Before this election and in the before the one before it, there were some of us on these threads pointing out that in the event of an Obama victory there was simply no institution extant which will act as a check, contemplated by the framers when they constructed their checks and balances which were designed to protect our liberties.
We noted that there was no hope to be found in either the House or the Senate, even if the Republicans managed to retain a nominal minority sufficient to mount a filibuster. We knew that the Rinos would sell the party out and that there would be no real recourse to the Senate.
It scarcely deserves comment that federalism as a concept simply is, especially in the economic sphere, dead as a vehicle to oppose even this breathtaking seizure of the American economy.
We knew that the media, apart from talk radio, Fox news, and the Internet would act not as a free press should to hold governments accountable but as a cheerleader to vindicate their obsessive support of the first black president. We contemplated that talk radio would be effaced in the wake of the election and it now appears that the "final solution" cannot be far off. There is even talk in high liberal circles of censoring the Internet. So it may well be that we will not have these institutions around for very long through which to advance conservative principles. It is illustrative of the sad state of affairs confronting conservatives that our great hope is that the traditional media goes bankrupt and loses the foot race with congressional Democrats to extinguish talk radio.
One looks to our academic institutions to play their traditional role of providing independent analysis and dissent from the conventional wisdom in vain for any hope that a conservative point of view might reach the light of day. In fact, the censorship and intimidation of conservative opinion on American campuses today is approaching Stalinist proportions without the gulags and the firing squads.
Our churches likewise can provide limited promise to speak out on behalf of individual virtue or individual rights. First, secular Jews now fully dominate discourse coming from that minority. The Protestant camp has been thoroughly undermined to the point where one can actually question the patriotism Of the National Council of Churches-in one of which I grew up. Only the evangelicals remain a viable voice for any conservative cause and they are soon to be attacked by the Internal Revenue Service which will add its weight to the powers seeking to destroy evangelicals who have been behaving so heavy handedly in the media and in Hollywood. The Catholic Church, equally, faces internal termites and external opposition. It has been weakened in the wake of the priest/pederast scandal. I predict increasing attacks on the German Pope. In any event, to be effective politically the evangelical and Roman branches of the Christian faith must find a way of speaking with one voice. Finally, the Republican Party is riven by the indigestion felt by fiscal conservatives when they contemplate evangelical social conservatives.
The Republican Party itself is fighting for its very a survival. It might very well be pushed into a regional party consisting of a few mountain states and parts (not even the whole of) the old Confederacy. It has appointed an attractive black man as Chairman of the Republican National Committee probably at least partly because a black man can speak out against Obama and hopefully avoid charges of racism. I regard that factor to be a point in his favor. But my conception of an effective leader for the national Republican party is someone with the remorseless drive of a Rahm Emmanuel. I see no evidence whatsoever that Michael Steele possesses that drive. Further, by default, the chairman has become the spokesman of the party which has no other national figure. That role means he must be able to rouse the troops with his charisma. I see absolutely no evidence that Michael Steele possesses the power of speech, Ronald Reagan's style, to mobilize the vast middle of America. Has he been speaking out against porkculus? Finally, a party which is undisciplined cannot come back from the wilderness. Despite the surprising unanimity displayed by House Republicans in fighting this damned porkculus bill, I see no reason to believe that Michael Steele or anyone else can impose rigorous discipline on the party, and certainly not on Rinos in the Senate. Hence I conclude that the Republican Party as an institution will be of limited value, especially in the early stages of mounting a recovery.
The great eleemosynary institutions of America like the Ford foundation and the Rockefeller foundation are wholly given over to liberalism and, sadly, liberalism of the most profound internationalist and leftist bent. Even in a global depression they are possessed of immense wealth and they will continue to buy enormous influence in academia, the media, and ultimately, the Congress. I see no source of recovery for conservatism here, indeed, these institutions will prove implacable and wealthy enemies of individual liberties.
So far, this analysis has been presented before the election on these threads by other posters and columnists as well as well as by myself. Credit to A Navy Vet for looking for solutions to our existential dilemma. A Navy Vet has quite properly looked to the court system as an institution which offers the most promise as a place of refuge for sanity and individual liberty. Alas, even this institution is under assault from the left and the left is winning and has been winning for more than half a century. Nevertheless, the court still march to a different drummer. They still pay a lipservice to the Constitution-at least the majority of them still do. They are impervious because of their life appointments to much of the pressure brought to make the other institutions conform to the liberal agenda. The courts both state and federal, are not monolithic hence there is always a venue with another point of view. Many many judges, and especially Justices, are intellectually arrogant and that is true of both the left and the right and that means that conservative judges, as few as they might be today, might well stand up for liberty. Much depends on the cultural consensus of the country and on the nature of the issue which pricks a judge's conscience.
By way of illustration, when the courts set out to shape America to their liking as they did in the middle of the 20th century they had on their side an ally of inestimable value: the television camera. Civil rights probably never have been effected in that age without television. The courts alone could not have achieved such a social revolution. What we saw was a unity of purpose among the political arm (Lyndon Johnson and many Senate and House Republicans as well as North Eastern liberals) to draft the laws, the courts to validate the questionable constitutionality of many of the laws and amplify their application where possible, and the media to provide the cultural consensus to make it all stick.
Clearly no such unanimity of purpose among our institutions can be contrived today which will aid the conservative cause. There is, however, a faint ray of hope to put together a coalition on behalf of individual liberty which might draw enough support of enough patriots in all of these institutions to mount a recovery of the American conscience. I believe that individual liberty is the key to recovery.
Every step that Obama and his leftists take will be presented to be for the greater good of the greater number. We know that means only great oppression of the individual. One need consider only the efforts in the porkculus bill to impose on America by stealth a health regime designed to push grandma off onto the ice flow to understand the Stalinist assault on traditional individual American liberties which Obama represents.
While talk radio is still lives an alliance might be fashioned which will resonate with the American people over the preservation of their liberties. It may require the adoption of many liberals tactics, such as exploitation of the victimization card, but it would certainly include the coordination of counterattacks in every imaginable legal venue, support from talk radio, the Internet, and the pulpit. It would require some brave and ambitious young professors willing to risk their careers in order to make a career to provide the intellectual support for the campaign for individual liberty. Who knows, there might well be some ambitious young reporter or media personality willing to take the same chance with and for his career and who, somehow, finds a way to get past the liberal censors at the editorial level.
Above all, it will require an issue that seizes the American imagination to be successful. No one can foretell what such a news event will be. If America and Great Britain could be wracked by the death of a self-indulgent, airheaded princess, or obsessed with a football player who sawed off the heads of two people, or the pathos of a little girl trapped down a well, there can be no doubt that such a news event will soon come along. We must find something which is not necessarily trivial but emotionally gripping which exposes the left for the demagogues and liberty grabbers they are. We must not expect to move the tectonic plates with a first heave. And we will have no power to do anything if our efforts among all these institutions are not coordinated. But the hope is that after real Americans time and again are exposed to real patriots fighting for real liberties with a will grab hold of reality and awaken to the urgent need to act like our forefathers always have acted when confronted with tyranny.
I salute A Navy Vet for opening a dialogue and reaching for solutions. This is the beginning of a comeback.
