Category Archives: Government & Politics

What’s in a Name: On Hayek’s ‘Why I am Not a Conservative’

Sixty six years after its original publication, Friedrich Hayek’s masterpiece, The Road to Serfdom, continues to inspire legions of both mature and aspiring devotees of individual liberty, free markets and limited government. Hayek’s explanations of why collectivist planning must inevitably lead to tyranny are simple and logical, yet also profound and thoroughly convincing.

Hayek’s grand tome, The Constitution of Liberty, published 16 years later, contains more brilliant reasoning and forehead-slapping insights – this time more from a “political/sociological” point of view than via the “economic” slant in The Road to Serfdom. But the Constitution of Liberty ends with a special Postscript entitled Why I am Not a Conservative. This short but devastating critique of American conservatism – as Hayek saw it in 1960 – has had a demoralizing effect on the conservative movement.

Seen from today’s perspective, it is as if the Founders had put a postscript on the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution asserting that all who subscribe to the underlying philosophy therein were flawed, wrong and hopelessly incapable of administering a regime dedicated to those documents’ principles. When conservatives read Hayek’s works they find almost nothing with which to disagree. His words on the dangers of central planning and enhanced government and how they invariably lead to loss of freedom could come from the lips of Paul Ryan or Jim DeMint. How can it be that Hayek scorns the label by which these devoted students of the right identify themselves?

Hayek agonizes in the Postscript as to how to label himself. He argues convincingly that he is a classic eighteenth/nineteenth century liberal in the mold of Burke, Gladstone, Macaulay, de Tocqueville and Lord Acton. But he acknowledges that the word ‘liberal’ has been hijacked by the progressives and so its original meaning is thoroughly corrupted. He professes to dislike libertarian (“I find it singularly unattractive. For my taste it carries too much of the flavor of a manufactured term…”) and instead settles on Whig. But as he admits this term is too dead and buried to be resuscitated; and talk about ‘singularly unattractive.’

Other writers, in similar examinations, have suggested constitutionalist, traditionalist or neoliberal. In fact, in today’s understanding of the terms, Hayek would definitely be considered a libertarian. Now there is an enormous overlap between conservative and libertarian philosophy, but the two camps differ significantly on two crucial points.

Morals. There is a libertine streak in libertarianism that is missing from the conservative repertoire. I believe that this traces to the representative camps’ understanding of morals. Many conservatives tend to base their morals on religious grounds. But even among conservatives whose morals derive from a more rationalistic basis, there is a belief in an irreducible, unchangeable core to their moral structure, an immutable understanding of the difference between good and evil, which does not evolve.

A libertarian takes his devotion to individual liberty more literally. While libertarians also believe that sound morals must govern individuals and their society, and must move them more toward good than evil, they also accept that morals set by the community are susceptible to change. Individuals, exercising their right to liberty, might over time come to new and better moral understandings. Thus libertarians do not decry sexual permissiveness, drug use and certain ‘life’ issues, which conservatives see as violations of fundamental moral laws. In particular, conservatives and libertarians tend to wind up on opposite sides of issues like drug prosecution, public homosexuality and abortion. This difference in perspective between conservatives and libertarians is fundamental and there is no minimizing it.

America’s Role. The other fundamental difference between conservatives and libertarians is in the understanding of America’s role in history. While both groups are intensely patriotic and believe that America represents a tremendous step forward in human history, conservatives believe in an Old Testament type philosophy – America as a light unto the nations, a concept that libertarians reject.

Conservatives see America as a seminal Constitutional Republic, a beacon of freedom and a fount of liberty, and that Americans – like the ancient Israelites or even like some parts of modern Jewry – have accepted the mantle of specialness with the obligation to play a singular role in bringing freedom to the world. Conservatives describe this as American exceptionalism and believe that we as a people have accepted the consequent burdens this role puts on our shoulders.

Libertarians believe on the other hand that good luck and good decisions led to our exceptional society. But other societies are free to make the same decisions; we have no special obligation to lead them there. This discrepancy leads to huge differences in opinion on foreign policy, defense spending and the role that America is supposed to play in the world. As with the previous basic difference, this one is sharp and its effect should not be trivialized.

Hayek recognizes both points and takes the libertarian position on each. But these are far from his most severe criticisms of conservatives. Hayek also charges that conservatives are:

·        worshippers of old ideas and ideals – not because they are cherished or invaluable, but simply because they are old;

·        wedded to ironclad first principles (of economics, politics and culture) and do not trust the uncontrolled, random, invisible hand type forces that lead society to the best outcomes in a free market – and by that he means a free market not only in business, but also in political and cultural ideas;

·        too comfortable with authority;

·        too inclined toward an aristocracy as the correct form of societal organization;

·        partial toward protectionist economic policies; and

·        basically not Whigs, but Tories.

Some or all of this might have been accurate in the 1950s when Senator Robert Taft was “Mr. Conservative.” But none of it is on the mark today. If Hayek could reappear at a Tea Party event, he would certainly repudiate most of what he wrote in ‘Why I am Not a Conservative.’ The two fundamental differences described above remain and they would continue to identify Hayek as a libertarian, but all of his criticisms in the bulleted list no longer apply.

Judging by their known affiliations and self-identification, the vast majority of rightward leaning people in the US come down on the other side from Hayek on the two fundamental principles upon which conservatives and libertarians differ. If there is any hope of reestablishing America as a Constitutional Republic dedicated to individual liberty, then it is conservatives who shall play the main role, not libertarians.

But the latter group does have a key role to play in the unfolding conservative revolution in America. It may be explained via an analogy. Orthodox, or strictly observant Jews see their role in the world as living a pious, holy life according to the strict commandments of God and that by doing so, they constitute a light unto the nations. They seek to create a model example by which the vast number of Gentiles in the world will set their compasses, thereby “fixing the world” and bringing mankind to harmony, justice and peace.

Whether the model is good or not, it turns out that the commandments are so incredibly strict that it is virtually impossible for any, beyond an extraordinarily dedicated few, to observe them. Most fall away. But among those are many who are imbued with the spirit and blessing of God and they proceed to enrich and improve mankind, often without realizing that is their deep Jewish roots which provide the seeds of their great strength, talent and leadership capabilities. Examples are copious: Einstein, Freud, Herzl, Salk, Sabin, Disraeli, Spinoza, Koufax, Kissinger, Brin, Berlin, perhaps even Jesus of Nazareth. It is the vastly greater number of secular Jews and their associated and converted offspring, offshoots of the rigid and impossibly demanding Orthodox tradition, which provide the light unto the nations and thereby fix the world. (I confess that this theory by which Orthodox Jews fix the world via their “failed” descendants originates with a mentor, Dr. Jacob Goldhaber.)

In the analogy, the libertarians are the Orthodox Jews and conservatives are their “assimilated offspring.” A dogmatic, fiercely rigid, sometimes self-defeating and blind devotion to the purest form of libertarianism gives rise to a somewhat less pure, but more successful offshoot (conservatives). The latter are in a position to deploy the fundamentals of the “parent religion” without being crippled by the extremely pure version to which a widespread conversion is not in the offing. In both versions there remains an irreducible core that is preserved. But it is the “less pure” version that has the greatest chance of “fixing the world.”

In modern terms, I believe that Washington, Madison, Hamilton, Adams and Franklin would be classified as conservatives, not libertarians. Paine was a libertarian and I’m not so sure about Jefferson. With all due respect to the genius of Frederick Hayek (which genius I described in depth in the previous post below, I believe that conservatives, not libertarians, will lead us to the promised land.
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This article appeared both in the American Thinker and in The Intellectual Conservative:
 
 

On the Genius of Friedrich Hayek

The United States was founded upon certain fundamental ideas and principles – political, cultural, social and economic. As the American people’s faith in and adherence to those principles have eroded over the decades, those of us who cling to them attribute much of the decline to the miserable education that our youth receive. Our schools – from kindergarten to graduate school – have done, in the last two generations, a deplorable job of inculcating in our children the ideas that animated our Founders. The names, much less the thoughts, of those responsible for the principles upon which America was established are virtually unknown to the youth of America. Alas, they are often equally unknown to their parents. How many among us recognize the name or words of Adam Smith, Edmund Burke or William Gladstone? Our children might know that Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence, but how many recognize James Madison as the “Father of the Constitution?” Furthermore, the lack of knowledge of the content of these seminal documents is shocking.

Going forward, the populace’s ignorance of the great philosophers who followed the Founders in the 19th century – de Tocqueville, Lord Acton and John Stuart Mill – is equally dismaying. The deficit grows even stronger in the twentieth century as Ludwig von Mises, Russell Kirk and (to a lesser extent) Milton Friedman are completely off the radar screen of mainstream educators. But the most egregious instance for me is the disregard paid to one of the great minds of the 20th century – Friedrich Hayek, a Nobel Prize winning economist. Hayek’s writings in the middle part of the 20th century should be required reading for every high school and college student in America.

Americans show an appallingly poor grasp of the political ideas of Madison (individual liberty, limited government, separation of powers, republican government). Lacking same, it is not surprising that they fail to understand the proper role of the Federal Government, State Sovereignty or what the Rule of Law really means. Equally bad is their lack of exposure to or appreciation for the basic economic ideas of Adam Smith. How else to explain the most entrepreneurial country in history in which politicians and the people routinely blame their economic woes (real and imagined) on “business interests and corporate greed?” Both deficiencies could be remedied if Hayek were on the syllabus. But alas he is not – in fact, I sometimes wonder whether those who draw up the syllabus have ever heard of him.

My purpose here is to provide a modest sampling of the brilliance of Hayek’s thought. He wrote approximately a dozen and a half books – the most well-known being The Road to Serfdom (1944) and The Constitution of Liberty (1960). The quotes below are all from The Road to Serfdom (Fiftieth Anniversary Edition, U. of Chicago Press, 1994). My hope for this brief compendium is that readers will be so struck by the clarity, relevance and insight of Hayek’s words that they will be tempted to share them with others – especially non-readers of this journal, who are sorely in need of some enlightenment.

Chapter 4: The “Inevitability” of Planning, p. 49: It is a revealing fact that few planners are content to say that central planning is desirable. Most of them affirm that we can no longer choose but are compelled by circumstances beyond our control to substitute planning for competition. The myth is deliberately cultivated that we are embarking on the new course not out of free will but because competition is spontaneously eliminated by technological changes which we neither can reverse nor should wish to prevent. This argument is rarely developed at any length – it is one of the assertions taken over by one writer from another until, by mere iteration, it has come to be accepted as an established fact. It is, nevertheless, devoid of foundation. The tendency toward monopoly and planning is not the result of any “objective facts” beyond our control but the product of opinions fostered and propagated for half a century until they have come to dominate all our policy.

Chapter 5, Planning and Democracy, pp. 69-70: The inability of democratic assemblies to carry out what seems to be a clear mandate of the people will inevitably cause dissatisfaction with democratic institutions. Parliaments come to be regarded as ineffective “talking shops,” unable or incompetent to carry out the tasks for which they have been chosen. The conviction grows that if efficient planning is to be done, the direction must be “taken out of politics” and placed in the hands of experts – permanent officials or independent autonomous bodies.

Chapter 6, Planning and the Rule of Law, pp. 91-93: If the law says that such a board or authority may do what it pleases, anything that board or authority does is legal – but its actions are certainly not subject to the Rule of Law. By giving the government unlimited powers, the most arbitrary rule can be made legal; and in this way a democracy may set up the most complete despotism imaginable…The conflict is thus not, as it has often been misconceived in nineteenth-century discussions, one between liberty and law. As John Locke had already made clear, there can be no liberty without law. The conflict is between different kinds of law – law so different that it should hardly be called by the same name: one is the law of the Rule of Law, generally principles laid down beforehand, the “rules of the game” which enable individuals to foresee how the coercive apparatus of the state will be used, or what he and his fellow-citizens will be allowed to do, or made to do, in stated circumstances. The other kind of law gives in effect the authority power to do what it thinks fit to do.

Thus the Rule of Law could clearly not be preserved in a democracy that undertook to decide every conflict of interests not according to rules previously laid down but “on its merits”…The Rule of Law thus implies limits to the scope of legislation: it restricts it to the kind of general rules known as formal law and excludes legislation either directly aimed at particular people or at enabling anybody to use the coercive power of the state for the purpose of such discrimination. It means, not that everything is regulated by the law, but, on the contrary, that the coercive power of the state can be used only in cases defined in advance by the law and in such a way that it can be foreseen how it will be used. A particular enactment can thus infringe the Rule of Law. Anyone ready to deny this would have to contend that whether the Rule of Law prevails today in Germany, Italy, or Russia depends on whether the dictators have obtained their absolute powers by constitutional means.

Chapter 9, Security and Freedom, pp. 144-147: The general endeavor to achieve security by restrictive measures, tolerated or supported by the state, has in the course of time produced a progressive transformation of society…This development has been hastened by another effect of socialist teaching, the deliberate disparagement of all activities involving economic risk and the moral opprobrium cast on the gains which make risks worth taking but which only few can win.

We cannot blame our young men when they prefer the safe, salaried position to the risk of enterprise after they have heard from their earliest youth the former described as the superior, more unselfish and disinterested occupation. The younger generation of today has grown up in a world in which in school and press the spirit of commercial enterprise has been represented as disreputable and the making of profit as immoral, where to employ a hundred people is represented as exploitation but to command the same number as honorable…Where distinction and rank are achieved almost exclusively by becoming a salaried servant of the state, where to do one’s assigned duty is regarded as more laudable than to choose one’s own field of usefulness, where all pursuits that do not give a recognized place in the official hierarchy or a claim to a fixed income as inferior and even somewhat disreputable, it is too much to expect that many will long prefer freedom to security. And where the alternative to security in a dependent position is a most precarious position, in which one is despised alike for success and failure, only few will resist the temptation of safety at the price of freedom. Once things have gone so far, liberty indeed becomes almost a mockery, since it can be purchased only by the sacrifice of most of the good things of earth. In this state it is little surprising that more and more people should come to feel that without economic security liberty is “not worth having” and that they are willing to sacrifice their liberty for security.

There can be no question that adequate security against severe privation, and the reduction of the avoidable causes of misdirected effort and consequent disappointment, will have to be one of the main goals of policy. But if these endeavors are to be successful and are not to destroy individual freedom, security must be provided outside the market and competition left to function unobstructed. Some security is essential if freedom is to be preserved, because most men are willing to bear the risk which freedom inevitably involves only so long as that risk is not too great. But while this is a truth of which we can never lose sight, nothing is more fatal than the present fashion among intellectual leaders of extolling security at the expense of freedom.

It is essential that we should re-learn frankly to face the fact that freedom can only be had at a price and that as individuals we must be prepared to make severe material sacrifices to preserve our liberty. If we want to retain this, we must regain the conviction on which the rule of liberty in the Anglo-Saxon countries has been based and which Benjamin Franklin expressed in a phrase, applicable to our lives as individuals no less than as nations: “Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.”

Chapter 11, The End of Truth, pp. 178-179: Once science has to serve, not truth, but the interests of a class, a community, or a state, the sole task of argument and discussion is to vindicate and to spread still further the beliefs by which the whole life of the community is directed…The word “truth” itself ceases to have its old meaning. It describes no longer something to be found with the individual conscience as the sole arbiter of whether in any particular instance the evidence…warrants a belief; it becomes something to be laid down by authority, something which has to be believed in the interest of the unity of the organized effort and which may have to be altered as the exigencies of this organized effort require it.

The general intellectual climate which this produces, the spirit of complete cynicism as regards truth which it engenders, the loss of the sense of even the meaning of truth, the disappearance of the spirit of independent inquiry and in the belief in the power of rational conviction, the way in which differences of opinion in every branch of knowledge become political issues to be decided by authority, are all things which one must personally experience…Perhaps the most alarming fact is that contempt for intellectual liberty is not a thing which arises only once the totalitarian system is established but now which can be found everywhere among intellectuals who have embraced a collectivist faith…Not only is even the worst oppression condoned if it is committed in the name of socialism, and the creation of a totalitarian system openly advocated by people who pretend to speak for the scientists of liberal countries; intolerance, too, is openly extolled.

Chapter14, Material Conditions and Ideal Ends, pp. 223-224 & 234-235: It was men’s submission to the impersonal forces of the market that in the past has made possible the growth of a civilization which without this could not have developed; it is thus by submitting that we are every day helping to build something that is greater than any one of us can fully comprehend…unless this complex society is to be destroyed, the only alternative to the submission to the impersonal and seemingly irrational forces of the market is submission to an equally uncontrollable and therefore arbitrary power of other men. In his anxiety to escape the irksome restraints which he now feels, man does not realize that the new authoritarian restraints which will have to be deliberately imposed in their stead will be even more painful.

What are the fixed [moral] poles now which are regarded as sacrosanct, which no reformer dare touch, since they are treated as the immutable boundaries which must be respected in any plan for the future? They are no longer the liberty of the individual, his freedom of movement, and scarcely that of speech. They are the protected standards of this or that group, their “right” to exclude others from providing their fellowmen with what they need. Discrimination between members and nonmembers of closed groups, not to speak of nationals of different countries, is accepted more and more as matters of course; injustices inflicted on individuals by government action in the interest of a group are disregarded with an indifference hardly distinguishable from callousness; and the grossest violations of the most elementary rights of the individual…are more and more often countenanced even by supposed liberals. All this surely indicates that our moral sense has been blunted rather than sharpened. When we are reminded, as more and more frequently happens, that one cannot make omelettes without breaking eggs, the eggs which are broken are almost all of the kind which a generation or two ago were regarded as the essential bases of civilized life. And what atrocities committed by powers with whose professed principles they sympathize have not readily been condoned by many of our so-called liberals”?

Hayek’s thinking would be most accurately labeled in today’s lexicon as libertarian rather than conservative. That doesn’t change the fact that the fundamental truths which he espouses should serve as a guide to conservative politicians and economists, indeed to all people in the nation whose desire for the country is success and prosperity. But because of the purity of Hayek’s libertarian thought, acceptance of his ideas requires more than just sound reasoning and an open mind. It requires faith. Not religious faith, but more a faith in the reliability of historical observation, acquired wisdom and the unformulated but immutable laws of human nature. Hayek explains why free markets work better and are more just than collectivist planning. He describes how social values and cultural morals that are developed by communal trial and error are more reliable and humane than behavior dictated by political elites. He argues that social advancement and individual accomplishment are better served by uninhibited competition than by edicts and artificial rules imposed by anointed experts. In order for one to accept the legitimacy of Hayek’s reasoning one must be willing to trust the efficacy of “unseen forces,” invisible hands, seemingly irrational and/or random processes and unprovable theories over and above the desire for order decreed and enforced by leaders and experts. To do so arguably goes against human nature. It requires a difficult leap of faith. And if teachers do not accept the paradigm in the first place, their students learn its negative – despite the vast history that shows how accurate Hayek’s formulations for societal and economic organization have proven to be.

Periodically, we experience a breakthrough. The popularity of Allan Bloom’s book, The Closing of the American Mind is a prime example. Others that occur to me are: the willingness of the American people to entertain Ronald Reagan’s ideas; the positive response to conservative thought for a brief moment in 1994; even the fact that John Stossel survived for a while in the belly of the beast (at ABC); or the recent eruption of the popular Tea Party movement. But for the most part, the people of the United States have been blind to the wisdom of Hayek. The ascent of the Obama-Pelosi-Reid gang is a testament to that blindness. The popularization of Hayek’s work would be a tremendous step forward in combating said blindness.
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This article also appeared in The Land of the Free at

Inviting RINOs to a (Tea) Party

All the polls predict substantial gains for the Republican Party in this fall’s midterm elections. Some pundits are even claiming that the GOP will capture one or both houses of Congress. Many conservatives are licking their chops at the prospect, believing that whether the GOP takes control or only comes close, it will spell the end of any chance for Obama to further his radical remake of America according to his statist/Keynesian/multicultural vision.

Perhaps such thinking is correct. But only in the short term. Exactly as the GOP takeover of Congress in 1994, exactly as the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980, and certainly as the election of either Bush did not herald a halt to the ongoing progressive capture of the American polity and culture, the coming Republican tsunami (no matter how strong) will prove just as ephemeral in its effect. Unless other fundamental changes accompany the anticipated Republican sweep in two months, the leftist onslaught that has buried America in: gargantuan government, collectivist programs, Keynesian economics, multicultural drivel, anti-religious morals, and a welfare state mentality; that onslaught will continue. In particular, the fickle electorate will tire of the new Republican majority as quickly as it soured on the Obama-Pelosi-Reid regime, and the country will resume its oscillation between hard left Democratic governance (à la Obama, Carter and Johnson) and faux conservative Republican leadership (such as Bushes, Nixon and Ford).

For that not to occur, the right in America must achieve two monumental transformations that would be mirror images of the stupendous changes engineered by the left over the last century.

  1. True conservatives must take complete control of the Republican Party, exactly as hard core liberals have commandeered the Democratic Party.
  2. Conservatives must recapture the country’s culture, which is now almost completely characterized by the preferences of leftists, progressives and multiculturalists. This means in particular, wresting control of the media, educational establishment, legal profession, academia, major foundations, librarian societies and government bureaucracies from the clutches of the liberals who dominate these venues and through them establish the cultural norms of the nation.

I have argued elsewhere (see e.g., http://new.ronlipsman.com/2009/05/17/what-culture-is-it-that-the-politics-have-caught-up-with/ and the references therein) that the liberal seizure of the culture represents the successful implementation of a slowly-evolving, but highly effective strategy conceived by progressives in the early twentieth century. Moreover, I have claimed that the politics followed the culture – exactly as those early progressives predicted it would. Specifically, for the left, #1 was a consequence of #2, not independent of it. The liberals only came to dominate the polity after their capture of the culture rendered it virtually inevitable. Well, why does the same reasoning not apply to conservatives? That is, how can the right hope to address the first transformation before it has made substantial progress on the second? The answer lies in a point that I made previously in this journal (perhaps too obliquely, but see http://new.ronlipsman.com/2010/08/26/defeating-obama-and-the-progressives-is-there-cause-for-optimismthe-election-of-barack-obama-and-a-hard-left-congress-has-not-been-a-boon-to-the-cause-of-individual-liberty-in-the-united-states-ob/).  Namely, despite the idiotic votes for progressives, the mind-numbing stupidity of entrusting the Oval Office to an anti-American radical, the acquiescence in the demonization of businessmen and entrepreneurs – especially in contrast to the supposedly benign nature of government, the slavish attention paid to the filthy pop culture propagated by the media; despite all that, at heart, we are still a center-right country. Most of the American people believe in individual liberty, free markets, American exceptionalism and traditional culture. Therefore, whereas it took the liberals a century to weave their magic, hypnotize the populace and establish their radical agenda as “mainstream,” it should take conservatives no more than a generation to undo the treachery and restore the country. It requires only the will and an aggressive pursuit of the two transformations. The process will be accelerated by the fact that conservatives can address both transformations simultaneously – because of the inherent nature of the American people – unlike the liberals who had to approach them sequentially.

I have described elsewhere what I believe conservatives must do to recapture the culture. (See e.g., http://new.ronlipsman.com/2009/09/04/is-the-united-states-of-america-doomed/ or http://new.ronlipsman.com/2009/04/10/different-visions/.) My main goal here is to address the first transformation – what conservatives must do to convert the GOP into a party that stands for truly conservative philosophy, principles and policies, not the muddled, country-club, faux conservative, liberal-lite, RINO mess that it is and, with the brief exception of the Reagan era, has been for almost 80 years.

In fact the process has already begun courtesy of the Tea Party movement. It is not hard to understand why that movement has erupted now. The Obama-Pelosi-Reid gang’s aggressive pursuit of the most radical left agenda the country has seen since Johnson (or perhaps since Roosevelt, or even Wilson) has awakened a sleeping giant. The center-right American population has suffered through nearly a century of brainwashing at the hands of the liberal elite who control almost all opinion forming organs of American society. As a consequence, despite the people’s basically conservative convictions, their confidence in their underlying philosophy has been eroded; their natural instincts have been trashed and too often deemed illegitimate; and they have been taught to distrust their traditionalist intuition. Center-right Americans have been cowed into doubting the value of the political and cultural system that their forebears treasured and they have been tricked into paying feasance to a radically alien system imported from Europe.

But the O-Team pushed the pedal too hard and now many see clearly the abominable destination that the progressives have in store for us. The people can also see clearly that those who should have been protecting us from the progressive onslaught have too often “gone along to get along.” The people fear and dislike the O-Team, but they have nothing but contempt for the faux conservatives who control the Republican Party. So they have come together in Tea Party events to share their rage and plot strategy for undoing the harm that the progressives and their unwitting RINO accomplices have done to the country. All over the nation, Republican primary voters have tossed RINOs in the garbage and replaced them with Tea Partiers. This is the first and most important step in the assault that true conservatives must mount on the Republican Party. Here are some others:

  • (Repeating the first step.) Purge RINOs wherever possible. I believe that Buckley’s strategy of choosing a “more electable” pseudo-conservative candidate over a less electable true conservative has backfired. It enables too many RINOs. It’s time to jettison that policy.
  • Replace Michael Steele by a real conservative at the helm of the RNC and toss all the other faux conservatives who run that vital, but compromised organization.
  • Cease the practice of “open” primaries, which give diabolical Democrats the opportunity to ‘crossover’ and help nominate RINOs for important positions – like the Presidency.
  • Seek alliances with true conservatives in business, religious organizations, civic associations, foundations and all the other important components of civil society to help formulate conservative answers to critical questions – political and otherwise – that bedevil the public.
  • Compose documents that articulate clearly creative, conservative positions that the Republican Party will adopt to address America’s pressing problems. Representative Paul Ryan’s Roadmap for America is an excellent example. Newt Gingrich’s Contract with America was another. A second such contract – issued before the coming election if possible – would be very helpful.
  • Institute policies and establish structures to ensure that money, which flows into Republican coffers, is controlled by conservatives, goes to assist conservative causes and candidates, and bypasses the RINOs.

Thus far the Tea Party people have been working primarily on the first step. Hopefully, the forthcoming election will ratify the value of their efforts and thus reinforced, we can get to work on the other steps. If this first step is legitimized in the coming election, it will signal an accomplishment that eluded both Reagan and Gingrich. If RINOs can be rendered an endangered species, we will be well on the way with the first transformation, even before anyone has begun seriously plotting strategy for the second.

In conclusion, America’s conservatives have invited the nation’s RINOs to a Tea Party. Those who accept, see the error of their ways and adopt conservative ideas as their own will prosper in and help to make dominant a new conservative GOP. Those who refuse the invitation will be swept aside.

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This article also appeared in The Land of the Free at

Defeating Obama and the Progressives: Is there Cause for Optimism?

The election of Barack Obama and a hard left Congress has not been a boon to the cause of individual liberty in the United States. Obama has worked hard to advance his goal of transforming America into a government-controlled, social welfare state. Among other steps, he has: appointed two ultra-left Supreme Court Justices; filled the executive branch with all manner of socialist radicals; proposed, and had adopted by a complicit Congress, budgets with deficits guaranteed to bankrupt the nation; nationalized car companies, insurance firms and financial institutions; excused GSEs Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac from culpability in the creation of the housing bubble; prolonged the 2007-2008 economic downturn by pursuing ruinous Keynesian policies; refused to enforce immigration laws in the hope that the ensuing flood would boost leftist voting rolls; weakened America’s strategic defenses; and changed our foreign policy posture from strength to obsequiousness.

These stunning achievements are topped by Obama’s three signature “triumphs”: the (nearly) one billion dollar stimulus bill, Obamacare and “finance reform”. Thus far, fortunately, the US has been spared amnesty for more than 10 million illegal aliens, as well as cap and trade, but it is feared that he will try, with his duplicitous allies in the federal bureaucracy and Congress, to impose these de facto through executive action (or inaction as the case may be).

It is not surprising, therefore, that those of us who oppose his makeover of America should be feeling somewhat dejected. One manifestation of that demoralization is the appearance of a host of gloom and doom books on the future of America. The author reviewed two of them recently in this journal (http://www.thelandofthefree.net/conservativeopinion/2010/07/24/the-future-of-america-is-the-prevailing-pessimism-warranted/). Those books do not paint a cheery picture; indeed, they foresee America sinking into a collectivist morass of big government, declining freedom and vanishing prosperity.

However, it is gratifying to learn that the doomsayers have not cornered the market. Several books, which can only be described as bullish on America, have also been written recently by conservative authors. Two of the best are: To Save America by Newt Gingrich and After the Hangover by R. Emmet Tyrrell. These authors acknowledge the damage done by Obama and his leftist minions, but they look forward optimistically to a strong, resilient and prosperous America nevertheless – and they tell us what we need to do to get there. Is their optimism warranted? I will attempt to answer that question in this piece.

First, it is irrefutable that there is much cause for pessimism. The contents of the two introductory paragraphs above provide said cause. But rather than pile on with more concrete examples of the woes that the left has inflicted on unwary Americans, let me identify four major themes that will highlight the gravity of the problems we face.

1. The length of the path that we’ve already travelled is great. The nature of American politics and society would be unrecognizable to our Founders. Over the last 100 years, America has ceased to be a limited government republic that enjoys free markets and is also a bastion of liberty and a beacon of freedom to the world. Through the corrosive influence of the progressive movement, we have morphed into more of a Euro-style social welfare state, with a gargantuan government and a mixed economy – more of a populist democracy than a Constitutional republic, a nation that is not particularly admired or feared around the world. We would have to travel a very long road back to restore America to its founding ideals.

2. This transformation is not widely understood by the populace, and where it is understood, many approve. The people have been so thoroughly brainwashed by the media, academia, the legal profession, politicians and the education establishment that they have completely lost sight of what America used to stand for. They cannot imagine a US without government entitlement programs, direct election of Senators or the federal income tax. Yet a century ago, none of those existed. A liberal was a person like Madison, de Tocqueville or Gladstone who believed in individual liberty and that government posed the greatest threat to its existence.

3. The character of the American people has changed. Whereas we were once a fiercely self-reliant people who looked to our family, friends and neighbors, religious and civic organizations and above all ourselves to deal with our problems, today we increasingly depend on the government. We have traded liberty for security. More specifically, the proportion of the population that depends on the government for its sustenance – as a salaried employee, grant recipient, benefits recipient, contractor or in any other of the myriad ways that one’s personal finances or welfare may be intimately tied to federal purse strings – that percentage is impossible to estimate precisely, but it is inordinately high and growing.

4. Sheer magnitude of the required correction. Suppose miraculously the American people came to their senses and decided to restore America to its traditional mode and values. We would need to dramatically downsize the Federal Government: eliminate scores of departments and agencies; lower taxes and spending; curtail regulatory powers; divest property; and drastically shrink that unstated percentage described in #3. While in the long run, this would be of enormous benefit to the country and its citizens; in the short run, it would be exceedingly painful for a huge number of people. Could we find the political and economic will to initiate and sustain such a difficult course of action?

Now let’s turn the page on the preceding gloomy assessment and examine a few of the causes for optimism at this stage. Here we will highlight some of the themes that run through the works of Gingrich, Tyrrell and other optimists.

• Saving remnant. As the emergence of the Tea Party movement shows, there remains in America a saving remnant – a small but passionate group of people who have not forgotten the true historic nature of American society, who remain committed to the ideals of individual liberty, free markets and Western Civilization, and who wish to purge the country of the sickness of collectivism that has infected it. The remnant probably constitutes no more than 20, perhaps 25% of the population; but its desire to restore America to the principles of freedom, individual responsibility and American exceptionalism laid down by the Founders is fervent.

• The ‘independents’ are fed up. The percentage of the population devoted to individual liberty and a Constitutional republic is probably matched by the number devoted to its antithesis. The hard core leftists who wish to complete the transformation of the US into a multicultural, collectivist, Euro-style, social welfare state also comprises likely 20-25% of the nation. That leaves roughly half of the population in neither camp, the ‘independents.’ People might fall into this category because they are apolitical, confused or ignorant. Unfortunately, many of these are also brainwashed and so routinely side with the left. How else to explain why, despite the rough parity in basic strength, the left has been able to outmaneuver the right for nigh on a century. But there are clear signs that the wantonly corrupt and destructive behavior of our current liberal regime (the Obama-Pelosi-Reid gang) has seriously gotten under the skin of the independents. Many of them are waking up to recognize the dreadful destination that the gang has in store for us. The independents are not happy about it and they are reevaluating their core beliefs or lack thereof.

• Obama’s success is far from total. Yes, he got the ‘stimulus,’ Obamacare and ‘financial reform.’ but he didn’t get cap and trade, card check and amnesty for illegal aliens, and Fox News is still on the air. All is not lost yet. Yes, he can still wreak a lot of damage in the 29 months left until – God willing – he is tossed out of the White House. But hopefully the forthcoming midterm elections will substantially cripple his ability to implement his nefarious agenda. One might even hope that the momentum to recapture America from his and his cronies’ collectivist clutches will continue to build.

• Nancy Pelosi. There is no better symbol for the 21st century liberal than Nancy Pelosi – angry, mean-spirited, arrogant, dictatorial, closed-minded, and downright unpleasant to look at or listen to. She represents perfectly the bleak vision that modern liberalism wants to impose on America – a future of enforced equal poverty, subservience to a gargantuan federal government composed of haughty bureaucrats and elitist politicians, diminution of America’s historic role as a bastion of freedom, and a multicultural polyglot of favored groups and compliant individuals. An increasing number of Americans see her liberal agenda for the calamity it would inflict and they are recoiling in horror. Perhaps it took too long to recognize the true nature of the liberal utopia that Nancy, Barack and their ilk have planned for us – but better late than never. This dastardly duo has given America a clearer vision and a better understanding of the utopia that awaits.

• Ronald Reagan. There is no better symbol for the 21st century anti-liberal than Ronald Reagan – optimistic, cheerful, modest, kind-hearted, clear-thinking and mindful of history. He represented perfectly the grounded, yet vast vision of the grand experiment in individual liberty that America’s Founders intended for us. Although not strictly speaking a religious person, he understood that man is not the ultimate arbiter of his fate. Reagan preached that there is an unseen power that has contributed at least as much as man to the unfolding human drama and that the liberal atheist’s faith in human ability to totally plan mankind’s future is as dangerous as it is foolish. America resonated to Ronald Reagan. America is revolted by Nancy Pelosi. That is certainly cause for optimism.

• Center-right. Finally, polls, pundits and politicians continue to acknowledge that the American people remain more center-right than center-left. The instincts of the majority of the independent camp lean right – even if their behavior has unfortunately often tilted left. Perhaps that explains why it took the progressives a century to (nearly) achieve their objectives. If we are truly on the cusp of a counter-revolution, then unlike the progressives, we traditionalists/conservatives/19th century liberals will be swimming downstream as we try to correct the egregious mistakes of the last 100 years. Maybe we can get it done in half, or even a quarter of the time.

Obama repeats ad nauseam that it was George Bush’s policies that put America in its current doldrums – seemingly, idiotically unaware that there is a remarkable degree of similarity between his (i.e., Obama’s) policies and those of his much-maligned predecessor. They both ran up huge budget deficits, expanded government regulation, initiated massive new entitlement programs, increased the power of the federal government at the expense of the people and the States, and failed to set clear goals in the battle against Islamic fundamentalism. Yes, they had some differences (on taxes, nature of Supreme Court appointments, various social issues). But in the grand scheme of things with regard to moving America from a Constitutional republic to a statist society, they are cut from the same cloth. Of course, Obama is much more extreme in the collectivist direction than Bush, but Obama’s assertion that he is the anti-Bush is laughable.

The latter point and many of those in the bullets above are treated in the current small spate of optimistic books. Here are the final two paragraphs from the two books I cited earlier:

Gingrich. We [the American people] have the energy and we have the determination to save America. November 2010 will be our first big chance to render judgment on the Left’s healthcare bill, and two years later we’ll have another opportunity. It’s easy to despair, but that energy is better put toward preparing for these elections, which will be the most consequential of our lifetime.
We must speak out, organize, and never forget what’s at stake: our livelihood, our freedom, and our precious country.

Tyrrell. Viewed from the perspective of history, the Liberals have been in a long, slow, but apparently unavoidable decline since the 1960s, when for them history stopped. From their excesses in the early Obama administration, it is clear that they completely missed the 1980s and 1990s. They have become fantasists. They believe all the legends they have created for themselves. As one after another is defeated at the polls, it might be difficult to get them to vacate their offices. Special counselors may have to be called in.
America’s political center is now a center shaped by conservatism. With the growth of the conservative counterculture, the prospects are good for conservatism now to do what it should have done in the 1980s and act not merely like a political party but like a political culture. Finally, the conservatives can stop pulling each other back. They stand poised to create what the New Deal created, a New Order. History rarely repeats itself, but it does occasionally approximate itself.

I pray that we are truly on the cusp of a counter-revolution to the progressive hegemony that has dominated our politics and culture and which has done so much terrible damage. But I want more than what Reagan and Gingrich were able to bring about. They achieved at best a slowdown in the inexorable march to the left that the US has been on for decades. I want it reversed – irrevocably. I want my grandchildren to look back in 50 years and understand that their beloved America was almost lost because of traitorous progressives who introduced the poison of collectivism into the American bloodstream, and also due to the lack of faith by the people in the historical purpose, culture and values of the nation. My grandchildren should be incredulous that these developments almost cost us our freedom and they must be dedicated to preventing progressives and self-doubt from ever threatening the country again.

Is that too much to hope for? Is it too great a miracle to count on? Human history is replete with shocking and unanticipated developments – both good and bad. Ahead of the actual occurrences, few if any foresaw: the fall of the Soviet Union, the Holocaust, the rebirth of Israel, the advent of the United States, the carnage of the Great War or of the American Civil War. Perhaps the rebirth of the United States as a limited government republic devoted to the ideals and laws of our Constitution and Declaration of Independence, drawing inspiration from 19th century liberalism, is not beyond the realm of possibility. Perhaps all that is required is to remind the people of Franklin’s famous quote: “Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.”
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This essay also appeared in The Land of the Free; as did the following essay, which was inadvertently deleted in the transfer of the blog from Townhall to this site:

The Future of America: Is the Prevailing Pessimism Warranted?

 

There is no denying the heightened level of concern among the public for the future of our nation. Polls consistently reveal that optimism among American adults about the future welfare of their children and grandchildren is plummeting. Angry town hall meetings, anti-incumbent sentiment and the rapid growth of the Tea Party movement all reflect the deep misgivings that increasing numbers of Americans feel about what’s in store for our country. Another manifestation: there is no shortage of doom and gloom books that give vent to these concerns. Although these books have a common theme – namely, America is in trouble and if we don’t reverse course, the nation may cease to exist in the form that we have known it for more than two centuries – both the root cause of the malady and the remedies prescribed to fix it vary from book to book.

 

Most lay the blame squarely at the feet of the Leftist regime that has come to rule over America during the last 75-100 years. The common theme is that we have lost our way as a ConstitutionalRepublic founded on individual liberty, limited government and a traditional culture based on the tenets of Western Civilization and replaced it with a Euro-style, social welfare state that prizes equality of outcome, massive government control of all aspects of society and a secular creed steeped in multiculturalism.

 

Two representative examples that I read recently are: The Tyranny of Liberalism, by James Kalb (Intercollegiate Studies Institute, 2008) and The Struggle to Limit Government by John Samples (Cato Institute, 2010). I single these out not because they are the best of the genre – in fact, I think they are among the least attractive of the lot – but because each makes a critically important observation that is worth emphasizing.

 

Kalb’s book is really an exercise in political philosophy and psychology. His subtitle:  Understanding and Overcoming Administered Freedom, Inquisitorial Tolerance, and Equality by Command is a giveaway to what the reader may expect to find in his tome. It is a treatise in behavioral psychology, seeking to explain what motivates liberals to believe and behave as they do, how their increasing dominance affects the members of society and why – in Kalb’s belief – what they have created is ultimately unstable and will eventually cause the collapse of society. It is a book that could easily serve as a text in a graduate school psychology or sociology course, which explains why it has not topped the best seller’s list.

 

But it does have one remarkably redeeming feature. In Chapter 5, entitled “Are Objections to Liberalism Overstated?”, Kalb presents one of the most compelling litanies of the perverse accomplishments of American liberalism that I have ever read. If I may be permitted several trenchant quotes:

 

“Continued faith in liberalism is supported by the common view that whatever its flaws, American society today is much more fair and decent than in the past. The correctness of that view is quite doubtful. Past discriminations led to many evils, but the triumph of advanced liberalism in the sixties has meant worse. Recent social changes have taken mothers away from their children; forced children to grow up without fathers; led women to destroy their children before or during birth; taught boys there is nothing specifically good about manhood or respectable about women; told girls that they are victims, predators, and commodities; destroyed common culture and common sense; multiplied crimes and prisons; increased economic disparities and the working week; imposed pervasive bureaucracies of racial preference and thought control; and led to rabid and mindless political partisanship, a radical decline in intellectual and cultural standards, and the degrading entertainment now seen on television and in theaters. There is nothing fair or decent about forcing people to live, and young people to grow up, in such a setting.

The welfare state makes us clients rather than actors. It makes us useless to each other. It separates conduct from consequences and undermines personal responsibility. It weakens connections between the sexes and generations by insisting that dependence on particular persons is wrong. It deprives personal loyalty and integrity of their place and function by making us rely on the system as a whole rather than on ourselves and each other. The result is that people feel alienated and lack civility, couples do not stay together or have children, the ones they do have are badly brought up, and men and women do not know how to treat each other. In the long run—with the growth of crime, corruption, abusiveness, and other social disorders—costs soar, efficiency drops, dependency outruns productivity, and the system loses the ability to achieve its basic end of securing a reliable minimum of security and well-being.

 

The changes brought about by the radicalization of liberalism in the sixties and thereafter have hurt the weak and marginalized more than anybody. The liberation of women and of sex has deprived women of masculine support, feminized poverty, and turned girls into sexual commodities…Gay lib has liberated conduct that destroys lives by glamorizing acting on weaknesses and facilitating preying on the confused. Black progress slowed or reversed in most ways for most blacks after the sixties, the period that was supposedly a new dawn in fairness and decency on racial issues. None of that is progress, any more than it is progress to make people generally worse—less social, loyal, and disciplined, and more grasping, cynical, and self-involved—and to deprive them of concrete models and standards for a good life. All those conditions have been consequences of a post-sixties order emphasizing social justice and consequently downplaying the need for people to keep their own lives in order and to treat each other well in daily life.”

 

These powerful remarks are backed up by numerous illustrations throughout the book. They are representative of Kalb’s basic thesis, which can be summarized in these bullets:

  • Liberalism preaches tolerance, but is famously intolerant of those who don’t subscribe to its preachings.
  • Liberalism advocates inclusiveness, but excludes from the mainstream any who disagree with its premises.
  • Liberalism celebrates diversity, but crushes any whose views diverge from standard liberal thought or dogma.
  • Liberals profess to be non-judgmental, but they judge as unworthy any and all conservative thought or opinion.

 

Kalb goes to great lengths to explain why liberals must behave in this fashion. His explanations are, as I said, rooted in psychology, sociology and philosophy. His arguments are dense and at times impenetrable. Thus I fear that his book will not be widely read. That is perhaps unfortunate since his Chapter 5 contains many insightful and well-stated arguments. So if a copy falls into your hands, turn to Chapter 5, and then turn to something more readable and optimistic like the recent books by Gingrich (To Save America: Stopping Obama’s Secular-Socialist Machine) or Tyrrell (After the Hangover: The Conservatives’ Road to Recovery).

 

An equally dense, yet valuable critique of liberalism may be found in Samples’ book. The reader will not find much psychology there, but instead the most intense political science, political history and political minutiae imaginable. As the author says in the Preface, “This book concerns the political [emphasis added] struggle to constrain the activities of the federal government.” The work is an incredibly detailed look at the political machinations of the federal government over the last 30 years. The author explores in the greatest detail the strategies, motivations and actions of myriad federal officials (elected and appointed), especially with an eye toward evaluating the effects of any action that influenced the size and scope of the federal government. There is a tremendous amount of nuanced information, some of it quite interesting. But far from all of it! Like Kalb’s, I fear that Samples’ book is a sleep inducer. It is too dense, with too many asides and far too many statistics.

 

But Samples’ book, like Kalb’s, has a strongly redeeming quality – it effectively makes a point that transcends the otherwise laborious chore of slogging through the manuscript. The point is this. Reagan was a singular President in the last 80 years – the only true conservative elected to the White House. Reagan was the unique President since Coolidge who actually believed – as he said – that government is the problem, not the solution and that he intended to address the problem by shrinking the size of government. The book makes a persuasive case that he did not succeed. He did succeed in reducing taxes, jump staring the economy and initiating 25 years of growth and increased prosperity. He did revitalize the nation’s defenses and defeated the Soviet Union to win the Cold War. But he utterly failed to win the ‘struggle to limit government.’ Once again, some relevant quotes:

“Reagan sought to control spending later by cutting taxes first. The prospect of substantial deficits would force Congress to choose cutting programs, a choice members did not like but would have seen as better than deficit spending. This strategy did…not work.

 

Overall, the Reagan years saw neither growth nor reduction of domestic discretionary spending. … Hence the period 1981-1989 is more appropriately characterized as one year of deep budget cuts, 1982, followed by rapid budget growth. … Between 1980 and 1987, the three largest social welfare programs (Social Security, Medicare, and other health care spending) increased their spending by 84 percent. … Even in the discretionary domestic budget, a relatively small part of overall spending, the Reagan administration produced only minor absolute cuts in spending. … The Reagan years did not see … a significant reduction in the size of government…

 

Did Reagan change the political culture of the United States? … Polling responses indicate that the number of people who wanted more government spending grew with each passing year in the Reagan presidency. A similar result marked ideological self-identification among Americans. During most of the Reagan years, the number of people claiming to be liberals rose and the number identifying as conservatives fell.

 

What explains Reagan’s limited success at limiting government? The …answer may be found in Reagan’s 1980 election campaign. Candidate Reagan promised to restrain the growth of government, not roll back the state. But candidate Reagan also promised to enact reforms that would constrain government spending and taxing. These changes did not happen. Year after year, the Reagan administration proposed cutting or eliminating spending on everything from small programs … to large programs… Yet after 1981, these budgets and their cuts were considered “dead on arrival” on Capitol Hill. … [One explanation:] There turn[ed] out to be relatively few fiscal conservatives in the administration or in either party in Congress… conservatives in both parties were more protective of programs that served their own states and favored constituencies than of their commitment to a responsible fiscal policy.

 

The old regime was built on entitlement expectations and concomitant spending. Reagan did not eliminate or significantly restrain major entitlement programs. Reagan did attempt, more than once, to constrain Social Security spending, and each time was met by an overwhelming political reaction that cowed most congressional republicans almost immediately…. Reagan did not come close to overturning the old regime. Its main policies and institutions resisted his efforts.”

Those words are found in a subsection entitled “Assessing Reagan” (pp. 142-154). Like Kalb, Samples justifies the words with ample evidence throughout the book.

 

It is possible to come away from these (and other) books profoundly depressed about the future of the nation. As Kalb demonstrates, liberalism is a self-contradictory, perverse philosophy that now rules the politics and culture of the USA. As Samples shows, the one serious effort that we have made to tame the beast did not succeed. Despair seems legitimate. And yet, the nation’s political literature has also been graced by the recent appearance of several hopeful books – some based on an abstract faith in American destiny and some bearing concrete proposals to recapture the country. America has shown amazing recuperative powers in the past and I think that Reagan would have more faith in Gingrich and Tyrrell than in Kalb and Samples. I’ll stick with the Gipper.

Is the President a Closet Muslim?

Late at night, in the Lincoln bedroom, does the President of the United States whip out a prayer rug, drop to his knees and profess his obedience to Allah? According to recent polls, somewhere between 20 and 25 percent of the American people believe that he does. What an astounding development! Nearly seventy five million Americans think that our President is a follower of a faith that demeans Christianity and Judaism, that is the inspiration for world-wide Jihad against Western Civilization, that has contributed virtually nothing to the history, culture and politics of our nation and whose adherents around the globe consider themselves at war with our country.

How amazing! The American people have installed in the White House a man about whom it knows remarkably little – and more astonishingly, a man who little understands the nature of the people he governs. Surely the election of this enigmatic man to the Presidency must be one of, if not the most colossal blunder(s) that the American people have ever collectively made. The people entrusted the Presidency to an individual who expresses scorn for the nation’s history, who purposefully weakens the fabric of society and who steers its economic course directly toward bankruptcy. This expression of trust seems almost like an act of madness and self-flagellation by the American people.

Perhaps enough of us have woken up to the horrendous mistake we made so that the intention to terminate the madness will bear fruit in 2012. That will not change the fact that Barack Hussein Obama will always be listed as the 44th President of the United States. The blow to our self-confidence as a people – given the monumental blunder that we have made, the fact of which we will never be able to erase – will be felt for decades.

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This post also appeared in The Intellectual Conservative blog at