Category Archives: Government & Politics

Patriot Games

In the spring of 2014, the conservative firebrand, Steve Deace, published a book entitled Rules for Patriots. Deace is a take no prisoners kind of guy. He is well-known in the conservative circuit, but rather controversial. One might even say that he tends toward the extreme. He has no truck whatsoever with so-called establishment Republicans, or Republicrats as he calls them. He believes that they are as guilty as the Democrats for leading our country astray into the swamp of progressivism under which we are slowly sinking. Deace agonizes over whether true conservative patriots should either seek to take over the Republican Party (as the progressives have captured the Democratic Party) or form a new third party. He recognizes that the latter step has a very low chance of succeeding, but he also acknowledges how entrenched in command of the GOP are the “establishment types.” In any event, the point of the book is to lay out some rules that patriots, that is, true conservatives should adhere to as they go about the business of recapturing the country from the progressives and Republicrats.

This essay is not intended to be a review of the book. The interested reader may find ample reviews – both kind and unkind – e.g., by following these links: Regnery, Chocola, McDurmon,  Therein you will find various assessments of the worth of Deace’s playbook.

What I wish to do here is focus on four points that Deace makes as he develops his rule book. Although they are in some sense just “supporting evidence” for his arguments, they struck me as particularly insightful, occasionally unique and eventually helpful for crystallizing the thoughts of a conservative. Moreover, he writes with a certain flamboyant style – which you will encounter in a few quotes below. Deace’s first point is not new, but it is well-formulated and concentrates one’s thoughts on the precise foundation of the progressive opposition. The remaining three points may not be totally novel, but I have rarely seen them stated as forcefully as they are in Deace’s book and I think that they are worth highlighting.

1. The four pillars of progressivism. The liberal/progressive world has many components, some more prominent or powerful than others. Deace argues that there are four fundamental pillars – without any one of which, the progressive movement would be far weaker and less effective. These pillars are, as stated exactly in Deace’s words:

    1. The child-killing Industry
    2. The homosexual lobby
    3. Government education
    4. Government sector employee unions.

You can see from (a) that Deace is a flame-thrower as his appellation for the pro-choice coterie has rather more flavor than the usual term. Along the same lines, while describing the pernicious effect of each pillar, Deace asserts:

We don’t trust the leadership of the Republican Party any more than we trust the Democrats, but are pragmatically willing to use the GOP’s infrastructure as the most convenient vehicle to engage the political system to fight for our freedom and liberty…We do not believe there is any such thing as a “fiscal conservative” but there are only conservatives. “Fiscal conservatives” and “pro-life Democrats” are like unicorns—figments of our imagination. A fiscal conservative is code language for a materialist who just wants more mammon…Not to mention the more immoral a people become the bigger the government always gets, because the first thing an immoral people want to avoid is paying for their own mistakes. A welfare state profits off the basis of bad behavior, and then cost shifts the bill to do those who make sound decisions…We do not romanticize the Republicans as the good guys and the Democrats as the bad, but see the leadership of both parties as part of a ruling class (thank you Anthony Codevilla) that is more concerned with maintaining their own gravy train than honoring their sworn oaths to uphold and defend the Constitution of these United States.

Like I said, a flame-thrower. But Deace has identified quite succinctly what is the heart of the progressive movement. If the conservative viewpoint is ever to prevail again in the United States, then the abortion industry, gay rights crowd, left-wing educational establishment and public sector unions must be defanged. It took a century for the four to grow long claws and plunge them into the soul of American society. I doubt that we have anywhere near that much time to extract the claws and tame the beasts.

2. We are the counter-culture. In 1950, a person who espoused the cultural views, political ideas and economic policies of Barack Obama would have been considered counter-cultural. Such a person had a self-appointed job to overthrow the prevailing conservative cultural/political/economic system and replace it by his leftist substitute. Well, it is painful to admit this, but they did it! Today, readers of Deace’s book – and likely the readers of this journal – are the counterculture. Now it is our job to overthrow the counterculture that has become the culture. As Deace says:

We’re now the counter-culture and the Left is now “the man keeping them down.” It’s becoming passé to have sex with anything you want short of a car battery, get stoned every day that ends in “y,” and know nothing. That used to be cool, and considered some existential statement about refusing to be a cog in the machine, but now it’s a cliché. Even raunchy comedy movies like Knocked Up have an underlying theme paying homage to some vestige of the Judeo-Christian moral ethic. If you want to challenge the status quo in this era you get and keep a job, pay your own way, stay married to the same person from the opposite gender until one or both of you die, have a lot of kids, and go to church. In other words, the 1950s is now considered edgy.

3. Ignorance of conservatism. According to Deace, today’s youth have not rejected conservatism. They have not even encountered it. They cannot reject what they don’t know exists. The brainwashing to which the youth of America are subjected in the K-12 educational system is pervasive and penetrating. The liberal/progressive view of history, government, economics, etc. is all that is taught from kindergarten through graduate school. If conservative thought is presented at all it is to highlight it as a formerly acceptable, reactionary, racist, sexist, homophobic, and economically biased point of view over which our enlightened age has triumphed.

Conservatives often fret about the youth vote – how Obama captured it so thoroughly and easily. Patriots worry about honing and refining their message so as to break through the misconceptions. Well, the youth are not paying attention. They’ve already been programmed. As Deace says:

Since conservatives have spent a generation retreating from the arena of ideas to form holy huddles in our own little enclaves of the already-initiated, we have forsaken an entire generation to be indoctrinated by anti-American/anti-Christian Leftists who clearly know what they’re doing. The emerging generation hasn’t rejected the American way. It hasn’t even considered it. We’ve stopped competing in the arena of ideas, so we’ve left them with no choice but to accept the synthesized narrative (Hegelian Dialectic) they’ve been sold in government school. Thus, they believe the Constitution calls for the separation of church and state, there is no such thing as transcendent truth, and moral absolutes don’t exist. So if we’re going to engage this emerging generation, we’re going to have to define our terms and ourselves clearly and explicitly.

4. Misplaced nostalgia. Republicans – even of the establishment variety – pine for Reagan and long for the second coming. GOP presidential candidates are examined for their ability to channel Reagan, both in style and substance. If we can only find the right candidate who can replicate Reagan’s devotion to conservative principles, infectious optimism, and ability to explain his ideas clearly, then we’ll reclaim the high ground.

Well, says Deace, get over it. It ain’t happening. Most young people have no memory of Reagan, and even among the middle aged, there is little recognition of who he was and what he stood for. Says Deace:

There is a fine line between tradition and nostalgia. Tradition is the assurance that you have the right ethics and institutions to be successful again based on what was done in the past, provided you have the right people in place to exploit them. Tradition spurs action and innovation to build upon a foundation of success. On the other hand, nostalgia is a paralyzing force because it tempts you to keep trying to recreate the precise conditions that led to a specific past success. Often that specific success was a moment in time, and the attempt to repeat it creates a myopic inflation of that success to the point it stalls progress towards a new era of success. Instead of moving forward, you keep trying to go back to the good old days. Right now we are mired in nostalgia at the expense of our tradition. We are mired in nostalgia because our entire movement has been defined by one man’s success, as opposed to the timeless traditions he fought for. As a result, every sort of Republican now claims Ronald Reagan as their legacy, even the absolute worst ones that might as well be Democrats. A pretty good rule of thumb is that if everybody can claim something, then nobody can. Yes, Reagan was a gifted man, and I’ve used several examples of that giftedness in this book. But that giftedness doesn’t matter to us if it’s not used to advance the principles we hold dear. There have been gifted people throughout history that used their gifts to do wicked and awful things. Why don’t we celebrate them? Because what they stood for was wrong or evil, that’s why. In other words, what they stood for overshadowed their giftedness. The same should be true of Reagan’s positive legacy as well. While it’s a testimony to his legacy that we still play clips of Reagan to defend our values today, it’s also an indictment of how stale we are. At the time I was writing this book I just turned 40 years old. When Reagan first ran for president in 1976 I was still eating paste and my boogers.

We may wish for a second coming. But even if it happened, a substantial portion of the electorate wouldn’t recognize the messiah or understand his message.

There is no question that these are challenging and dangerous times for the United States of America. The progressive movement, which rejects virtually all of the principles that animated our Founders, aspires to recreate America as a Euro-style social welfare state. It seeks to refashion our nation into one that values equality over liberty, that favors socialism over capitalism, that places appeasement, disarmament and multilateralism above a robust national defense, that shuns the traditional Judeo-Christian ethic of our forefathers in favor of a squishy multiculturalism and that thinks the only thing exceptional about the US is that it is marked indelibly by racism, sexism and homophobia. It has taken them a hundred years to achieve, but their view now seems to command the allegiance of a majority of Americans. If American conservatives cannot reverse this horrific pattern, then the USA as we know (or knew) it is doomed. Deace is not the first to espouse this view – nor the most articulate. But he does have a few poignant observations to his credit – specifically the four that I have highlighted above.

This essay also appeared in The Intellectual Conservative

 

Why Do the People Abuse Themselves by over Empowering Government?

There is nothing in the Constitution that grants the federal government the authority to regulate the health care industry, much less the right to actually administer any portion of it. Of course, the same statement can be made about education, disability, retirement, insurance, employment, housing and so many other key aspects of our society and the US economy. That hasn’t stopped the feds from assuming control of these enterprises – sometimes partial, increasingly total. Moreover, all three branches of the government have colluded in the lawlessly unconstitutional usurpation of the people’s rights in these matters.

But the people are complicit. By repeatedly electing politicians who boldly proclaim their intention to enhance federal power, the people knowingly empower those who rob the people of their rights. By not recalling judges who ratify the government’s implementation of unconstitutional authority, the people acquiesce in the curtailment of the rights granted to them in our founding documents. By supporting statist policies and programs that assign responsibility for managing the mundane details of their lives to Uncle Sam, the people surrender the liberties envisioned for them by their forefathers and enjoyed by their ancestors.

Why do people do these things? I submit for your consideration three reasons: greed, laziness and ignorance. Perhaps greed is too strong a term. But people want stuff. Whether it is quality and affordable health care, a nice home, an outstanding education, a good job or a comfortable retirement, people naturally desire such things. It can be difficult to secure them. If the federal government is willing to help, doesn’t it make sense to allow it? Or even encourage it?

This leads us to the second reason? Again, perhaps laziness is too strong a word. But life is hard. Aside from the high cost of obtaining the aforementioned items, the act of doing so is often impeded by difficult family matters, incidental illness or injury, haphazard crime or natural disaster, and unsympathetic friends and co-workers. It’s enough to discourage one from even trying. A little help from a benevolent government can make a difference.

And that is where ignorance comes in. All of these obstacles were anticipated by our Founders. They knew, therefore, that our system of government – structured for a free people to govern themselves – would only work if the people were moral, disciplined, well-educated, responsible, self-reliant, modest and respectful of their neighbor. Alas, the progressives, who have taken control of all the opinion-molding organs of American society over the last century, have done their best to undermine in the populace all of the virtues required by the Founders’ recipe to work. Too many people no longer understand that relinquishing to the government the responsibility for running their own lives will inevitably lead to tyranny. As the famous saying – mistakenly attributed to Jefferson – goes, “A government that is big enough to give you everything you need is also strong enough to take from you everything you have.” [The actual Jefferson quote is: “The natural progression of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground.”] It is in the natural order of things for governments to take far more than they give – for they have nothing to give John but what they take from Sam.

And so through Medicare, Medicaid, SCHIP, the VA and, of course, Obamacare, the government has taken nearly complete control of the health care industry in America. The polls say that most people are unhappy about that development. Well, they have only themselves to blame. They put Obama and the Democrats in a position to impose on us the Frankenstein monster known as Obamacare. It’s not like Obama and the Dems hid, before the 2008 election, their intention to do it. The people elected them anyway. Greed, laziness and ignorance!

We are told that Obamacare was modelled after its precursor Romneycare in Massachusetts. Now, several state governments have decided that Obamacare does not go far enough in controlling the people’s health care. For example, I learned just last week about O’Malleycare. Martin O’Malley is Governor of the State of Maryland – in which progressive paradise I happen to reside. O’Malley has deemed that even though individuals are now dependent on government for their health care, they are still behaving in an irresponsible fashion. They eat too much, get fat, become sick and then spend too many health care dollars. Or they ignore health warnings (like high blood pressure, diabetes or a family history of cancer) and fall prey to expensive illnesses. Worst of all, they don’t follow the instructions of their physicians. Well, O’Malley will put a stop to that nonsense. Henceforth, all health insurance policies for state employees and retirees (and others soon I presume) will entail a contractual agreement between the State, the health insurer and the insuree. Everyone will have to undergo an initial medical assessment – presumably by a doctor of their choosing. The doctor is obliged to perform a health evaluation on the insuree, and then provide a plan of health care maintenance for the individual. If the insuree adheres to the plan, various discounts for medical services will ensue. If the insuree violates the doctor’s plan, then fees and financial penalties will be assessed on the individual. How often the assessment must be performed is unclear.

The mechanisms for administering and enforcing this government diktat are buried in a document, which – although not as long as the Obamacare bill – is just as obtuse and impenetrable. One more layer of my individual freedom is peeled away by a supposedly benevolent, but, in fact, a misguided and ultimately insidious government.

“But,” say the new mandate’s supporters, “this is for your own good and, anyway, government has to do something to rein in health care costs. Well, it is not big brother’s place to tell me what is good for me. As long as I don’t harm anyone else, my health concerns are none of government’s business. And if the government was not running health care, it would not be incurring any costs that it felt the need to control.

If we are to halt government’s increasing encroachment on our freedoms, we must find a way to overcome the greed, laziness and ignorance instilled by the progressive-controlled, opinion-molding organs of society. If conservatives do not contest the liberal cultural hegemony and ultimately reassert control of those organs that drive the culture, then you can kiss the good old USA goodbye.

This essay also appeared in The American Thinker

Follow Ron Lipsman on Twitter @rlipsman

Is It a Coincidence that Obama is Beset by Multiple Crises?

The cable news programs are enjoying a boom time. They have so much scandalous material to choose from that it’s a challenge to cover all the domestic and international crises in a one hour program. Indeed, the attention of the American people is increasingly drawn to an incredibly wide and varied series of crises and scandals. Not any one of them compares in seriousness to 9/11 or Pearl Harbor; but in breadth and number, they represent a panoply of domestic and foreign crises that is arguably unparalleled in American history.

Now one might argue that this is a singular piece of bad luck for President Obama – namely, that so many crises have landed in his inbox at the same time. In fact, the bad luck is more accurately ascribed to the American people, because events of the last few years reveal unquestionably that Obama is totally unable to deal with any of these crises. The USA is witnessing a spectacular failure of leadership, characterized by: manifold manifestations of misguided analysis; timid, confused and inappropriate responses to pressing concerns; as well as deceitful and unlawful actions by the executive branch of government. But it is worse than that. For in every instance, at least one of the underlying causes of the crisis can be traced to the policies, attitudes and actions of the Obama administration.

Before justifying that assertion, let’s supply a (non-comprehensive) list of the crises and scandals that beset team Obama:

(a)    War in Ukraine and the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 by a Russian-made missile.

(b)   War in the Middle East between Israel and Hamas.

(c)    The ongoing failure to explain how the IRS came to target conservative groups.

(d)   The failure to prevent or investigate the murder of US Embassy and CIA personnel in Benghazi, Libya.

(e)   The stunning incompetence of the Veteran’s Administration (VA) that has resulted in the needless deaths of American veterans.

(f)     The invasion of our country by illegal aliens – many of them unaccompanied minors.

(g)    The disintegration of Iraq and the establishment of a terrorist Islamic caliphate in its stead.

(h)   Iran on the verge of nuclear weapons, facilitated by pretend negotiations that no one believes will forestall the acquisition of nukes by the mullahs.

(i)      The threat of Afghanistan following Iraq into the toilet.

(j)     The lawless behavior of the President – making and altering laws without congressional authorization.

(k)    An anemic economic recovery from the “Great Recession,” marked by the lowest labor participation rate in 40 years, stagnant wages, and untold twenty-somethings living in their parents’ basement.

(l)      An exploding federal debt, thanks to supra-$1M deficits in Obama’s first four years – today, he brags that the deficit is only a half-trillion dollars.

(m) The death of the Keystone pipeline and the crippling of the American energy industry caused by outrageous environmental policies.

I could go on (Obamacare, Fast & Furious, Boko Haram, Libya,…), but, in the interest of brevity, I kept the list to a baker’s dozen. The desired brevity will require that the explanation of how Obama’s paw prints are all over every one of these crises shall be restricted to a few lines. However, each cause/effect scenario has been flushed out more fully in the blogosphere, and I leave it to the diligent reader to pursue any that interest him. Here are the connections:

(a)    War in Ukraine. Obama’s obsequious efforts to appease Putin have only emboldened the czar wannabee to recklessly pursue a restoration of the Russian Empire.

(b)   War in Gaza. Obama’s maltreatment of Israel and coddling of Muslim extremists has had the easily foreseen consequence of encouraging Hamas to pursue its rocket attacks on and infiltrations into Israel. Sensing no help forthcoming from the benighted one, the Israelis took matters into their own hands.

(c)    IRS. Even if Obama did not issue a direct order, his tone and that of his lieutenants conveyed the message to Lois Lerner (and others) that it was not only alright, but encouraged to harass conservative groups and prevent them from obtaining tax-exempt status.

(d)   Benghazi. It would have severely impeded Obama’s re-election effort to admit that the attacks on the US Consulate and CIA Annex were pre-planned terrorist assaults by jihadists. Better to blame an obscure video than to acknowledge that the War on Terror had not been won – as Obama claimed. Why was there no prior beef up of security? Ask Hilary!

(e)   VA. Despite campaign promises to clean up the mess at the VA, Obama purposefully ignored the matter; it was not part of his plan to “fundamentally transform America.”

(f)     Alien invasion. Tens of millions of future Democrat voters and government dependents are too appetizing for Obama to pass up. “Please come in” is his unmistakable message. He desires it so much that he practically issues an invitation by his unlawful executive implementation of a pseudo DREAM Act, and he facilitates it by refusing to secure the border.

(g)    Iraq. At the risk of a “blue” interpretation, can you say “pulling out too early!”

(h)   Iranian nukes. Obama shows his disdain for Israel, America and Western Civilization by refusing to take the actions required (military and non-military) to prevent Iran’s acquisition of the bomb. He gives the impression that he believes that Iran has as much right as the US or Israel to possess nuclear weapons.

(i)      Afghanistan. See (g) above.

(j)     Lawlessness. Obama displays his disrespect for the Constitution that he is sworn to “preserve, protect and defend” by asserting that Republicans in Congress have no right not to endorse and vote for his leftist programs. Since the GOP refuses to kneel, he will implement his policies without their consent – as if he were a monarch.

(k)    Economic recovery. Obama may not have caused the recession of 2007-2009, but his refusal to lower taxes, decrease regulations, open up the domestic energy industry and rein in federal spending – that is, by pursuing an economic program that is virtually the reverse of the policies implemented by Jack Kennedy and Ronald Reagan – has mired the economy in a seemingly permanent torpid phase of anemic growth.

(l)      Deficit and Debt. Obama ignores: the impending entitlement crisis, the indebtedness to China, the projection of unaffordable interest payments (on the debt) swamping the budget, and the moral crime of passing these burdens on to our children and grandchildren. His economic policies are crippling the middle class. Barack couldn’t care less; he keeps piling on the debt.

(m) Energy. Obama is an environmental fundamentalist. His maniacal green policies have not only stopped the Keystone pipeline, but also prevented the development of LNG terminals, halted offshore drilling and drilling on federal lands, and destroyed the clean coal industry. Is it any wonder that the domestic energy enterprise is in crisis?

The question that the American people must ask themselves is how they could have empowered this rank amateur by placing him in a position to do the enormous harm that he has. Americans elevated to the presidency a man: with no executive or managerial experience; whose background (including his mentors) was rife with leftist radicals; who made no secret of his disdain for America and his desire to transform it from a constitutional republic into a collectivist, centrally-managed, Euro-style social welfare state; who also made no attempt to hide his contempt for free market capitalism; and whose vison of America was not that of a nation dedicated to individual liberty, which faithfulness to that dedication had saved the world twice from totalitarianism. Instead he saw an America defined by the warts that he identified: slavery, brutalization of the native peoples, discrimination against women and minorities, confinement of Japanese-Americans, pillage of foreign lands and unequal distribution of wealth. His America needed fixing, a fundamental transformation.

Armed with enormous self-confidence (that frequently spilled over into arrogance), copious charm, an engaging style, a soothing and eloquent voice, and aided by a compliant media, he convinced the public that he would “heal America.” In fact, his intent was to “remake America.” And to anyone with half an eye open, that was obvious from his first appearance on the national stage. How could the people be so blind? America committed not just a reckless act by electing Obama, but arguably an act of national suicide – twice! It defies belief.

Why we did it is a story that has been told by many. I would cite two examples: America: Imagine a World without Her by Dinesh D’Souza and Silent Revolution: How the Left Rose to Political Power and Cultural Dominance by Barry Rubin. They, like others, point out that a decades-long brainwashing of the people by the media, the educational establishment and all the other opinion-molding organs of national culture – virtually all of which had come under leftist control in the twentieth century – played a huge role. But as the biblical admonition says: “What ye sow, so shall ye reap.” The multiple crises are a direct consequence of Obama’s transformational program.

In response, Obama seems at times bewildered, at other times disinterested. He is bewildered because he didn’t anticipate the developments – he believes his own propaganda and thinks that nearly everyone appreciates his actions. The jolts and shocks from his misguided policies are a genuine surprise for him. But he is also disinterested because he doesn’t care for the most part. Certainly he doesn’t care about the international crises – his total fixation is on remaking America. Moreover, many of the domestic crises don’t prove a threat to his transformational efforts (they even help sometimes). So why get bent out of shape?

The last president who doubted America’s overall goodness and who made attempts to fix us was Jimmy Carter. (Although, truth be told, Carter was far less radical than Obama). Of course, Carter made a mess too. But thankfully, Ronald Reagan arrived to clean up the mess. Is there a second Reagan who will clean up Obama’s mess? Or is the mess beyond the capabilities of even a Reaganesque figure? We shall know relatively soon. If we survive, we will look back and wonder how we could have been so insane as to elect Barack Obama president of the United States.

This essay also appeared in Canada Free Press

Which Party is Furthest from the Center?

We are told incessantly by the media pundits that the GOP has moved sharply to the right. Supposedly, the Republican Party establishment is under assault from the Tea Party in a largely successful attempt to shift the Party’s center of gravity to starboard. No mention is made of the Democratic Party’s severe lurch to the left over the last half century. It is similarly unremarked how the cultural and political fulcrum of the nation as a whole has migrated to port during this time. No, the only political motion that concerns the moguls of the mass media and the pundits of the political press is the supposed rapid rush to the right of the Republican Party.

I have news for you. The Democratic Party has moved much further to the left than the Republican Party has moved to the right.

This is not an assertion that is easily quantified. But let us try. First of all, we must be clear about what we mean by left and right. If we take as the fundamental criterion the amount by which the government dominates the society, then on the extreme left we have totalitarianism, with authoritarianism to its right; whereas on the extreme right we have anarchy, with mass democracy abutting it on the left. In the center we have a constitutional, representative, federalist system such as in the United States. Of course it is a bit more complicated than that. But hopefully, we can agree that moves from the center to the left would certainly entail: more rather than less government taxation, spending and regulation; government restrictions on individual liberties, restraints on business, and limitations on property rights and freedom of association; and generally, a constriction of the individual rights found in the Bill of Rights in pursuit of more group equality, uniformity and social order.

On the other hand, a move from the center to the right would constitute essentially the reverse of the trends just outlined – in particular, the curtailment of government’s ability to interfere with the individual’s life, property or business; manifested by lower taxes, less government spending and regulation, etc.

Since 1900, the US has had two, perhaps three decades during which the country has moved to the right: the 20s, the 80s and arguably the 50s. In all other periods, the movement has been decidedly in the other direction – especially in the 10s, 30s, 60s, 70s and since the turn of the millennium. But what of the political parties themselves?

In the 1920s, the members and supporters of the Republican Party were generally a conservative bunch. In fact, I doubt that they contemplated their positions explicitly in the terms outlined above. More simply, they likely saw themselves as the inheritors (after a century and a half) of the traditions and mores established by the Founders – only updated to a more modern period. Thus they took seriously the sanctity of property and that business should be largely left alone by government (the Sherman Antitrust Act not withstanding). Republicans in that era subscribed to the idea that the government should limit its involvement in the people’s affairs and businesses. They had a healthy respect for federalism. Moreover, they strongly believed that charity was a matter best left to individuals and private associations, and that it was completely out of the purview of government. However, it is fair to say that the GOP commitment to liberty was not without blemish as the Party had a less than benign attitude toward the role of women and minorities in society. And its members certainly participated in and promoted crony capitalism. But overall, on the scale laid out earlier, the GOP occupied a rather conservative location on the right.

At the same time, the Democratic Party had already become infected with the progressive virus imported from Europe. The dramatic change in the Democratic Party (over the decades spanning the turn of the 20th century) is reflected in the distance between Grover Cleveland and Woodrow Wilson (between whom there were only Republican presidents). Cleveland was quite conservative and in many ways little different from the Republican presidents who surrounded him. But Wilson was super liberal. For example, under his watch, America adopted the direct election of senators, established the Federal Income Tax and gave birth to the Federal Reserve Bank. All of this – and more of its ilk – occurred exactly a century ago as the Democratic Party veered sharply to the left. Moreover, not only were its initial steps to the left rather substantial, but it has never retreated back to the center. The only presidential candidate it nominated in the last hundred years who was not well to the left of center was John W. Davis (in 1924). Moreover, during those hundred years, the Democratic Party has experienced four hard leaps to the left – under Wilson, FDR, LBJ and now Obama. One could argue that small corrections occurred in between (e.g., Davis after Wilson, Truman after FDR, Humphrey after LBJ). But since the nomination of George McGovern, the Democratic Party has fled to the far left end of the political spectrum and there it has remained for 40 years. Until the arrival of Obama – a southpaw, mentally and physically – under whom it has plunged even further to the left.

The following ideas – which are unmistakably hard left on our scale – are now mainstream in the Democratic Party:

  • The Federal Government may spend any amount of money to address any issue it considers necessary to promote (what it perceives to be) the welfare of the American people. Debt and deficits are immaterial!
  • The Federal Government may impose any regulatory burden on American business it deems necessary in order to protect the people or the environment – cost, economic viability and limitation on freedom be damned.
  • The Federal Government may mandate the playing of favorites in hiring, firing, promotions, admissions, licensing and associations in order to further the goal of “diversity” – thereby in effect legally sanctioning immoral discrimination.
  • The Federal Government may confiscate the people’s wealth, property and business in order to redistribute resources more “fairly” among the population.
  • The American experience is rife with persecution, racism, sexism and colonialism especially in the treatment of women, minorities, gays and third world peoples; the nation has no moral claim to any exceptional status and its WASP heritage is a stain rather than a badge of honor.

These radical left positions are now the staple of the rank, file and leadership of the Democratic Party. They are hard left by any measure. It took a century to get there. But that is where the Democratic Party is, and largely has been for 40 years. It has dragged the country as a whole in that direction, although not as far as the Party has travelled. And it considers its positions to be the new normal, the new center. As far as it is concerned, the radical left positions expressed in the New York Times are dead center, whereas the mildly right ideas espoused on Fox News are far off in the right stratosphere.

Now what has happened to the Republican Party since its heyday in the roaring twenties? In some sense it was a spectator from the onset of the Depression until the arrival of the Eisenhower administration. During that time, it lost a great deal of confidence in its conservative ideals – so much so that Ike and the Republican Congress (in the 1950s) made little attempt to roll back FDR’s New Deal. In fact, the GOP was infected with some of the same progressive ideas that now dominated the Democratic Party. Johnson’s Great Society and the McGovernite capture of the Democratic Party did frighten the electorate, and so the Republicans had a near lock on the presidency for over 20 years (albeit not on the Congress). And, like the country, the GOP did swing back to the right during the 1980s. But it tossed aside that conservative correction with the arrival of the Bushes and again drifted slowly left from 1988 to 2010.

Once again, the Dems (in the person of Barack Obama) scared the hell out of the people – however, not nearly the percentage that they managed to frighten under Jimmy Carter. Since 2010 and the rise of the Tea Party, the GOP (and the nation, to some extent) has been pulled back to port. That the pullback has not been as widespread as it was in 1980 is attested to by the re-election of Obama. In any event, the GOP today is more to the right than it was in 2008. But I venture, it is roughly where it was under Reagan and nowhere near as conservative as it was under Coolidge.

Recently, I had a conversation with a university colleague whom I consider to be thoughtfully and moderately left of center. I proposed to him that we put numbers on my political scale: -10 = extreme left; 0 = center; +10 = extreme right. I asked him to locate the New York Times and Fox News on the scale. He assigned the Times a ‘-3’ and Fox News a ‘+9’. When I indicated to him that my assessment gave the NYT ‘-9’ and Fox ‘+3’, he was absolutely flabbergasted. Motivated by a desire to maintain our friendship, he muted his reaction; but I could tell that he thought I was totally off my rocker. Now my colleague is not a flaming leftist. I see him as perhaps ‘-2.5’ in the spectrum. But he probably sees himself as ‘0’, or perhaps even positive. He is typical of the dramatic shift in the country (and of course in the Democratic Parity), and so finds my assignments completely absurd.

The country has elected, and re-elected the most extreme leftist president in our history. Let me offer just one piece of evidence to support that claim. Wilson, FDR and LBJ were hard left presidents. Yet, I have absolutely no doubt that each was a patriot, who believed in American Exceptionalism and that America was a force for good in the world. Sadly, they also believed that America could do better by adopting their progressive ideas. By contrast, Obama is not a patriot, does not subscribe to American Exceptionalism (as he stated explicitly), has given no evidence that he believes America has been a force for good in the world and has expressed the desire to fundamentally transform the nation. By the latter, he doesn’t mean switching America’s favorite food from burgers to gruyere cheese. He means overthrowing the belief that individual liberty is the prime purpose of the societal structure and replacing it by a statist, collectivist system. The Democratic Party is one hundred percent behind him. The Democratic Party has moved five steps to the left for every step to the right taken by the Republican Party. That this is not completely obvious to all Americans is testimony to the subtle brainwashing the American people have endured and to which they have capitulated over the last 50 years.

This essay also appeared in The Intellectual Conservative

Obama’s Most Serious Scandal

My online Merriam Webster gives the following definitions of scandal: “an occurrence in which people are shocked and upset because of behavior that is morally or legally wrong; circumstance or action that offends propriety or established moral conceptions or disgraces those associated with it.” According to these definitions, many significant events that have occurred during the life of the Obama administration  clearly qualify as scandals. The point of this article is not only to summarize the most egregious of the Obama scandals, but also to highlight one – arguably the most serious one – that originates from the first moment of Obama’s presidency.

Benghazi. The administration located, for reasons that remain as yet unclear, a CIA operation in Libya’s eastern port city for which – despite repeated pleas from Ambassador Stevens – it failed to provide adequate security. In a planned and coordinated terrorist attack by al Qaeda elements on the US consulate and a CIA annex, the Ambassador – whose presence in Benghazi also remains unexplained, another member of the embassy staff and two CIA operatives were murdered. For months, Obama and members of his administration knowingly lied by asserting that the violence was sparked by a spontaneous demonstration against an obscure anti-Islam video. This lie was repeated by Obama and then Secretary of State Hilary Clinton to the families of the murdered men in front of their caskets at Andrews Air Force base. The speculation is that the lie evolved from the belief that an acknowledgment of an al Qaeda attack before the 2012 presidential election would contradict Obama’s campaign mantra that al Qaeda was decimated.

IRS. Despite stonewalling, misdirection and an improper “taking of the fifth,” it is clear that since about four years ago, the IRS has been engaged in a systematic and sustained effort to harass and deny tax-exempt status to numerous organizations intent on political action on behalf of conservative causes and candidates. Once again, the goal was to maximize the re-election prospects of the president. Whether the motivation to engage in this illegal endeavor came from the White House is unclear, but evidence suggests that the idea originated at very high levels in the administration.

Fast and Furious. In a misguided and reckless  attempt to track Mexican drug cartels, US guns were allowed to pass into the hands of numerous miscreants south of the border. Some of those guns turned up at the site of the murder of a US border patrol agent. No one in the administration – not even the Attorney General, under whose auspices this harebrained scheme was carried out – can explain who concocted the operation, what exactly it was intended to achieve, and how it went awry.

Obamacare. Leaving aside whether the nationalization of one-sixth of the US economy is a good idea, and whether Obamacare will help more people than it hurts, there remain three irrefutable points: (i) This is arguably the only piece of major national social legislation in a century to be passed exclusively by one party – using parliamentary tricks, unscrupulous back room deals and subterfuge in the presentation of the details; (ii) Its passage was secured by the promulgation of bald-faced lies – If you like your doctor and your plan, you can keep your doctor and your plan, period; (iii) Since its passage, the president has illegally altered numerous clauses in the statute, usually to shield the administration from criticism sure to reign down failing the alteration.

Veterans Administration. Long delays, callous treatment, and falsification of records to cover up miserable performance – all of these abominable features of the VA have been present for decades. During his campaign in 2008, Obama made a major promise to fix them. Like so many of his other promises – for example, to run the most transparent administration in US history, it was forgotten the moment his hand slipped off the Bible.

AP Phone Records. The administration secretly obtained the telephone records of reporters and editors from this wire service. This represented an unprecedented government intrusion on the press and revealed a total disregard for first amendment rights. No explanation was ever given, and as in almost all the other scandals, the administration set about to “investigate” the event. No such investigation has ever concluded, put forth any results or held anyone accountable. The Obama administration’s investigations are uniformly stonewalling operations.

Illegal Immigration. In his – and in the Democratic Party’s – ardent quest to lock in a permanent electoral majority, Obama proposes citizenship for the 11+ million illegal aliens in our country. Unable to achieve this lawfully, he engages in all manner of deception and lawlessness to bring about the desired end: for example, essentially implementing the DREAM Act by executive order; refusing to deport illegals caught perpetrating crimes; and ensuring lax border security wherever possible.

Quite a record! If the reader googles “Obama scandals,” then a whole host of other major and minor Obama administration scandals come into view. Indeed this administration is more lawless than the Nixon administration; arguably more corrupt (cf Solyndra) than the Harding administration; comparable in incompetence to the Carter Administration (Jimmy set the bar pretty high, or was it low); and even more polarizing than its predecessor. But to my mind the most scandalous act performed by Barack Obama was when he put his hand on that Bible (twice) and swore to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.” This was by far Obama’s biggest lie. Not only has he made absolutely no effort to protect the Constitution, he has worked assiduously – and at times quite effectively – to undermine that sacred document. His oath of office was the seminal lie from which flowed all other lies, misrepresentations and scandals.

Based on the books he has (had ghost-) written, the words he has spoken and the deeds he has committed, Obama clearly believes that the US Constitution and the organization of society that it commands are fatally flawed. He seeks to replace them with a creed founded on the ideas of people like Antonio Gramsci, John Dewey, Sinclair Lewis, Cloward-Piven and Saul Alinsky – although his goals are always couched in language that easily misleads all who only see his pleasant visage and hear his soothing voice without paying attention to his character and desires.

In some sense, he has made no secret of his intentions. In short, he pursues a centralized, government-controlled, amoral society in which coerced egalitarianism, multilateralism, collectivism and multiculturalism replace individual liberty, free market capitalism, traditional culture and American Exceptionalism. I reiterate: he scandalously placed his hand on the Bible and swore to protect the system that he is committed to destroying. It was duplicitous, diabolical, even treasonous. While also scandalous, the true scandal is that the American people handed him the keys to the realm, that is, they elevated him to a position from which he can bring to fruition his (only semi-surreptitious) betrayal.

This essay also appeared in Canada Free Press, as well as in The Intellectual Conservative