What Is the Endgame for Conservatives?

Conservatives who read the polls are already anticipating Republican gains in this November's Congressional elections, hoping for an anti-Obama tidal wave. They should temper their enthusiasm. Statistically, the opposition party almost always gains seats in midterm elections. But let us for the sake of the argument suppose that a repeat of the 1994 midterm elections is in the offing and that Republicans exceed their wildest expectations, and gain control of both houses.

Will ObamaCare be repealed? Almost assuredly not. There is virtually zero chance that the Republicans will control both houses by the two-thirds majority necessary to override Obama's certain veto of any repeal effort.

Will illegal aliens be deported and the Mexican border sealed? No. Sen. McCain (whose signature legislation sought to make First Amendment freedoms illegal during election campaigns) will join forces with Obama and Sen. Graham to grant amnesty to the 12-15 million illegal aliens already here, during a time of 10% unemployment.

Will the budget be balanced? Not a chance. If the current $-1.5 trillion deficit were shrunk to only the half-trillion of the Bush years it would be a monumental accomplishment.

Will the pointless war in Afghanistan, in which the U.S. endeavors to prop up a government just as corrupt as Ngo Dinh Diem's in Vietnam, be ended? No. It will continue to drag on and cost American lives.

It is time for conservatives to ask some hard questions. What, exactly, is it that they hope to "conserve"? And how will they do it?

We know what the endgame is for the political Left. It is national socialism with as many citizens dependent on the government as possible, and international socialism with foreign policy and economic policy controlled by UN and EU-style bureaucrats. This would put the Right out of business for good. What, then, is the endgame for the political Right? How does it plan -- (does it even have a plan?) -- to put the Left out of business for good?

For decades, right-wing voices were nearly unheard in our national discourse. Today, the right-wing critique is ubiquitous. FOX News is almost 14 years old, and it has healthier ratings than "mainstream" broadcast news. AM radio stations broadcast wall-to-wall right-wing talk to tens of millions, while the New York Times and CNN teeter on the verge of insolvency. Every verbal gaffe or moronic statement made by Obama and his fellow Leftists is instantly relayed to millions on the Internet. No one seeking an alternative to Leftist thinking can credibly say that they cannot find one.

But what has the conservative critique of the Left achieved? Nothing. In 1951, the late William F. Buckley single-handedly founded the modern conservative movement when he wrote God and Man at Yale -- a critique of the atheist and socialist sympathies of the Yale faculty that he had experienced firsthand as an undergraduate. Today, Yale hosts an annual "Sex Week" in which porn stars, strippers, and fetishists give presentations.

In his 1960 book Conscience of a Conservative, Sen. Barry Goldwater decried the increase in Federal spending from $60 billion to $80 billion. Goldwater lost to Lyndon Johnson by a nearly 2-1 margin in the 1964 election. Today, Federal spending is approaching $4 trillion and the deficit is $-1.5 trillion per annum.

It has been thirty-seven years since Roe v. Wade was decided, and thirty years since Ronald Reagan was elected promising to appoint "strict constructionists" to the Supreme Court. But it was Reagan's affirmative-action "first female" appointee Sandra O'Connor who voted to uphold Roe in 1992.

Indeed, the sainted Gipper, icon of the conservative movement, was a former Democratic union man who signed an abortion into law as governor of California six years prior to Roe, never had a balanced budget in his eight years as president, and signed an illegal alien amnesty in 1986. Thirty years after Reagan's administration contemplated eliminating the Department of Education, it is more bloated than ever, using taxpayer dollars to subsidize the teaching of political correctness and hatred of America.

What would a truly conservative America look like? It is unrealistic to argue, as some conservatives and Tea Partiers do, for a return to Jeffersonian libertarianism, no matter how desirable that may be. If conservatives were able to scale the power of today's Federal leviathan back to "merely" post-New Deal levels, it would be an enormous achievement.

Let us suppose for a moment that the conservative goal was merely the preservation of the cultural values and international status of the America of the Eisenhower-Kennedy era (arguably the apogee of American power and influence). What then would be on the conservative agenda?

-A civil-rights movement based on individual equality, not group entitlements and reverse discrimination against whites and Asians;

-A muscular foreign policy in which America stood up to its enemies as JFK did during the Cuban missile crisis, rather than the Obama foreign policy posture of a beaten dog piddling in submission;

-Balanced or low-deficit budgets, with social spending limited to pre-Great Society "safety-net" minimums;

-A non-P.C. acknowledgement that enemies (then communists, now Muslim fanatics) sought to use America's freedoms as a tool to destroy it from within;

-The unapologetic deportation of illegals, e.g., Eisenhower's "Operation Wetback" in 1954;

-Social issues such as abortion and homosexuality left up to state legislatures as the Founders intended, rather than declared "constitutional rights" by activist judges;

-The public acknowledgement of a nonsectarian "civic religion" based on the Judeo-Christian tradition;

-Unions investigated by the Federal government for corruption and racketeering, and a non-unionized public sector.

Conservatives must be under no illusions that the Left would regard such an agenda as "fascist" and react violently if such an agenda ever came close to being implemented.

It must be remembered that the Left of the Sixties routinely characterized Lyndon Johnson -- father of Great Society socialism and affirmative action -- as "fascist," and that violence has always been a central part of the Left's strategy. Armed black students seized Cornell University in 1969. JFK was shot by a communist. RFK was shot by a Palestinian. Pentagon bomber Bill Ayers is now a tenured professor and confidante of the President of the United States. From the riots in Watts to the anti-globalization protesters in Seattle to the anti-Bush and anti-Iraq war marchers, the Left has always "taken it to the streets." The Right could not succeed in implementing the conservative agenda outlined above without a willingness to utilize the power of the state to suppress the violence that the Left would surely perpetrate if a Rightist victory were imminent.

The Republicans may gain seats in November, but it is hardly certain that they will implement a conservative agenda. Will the American Right choose to accept subjugation under the rule of the Left, and perform the same function that the British Conservative Party has performed for decades -- namely, provide rhetorical opposition but never really change anything? Or will the Right actually seek to reverse the hegemony of the Left, and restore American culture to its post-WWII greatness, mindful that the costs of doing so would be high?

As a military question, the Department of Defense would seem likely to win (although state militias might provide some surprises) but politically and morally, Obama would lose, lose, lose.

Obama has no morals so that doesn't matter. And with the red states in rebellion, and hence not voting, Obama wins easily. History is again the guide. The amendments ending slavery could never have passed in a United States where the Southern states were a part. If the goal was to preserve slavery then the dumbest thing the South could do was walk away, leaving only abolitionist states behind to pass the amendments.

The South lost their rebellion in the opening days. It took four years to resolve the issue, but they doomed themselves before the first Bull Run. First they didn't just walk away quietly. They had to taunt the hated Northerners. They refused to pay for seized federal land, and insisted on the right to pursue slaves into Northern states even though by their claims that was now a foreign country. The South also laid claim to all former US territories including what is now the Dakotas and Montana, hardly "Southern" territory.

Worse was the fact that in an time when pride and honor were much more important than they are today the Southern leaders never lost an opportunity to personally insult and degrade Northern leaders. If you spit on a man and then try to walk away you probably won't make it to the door without a fight. They way to secede is to make the other side believe they threw you out. You might lose a little pride, but that is better than losing all your freedom and possibly your life.

There is an old quote attributed to Longstreet that the South should have freed the slaves, then fired on Fort Sumter. Without European recognition and support the South was doomed, in fact it is hard to see how they could have done any better than they did considering the skills of their generals and the almost impossible incompetency of their union counterparts. Yet Europe would not recognize the South until after they had won independence because of the institution of slavery.

The other mistake the South made at the outset of the war was their invasions of Kentucky and Missouri. Both of those border states had declared neutrality. While they would not join the Confederacy, they also would not permit Union armies to cross. Thinking they would come out if given a push the Confederates sent small forces into both states. This cause the locals to view the Confederates as invaders rather than allies and allowed the Union to send in large forces that drove the Confederates out. More importantly it opened up the Mississippi as an invasion route into the Confederacy. It would be like Arizona seceding and then immediately sending the Arizona National Guard into Nevada.

This article is odd at best.

“But let us for the sake of the argument suppose that a repeat of the 1994 midterm elections is in the offing and that Republicans exceed their wildest expectations, and gain control of both houses”.

“There is virtually zero chance that the Republicans will control both houses by the two-thirds majority necessary to override Obama's certain veto of any repeal effort. ”

Uhm ya…the chances of them getting control of both houses is about the same as them getting 2/3’rds majority in both. Regardless the next few paragraphs is what can’t be achieved without 2/3rds majority. It’s not news, it’s not constructive, and it’s akin to crying. Cowboy up! So we won’t win the war with the next battle, but we still have to fight. We have to achieve intermidiary goals to arrive at the end game.

“We know what the endgame is for the political Left. It is national socialism with as many citizens dependent on the government as possible, and international socialism with foreign policy and economic policy controlled by UN and EU-style bureaucrats. This would put the Right out of business for good. What, then, is the endgame for the political Right? How does it plan -- (does it even have a plan?) -- to put the Left out of business for good?” .

Great question…except the prefacing statement is wrong or at least puts the left’s goal in the best possible light. It needs to be said loudly and often that socialism is simply a tool for tyrants and what the left really wants is a return to slavery. They desire the great unwashed masses to bow to them because to leftist elites suffering from megalomania, it’s about power and they would claim whatever ideology they needed to claim to gain it. They don’t care about socialism as an ideology any more then Marx actually believed in communism. These ideologies are tools to gain power and that is all.

We should have no plan to put these people out of business for good as that is impossible. Our founding fathers knew what evil lurked in the heart of man. They knew that there would always be another power hungry wannabe tyrant waiting in the wings to seize power. They carefully crafted a government devoid of the power to impose tyranny. It’s taken this long for us to slide as far back as we have to tyranny and it’s naïve to think that we will achieve what our founders did with any less effort then they put in. A valid argument could be made that we are less free now then the colonists were under British rule why do we think we can reclaim our birthright as Americans without a fight?

We need to re-impose the constitution and educate the populace so freedom is preserved for another generation. And the generation after us will need to do it again. That we thought we won the war the first time was our biggest mistake. This war can never be won…only fought to the best of our abilities.

“Indeed, the sainted Gipper, icon of the conservative movement, was a former Democratic union man who signed an abortion into law as governor of California six years prior to Roe, never had a balanced budget in his eight years as president, and signed an illegal alien amnesty in 1986”.

We will never win anything when conservative attack each with more venom and commitment then they ever attack liberals. No one is perfect, save your ammo for the enemy.

”It is unrealistic to argue, as some conservatives and Tea Partiers do, for a return to Jeffersonian libertarianism, no matter how desirable that may be. If conservatives were able to scale the power of today's Federal leviathan back to "merely" post-New Deal levels, it would be an enormous achievement.”

The left has set unrealistic goals for themselves too. They have corrupted the most free nation on earth against all odds and have almost achieved their goal of destroying it so they can take over and your proposed end game is to push them back half way? This sounds like a losing strategy to me.

“Let us suppose for a moment that the conservative goal was merely the preservation of the cultural values and international status of the America of the Eisenhower-Kennedy era (arguably the apogee of American power and influence). ”

Let us not. Our nation was already infested with and controlled by leftist influences by this point. There is no need for us to return to it. Let us instead desire to return to the spirit of ’76 where real freedom was the goal.

-A civil-rights movement based on individual equality, not group entitlements and reverse discrimination against whites and Asians;

This can't be done by government but must be achieved by society. Law is purportedly colorblind, it's the people that tinge it.

-Mandatory military training and conscription;
Unconstitutional boondoggle of unimaginible porportions.

-A muscular foreign policy in which America stood up to its enemies as JFK did during the Cuban missile crisis, rather than the Obama foreign policy posture of a beaten dog piddling in submission;

The muscular foreign policy like the Bay of Pigs fiasco where revolutionary forces were about to achieve victory but JFK “Stood up to its enemies” and withheld the promised air support so they were utterly decimated? How about we go back to a time when we actually didn’t back down and snatch defeat from the hands of victory? When an author will denigrate Reagan, but likens JFK to a hero, I begin to question their ideological preferences.

-Balanced or low-deficit budgets, with social spending limited to pre-Great Society "safety-net" minimums;

Why? I mean blanced budgets are required but why have social spending at all. The end game should require no social spending.

-A non-P.C. acknowledgement that enemies (then communists, now Muslim fanatics) sought to use America's freedoms as a tool to destroy it from within;
From whom and for what purpose? Will it allow the author to sleep better at night?

-The unapologetic deportation of illegals, e.g., Eisenhower's "Operation Wetback" in 1954;

I don’t care if we train our immigration officials to constantly apologize as they deporting illegals as long as they do it.

-The maintenance of American industrial and technological superiority;

Maintenance by whom? The collusion of government and business is unconstitutional, and is a basic building block of fascism.

-Social issues such as abortion and homosexuality left up to state legislatures as the Founders intended, rather than declared "constitutional rights" by activist judges;

Our rights are not confined to those in the constitution and nor was our government designed as a tyranny of the states. Abortion is the taking of a human life and should be treated as such. Homosexuality is a life style choice and as long as society at large doesn’t have to pay for their behavior then it’s not societies business. That being said, if we were to make pedophilia a capital offense, then I suspect in a couple of generations there would be very few homosexuals.

-The public acknowledgment of a nonsectarian "civic religion" based on the Judeo-Christian tradition;

Ok…I suspect I know where this is going but as stated is only half of the real suggestion.

-Unions investigated by the Federal government for corruption and racketeering, and a non-unionized public sector.

Agreed.

Conservatives must be under no illusions that the Left would regard such an agenda as "fascist" and react violently if such an agenda ever came close to being implemented.

Some of it is fascistic…what wrong with following the constitution?

The Republicans may gain seats in November, but it is hardly certain that they will implement a conservative agenda.

It’s clear that they won’t yet have the numbers to achieve any agenda but to slow down the lefts agenda. This is simply setting them up for failure when they won’t be at the stage where they can set an agenda.

Will the American Right choose to accept subjugation under the rule of the Left, and perform the same function that the British Conservative Party has performed for decades -- namely, provide rhetorical opposition but never really change anything?

I’m pretty sure that the Libertarian party has already locked up that role.

Or will the Right actually seek to reverse the hegemony of the Left, and restore American culture to its post-WWII greatness, mindful that the costs of doing so would be high?

Or will the right dispose of all the trappings of unconstitutional meanderings and once again champion liberty?

End game? Decline, collapse and anarchy.

Can we do something, as conservatives and libertarians - as patriots - to stop America’s self destruction?

No, we can’t. We are too small, too few, and America is too big, to complacent, and way too stupid. We can probably best invest our energy in “selfishly” attempting to prepare and provide for our own family and friends and in setting a common-sense example for others.

But stop America’s self destruction? Can’t be done. Like Bolivar said, might as well try to plow the sea.

In a speech entitled “Industrial Management in a Republic,” delivered in the grand ballroom of the Waldorf Astoria at New York during the 250th meeting of the National Conference Board on March 18, 1943, Henning Webb Prentis, Jr., President of the Armstrong Cork Company, had this to say:

“Paradoxically enough, the release of initiative and enterprise made possible by popular self-government ultimately generates disintegrating forces from within. Again and again after freedom has brought opportunity and some degree of plenty, the competent become selfish, luxury-loving and complacent, the incompetent and the unfortunate grow envious and covetous, and all three groups turn aside from the hard road of freedom to worship the Golden Calf of economic security. The historical cycle seems to be: From bondage to spiritual faith; from spiritual faith to courage; from courage to liberty; from liberty to abundance; from abundance to selfishness; from selfishness to apathy; from apathy to dependency; and from dependency back to bondage once more.”

First of all, nobody gets put out of business for good in politics. What I mean is that there will always be something called "left" and something called "right." The positions that each side takes may vary but the polarity will always remain. Some ideologies do come close to disappearing, like absolute monarchy or the 20th century totalitarianisms, but the idea that you won't have a big government and a smaller government, an egalitarian and a libertarin wing of political discourse is silly.

Secondly, this was the problem that conservatism has had since it was formed back in the 1940s and 1950s. That was an age of big, monolithic ideologies and ideas that claimed to provide THE answer to all of life's problems -- socialism, fascism, communism, Marxism, Freudianism, linguistic or analytic philosophy, cultural anthropology, semantics, etc. The founders of modern American conservatism opposed such monolithic ideologies in favor of a more realistic approach, but being of their age, they had to wonder whether or not they needed such an iron-clad ideological system of their own.

Nowadays, when all of those older systems have failed it would be a mistake for conservatives to adopt that way of thinking in giant blocks of thought, unbridgeable dichotomies, and final apocalyptic battles of good versus evil. Better to look at the way the world is and propose useful reforms that the country needs rather than to look ahead to a final conflict between massive ideological systems.

If you can prevent the other side from doing what it wants and put through a few useful and necessary measures of your own, you've won. Thinking about root and branch transformation of the whole country along some kind of ideal lines, or getting way too excited about ideological combat is a distraction from doing what needs to be done.

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