Posted on 09/13/2011 9:05:56 AM PDT by Indy Pendance
A single day does not pass that I do not receive many e-mails telling me that one or the other of the Republican candidates for President is an imposter to his/her cause - not really a conservative or not really a libertarian, as the case may be. It is frankly very annoying.
The tactic is ineffective, and the underlying premise – that political piety exists – is deeply flawed. Political orientation is not digital - 1 or 0, left or right, approve or disapprove. Think of it as a continuum with utopian socialism anchoring one end and utopian libertarianism at the other.
Each of us first chooses one of those directions - State or Self – and then discovers a comfortable destination along the route we travel in search of our core beliefs. Our resting places have names - progressive, liberal, moderate, blue-dog, centrist, neo-con, conservative, paleo. Those fixated on labels will drill even deeper, pursuing their happiness by defining sub-categories of sub-categories of sub-categories.
Too many of us judge each others’ politics by the absolute distance between our places on the spectrum. This seems unnecessarily divisive and is mostly counterproductive. Some hairs are too fine to split, and purity exists only in the mind of the purist. No two people will agree on every single issue unless both have surrendered their brains to an ideology they have memorized.
Years of living over here on the libertarian lunatic fringe have taught me to define others by the direction of their steps, not by the number it would still take for them to reach me. If I can see your face as you travel, you are my friend; if you have turned your back on me we will be adversaries. These days, when each election is a virtual referendum on the Constitution, it does not have to be much more complicated than that. It’s ok for conservatives and libertarians to be good neighbors; we don’t have to be family.
Free trade, limited government, individual liberty, private property - is there any conservative or any libertarian who does not embrace these four principles? More importantly, is there a single liberal, progressive, or socialist who does not oppose them all? The choice of trajectories is so starkly opposite that such surgical sub-species labeling as “neo-progressive post-libertarian anarchist” serves no practical purpose. But if you are one of these, I hope it makes you happy.
We already know there will be a Democrat incumbent President running for re-election in 2012 who hails from the left-most nether regions of the spectrum. We know he is an anti-capitalist, a serial statist, an internationalist, an anti-constitutionalist and an interventionist. We know that we will never see his face from where we stand; he will never travel in this direction. Not ever.
We know that he fears liberty enough to extinguish it; what we don't know yet is who liberty will choose to defeat him.
While we each may have a preferred candidate among this year’s lineup of challengers for the Presidency, it is foolish to think our favorite can win our country back by tearing down the others. To imagine our guy or gal is the only one who can lead a nation of self-sovereigns is to deny self-sovereignty at its essence. We are not electing a savior; that position has been filled for all eternity.
The first primary is still months away. The process of nomination is long and arduous for a reason; it will show us what we don't know now about each of those who seek the office. It is a contest that must be played out, not a coronation ritual staged for TV ratings months before the first vote is cast.
We will discover the true character of the candidates. We will observe their leadership style in the management of their campaigns. We will judge their stamina, consistency, and temperament. We will see how they handle disappointment, victory, deception, unfairness, adulation, and defection. We will watch to see if their positions can mature without abandonment of principle. We will study their gaffes, their recoveries, their missteps, and their strategic prowess. We will see them get angry, and judge them by what they get angry about. We will watch them gloat and judge them by what they gloat over.
Those of us who have left the Republican Party should not tell it how to pick its standard bearers. But we should remind our GOP friends that they cannot win elections on their own. They will need all of us tea partiers, independents, Libertarians, Constitutionalists, patriots, and disaffected Democrats to secure their victories.
And we will not blindly support whoever they select; fitness for office is more than simply being the least unfit in the herd. If a third-party candidate draws large numbers of votes in 2012, it will be the fault of the GOP fielding a bad ticket that could not win us over.
Republican activists working on campaigns are not making that job easier on themselves by sending out daily emails telling us what a lying, corrupt, unprincipled poser this or that one of their rivals is. At this point, any one of them could find themselves at the top of that ticket, and words are not so easily eaten in the internet age.
President Obama has proven that you cannot lead this nation on a last-guy-bad platform. All of the GOP challengers have said they would repeal Obamacare on their first day in office – we get that. If they want to move up in the polls, they should start talking about day two.
I agree.
I would also like to expand that thought and include any stage hands, janitors, vendors and or delivery personnel that might have been present at the time as a better option than the Phony-In -Chief that we currently have infesting the WH.
I note you didn’t include any of the newsreader talking heads...
It'd be pretty close I suppose, but in the end, I guess that even the talking heads would be better than what we have.
Sad state of affairs!
Hmmm, maybe so. They are much better than him at his one skill, reading a teleprompter...
“Think of it as a continuum with utopian socialism anchoring one end and utopian libertarianism at the other.”
Wrong. Dead wrong. Libertarianism is compatible with both leftism and an inconsistent conservatism.
The continuum runs from God on the right to Satan on the left, and none of us is as far to the right has he should be.
Leftists, more heavily influenced by Satan than those to their right, swear by the principle, “No enemies to the left.”
None of us can get far enough to the right that we comfortably accept the contrary: “No enemies to the right.” (Of course, the confusion sown by the father of lies as to what is of the left and what is of the right also contributes to this.)
Wait! we cry. I don’t want to be associated with nutty militias. Some people still think Nazism and Fascism are right-wing. Some have accepted the lie that racism is inherently right-wing. Warmongering?
What is right-wing about these things? Remember the leftard bombings and other violence in the 60s and 70s? Patty Hearst? Bill Ayers? Violence in and of itself is morally neutral: it can be used for good or evil. Leftards like the Shining Path, the Viet Cong, and Argentina’s Montoneros and People’s Revolutionary Army (ERP) used violence for evil.
The United States has, historically, used violence for good, and the militias are (were?) organized solely to oppose those who would use it for evil. (Which is to say, of course, the left.)
If you still think Hitler and Mussolini were right-wingers, I would recommend “Liberal Fascism” by Jonah Goldberg.
The Democrats were the party of slavery, of the 20th-century KKK, and of Jim Crow. George Wallace was a democrat when he kept his promise to stand in the schoolhouse door to prevent Negroes from entering. Eisenhower, who sent troops south to force integration of schools, was a Republican. JFK was a cynical hypocrite who never called Negroes anything but n*ggers in private, but publicly supported the civil rights movement because he wanted their votes.
Lyndon Johnson, who presided over some of the worst race riots in US history, was a Democrat. Because of the mess handed over by LBJ, there were less-severe riots under Nixon in 70-72. (There have been riots since—none under Reagan—but I don’t feel like going into the intricacies of that.)
The Civil Rights act was passed over Democrat opposition. It was Republican votes that swung it.
Who presided over the (completely justified) Mexican-American war? Polk. A Democrat.
The Spanish American War? McKinley, a Republican. Still, a short war and a just war.
WWI? Woody Wilson, a far-left, ivory-tower academic Democrat.
WWII? FDR. The less said about him the better.
Korea? Truman, a Democrat, by showing weakness.
Viet Nam? Eisenhower decided against intervention, and warned John F. CowardlySlimeball against it. Nonetheless, he opened the door, and after that nutball loser commie Oswald shot him, LBJ, a Democrat, rushed in where angels and Frenchmen feared to tread. Nixon, a Republican, extricated us. When he was crippled by the manufactured Watergate hissyfit, democrat fellow-travelers in congress ensured the ultimate communist victory
Panama and Grenada were short—in, mission accomplished, then out. Both in the interests of the US.
Gulf War I? GHW Bush threw the Iraqis out of Kuwait, prevented their planned invasion of Saudi Arabia, then got out—except for a very few forces assigned to enforce UN Sanctions.
Gulf War II? Well, that’s where Dub really paid for not being a solid conservative. As a response to the attacks of September 11, 2001, laudable. Then he started acting like a Democrat.
Make the Democrats take the blame for their own transgressions, and adopt the attitude, “No enemies to the right.” Ain’t nobody over there but God and people who are closer to Him than you or I.
“purity exists only in the mind of the purist. No two people will agree on every single issue unless both have surrendered their brains to an ideology they have memorized.”
Great excuse for compromising one’s principles.
A huge number of people agree on the major issues and most of the minor. We don’t have to agree on our favorite foods or our tastes in music.
The problem arises when someone who wants to represent conservatives (or says he does) disagrees on one of the major issues: liberty, baby-killing, the second and tenth amendments, sodomy, the sanctity of the family, socialized medicine, etc.
Characterizing a properly-formed conscience as surrendering one’s brain to an ideology one has memorized is to open the door to compromise on any issue whatsoever. It is mockery of principle, of the reality of right and wrong, good and evil. It is denigration of a person who holds that some principles are absolute.
This here article is ver’ ver’ deceptive.
I hate to sound cynical, but which of these candidates will actually follow through on that promise? Sad fact is, every challenger will claim to disagree and vow to negate the incumbent's policies, especially the unpopular ones. If the challenger's the same as the one we got now, why vote for him (her)?
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