Posted on 10/15/2004 1:56:07 PM PDT by writer33
The Reagan Renaissance is focused on the future elections of 2006, 2008, 2010 and 2012. I had not originally planned to make any comments with regard to the 2004 election which was already at hand. However, recent polling data shows that the election has tightened and the risks posed by the growing possibility of a Kerry presidency lead me to offer the following comments on the current election.
John Kerry is a socialist. His voting record in the Senate is one of the worst in history, even worse than the record of the notoriously liberal senior Senator from Massachusetts. Socialists are famous for planning. It is state planning that allows socialists to take control of the economy and practically everything else. Kerry has more plans for the economy and the War on Terror than the commissars had of the famous Five Year Plans for the Soviet Union. Adam Smith's invisible hand that guides free markets is the most efficient conductor of economies and has always surpassed any form of planning, especially that done by governments where planning is actually an oxymoron.
Governments focus their attention on collecting data from the present and then comparing it to their diaries of the past. The past helps explain how you got to where you are and where you might be if nothing changes, but it has no real predictive power because all things in an economy are always changing. Governments and economists do not have crystall balls; no one has ever had a crystal ball that has allowed them to see the future before it happens. How many repeat lottery winners do you know? Or how many people in the Fortune 400 have earned their fortunes at the track or in Las Vegas playing against the house? In free markets, countless entrepreneurs put their capital at risk providing goods and services to consumers. Over time, consumers are able to choose products and services that fulfill their needs at a price they can and are willing to pay. Only government bureaucrats and socialists are foolish enough to believe they can improve on Smith's Invisible Hand.
Prior to Wilson and Roosevelt, citizen-statesmen were willing to sacrifice time away from their careers and families to make a contribution to public service during which time they contributed their special insight, such as it was, and then returned to their private careers and personal lives. The Founders and their early successors never considered making politics a career choice. Democrats made "professional" politicians possible with passage of the Federal Reserve and Roosevelt's introduction of socialism to America. It is not an accident that Adam Smith's Invisible Hand bears a resemblance to the Founders' Divine Hand of Providence. Nor is it a coincidence that socialism inevitably leads to economic failure through bankruptcy or hyperinflation. I have described socialism as the economic equivalent of cancer, but it also fair to use the analogy that socialism is a form of economic suicide.
We have talked about conservative third parties before. I do not dispute that the compassionate conservative and other Republicans have supported some socialistic programs and not opposed some that they might have defeated. Most people inclined to vote for conservative third party candidates are substantially more conservative that average Republicans and feel like they are voting their consciences and their beliefs and that is their only tool by which to move Republicans in their direction. I cannot disagree. However, I would like to make a case to you that this election could actually be different. First, any hope that you have of making your third party a majority party that can govern is never going to be a reality. We have at the most four elections (eight years) after this one to fix the United States before the US is forced into bankruptcy or hyperinflation. There is simply not enough time remaining for any third party to rise to majority power. The Reagan Wing of the Republican Party could be the last best hope of turning the United States around before it goes off the cliff of profligate financial insolvency. If Kerry wins this election, the task of turning the country around between 2006 and 2016 could be made incrementally more difficult, and the increment could be simply the difference between a Bush Presidency and Kerry in the interval between 2005 and the off year elections. This election could be extremely close. If most conservative third party voters would vote for Bush, it could prove to be the margin of the election and possibly the margin of safety that would keep the US solvent and allow the Reagan Renaissance enough time to take hold. Please, I beg of you; do not make the mistake of wasting your vote on your own third party candidate when the fate of America could hinge, not on this election, but the next four. Please do not risk making the task of turning America around any more difficult than it already is. Please give the Reagan Wing and the Reagan Renaissance the benefit of the doubt.
John Kerry earned his reputation as a flip-flopper. Cheney was correct in drawing the analogy that the most interesting debate in this election could be the one that John Kerry was having with himself. Politicians deserve their reputations about making promises, particularly "professional' promisers. I don't have to tell you which party is more problematic about promising nor do I have to tell anyone about which party has the greater problem with regard to telling the truth. Next year after the elections are over and whenever the next terrorist attack occurs, which team would you rather have in charge: Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Powell or Lurch and Smiley. Which party should the people trust to defend them, the one that bombed an aspirin factory or the one that built the Mother of All Bombs? When the next major hostage event occurs which party should be in charge of making decisions, the one that won the Cold War by defeating the Soviet Union or the one in charge at Mogadishu?
If I may be permitted the privilege of second-guessing the President about going to war with Iraq for the reasons he went at the time he made the decision to go, I might not have reached the same conclusion. Far be it from me, however, to point the finger and call it error even with the benefit of hind-sight knowing that there were no WMD. It is worse than naivety or the disingenuousness of politics as usual to claim that Saddam and his regime did not pose a threat of future terrorism against the United States. To believe such people could be put in charge of defending us against the terrorists is incredulous. While there is a real risk that President Bush and the US could eventually be unable to successfully establish freedom and democracy in Iraq, the terrorists are terrified that he could prove to be correct. If freedom gains a toe-hold in either Iraq or in Afghanistan where the terrorists had a strangle-hold, the terrorist know they will be finished. Terrorism and tyranny are no match for freedom. Socialism is not compatible with freedom; most socialists have some inkling or understanding of this basic truth. This is the reason why the socialists in the Democratic Party greatly underestimate the power of the President's plan.
Ask yourself two questions: 1) If you were a terrorist and wanted to strike the US homeland, would you rather face John Kerry or George Bush as President? 2) If you were a terrorist in Iraq, and you wanted to destabilize the new Iraqi government to create a terrorist haven, are you more likely to succeed if John Kerry is President or George Bush? Ask yourself a few more questions: If the objective of the terrorists is to destabilize the US and damage the economy, why is that we did not suffer a series of small attacks while we were reeling after 911? Why weren't young middle eastern men with back packs walking into Wal-Mart's all over the country? And why did we not suffer another major attack after it was clear that we were starting to recover from the devastating effects of the collapse of the towers and the related crashing of the travel and airline industries? Could it just be the fact that since none of these happened, that the President's measures for homeland security were effective and that the coalition attack on the Afghan regime harboring the terrorists prevented further attacks? Could it be that the Bush doctrine has been effective? Assuming the terrorists would prefer to have anyone but Bush in power, could that have played any role in the fact that the US homeland has not been attacked and at the same time the terrorists have tried to turn Iraq into a hell hole? The terrorists are certainly going to ratchet up the stakes in Iraq after our election in hopes of preventing free elections in Iraq. And the terrorists are smart enough to know that the as yet untested Kerry might capitulate when they ratchet the stakes past his pain threshold, and at the same time the terrorists are also smart enough to know that President Bush has already been tested and that Bush will respond by ratcheting the stakes up past the terrorist networks' own pain threshold.
Do the people of the United States have a death wish? Are the people of the United States determined to gut our own nation? What is it that makes socialists or liberals feel guilty? Why do they feel guilty and why do they seem intent on endangering those of us who don't while they engage in their own versions of self-emollition? Is there a link between socialism and the ancient legendary (Chinese?) death by a thousand cuts or the Japanese Samurai ritual of hara-kiri? Are Americans going to listen to the Swift boat Vets or are they actually going to vote for hari-Kerry?
Ping!
John Kerry is a socialist.
Dont insult Socialists....
"Dont insult Socialists...."
Now you're not being open-minded to free speech in America. You...You...Mean, nasty, conservative you. :)
BTTT!
Why do they feel guilty and why do they seem intent on endangering those of us who don't while they engage in their own versions of self-emollition?
Change that to "self-immolation."
Ah, that's better. I think of it as a verbal emollient.
<Please return to your seats.>
"Ah, that's better. I think of it as a verbal emollient."
You conservatives are just mean and nasty. Mean and nasty. You're gonna make me cry. :) HA!
We're nuanced, too, in a mean and nasty sort of way.
Well, it shows the editors didn't catch it either. This happens periodically. It drives you nuts, but it happens. Especially when it happens two or three times in a novel. And you find out after it goes to print. After a while, you just learn to accept that you're gonna make mistakes no matter what. And then rely on the benevolence of your readership. ;)
I remember when I came to this site in Febuary of last year. I found out how tough it is writing for conservatives. This is the truth. They are the toughest crowd to bring around. Once you do, you're in excellent shape. They'll go to the grave defending you. Being a conservative, I know this to be a fact.
After being flamed in my first day here, I knew this was the place I wanted to be. I've said it before and I'll say it again, "Free Republic has some of the finest minds I'll ever know."
It's safer and more fun just to pretend to be a spelling/grammar nazi, and even more so when you can work in a couple of tortured puns to increase the readers' agony level.
Please remove my name from your ping list.
Thanks.
NFP
...the people of the United States ... Why do they feel guilty and why do they seem intent on endangering those of us who don't while they engage in their own versions of self-immolation?
Being somewhat of an Agnostic, my theory (gleaned from the Church of England) is we are taught and conditioned by our Judeo-Christian beliefs that the 'poor' are noble, and the 'rich' are sinful; therefore aspiring to be 'rich' goes against the grain of all we've been taught. How we assuage that guilt is by giving the poor what they want, not what they earn. Those that have the most have the biggest guilt so they give the most -- but horrors! the guilt increases because of the power that accumulates from those 'good works'.
People must be allowed to fail and fall from the grace of our society, else we shall all fail and fall back to the feudal days of yore.
I fear Kerry and the current crop of Democrats for just that reason -- they intend to be the Landed Gentry suffering the Serfs as a necessary nuisance.
You have mail. Something that you didn't do for me. And this is not my ping list!
Ping!
I can agree with that.
Of late I have noticed a fad of pinging people to threads on ping lists without any request for such pinging. And if it's ReaganRenaissance, or ReaganGhost or whatever - I never asked to be on his/hers ping list either.
So please take me off your copy of his/hers, and if he/she's listening take me off his/hers as well.
Thanks.
NFP
If conservatives turn out and if libertarians or other conservative third parties will vote for Bush, Kerry's office should remain in the Senate Office Building, not 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.
The Democrats appear to be setting the stage for considerable vote fraud and vote protests including more court action. I fear that the Democrats will make enough allegations of Republican fraud to increase turn-out among Democrats in future elections and file enough court battles to discourage Republican turn out in future elections simply because of the frustations over repeated court battles.
Turning out the conservative base and persuading conservative third parties to vote against Kerry by voting for Bush are the keys to keeping Kerry corraled in the congressional chambers.
I agree.
As a valley girl would say it, "I so like totally think that's so totally awesome." :)
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