ecology of the planet as they set Kuwait's oil fields ablaze in 1991 and are even now torching their own.

If these actions by the Iraqi Military and Leadership is not enough reason to fight, then one British Commander told his troops the Iraqi have a stain on their souls. His point is well founded in recent history.

So, why do our troops fight? If you are not convinced by what I have written above, then you tell me?

[TalBlack]

“None of this will be due to the brilliance of conservative ideas.” Which as everyone knows have failed miserably every tine they have been tried...oh...wait...

Funny that conservative ideas can be so easily dismissed. Wonder why that is?

[Jabba the Nutt]

Since I discovered Mises, Hayek and Rothbard in the mid-80's, I knew the economic crack was coming. Austrian economics can tell you that, they just can't tell you when. With pals of mine, I'd argue the crucial issue will be, who do Americans blame for the collapse? Government or the private sector.

In the Panic (depression) of 1817, the American public blamed government and cronyism of the Bank of the United States for the crash. That lead to Andrew Jackson and the killing of "the monster", the first American central bank. Did Jackson institute the right solution, not completely, but it served us well up into the 1890's.

In the crash of that decade, the business elites, who were enamored of the idea of combinations (combines, consolidations, mergers, with one company in each sector, think US Steel or Standard Oil), decided that to accomplish their goals, they needed to control money. They pushed for the creation of a central bank.

The Progressives (the non-revolutionary leftists) agreed and in Woodrow Wilson's first year, we got the Federal Reserve. They promised us no more financial panics or crashes. With the Fed in place, we've had as many and as severe financial panics as before. What's different is the consolidation of power in the Federal Government.

In 1929, the public was persuaded for a time to blame the market. Hoover stared the New Deal and FDR took that and floored it. FDR was able to buy his way to re-election in '36 and '40 against weak candidates. The Ruling Class propagandists were able to persuade or keep opposing views silenced for decades and give us the Great Society in the 60's and maintain their programs and steady growth of the Federal Governement even through the GOP interegnum from '95 to '07. Newt said while Speaker that he believed the Federal Budget would grow for another 50 years. I never forgot that he said that.

Up until Obama, there remained a sense of responsibility, of some humility and of some concern for the overall state of finances in the country. Obama took was his predecessors built and put pedal to the metal to complete the consolidaton of power, threw out any sense of limitation, denied any concern for the country and tossed any sense of responsibility out the window. Obama and the Democrats are creating the possibility of a Weimar-style hyper-inflationary collapse in the United States.

To my huge relief, the American People are blaming government for this collapse. Indeed, before the ultimate collapse. This is inspite of daily, incessant propaganda against the market, against the private sector and against corporations.

In my view, the American Public is in the process of being radicalized in a libertarian/constitutional direction. The Ruling Class will kick, scream and throw tantrums, but it hasn't mattered and won't matter. Tens and tens of millions of Americans have chosen the private sector over the public sector. This choice will only spread and deepen over time. There's no turning back.

This November's election is only the opening act. The only way the Ruling Class can stop it, is through violent suppression. That would mean civil war. Are they so irresponsible to give that one a try? Maybe. Obama has shown no sense of limitation. But what about other members of his Administration? I don't see the military going along, maybe the Federal law enforcement, but will State National Guards follow Federal orders to clamp down? I don't think so. Will local police and sheriffs? I don't think so.

We will see how irresponsible the Federal Government bureaucracy will be over the next door years. They will drop the mask.

[Jacquerie]

But you can trust government, led by educated youth -- men like Joseph Stalin, seminarian; Fidel Castro, lawyer; Pol Pot, technical student.

Add Cass Sunstein and Donald Berwick. There is no doubt these two would happily death march every Freeper to the labor camps.

[PGalt]

Why We Fight? We fight for our lives.

Frederic Bastiat - The Law [excerpts]

Life Is a Gift from God

We hold from God the gift which includes all others. This gift is life — physical, intellectual, and moral life.

But life cannot maintain itself alone. The Creator of life has entrusted us with the responsibility of preserving, developing, and perfecting it. In order that we may accomplish this, He has provided us with a collection of marvelous faculties. And He has put us in the midst of a variety of natural resources. By the application of our faculties to these natural resources we convert them into products, and use them. This process is necessary in order that life may run its appointed course.

Life, faculties, production — in other words, individuality, liberty, property — this is man. And in spite of the cunning of artful political leaders, these three gifts from God precede all human legislation, and are superior to it. Life, liberty, and property do not exist because men have made laws. On the contrary, it was the fact that life, liberty, and property existed beforehand that caused men to make laws in the first place.

...When plunder is organized by law for the profit of those who make the law, all the plundered classes try somehow to enter — by peaceful or revolutionary means — into the making of laws. According to their degree of enlightenment, these plundered classes may propose one of two entirely different purposes when they attempt to attain political power: Either they may wish to stop lawful plunder, or they may wish to share in it.

Woe to the nation when this latter purpose prevails among the mass victims of lawful plunder when they, in turn, seize the power to make laws! Until that happens, the few practice lawful plunder upon the many, a common practice where the right to participate in the making of law is limited to a few persons. But then, participation in the making of law becomes universal. And then, men seek to balance their conflicting interests by universal plunder. Instead of rooting out the injustices found in society, they make these injustices general. As soon as the plundered classes gain political power, they establish a system of reprisals against other classes. They do not abolish legal plunder. (This objective would demand more enlightenment than they possess.) Instead, they emulate their evil predecessors by participating in this legal plunder, even though it is against their own interests.

It is as if it were necessary, before a reign of justice appears, for everyone to suffer a cruel retribution — some for their evilness, and some for their lack of understanding.

It is impossible to introduce into society a greater change and a greater evil than this: the conversion of the law into an instrument of plunder.

What are the consequences of such a perversion? It would require volumes to describe them all. Thus we must content ourselves with pointing out the most striking.

In the first place, it erases from everyone’s conscience the distinction between justice and injustice.

No society can exist unless the laws are respected to a certain degree. The safest way to make laws respected is to make them respectable. When law and morality contradict each other, the citizen has the cruel alternative of either losing his moral sense or losing his respect for the law. These two evils are of equal consequence, and it would be difficult for a person to choose between them.

The nature of law is to maintain justice. This is so much the case that, in the minds of the people, law and justice are one and the same thing. There is in all of us a strong disposition to believe that anything lawful is also legitimate. This belief is so widespread that many persons have erroneously held that things are “just” because law makes them so. Thus, in order to make plunder appear just and sacred to many consciences, it is only necessary for the law to decree and sanction it.

[end excerpts]

“Most Americans don’t care about ideas.”

The idea that we extend a compassionate hand toward liberals? or socialists/marxists/thugs/criminals/totalitarians/anti-freedom, anti-life collectivists does not resonate with me considering the time of life they have stolen from me and their unwitting victims...not to mention the destruction of innocent lives buried in the lessons of history.

Life, liberty and the pursuit and destruction of totalitarians so the we may enjoy life, liberty.

Ballot box.

November

[EternalVigilance]

Bump.

[W. W. SMITH]

Add Cass Sunstein and Donald Berwick. There is no doubt these two would happily death march every Freeper to the labor camps.

Don't forget William Ayers. He wants every one to the right of Joe Lieberman in a reeducation camp and those who won't buy into the progressive claptrap, he wants to execute with a bullet to the head.

[Jacquerie]

Quite right.

[loveliberty2]

Excellent!

We have allowed the essential ideas of liberty to be censored from our textbooks and from our public discourse.

Thankfully, technology has made the great writings which contain those ideas available to every home with a computer. The censorship of books can't work any more. As a result, the so-called "progressives" are being confronted by informed citizens who are reading the writings and speeches of America's Founders.

Ordinary citizens are seeing the great divide between the ideas of liberty articulated by the Founders and implemented in their 1787 Constitution as contrasted with the counterfeit ideas of Mao and Marx being expressed by Obama and his fellows.

The Taxed Enough Already movement is a great expression of a passion for liberty which has not been felt in America for a very long time. It is a rising tide, and the only label the Progressives can give it is "anger." That is because they have been dumbed down to the ideas most citizens understood well in 1787 and for America's first 100 years. They have bought into a false set of ideas which is attempting to extinguish the great light of liberty portrayed by the Lady in the Harbor. They must not succeed!

[gitmo]

The issue is clear. If you believe that people can be trusted, then you think that most problems can be solved through peaceful resolution; you will vote for limited government. If you think that the untrustworthy people are going to take over, then you will want them restrained by government force.

I think the dichotomy is this: If you believe that people cannot be fully trusted, you will not allow an unrestrained government to take hold. But you will allow competing businesses to operate with minimal intervention, allowing society to choose those that behave civilly. This requires a few minimal rules such as some transparency in business and government, and regulations prohibiting collusion between competitors.

If you believe that all people can be trusted, then there is no need for government.

[gitmo]

But you can trust government, led by educated youth -- men like Joseph Stalin, seminarian; Fidel Castro, lawyer; Pol Pot, technical student.

And Barak Obama, con artist.

[ForGod'sSake]

Great article and following comments. Wish I could add something but it’s just about all been covered. Thanks for the ping cIc.

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks neverdem. I'd quibble -- "our liberal friends" my ass. Nice and polite wrier though.

As many as eighty Democrats may go down to defeat in the House of Representatives. But for what? None of this will be due to the brilliance of conservative ideas. Most Americans don't care about ideas. Voters are turning away from liberal government because it seems that President Obama and the Democratic Congress have run the S.S. America onto the rocks.