A VIKING LECTURE ON REAL CONSERVATISM
I am pissed off. Why? I am fed up with faux (or as I will call it from here forward "Fox") conservatism. We are going to look at what REAL conservatism is. Forget the divide and conquer "51 percent" mantra of Karl Rove. Real conservatism ALWAYS wins elections. It is a superior ideology but many Fox conservatives have perverted it to the point where I don't recognize it anymore. Our party should be ashamed itself. We have betrayed our hero and greatest president, Ronald Reagan. Like many of you, I was raised during the Reagan administration. As a six year old child, I told my father to vote for Reagan in 1984 due to his support of "Star Wars" missile defense. He did. I guess that was my first political stump speech. I am here to give another. I have a bigger audience now and the cause is as important as it was in 1984. Conservatives face a choice, we can get back to real conservatism or face political extinction. This is that clear to me.
What is real conservatism? It is not some mythical notion from a philosophy textbook like communism. We only have to go back 44 years to the architect of modern conservatism, the great President and hero of our time, Ronald Reagan. It was Ronald Reagan's speech at the 1964 Republican National Convention that started it all..the famous "Time for choosing" speech. Ronald Reagan took power in 1980 after years of economic and cultural malaise that began with the Vietnam War. The late 1970s was the worst time in our nation's history outside of the Great Depression. The reaction to the Great Depression was a disastrous lurch to the left. Our forefathers of that time have left us with a mess of government entitlements and a Federal bureaucracy that frankly no one knows how to fix. Conversely, the malaise of the 1970s resulted in the widespread adoption of modern conservatism. It was a reaction against oppressive Federal government regulation and economic and military impotence
The foundation of Reagan Conservatism is elegant in its simplicity. He vowed in his successful run for Governor of California in 1966 "to send the welfare bums back to work" and to "clean up the mess" that was Cal-Berkeley at the time. In his first term, he froze government hiring and RAISED taxes to balance the budget. The great Ronnie raised taxes? Yes, he did. He later ordered 2,200 National Guard troops into Berkeley to shut down the stinky hippie anti-war protests. He reinstituted the death penalty and signed a bill that allowed abortions but later came to regret that decision. At his concession speech in 1976, when he lost to Gerald Ford for the GOP nomination, he warned of nuclear war and the threat of the Soviet Union.
He would win the Presidency in 1980. He vowed to reinvigorate the nation's armed forces. He also vowed, more importantly, to bring America back into its rightful position as leader of the free world against the tyranny of the Soviet Bloc. Thirty minutes into his inaugural speech, Iran released the hostages it had been holding after the takeover of the US Embassy during the Iranian Islamic Revolution of 1979. In 1981, he fired the 11,000 member Air Traffic Controllers Union when they did not end their strike. His most famous quote in my view is that "Government is not the solution to our problems, government is the problem".
Why are the three paragraphs above relevant to what we face now as conservatives? To me, it is obvious. Today, we face different problems and issues but the challenge is the same. How do we maintain a lawful society without snuffing out freedom with endless well-meaning but flawed government interference? The answer is simple. But I fear that today's Fox conservatives don't want to hear it. That is why I am writing this article.
Ronald Reagan did not run on anti-abortion, anti gay marriage, anti-immigrant platform. He ran on a platform of hope. He hoped that Americans would make the right choices with their lives when given the opportunity to do so. While he was pro-life, but he DID NOT have the so-called "litmus test" on abortion for his Supreme Court appointees. He never talked about gay rights because he saw homosexuality as a lifestyle not a civil right. He signed an AMNESTY bill for two million illegal immigrants. He said "The legalization provisions in this act will go far to improve the lives of a class of individuals who now must hide in the shadows, without access to many of the benefits of a free and open society. Very soon many of these men and women will be able to step into the sunlight and, ultimately, IF THEY CHOOSE, they may become Americans". That is hope, that is clarity, and that is conservatism.
I have been absolutely sickened by the current affairs of our party on the issue of immigration. Many of our party's candidates support mandatory deportation for ALL illegal immigrants. This Draconian solution is the antithesis of true conservative ideology. Conservatism has nothing to do with national origin, race or gender. A true conservative believes that people have a thirst for success and happiness and will work endlessly to achieve it. Labeling people who want to improve their lives by any means necessary "criminals" is immoral. Real conservatives believe that ALL PEOPLE are endowed with certainly unalienable rights; life, liberty and pursuit of happiness. We don't guarantee happiness, just the free pursuit of it. The vision of government agents (recently hired by a new cabinet level bureaucracy) harassing people of Hispanic origin for their immigration paperwork would have Ronald Reagan rolling in his grave. Should we secure our borders? Yes. Should we have a militarized border like Poland and Czechoslovakia circa 1968? Hell no.
I have said on the record many times that I am anti-gay marriage. I think it is a horrific perversion of the word. That being said, basing a political platform and a election strategy based on this issue is disgusting. A real conservative would say "The Federal government does not sanction marriages, the states do"...end of discussion. I completely understand how the gay issue offends conservatives. The fact that we are subjected to constant politically-based inferences on it is disturbing. Why do we see more of it now? Because WE HAVE made it an issue. Gays will be gay and there is not a thing we can or should do about that. If the city of San Francisco wants to allow gay marriage and pay benefits to gay couples, it is their decision and the taxpayers can decide whether or not they want to deal with that. If not, they can move to fucking San Jose. Abortion, to me, should be handled like gay marriage. It is a localized decision. The Federal government should not subsidize it and that should be the limit of influence.
My point is that social issues are ALWAYS secondary to our core values; belief in America's greatness, upholding the Constitution, defeating our enemies on the battlefield, and near worship of the Bill of Rights. Conservatives who seek to legislate morality are destroying our party. Starting in 1994, as part of the Clinton backlash, our party was hijacked by the "Christian right" who looked to the GOP to push their agenda down America's throat. They are simply a special interest group, no different than gay lobbyists, the gun lobby, unions, etc. They elected their champion, George W. Bush, in 2000. He simply paid lip service to the Christian crowd while generally ruling like President Reagan. There have not been significant social changes in the last eight years. But the perception is that there have been and that is what drives the anti-W crowd. They are not Christians and they feel like Christianity has been forced upon them. It galvanized them just as Clinton galvanized the Christian voter. Our core values are based on Christian morality and Protestant work ethic not what some asshole pastor at a fucking megachurch says. The Fox conservatives have an ideology that makes it difficult for non-Christians to be politically conservative. Faith in God is not a requirement of the Presidency. The notion that a non-Christian can't be a conservative will rip our nation into shreds. All we should ask for, as real conservatives, is that our leaders understand that primacy of Protestantism in our nation's history and culture.
The foundation of our ideology, as real conservatives, is personal freedom. We believe that every man, woman and child should have the right to become whatever they can be. To those who call on politicians to police what goes on in your neighbors house....fuck you. To those who think that Creationism should be the standard for teaching in PUBLIC school.....you are wrong. If you want to teach your children about the book of Genesis, that is admirable. By wanting Christian theology in our public schools, you are proposing a state religion and eventually theocracy. We are not a theocracy, never have been and never will be. We have this little idea called freedom of religion but not freedom from religion. Real conservatives believe that we can say "Merry Christmas" whenever we want but we also understand that if you do that in a business capacity you could lose business. It is a choice that everyone has to make. Once again, it is about choice. Real conservatives understand that federal government should not be involved with religious holidays. To put a manger scene on the lawn of White House, for example, would be unconstitutional. On the other hand, we would defend the rights of Christians to celebrate the birth of Jesus in the way they see fit which included Christmas decorations on private property instead of caving to public pressure as some activist judges have in the past. We do that with the understanding that some may use that freedom to say "Christ died for good reason" on their lawns. It may seem abhorrent to us but you cannot have it both ways.
The concept of economic freedom is paramount in the minds of real conservatives. The primacy of the "market" is part and parcel with this belief. We believe that there is not a problem that the market cannot solve. Most Fox conservatives pay lip service to this idea but, in many cases, they abandon the idea of a market when it is convenient. A great example of this is the re-importation of pharmaceutical drugs. Sitting where I am sitting now I can drive 150 miles north and pick up certain, but not all, prescriptions cheaper in Canada. The Fox conservatives oppose this idea. I ask you, why the hell should I not be able to drive north and buy drugs at a discount? The answer is that I should. This is an example of protectionism..the pharmaceutical companies have lobbied so successfully to our lawmakers to allow them to charge Americans more for drugs. It really amounts to a handout, albeit, less obviously than a subsidy or tax credit.
Subsidies for American industries need to be eliminated even when it hurts Americans. If you protect certain industries, nations will retaliate. I have a personal example of this. My father has worked in the cedar industry for decades and I saw how this played out first hand. Canada is a net exporter of lumber into the US. During the 1990s, we set quotas on Canadian exporters to protect American timber mills. Canadian companies did not like this and to make sure they stayed in business the Canadian government subsidized their timber industry. We accused them of dumping wood under cost and the desired protection of American mills did not work. When the agreement came to an end, we put a 27% tariff on incoming lumber. Needless to say, this drove up the price, the increased price, by definition, decreased demand and HURT EVERYONE involved on both sides. If you believe that our nation is the greatest in the world, then you should not be afraid of open competition. We are the best nation in the world and if ALL markets are open, the economic benefit will outweigh any loss of jobs overseas. You can't expect nations to agree to free trade unless we also participate fairly. If you believe that free trade hurts our country, you believe that other nations are better and more productive than we are. That is not what a real conservative believes. Isolationism of any kind results in decay and if you need evidence of that, go to France.
A true conservative also believe that labor is a widget which can be bought and sold. The concept of minimum wages, unions, and tariffs are a legacy from our more socialist past. These need to be eliminated. Any so-called conservative who calls for anything like this...is a fraud. It all comes back to freedom, if someone is willing to work for $1.00 an hour and someone is willing to pay them $1.00 per hour then you have an free and fair exchange. I have heard some populism out of our GOP candidates and it disturbs me. This idea that we have an economic class in our nation that is disenfranchised is complete rhetorical garbage. I have even heard the term "Corporate Greed" come out of the mouth of a so-called Republican. This is foreign concept to a real conservative. We believe that THE ONLY job of a corporation is to benefit stockholders. Instead of bitching about "corporate greed" go buy one of their shares once a month and share in the benefit. Class warfare is a tactic of liberals (and more notably Communists like Castro, Chavez, etc).
A true conservative also embraces the idea that the world is not owned by just our generation. It is our duty to leave the world better than we found it. We work tirelessly to do that in foreign policy but not with environmental policy. Fox conservatives will have you believe that driving a hybrid is tantamount to treason. They drive their urban assault vehicles funding Islamic terrorists and polluting our world unnecessarily. They will call for drilling in Alaskan wilderness instead of driving more reasonable vehicles. These bastards will tell you that fuel cell and electric technology is not the solution but ethanol is. They are wrong. A real conservative yearns for the end of oil. Why should our energy dollar go to the Middle East? When we unteather ourselves from the Islamic umbilical cord our innovation and technilogical superiority will lead to energy independence. Preserving our planet makes economic sense. A Fox conservative will tell you that global warming is a liberal myth while a real conservative says "If it's true, let fix it and make money doing it, if it's not...let's still make money". With nuclear power and advancements in alternatives (wind, solar, wave) we can be an exporter of energy. I call for this to be priority #2 behind destroying Islamofascism. We spent trillions to get to the moon, just to prove that we could beat the Soviets. Let's do it again with energy technology.
This article, I hope and it should, help you wade through the muck of our party's primary. We have one candidate who stands in direct opposition to true conservatism, Mike Huckabee. He used Romney's faith against him in Iowa by pretending to not know what Mormonism was, raised minimum wages in his home state and touts the deportation of illegals line. He, and to a lesser extent, Mitt Romney are Fox conservatives. They talk the talk but when it comes down to it, they are not conservatives. They are purveyors of division in our nation. Since neither of them have much experience nationally, they use the Fox conservative orthodoxy in the attempt to gain the nomination. They are both sitting ducks in a national election. The Democrats will preach unity and change and these clowns will talk about abortion and gay marriage. Issue based Fox conservatism is dead. It has been packaged, bought and sold, it is no longer authentic, it is a product. People don't elect products, they elect leaders and vote for ideas. Our party needs to find itself again. We should be about upholding the Constitution, defeating radical Islam, spreading freedom and democracy, and as we always have, giving hope to the world that someday they can be as great as we are. In the words of Ronald Reagan's farewell speech from the Presidency in 1989:
The lesson of all this was, of course, that because we're a great nation, our challenges seem complex. It will always be this way. But as long as we remember our first principles and believe in ourselves, the future will always be ours. And something else we learned: Once you begin a great movement, there's no telling where it will end. We meant to change a nation, and instead, we changed a world.
Countries across the globe are turning to free markets and free speech and turning away from ideologies of the past. For them, the great rediscovery of the 1980s has been that, lo and behold, the moral way of government is the practical way of government: Democracy, the profoundly good, is also the profoundly productive.
I've spoken of the shining city all my political life, but I don't know if I ever quite communicated what I saw when I said it. But in my mind it was a tall proud city built on rocks stronger than oceans, wind-swept, God-blessed, and teeming with people of all kinds living in harmony and peace, a city with free ports that hummed with commerce and creativity, and if there had to be city walls, the walls had doors and the doors were open to anyone with the will and the heart to get here. That's how I saw it and see it still.
And how stands the city on this winter night? More prosperous, more secure, and happier than it was eight years ago. But more than that; after 200 years, two centuries, she still stands strong and true on the granite ridge, and her glow has held steady no matter what storm. And she's still a beacon, still a magnet for all who must have freedom, for all the pilgrims from all the lost places who are hurtling through the darkness, toward home.We've done our part. And as I walk off into the city streets, a final word to the men and women of the Reagan revolution, the men and women across America who for eight years did the work that brought America back. My friends: We did it. We weren't just marking time. We made a difference. We made the city stronger. We made the city freer, and we left her in good hands. All in all, not bad, not bad at all.
Let us revive the spirit and positivity of Ronald Reagan. He started it in 1964 and it is our job, no, our duty, to push these revolutionary ideas forward. A belief in America as the leading exporter of hope all over the world. We cannot do this when we resort to partisanship and division to win elections. We are the party of freedom. We have led the fight into the Middle East to bring democracy to that tyrannical part of the world. We destroyed Communism. We will destroy our transcendent ideological nemisis, radical Islamofascism. We have led the world into economic prosperity. We have put more money in the pocket of the American innovator, family and consumer. Our legacy will be much larger than we can imagine. Forget the "litmus tests", the division, the bitterness, the identity politics, the nativism, and embrace our greatness as we share it with the world. God Bless America and God Bless the world.
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