Nov
22
Doing My Part
Filed Under Blogging and Computers | Leave a Comment
As part of my effort to protect freedom for the next generation, I’ve become the tech specialist for the Republican Young Professionals of Pasco County. I used blogger to put up the website here. Take a look!
It’s also important to point out that zoominac.com is my personal blog, and the opinions expressed here are mine alone and do not necessarily represent those of the RYPPC. ‘Ya mean?
Nov
4
Moving Forward
Filed Under Conservatism | Leave a Comment
Last night’s elections were good news for recovering conservatives: Christie in NJ, McDonnell in VA, and Hoffman barely loses on a third party ticket to the Democrat endorsed by the party-money-taking RINO Scozzafava. The races, especially in the case of NY-23, have brought about a lot of chatter about how the GOP should move forward, how it can remain viable and principled, and what level of moderation we should be willing to accept in places where conservatives are typically not found.
AOSHQ had some thoughts on the future of the Republican party and the supposed conflict between conservatives and moderates:
I do not think these two camps are as far apart as their proponents seem to think. It is often the case that maximalists accuse, or suggest, that pragmatists aren’t interested in electing more conservative candidates, or of supporting more conservative primary challengers to confirmed RINOs. And it often the case that pragmatists (including myself) seem to talk as if the maximalists are unaware that a Tom Coburn type candidate wouldn’t fare so well in liberal New Jersey or arch-Democratic Maryland.
For what it’s worth, I agree with Mike Flynn at Big Government that fiscal, and not social conservatism will be the real divining rod in the politics of the future (emphasis mine):
This year, the Washington Post—the most effective arm of the Virginia Democrat Party—thought it found the silver bullet to kill the gubernatorial campaign of republican Bob McDonnell. They unearthed a 20-year old thesis McDonnell wrote in college that contained some pretty embarrassing statements–at least by today’s standards—about whether, for example, families are better off if the wife doesn’t work outside the home. The Democrats based almost their entire campaign, and the Post based most of its coverage, on McDonnell’s thesis. It must chill them to the bone that McDonnell is set to win by one of the larger margins in state history. It isn’t that the public, or even McDonnell today, agrees with what’s in the thesis; they just don’t care.
Conservatives, independents, and libertarian-leaning Republicans like myself will often be determining their support on fiscal issues, and I think that fiscal conservatism is something that can win nearly everywhere. I will not, however, join the chorus of bashing the “religious right” and looking to cast out a very important segment of the party. Nor will I, as Ace warned in his post, push my unorthodox positions (pro drug legalization and pro gay rights) as electoral winners. They are my positions, and I can try to persuade others to agree with me to the full extent of my ability, but I will not claim that they are viable political tools. As the Maine results showed, support for traditional marriage is still popular, even in liberal leaning states. And many who take an individualist or libertarian view on the issues are pro-life, which is where I stand.
I understand that there will need to be varying degrees of political positions for Republicans throughout the country. However, there must be a brand that voters can identify and count on in our party. We must stand for something, but we cannot stand for anything. Arlen Specterand Dede Scozzafava have no place on our side.
So where do we draw the line? We needn’t be open to everything, essentially political whores who see our next John in every voting block. Nor must we be the extremist caricature that the media paints conservatives to be. I think there are certain principles that every Republican in the country can and should support, which give voters a clear and consistent choice in contrast with the socialist Democrats, while still inclusive enough to win elections and, ya know, actually do something. Every Republican candidate in the country should believe that:
- The size of government should not be increased - We may disagree with what the ideal size of government should be. Some believe it is a hedge that needs trimming. I think it is a pit viper that should be strangled. However, we can agree that the whole thing is too damn big as it is, and no more should be added. That means no to Obamacare and the stimulus. Republicans can disagree to a lot of things while still holding to this maxim.
- All things being equal, the people who earn the money should be the ones to spend it and will do so better than the government can.
- Whatever path society follows in the future, government should be neutral. Government should be reffing the game, not calling the plays.
- The three branches of government should stick to their roles prescribed by the founders, especially in regards to the judiciary.
- The United States should have the most powerful military in the world, as deterrence through strength is the surest path to peace. Liberal democracies have a natural bond that should not be shunned in international relations. The United States is not perfect, but overall has played a positive and liberating role in history. The United States was a victim on September 11, 2001, not a perpetrator. There is NO excuse for terrorism, nor any apology necessary for our self defense. The 9/11 attacks were not meant to be a solitary event - they were not the beginning of Al-Quaeda’s war on the United States, and they were not the end (can you hear me Ron Paul?).
In addition, with Obama’s clowns in office, this period will present a great oppurtunity to the GOP to pick off the low hanging fruit - things like transparency, honesty, ethics, and competence. All around winners.
To borrow from our Dear Leader, let me be clear. The stakes of losing elections, even for the sake of purity, are very high. However, we can not elect RINO candidates whose only accomplishment is to put GOP fingerprints on legislative clusterfucks like Medicare Part D, NCLB, TARP and Obamacare, allowing us to be indicted when these things inevitably blow up in America’s face. There can be room for dissent on issues, but we must offer a choice, not an echo.
Jun
10
I Second That
Filed Under Uncategorized | Leave a Comment
Reason: Why the GOP should be the party of liberty.
May
8
Hanson On The Loss of GOP Appeal
Filed Under Conservatism | 1 Comment
This piece from Victor Davis Hanson is as encouraging as it is accurate. An excerpt:
The elections of 1964, 1976, and 1992 were all heralded as the beginnings of new permanent liberal majorities. In the first two cases, the inept governance of LBJ and Jimmy Carter ensured that Republicans were back in office in four years. Bill Clinton extended Democratic rule for eight years; but he did so without winning a majority of the votes in either election. Take Ross Perot out of the equation in 1992 — and perhaps even in 1996 — and Clinton might well not have won. Clinton survived Monica because no Americans were killed in his Balkans War, and because Dick Morris taught him the arts of triangulation, while the Republican Congress forced spending cuts that led finally to two years of budget surpluses. He left office popular, despite Monica, with balanced budgets and an assurance that the era of big government was over.
It is really an excellent piece, so be sure to read the whole thing.
Via Protein Wisdom, where Jeff adds:
Guess that’s why VDH has a wide audience, and I get banned from commenting at certain ostensibly conservative sites.
Well, that, and he’s not just some dude scribbling on free blogging software…
Don’t worry, Jeff. For both our sakes, blogging remains an important part of the punditocracy.
Apr
30
Don’t Let the Door Hit Ya’…
Filed Under Uncategorized | 5 Comments
… where the Good Lord split ya.
On Tuesday, RINO Senator Arlen Specter switched parties to become a Democrat. He cited the fact that the GOP had moved too far to the right, had become too intolerant of moderates, and that he was ”…not prepared to have my 29 year record in the United States Senate decided by the Pennsylvania Republican primary electorate.” Am I the only one that finds it wrong that an incumbent politician refuses to subject himself to voters?
This will give GOP challenger Pat Toomey a clear path to the Republican nomination to challenge Specter in the general. Pat Toomey is a former member of the House of Representatives and headed the Club For Growth after losing to Specter in the GOP primary in 2004. I have followed Toomey’s career with interest, and the Club For Growth (of which I am a member) was one of the organizations that I researched and eventually led to me leaving the Democrat party . I was already planning on supporting and donating to Toomey’s campaign, and will be doing so with even more enthusiasm now.
The reactions to this defection have been pretty much as one would expect. Conservatives have echoed my sentiments above, while moderates have seen it as another red flag of the waning GOP.
Moonbattery: “Only by ridding itself of the lowly likes of Specter will Republicans reemerge as the party that can rebuild the country by upholding the principles that made it great.”
Rush Limbaugh: “This Arlen Specter business. Maybe I’m outta touch. I am stunned at the way the political class, both Republicans and Democrats, are dealing with this defection of Arlen Specter to the Democrat Party. It’s almost like a religious leader abandoned the religion, which is not the case. We got rid of some dead weight.”
RedState: “A “moderate” Republican, Specter has long been at odds with mainstream Republicans on spending and life issues, as well as several other positions.”
R. Stacy McCain: “Exit lying. One less member of the Senate Republican “Jellyfish Caucus.” Specter reminds me of the high-school slut trying to sleep her way to popularity — a weak reed, blown by the shifting winds. The fact that the national GOP apparatus lined up behind this venomous crapweasel in 2004 is all you need to know about what a worthless waste of time the national GOP apparatus was during the Bush/Mehlman era.”
If Al Franken (D-MN) is seated in the Senate, the Democrats will have a filibuster-proof majority. Many see this as opening the door to an avalanche of big-government liberalism that could have been avoided had the Republicans been able to keep Specter. The question I have is this:
What the hell else can they do?
Now don’t get me wrong. Card check, universal health care, and cap-and-trade are all disastrous proposals. But lets not forget what Specter has already done. Specter voted for Obama’s $787,000,000,000.00 ’stimulus bill.’ It is the single most expensive piece of legislation in U.S. history. What exactly are we keeping this ace in the hole for? To sponsor, “A resolution honoring the important contribution to the Nation of the Academy of Music in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on its 150th Anniversary”??? Some more of Specter’s highlights, from Ed Morrissey at Hot Air:
What did his Porkulus vote tell us about his core values? He doesn’t support the social-issues positions of some conservatives, nor does he support fiscal constraint and responsibility. I’m looking for any corner of a Republican tent that could possibly cover where Specter stands, and I’m not seeing any. Taxes? He voted to water down the Bush tax cuts. Judges? Specter went along with the Borking of, well, Robert Bork. Specter in 1990 opposed parental notification on abortions — not consent, but notification.
In an op-ed in the New York Times, fellow ‘moderate Republican’ Senator Olympia Snowe of Maine bitched and moaned:
IT is disheartening and disconcerting, at the very least, that here we are today — almost exactly eight years after Senator Jim Jeffords left the Republican Party — witnessing the departure of my good friend and fellow moderate Republican, Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, for the Democratic Party. And the announcement of his switch was all the more painful because I believe it didn’t have to be this way.
…
There is no plausible scenario under which Republicans can grow into a majority while shrinking our ideological confines and continuing to retract into a regional party. Ideological purity is not the ticket back to the promised land of governing majorities — indeed, it was when we began to emphasize social issues to the detriment of some of our basic tenets as a party that we encountered an electoral backlash.
It is for this reason that we should heed the words of President Ronald Reagan, who urged, “We should emphasize the things that unite us and make these the only ‘litmus test’ of what constitutes a Republican: our belief in restraining government spending, pro-growth policies, tax reduction, sound national defense, and maximum individual liberty.” He continued, “As to the other issues that draw on the deep springs of morality and emotion, let us decide that we can disagree among ourselves as Republicans and tolerate the disagreement.”
So how is voting for TARP and the stimulus advocating ”restraining government spending, pro-growth policies, [and] tax reduction,”?
I get the ‘big-tent’ strategy. I believe in it. As a small ‘l’ libertarian and registered Republican, I get that there must be diversity of opinion. None of our goals will be realized if we don’t win elections and forge coalitions. But there must be some core brand that the GOP can offer voters. There must be a point where a line is drawn. Specter is not a ‘moderate Republican.’ He is a centrist Democrat, or a liberal. If you cannot offer a compelling, base-line philosophical reason why you are a Republican and not a Democrat, then get the hell out.
Feb
16
Gay Mexicans Should Vote Republican
Filed Under Civil Liberties | 3 Comments
Group identity politics seem to be all the rage now, especially with the Democrat Party in charge in Washington. No longer viewed as individuals, people are now seen as members of large, homogeneous groups, rife with societal grievances and ripe for political exploitation. The American population can be split along any lines imaginable in regards to race, skin color, ethnicity, religion, age, sexual orientation, geographical distribution, income, occupation, etc.
Many affiliated with the Republican Party see the last two elections as the party’s “failure” to “reach out” to groups in this manner. Much has been made about the impact of the Hispanic vote given recent demographic changes. Immigration and social welfare issues are seen as very important to these groups, and those who espouse collectivist ideals want to tailor the conservative movement to accommodate such groups.
Another growing political trend has been the rise of the gay rights debate. Many have likened the movement to legalize gay marriage to the civil rights movement of the 1950’s and 1960’s.
For reasons that are beyond my understanding, the Democrat party has been seen as the allies to immigrant and homosexual rights proponents, while the evil Republicans are seen as the enemies of liberty to these disadvantaged groups.
Regarding the issues of gay rights and immigration, I am a strict libertarian. Regarding the former, I cannot see how being homosexual is harming anyone else, and therefore do not support laws discriminating against it. As for marriage, I don’t believe it is any of the government’s business.
When it comes to immigration, I believe that it is not government’s job to manage demographics over a given geographical area (in other words, immigration quotas), nor is it a function of the state to manage our ‘culture’. As long as you are not a criminal, terrorist, or have an extremely dangerous communicable disease, come on in. Just don’t live off of my dime (which will be the idea of this post). Coyoteblog has a very good piece concerning immigration here.
Arguing my side of these two points would be more than this post is intended for. What this post is meant to do is illustrate that both the Democrat and Republican parties are enemies to the freedoms of gays and immigrants, and that people who already agree with me should vote for the lesser of two evils and for what will realistically bring about the reforms we support. So, if I grouped people into political identities instead of free-thinking individuals, I would, as my (I think rather catchy) title says, urge that gay Mexicans should vote Republican.
It’s easy to say the Republican party is against gay rights and immigration. Democrats are generally for relaxing immigration standards, while Republicans are generally for strict immigration enforcement and sometimes reducing immigration altogether. Proponents of legalizing gay marriage tend to be Democrats or liberals, whereas Republicans oppose gay marriage and support a constitutional ban.
The first thing I can’t stand is why Democrats seem to have the default support of immigrant and gay-rights groups when they differ very little from Republicans. For instance, as this article points out, all of the major 2008 Democrat presidential candidates opposed gay marriage, although they supported civil unions. Then-candidate Barack Obama:
“When you’re a black guy named Barack Obama, you know what it’s like to be on the outside,” said the Illinois senator at the nationally televised forum in Hollywood. “And so my concern is continually to make sure that the rights that are conferred by the state are equal for all people.”
The love may have been flowing at a forum specifically for gay rights, but political realities bogged down Obama when he actually became president. Homosexual blogger Perez Hilton lamented Obama’s decision to cut out of an HBO broadcast a prayer by a gay bishop and also to invite Rick Warren to attend the inauguration. Over a picture of Obama, the blogger scribbled “He’ll let u down too.”
While such politically-motivated moves may shock gays who are liberals like Perez Hilton, it doesn’t shock conservatives or libertarians like me. We realize that statists like the Democrat party employ a strategy of lumping people into groups, promising them things in order to gain power, and rob freedom from everyone, including the groups they claim they’re helping.
Another dark side of statism is that it gives legitimacy to government control of things like marriage and immigration, because costly social welfare programs give the federal government a vested interest in restricting such things. Case in point, the rise of welfare, Medicare and Medicaid, and Social Security have only strengthened the argument to limit the amount of people eligible for American citizenship and equal recognition under the law.
I understand that xenophobia has always and will always exist. However, as civilization progresses, we begin to become more tolerant and see people as individuals, not as members of stereotypical groups whose needs and qualities are all alike. Then how are issues like immigration and gay marriage still significant in modern political discourse?
Take immigration, for example. In a completely free country with a government as the constitution intended, citizenship would mean little more than where you lived. The only argument against open immigration would be that some ethnic groups are undesirable. As I said, such a xenophobic stance has become less and less popular. But what legitimizes an argument towards limiting immigration? Massive (and massively expensive) government entitlement programs like welfare, Medicare and Medicaid, and Social Security, all programs supported by the statist Democrat party. We cannot expect citizens who have been paying into such programs for decades to accept immigrants taking benefits after being here for a fraction of the time. Not only is it not right morally, it is not fiscally feasible. Libertarians like me cannot accept open immigration, as it would bankrupt taxpayers. The Republicans are completely right when they say that immigration restriction and reform are top priorities. Without governmental largess created by Democrats, there would be no need to restrict these freedoms, and xenophobic policies would begin to politically ring hollow in a nation of immigrants. LBJ and FDR did more to restrict immigration than Tom Tancredo could ever hope to.
The argument that Democrat big-government programs are an enemy to civil rights causes is even more blunt when dealing with gay marriage. The error of gay-marriage proponents, with whom I agree, is that their strategy is to make gay marriage acceptable in society. Unfortunately, not only do we have no right to force our viewpoints on others, such a task is not plausible. A Quinnipiac University poll gave the following three choices:
1. Same-sex couples should be allowed legally to marry
2. Same-sex couples should be allowed legally to form civil unions but not marry
3. Same-sex couples should not be allowed to obtain legal recognition of their relationships
The results of the poll show that 62% opposed legalizing gay marriage. The respondents had varying degrees of support for a either a constitutional ban on gay marriage or allowing some civil rights to gay couples. However, these are all the wrong questions. The question should be why the hell the government has a vested interest in who the hell gets married anyway. That answer is simple - Social Security.
Social security not only pays disability, unemployment, and a contributor’s own retirement benefits, it will also pay spousal benefits. In the event of a spouse’s death, the survivor will receive either their own benefit amount, or half that of their deceased spouse’s, whichever is greater. Because of government control of retirement, the feds have a vested interest in what kinds of relationships are recognized as marriage.
Take the following example: There are two relationships, one homosexual, the other heterosexual. In each, one member makes a very good living at their job, so that the other one has no need to work and devotes their time to a local charity and has no reported earnings. After 30 years of marriage, the high-earning member dies in a car accident. The difference between the two relationships? Well, under the current system that the Democrats favor, while the heterosexual survivor would receive half of their spouse’s benefit to live on, the homosexual survivor would be out of luck and the government would pocket their partner’s sizable contributions. If the government would get out of the business of running people’s retirements and left it to private accounts, similar to what Republican George W. Bush tried to implement, the homosexual earner could have designated their partner as the beneficiary in case of death. In a 401(k), you can designate whomever you wish as a payee if you kick off, including your mother, brother, dog, live-in girlfriend, or even a charity. With Social Security? No dice.
But wait, wail the “progressives,” if we legalized gay marriage, wouldn’t that get rid of the problem? Yes, but as that poll cited earlier, its going to be a bit of a stretch politically. The truth of the matter is that that which you give the government control of will also be under the control of whoever is in power and the political whims of the day. It’s all well and good when your guy is in power, but it won’t always be that way. A much wiser policy is to give others, government included, as little control over your own life and earnings as possible.
In the cases of both immigration and gay rights, Republicans are the party of less government control. The knee jerk reaction of freedom advocates, from libertarians like myself and progressives, may be to try to change the view of the world. But that is not a prudent course. It is best to allow a system where people are allowed control over themselves, and themselves alone. While Republicans may be doing things for reasons we disagree, they may be the right course of action after all.
Postscript: Pajamas Media had a great piece explaining why Dick Cheney was the most pro-gay VP in history. In the article, he is quoted as saying:
We live in a free society, and freedom means freedom for everybody. We shouldn’t be able to choose and say you get to live free and you don’t. That means people should be free to enter into any kind of relationship they want to enter into. It’s no one’s business in terms of regulating behavior in that regard. The next step then, of course, is the question you ask of whether or not there ought to be some kind of official sanction of the relationships or if they should be treated the same as a traditional marriage. … I think different states are likely to come to different conclusions, and that’s appropriate. … We ought to do everything we can to tolerate and accommodate whatever kind of relationships people want to enter into.
I guess those evil Republicans (even Cheney!) aren’t so bad, are they?
Jan
16
Crossing Over to the Dark Side: How I Became a Conservative Republican (Part III)
Filed Under Conservatism | 1 Comment
I was still in high school when 9/11 hit, and to say it shaped those in my generation is an understatement. It is very hard for young people to envision a world without a terrorist attack on home soil on our mind. It has shaped a huge portion of our lives. On that fateful Tuesday morning I, like the rest of the country, watched in shock as 19 murderous fanatics executed a coordinated attack on American soil, in the heart of our most prominent cites. With the loss of 3,000 of our brothers and sisters, it was clear that we were at war.
We all know what happened next. Our leaders in Washington pontificate about unity and patriotism. The country briefly bridges the partisan divide as we go into Afghanistan and knock out the Taliban. Next up is Iraq, where we make the decision to remove Saddam Hussein from power. Then, something strange happened.
The problems with the Iraq war are well documented. We went in with half-ass numbers, were not greeted as liberators, didn’t find what we went in for, and the efforts of our troops were tripped up by an incompetent defense secretary and an isolated president. It wouldn’t be until 2007 that things began to break our way. These are all legitimate concerns, and there were voices from the left and right that were against the invasion from the get-go. But as the 2004 presidential election rolled around, the Democrat party saw the political oppurtunity of a lifetime.
Slowly but steadily, voices out of the Democrat party began to denounce the war, and then to say it was all based on a lie. “This whole thing was a fraud,” as Ted Kennedy put it. Immediately the left went into whining mode, and I think for two reasons. One, was that I think a lot of the former hippies saught to relive the Vietnam war and have one last battle before they went out to pasture. Two, without an unjust war brought on by Dubya The Terrible, the party had little issue-wise to go with. Ever since Reagan had taken Mondale to the woodshed in ‘84 (for the record, that’s 49 states to 1, with a 525-13 electoral college), the liberals had looked like the Detroit Lions of the political world. Now Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, John Edwards and company saw their chance, and said that big bad Bush and Cheney had lied to them, and the public ate it up. In the 2006 and 2008 campaigns, they began calling for an unconditional withdrawl. That’s when this Democrat began to get suspicious.
The Democrats can say what they want about how we never should have invaded Iraq, how it was all a lie, there were no WMD’s. And hey, they may yet be correct. But I would offer the old saying that whenever you point a finger, there are three more pointing right back at you. This was not George W. Bush’s war. This wasn’t even the Republicans’ war. This was a war initiated by a strong coalition of both parties. But don’t take my word for it. Take Bill Clinton’s in 1998:
“If Saddam rejects peace and we have to use force, our purpose is clear. We want to seriously diminish the threat posed by Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction program.”
Or these folks:
· “Saddam Hussein has been engaged in the development of weapons of mass destruction technology which is a threat to countries in the region and he has made a mockery of the weapons inspection process.” -Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D, CA), Dec. 16, 1998
· “There is no doubt that … Saddam Hussein has reinvigorated his weapons programs. Reports indicate that biological, chemical and nuclear programs continue apace and may be back to pre-Gulf War status. In addition, Saddam continues to redefine delivery systems and is doubtless using the cover of a licit missile program to develop longer-range missiles that will threaten the United States and our allies.” Letter to President Bush, Signed by: — Sen. Bob Graham (D, FL), and others, Dec 5, 2001
· “We know that he has stored secret supplies of biological and chemical weapons throughout his country.” — Al Gore, Sept. 23, 2002
· “We have known for many years that Saddam Hussein is seeking and developing weapons of mass destruction.” — Sen. Ted Kennedy (D, MA), Sept. 27, 2002
· “I will be voting to give the President of the United States the authority to use force — if necessary — to disarm Saddam Hussein because I believe that a deadly arsenal of weapons of mass destruction in his hands is a real and grave threat to our security.” — Sen. John F. Kerry (D, MA), Oct. 9, 2002
· “In the four years since the inspectors left, intelligence reports show that Saddam Hussein has worked to rebuild his chemical and biological weapons stock, his missile delivery capability, and his nuclear program. He has also given aid, comfort, and sanctuary to terrorists, including al Qaeda members … It is clear, however, that if left unchecked, Saddam Hussein will continue to increase his capacity to wage biological and chemical warfare, and will keep trying to develop nuclear weapons.” — Sen. Hillary Clinton (D, NY), Oct 10, 2002
· “Without question, we need to disarm Saddam Hussein.” — Sen. John F. Kerry (D, MA), Jan. 23. 2003
So when it comes down to it, there were only two ways to expain the inconsistency of the Democrats. One, that those in power commited the resources of the United States and the lives of thousands of Americans in error because of the lies of one man (in which case I guess Dubya is a hell of a lot smarter than we make him out be), or two, that they cast those votes in good conscience and still agree, but seized upon a political strategy to portray Bush as a liar for electoral gain. So either the Democrats were mindless idiots or treasonous panderers. Looking back, both seem so plausible that I have yet to figure out which one it is. And both are reason enough to throw their butts out of office. No, Senator Kennedy, the “fraud” was not the war, it is the way your buddies like to rewrite history. If the Democrats had any dignity, they would put Dennis Kucinich in as house majority leader and run Noam Chomsky in ‘04. But of course they didn’t.
The final straw for me, foreign and defense policy wise, was when the Democrats began calling for unconditional withdrawl from Iraq. Even if the invasion was a mistake, giving up was madness. Just because getting knocked up at prom was a mistake doesn’t justify an abortion at 8 1/2 months. And trust me, with Iran waiting in the wings, leaving Iraq would make Darfur look like a freaking birthday party. And what about our responsibility to the International Community that the Democrats seem so concerned about? What is more of an injustice, removing a tyranical killer who slaughtered his own people, or removing a tyranical killer who slaughtered his own people and leaving the place in chaos before cleaning up the mess? The only one left was Joe Biden, who, in my waning days as a Democrat I supported for president in ‘08. He rightly reasoned that leaving Iraq would be condemning our grandchildren to return. But boy did he ‘change’ his tune when he got put on the Obama Hope-o-rama. I could only laugh when he said John McCain was “not who he remembered.” I guess they injected the botox a little too deep, Joe.
With my trust in the Democrats as a party shattered, I had to cast my eye on their principles. As I said in parts I and II, I had gained a healthy confidence in free-market principles. As I began to consider the ideas of thinkers like Adam Smith, Calvin Coolidge, Barry Goldwater, Milton Friedman, Ronald Reagan, Thomas Sowell, Walter Williams, and others it became apparent that a free market and an interventionist government were mutually exclusive. That is, one cannot exist with the other. The reason is simple; a dollar left in the free market can literally create another dollar. That’s right, throw the law of conservation of mass and energy out the window. That’s because someone in the private sector acting in their own self interest will use a dollar to buy some apple seeds and start a fruit stand. Wealth is created. With government, they use that same dollar to buy apples to be eaten by those who can’t or won’t produce, and the money is gone long before the private sector could have multiplied the dollar (and apple supply) many times over. The two cannot coexist becuause the government has to get that dollar from somewhere. The truth that the liberals and Keynsians refuse to see is that every penny spent by the government has to be taken from the private sector where it could have generated a better return. Yes, some will end up with a disproportionate amount of wealth, but if inequality is the price of prosperity, its worth every penny.
But there is a more sinister side to the argument.
While in my liberal intellectual-larva stage, I began dating a wonderful, beautiful, smart, and talented girl (hey folks, she’ll probably read this:) ). There was just one drawback - she was one of the evil conservatives. Not only did she despise welfare and government control, but she came from a family of active Republicans. She had a ‘Viva Bush!’ sticker on her car, and the first time I came to her house, her faithfully Republican mother had none other than FOX News on. What am I getting myself into? I remember thinking. Her mother was a smart-as-a-whip 4′11″ woman who had emigrated from Mexico at age 13. While she never completed high school, she knew more about politics and government than most people know about the alphabet. She would playfully mock Democrats, welfare, and any arguments that I had supporting either. I came to realize that I didn’t know what the hell I was talking about. But what stuck with me was a view that I had (embarassingly) never encountered. Looking me in the eyes, she said that welfare was no help to those in need; to the contrary, welfare was no more than a mechanism to force the poor into government dependency and foster political constituencies.
The free market is the best and only weapon ever devised by nature to liberate humanity from poverty. For almost the entire history of our species, in every country, community, and era, people have lived in poverty, sickness, famine, and oppression. And let it be clear, freedom is the exception, not the rule. In the few instances where free markets have been somewhat allowed to reign, that is where systems maintain private property, fair and consitent tort law, limited government and abolition of force, there have been explosions of population and living standards. At times, entire groups of people have gone from near stone age level to full development in a single generation. With advents in communication and information technology, this pace will only quicken. When people are allowed to act in the full measure of their economic self-interest, wealth has been created by entrepreneurs who made higher standards of living accessable to the masses. Everything that you and I own, without a single exception, began as a luxury for the super wealthy, upper crust, top 1%, etc. Through innovation, hard work, decentralized decision making, and unrepentant “greed,” producers slaughtered poverty, crushed infant mortality rates, and empowered millions by bringing luxury to the people. Where people are allowed to innovate, decide for themselves what to buy and sell, and amass personal wealth, there is prosperity. Where the inventive are constrained, where decisions are centralized by the powerful, and where people are not allowed to reap the benefits of their labor, there is misery, death, violence, and oppression. No student of history can deny these facts.
As I had these revalations, I made the decision that I was finally going to leave the Democrat party. They obviosly were interested only in making victims out of people and winning elections. But it was too much for me to swallow to become a Republican or call myself conservative or even libertarian. I was satisfied to remain independent. During this time, I got my hands on a very good book by Neal Boortz entitled Somebody’s Gotta Say It.With example after example, Boortz pounded into my head the fact that not only were the Democrats and statists against the free market, but they saught to destroy the concept of the free individual and control every aspect of our lives. Our country, our freedoms, and our way of life were very much under attack, and to sit idly by was nothing short of betrayal. I realized I could not sit on the sidelines. I had to get involved, speak out, and vote in primaries.
I disagree with Republicans on some issues like the seperation of church and state, gay marriage, and some foreign policy, and sometimes the party is a willing accomplice to the Democrats’ assault on freedom. But in the real world, one side or the other is going to win elections, and Republicans by far stand more for freedom and personal responsiblity than Democrats. I owe it not only to myself but the millions who have not yet escaped despair and poverty to preserve freedom and capitalism. I am proudly an active and vocal conservative Republican. To summarize my journey from Democrat to Republican:
When I thought that welfare and government helped the poor, I was a Democrat.
When I saw that welfare and government did not help the poor, I was an Independent.
When I realized that welfare and government hurt the poor, that was the day I registered as a Republican and vowed to advocate for free minds, free markets, and free souls. Anything I can do, from voting, to becoming active, to getting the word out (such as this blog) will be my charge to continue the revolution began over 200 years ago. For that was when men put their names, lives, and fortunes on the line to declare that people were free, that we exist as sovereign individuals, that our rights are a natural endowment and cannot be divorced from us by force, and that government must be constrained, its poweres ennumerated, and its mandate from consent.
Jan
14
Crossing Over to the Dark Side: How I Became A Conservative Republican (Part II)
Filed Under Conservatism | 7 Comments
I suppose my somewhat conservative leanings had always been there. I was personally conservative and looked down on lying, cheating, sexual promiscuity, drug use, and sloth. I had always been generally pro-life, and initially supported the war in Iraq. Yet I remained antagonistic towards the wealthy and big business. My view of conservatives and Republicans in general was somewhat of a caricature. I suppose the vision in my head was similar to when Tina Fey likened Bush supporters to those who, “believed Adam and Eve rode dinosaurs to church,” on Weekend Update. I saw those on the right as intolerant, racist, greedy, stupid, war-mongering, religious-fundamentalist, anti-Darwin zealots. Pretty assumptive for a teenager who had never met a real conservative, much less discussed or researched conservative principles. To me, conservatism could be summarized as: “I like money, I like God, I hate lazy people on welfare and I hate fags.” With this kind of skewed mentality, its not hard to see why I was a democrat - who wouldn’t be?
Ironically, my view of liberal Democrats was equally skewed, although in the opposite direction. As I got older, I appreciated capitalism a lot more, and I viewed the Democrat party not as enemies of the free market that they are, but as the guardians of it. Capitalism was great, I reasoned, but its excesses can create problems and inequality, and of course the Democrats could come to the rescue. Global warming was a very real threat, just like Al Gore warned, and I recycled with fervor, regardless of the gas I used to drive our cans and bottles over to the recycling center. I was doing my part. Welfare recipients were simply those who had fallen on hard times, and government programs were just a one-time temporary bridge. The rich were mostly lucky, and used their wealth and power to control the masses with lobbyists and advertising. While the Republicans used every dirty political trick in the book, the heavenly Democrats simply searched for common-sense answers. Every problem had a possible government solution, unless the blood-thirsty republicans tripped it up, of course.
My mindset was obviously a ridiculously unrealistic bubble, and it would pop sooner than I knew. My political path was irrevocably set to the conservative side by, ironically, my father. When I was sixteen years old, he gave a book to me called The Millionaire Next Door. This book literally changed my life. While the book had nothing to do with politics, it totally changed the way I viewed the world, and from where else do our political leanings spring? For those who haven’t read The Millionaire Next Door (you should read ASAP), it chronicled Americans with a net worth of over $1 million, more specifically who they were, how they acquired their wealth, and how they spent it. Instead of reinforcing my popular view of millionaires as lazy robber barons who cashed out when their parents kicked off, the book made the contention (with volumes of statistical backing) that:
“Most of America’s millionaires are first-generation rich.” (p. 15)
Through a steady diet of case studies, statistics, surveys, and simple logic, The Millionaire Next Door showed that wealth (and more generally success and happiness) are more a product of hard work, planning, sacrifice, and personal decisions rather than luck and circumstance. A few more statistics about millionaires from the book:
- More than half never received as much as $1 in inheritance
- 91% never received, as a gift, as much as $1 of the ownership of a family business
- Nearly half never received any college tuition from their parents or other relatives (p. 16)
I became convinced that success in life was formulaic, and that if I made the correct decisions and planned, I could be there too. More consequentially, it was probable that most of the rich had not attained their status through greed and deception, but rather through hard work.
After my misconceptions of personal wealth had buckled, my misgivings of big business were next to go. It became apparent that in a true free market, the only way a business could get rich was to provide the absolute best products for their fellow man. This was true even when it violated my sense of fairness and right and wrong. For instance, I had been brought up to never buy anything you didn’t need, and to only return it if it was defective. Yet, when I began working at a large retailer in college, I saw that they would return nearly any product for nearly any reason, often without a receipt. Many times I saw that even when a “big business” was totally justified to tell a consumer to screw off, they wouldn’t, and in fact would provide whatever they could to the consumer in pursuit of their own self interest. It was clearly apparent to me that capitalism used the only reliable human instinct, self interest, to provide the most goods to the most amount of people in the most efficient manner.
Yet even as my faith in free-market solidified, I remained a Democrat still, as I mentioned above that I saw the party as the guardians of fair capitalism. What really began to erode my trust in the Democrat party was, of all things, the war in Iraq.
Jan
14
Crossing Over to the Dark Side: How I Became A Conservative Republican (Part I)
Filed Under Conservatism | 3 Comments
I think the most lacking part of political discourse is that people don’t explain what principles they stand for and why. Sure, everybody is more than willing to say what their position is on issue x, y, and z, but they never explain what’s really driving them. It seems that people just assume everybody is affixed a certain viewpoint and political party at birth, and therefore must follow the line for every issue. When this happens, politics just degrades into a screaming match with two competing sides that refuse to be persuaded. All political decisions, including at the ballot box, seem to be riding on who will do the most for me, rather than who is providing the most reasoned, logical arguments.
As you can tell, I am on the conservative side of the spectrum, with a libertarian bent. But I wasn’t always that way. I want to tell the story of how I went from a moderately liberal, fiercely loyal Democrat, to a pro-freedom, pro-limited government conservative.
I was born in New York state, an obviously heavily democratic domain. My parents fit the bill. Both were loyal blue-staters (although my mother would sometimes stray, as she would vote for Jeb Bush for governor in 1998 in Florida). Throughout my upbringing, my parents would have 60 Minutes on and eat up the stories of big business and their evil republican allies. I would pick up on the snippets of politics my parents would drop about the ills of violence and gun ownership, the greed of business, and the need of government to step in to help people. To a child, and even as a young adult, this all seemed hunky dory, and I quickly learned to despise republicans, and to a lesser degree, big businesses. As for the wealthy, I wouldn’t say there was any animosity on my end, but I definitely felt like there were so many people that were simply given a better shake than I. Growing up my family wasn’t poor, but we struggled an awful lot. It was easy for envy to creep in and drive my emotions and the way I viewed the world, especially in high school when my friends had cars that had AC (a must in Florida) and could successfully exceed 50 mph.
Yet for all of my parents’ railing against conservatism and siding with the big-government types, they were, as most democrats are, a walking contradiction. While on one hand my father would not set foot in a Wal-Mart and vote for redistributionist politicians, he was the single hardest-working person I have ever met, encountered, or even heard of. There wasn’t anything he wouldn’t do or any burden he wouldn’t bear for his family. When he was laid off at the end of the supposedly blessed Bill Clinton era, he took on a paper route to make ends meet, and continued it even when he found work. My father would put in around 80 hours of labor a week for several years out of his sense of responsibility. To give him help or a handout was an insult. My father also was not fond of the police, and would be the loudest complainer if a government agency were to interfere with his burn pile or building a porch. Helping out with the paper route in middle and high school and working beside my father on our 5 acres would foster my liberal leanings, but it would also instill a strong work-ethic and sense of personal responsibility that I hope is my father’s proudest legacy.
My mother was also an ardent Democrat and went through a signifigant Al Gore phase, where saving the environment and stopping global warming were her missions, and even bought a Honda Civic Hybrid and had a Live Earth house party. She’s politically-correct to a T and is, like my father, an avowed enemy of Wal-Mart. Development, big business, government contractors, war profiteers, and gun owners were the favorite targets of my mother’s politics, and for the most part I carried this over to my own view. Yet my mother, with her Catholic faith grounding her, was rooted in traditional values, honored her marriage vows with utmost seriousness, and was unabashedly pro-life. From her I would impart a sense of compassion and selflessness, respect for family and morality, and a deep suspicion of power.
It was in this environment that my political intellect began to take shape, and I took an early interest into the workings of elections and government. I remember being a kid and being very impressed with an ad from Ross Perot: “I love America, and I love you!” Being proud that a former Buffalo Bills quarterback had been selected as a Vice Presidential running mate, and then being dismayed upon learning that he was one of the evil Republicans. Skipping school the day after the infamous 2000 election watching the news and hoping all the way to December 13th that Gore would pull it out. Trying to “shop responsibly” with envrionmental and nationalist concerns in mind. Watching Farenheit 911 at the only theatre showing it and taking its talking points hook, line, and sinker. Doing a woefully under-researched paper in my first college English class entitled Hurricanes and Global Warming (thank God for liberal educators - thanks for the A+ Mrs G.!). I had proudly registered to vote on my 18th birthday and of course checked the box for Democrat. Yet, little did I know, my journey towards conservatism had already begun.
