Senator Asked To Define Conservatism….CRUSHES It In 74 Seconds!

Sen. Ben Sasse, R-Neb., was asked to define conservatism and he gave the absolute best answer... “What makes America great is not some guy in Washington who says, ‘If I had more power, I could fix it all unilaterally,’” he said. “That’s not the American tradition.” --(Hat tip: Al Hutchinson via Proud Conservative via Heritage Response Room) Video here: br>

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Bill Whittle: How to Stop the Civilizational Collapse

Bill Whittle, a warrior for conservatism, explains how the tide can be turned at the Freedom Center's Restoration Weekend (Videos). --(Snip)-- There is no question that the wheels are coming off of Western civilization. And the problem is that the wheels have come off of every civilization, and they've come off of every civilization in exactly the same way throughout history, starting with the Babylonians, the Assyrians, the Egyptians, the Greeks, the Romans. Same pattern every time, every time we see it. And I didn't understand it until very recently. --But just to make the case...

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The Party of Lincoln AND Calhoun? The Right and the Civil War

“When the intellectual authors of the modern right created its doctrines in the 1950s,” wrote Sam Tanenhaus in The New Republic, “they drew on nineteenth-century political thought, borrowing explicitly from the great apologists for slavery, above all, the intellectually fierce South Carolinian John C. Calhoun…. The party of Lincoln… has become the party of Calhoun.” At first glance, such a statement sounds laughable. The Republican Party is indeed the party of Lincoln, a fact it has fully embraced over many years.  A 1992 political button for the campaign for president of George H.W. Bush in my possession claims “a proud tradition” for the GOP, featuring photographs of party luminaries Ronald Reagan, Dwight Eisenhower, Teddy Roosevelt, and Abraham Lincoln.


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IMPRIMIS: The Tea Party, Conservatism, and the Constitution

By Charles R. Kesler
Editor, Claremont Review of Books
January 2014
Reprinted by permission from Imprimis, a publication of Hillsdale College.

The Tea Party movement is named, of course, for the famous event in late 1773 when cases of tea were dumped unceremoniously into the Boston harbor. The Boston Tea Party—a carefully orchestrated strike against a commodity that was being taxed and sold by a monopoly provider—was intended as a one-time thing, though it ended up being an important link in the chain of events that led to the American Revolution. Today’s Tea Party, on the other hand, has ambitions to become an ongoing force—maybe even the major force—in American conservatism. And it strives for a revolution of its own, a return to a more limited, more constitutional form of government. If I had to judge its performance so far, I would say that it has been courageous and right in its diagnosis of the problems facing American politics, but somewhat off in its prescriptions.

When I say the Tea Party is correct in its diagnosis, I mean it is correct in its very clear sense that Obamacare is not just another costly, bureaucratic, top-down, regulatory scheme, of which we have, alas, so many. There is something genuinely tyrannical (despite the good intentions of many of its supporters) about Obamacare. It threatens not only to ruin our medical care system, but indirectly and directly—and sooner as well as later—to subvert our form of government and our way of life, fundamentally changing the relation between citizens and government.

Hubris and Nemesis

In a way, you can see how dangerous Obamacare is by noticing how it has brought out the worst in liberals—which is evident in how they have responded to the Tea Party. Liberal impatience with partisanship—that is, with people who oppose their plans—arises from the fact that in contemporary liberalism, there is no publicly acknowledged right of revolution. That may seem like a strange thing to say, but if one looks at some of the political theorists who were most important to modern or statist liberalism—Kant and Hegel in Germany, say, or Woodrow Wilson here in the United States—they are usually quite explicit in rejecting a right of revolution. In their view, a people always has in the long run the government it deserves. So there’s no right of the people to “abolish,” as the Declaration of Independence proclaims, the prevailing form of government and substitute a better one. In particular, there is no conceivable right to overturn contemporary liberalism itself; as liberals today are so fond of saying, there is no turning back the clock. To liberals the Tea Party appears, well, bonkers, precisely because it recalls the American Revolution, and in doing so implies that it might not be such a bad thing to have another revolution—or at least a second installment of the original—in order to roll back the bad government that is damaging both the safety and happiness of the American people.

This is the position, for instance, of Sam Tanenhaus, former editor of the New York Times Book Review and author of The Death of Conservatism. For Tanenhaus, conservatism is good insofar as it consolidates and preserves the liberal order. If conservatism turns revolutionary, i.e., attempts to roll back the liberal order, then it exceeds its commission—it goes off the reservation, so to speak—because liberalism stands for progress and progress is final. President Obama himself made this point a few years ago regarding national health care: “I am not the first president to take up this cause,” he said, “but I am determined to be the last.” But in fact, Obamacare’s strained and narrow victory in 2010 looked not so much inevitable as desperate. It passed by a party line vote, with rampant side deals to buy out the relevant interest groups, and against bitter resistance that has not gone away. Then came its disastrous rollout and its failure to meet any of its own targets for success. All of which suggests overextension and hubris on the part of liberalism, and in the wake of this hubris the Tea Party has confirmed itself as Obama’s, and Obamacare’s, devoted nemesis.

What the Tea Party needs now is a strategy—something it has so far conspicuously lacked—to allow it to achieve its worthy ends. Thinking through a strategy will help clarify those ends: What is it, exactly, that the Tea Party means by limited government? Limited to what? And limited by what? Clearly the Tea Party’s form of conservatism points back to the Constitution as the basis for restoring American government. But how practically to move in that direction?

The Tea Party rightly concluded from the battles over Obamacare that what we are seeing in our politics these days is not two clashing interpretations of the same Constitution, but increasingly two different Constitutions in conflict: the old Constitution of 1787 and a “living” Constitution that is not just a different approach to the original, but an alternative to it. The extraordinary fight the Tea Party was willing to put up arose from this fact—that Obamacare amounted to a colossal battle between two different ways of government. And it was the Tea Party and President Obama who shared a clear understanding of the stakes; mainstream Republican leaders understood them with much less clarity and intensity.

Matching Means to Ends

The failure of the Supreme Court to strike down Obamacare and the individual mandate played into the Tea Party’s suspicions. The Court, after all, had come close to striking down the act. There were five votes to rule it unconstitutional under the Commerce Clause before Chief Justice Roberts changed the subject to the taxing power. When the Court punted on the main question and allowed Obamacare to become law, it suggested to Tea Party leaders in and out of government that the old constitutional mechanisms of judicial review and separation of powers did not seem capable of defending the Constitution against this fundamental challenge, and that the only recourse would be a direct appeal to the American people—to the ultimate source of authority for any constitution. To them, John Roberts’s about-face revealed the failure, maybe even the treachery, of the governing establishment—including the establishment Republicans who had nominated and backed Roberts as chief justice. That judgment might be unfair—at the very least it is not completely true—but in any case, the Tea Party concluded that it was now urgently necessary to raise the consciousness of the American people to this new threat.

At this point we should note the paradoxical character of the Tea Party: It is a populist movement to defend the Constitution, but the Constitution is meant, among other things, to limit populism in our politics—to channel, moderate, and refine popular passion through constitutional forms, such as elections, officeholding, and the rule of law. The point was to ensure, as The Federalist put it, that the reason, not the passion, of the public would control and regulate the government. So it was incumbent on the Tea Party to try to keep its populist means in line with its constitutional ends. And it is in this respect that the Tea Party has sometimes fallen short.

Last fall, the Tea Party seized upon the latest Continuing Resolution to try to bring down Obamacare. Granted, Continuing Resolutions, the multi-thousand page omnibus spending bills that pass for appropriations bills these days, are abdications of Congress’s own budget process and derelictions of its constitutional duty to protect the public purse. Yet bad things can sometimes be used for good purposes. But mainstream Republican leaders warned that the Tea Party senators never had a realistic plan to obtain the votes to defund Obamacare in the Senate, or beyond that to overcome Obama’s veto pen. President Obama needed to fund the government, but he felt, rightly it turned out, that he could hold out longer than the GOP could. The architects of the government shutdown could never answer the question of how victory might be achieved.

Apparently their hope was that an outraged American public—fresh from voting in 2012 to re-elect Obama and to increase the Democratic majority in the Senate by two seats—would rise up and put such pressure on recalcitrant Democrats that they would defund the program that their party had been longing for since Franklin Roosevelt. In relying on such an unlikely outcome, the Tea Party showed its own populist brand of impatience with the separation of powers, bicameralism, and the legislative process that the Constitution prescribes. In imagining that the American public could be persuaded to reconsider the results of an election hardly a year old, the Tea Party surrendered to its own version of the “leadership theory” that liberals have long preferred to legislative-executive politics of the constitutional sort. The implicit argument was that by going over the heads of party leaders and constitutional officeholders to appeal directly to the people, the Tea Party could generate its own mandate to trump the mandate just awarded in the election.

Appealing to the people, of course, is a time-honored tactic: Ronald Reagan was famous for saying that if you can’t make politicians see the light, you can at least make them feel the heat! But Reagan appealed directly to the people from the bully pulpit of the presidency, not from the Senate floor, and he made sure to explain the issue in pellucid and persuasive terms. We learned from Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich in the 1990s that it really is impossible to run American government from Congress. So as the Tea Party’s unreasonable hopes faded, it had to settle for less and less: delaying the individual mandate rather than defunding it; verifying the subsidies of policyholders in the insurance exchanges; abolishing the medical devices tax; delaying the medical devices tax; and so on. The Tea Party leaders were pushed back and back and were forced to ask for less and less, until they ended up with virtually nothing.

The Need for Political Thinking

To summarize, the Tea Party has been right about the threat posed to the fabric of constitutional government by Obamacare and by other brazen assaults on the Constitution, such as President Obama’s asserted prerogatives to choose which laws to enforce and to make recess appointments when there was no recess. But the establishment Republicans were right about the outcome of the effort to defund Obamacare by tying it to the Continuing Resolution. One might conclude then that these two groups need each other—not only in the sense that they need each other to get to a majority in the House of Representatives, but also, at least for the time being, in the sense that each supplies the other’s defects. In that light it is neither wise nor moderate for members of either group to lambaste members of the other as political enemies—something of which both sides have been guilty.

The Tea Party could do itself and the country a great service by working out what a return to constitutional government might really mean, and thus the strategy and tactics appropriate to that. What is needed is less populism and more political thinking on its part, or on the part of its trusted advisors. Political thinking and constitutional thinking are not opposed, of course, any more than putting together a political majority and defending the Constitution are opposed. Indeed, these two great duties, properly understood, are implicit in each other. It’s doubtful that the Republican party can succeed without doing both.

After a century of Progressive mining and sapping of the Constitution, the great document we count on to defend us now needs our defense, and the form of government issuing from the Constitution is itself in need of restoration and renewal. Let me end by giving a few examples of how to bring the spirit of the Constitution and the spirit of conservatism closer together.

Tea Party leaders are eloquent on the point that the Constitution does not make the Supreme Court its final arbiter. Let them apply that insight to Obamacare. The problem with Obamacare is not merely that it will ruin health care, but that it undermines the whole notion of rights—natural rights—that come not from government but from our own nature and from God. Yes, it is unfair, unworkable, and unaffordable. But to leave the argument at that leaves the Constitution out of the picture. So when denouncing Obamacare, let’s hear more about its unconstitutional aspects.

The fattest target is the Independent Payments Advisory Board (IPAB), which is unconstitutional on its face. IPAB consists of 15 members who are not elected by the people but appointed by the president. Their job is to make recommendations to limit Medicare’s budget by reducing reimbursements to doctors. Unless both houses of Congress overrule IPAB by passing their own equal or greater cuts to Medicare, IPAB’s proposals automatically become law. What’s worse, Obamacare conspires to make IPAB permanent by mandating that no resolution to repeal it can be introduced before January 1, 2017, or after February 1, 2017. In other words, the Constitution would be operational for one month only—and even then the repeal must pass by August 15, 2017, in order to be valid, and it could not take effect until 2020!

Congress could presumably unravel these restrictions and undo IPAB anytime it wanted. Nonetheless, the spirit and the letter of this kind of regulation suggest just how averse (and adverse) to the Constitution Obamacare really is. To think that Congress couldn’t repeal it, except for one month, and that even then repeal wouldn’t take effect for three years afterwards, is astounding. Why don’t Tea Party leaders talk more about that in condemning Obamacare? I think the American people would be indignant over this attack on their liberty to govern themselves. But they won’t be angry if conservatives don’t inform them about this travesty.

Conservatives should be calling for other kinds of reforms as well, in order to apply the consent of the governed to regulations which form so much of the substance of modern government. Let’s call for a vote by Congress on all regulations costing $100,000,000 or more. That’s one idea already in circulation. Or why not require the Appropriations Committee, or some combination of committees and committee chairmen in Congress, to approve all regulations, approved by any agency, so that there has to be some democratic say-so before any regulations become law? That does not require changing the Constitution, only a change in the law. We should also require Congress to follow its own budget rules. This doesn’t require an amendment either, only vigorous partisanship on the part of Republicans of every variety. We should insist on 13 appropriations bills for the 13 departments, which would give both parties a chance to fight it out, make what cuts we can make, and decide what is more essential and what is less essential. These kinds of reforms, well short of constitutional amendments, would help to reinvigorate congressional accountability and constitutional government.

If conservative officeholders don’t start to correct these structural deformations in our government, and if the Tea Party doesn’t turn its formidable patriotism and energy to enlightening the American people about how we are losing control of our own destiny, then no matter how many good policies we enact, or how low we set tax rates, the body politic will continue to sicken, and self-government will slip through our fingers.

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The above is adapted from a speech delivered on October 21, 2013, at Hillsdale College’s Allan P. Kirby, Jr. Center for Constitutional Studies and Citizenship in Washington, D.C., sponsored by the AWC Family Foundation Lecture Series.

HARLES R. KESLER is the Dengler-Dykema Distinguished Professor of Government at Claremont McKenna College and editor of the Claremont Review of Books. He received his A.B., his A.M., and his Ph.D. in government from Harvard University. He is editor of the Signet Classic edition of The Federalist Papers; editor of and a contributor to Saving the Revolution: The Federalist Papers and the American Founding; co-editor, with William F. Buckley, Jr., of Keeping the Tablets: Modern American Conservative Thought; and author of I Am the Change: Barack Obama and the Future of Liberalism. Read More......

David Horowitz: Uniting the Right

Anyone who pays attention to politics can see that when Democrats attack, they speak from the same text, and when they vote, they march in lockstep. If one Democrat says the wealthy must pay their “fair share,” all Democrats do — regardless of the merits of the charge. If their leaders say Republicans want to shut down the government in order to deny Americans affordable care, the rest of the party will follow their lead — whether the claim is true or not. When a key program like Obamacare is the issue, not only do Democrats back it with one voice, but every player on the political left — journalists, professors, talk-show hosts, union heads, MoveOn radicals, and Occupy anarchists — falls into line and promotes it with virtually identical words. They act in “solidarity” in fair political weather and foul, and they do it even for a program like Obamacare, which (as some of them must surely see) is ill-conceived, falsely presented, incompetently executed, and fiscally unsustainable. When the voices of the Left all come together, the amplification is stupefying. The result is that a morally bankrupt, politically tyrannical, economically destructive party is able to set the course of an entire nation and put it on the road to disaster.

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Love community, love conservatism

A conservative from the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) must be shocking some Atlantic readers with his new article, “All You Need Is Love: How Community Can Save Conservatism.”

Author Michael Strain quotes and endorses the claim Rep. Paul Ryan recently made in a speech at AEI: People “hunger for a community,” because “we’re happiest when we’re together.”

What are these right-wingers doing talking about love, happiness, and community? Isn’t conservatism only about marginal tax rates, budget stats, and rugged individualists?

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Born Free

In Mozart’s Abduction from the Seraglio, the captive English maid, Blonde, scornfully rejects the advances of the powerful Osmin, overseer of Pasha Selim’s harem: “Pasha here, pasha there! Girls are not good to give away! I am an Englishwoman, born free, and I defy anyone who wants to force me to do anything!” More than two centuries later, Becky Gerritson, speaking to the House Ways and Means Committee about IRS harassment of the Wetumpka, Alabama, Tea Party, picked up the baton: “I am not here as a serf or vassal. I am not begging my lords for mercy. I’m a born free American woman, wife, mother, and citizen. And I’m telling my government that you’ve forgotten your place. It’s not your responsibility to look out for my well-being and to monitor my speech. It’s not your right to assert an agenda. Your post, the post that you occupy, exists to preserve American liberty. You’ve sworn to perform that duty. And you have faltered.” And so they have. Not that IRS bigwigs like Doug Shulman and Lois Lerner really believe that they faltered. They don’t seem any more contrite about their bullying than Osmin was about his.
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Conservatives: Not Completely Delusional

Ezra Klein makes the argument in writing that I have heard many progressives and moderates make in conversation: That Republican politicians have continuously moved to the right over the past 20 or so years, and Democrats have expanded their range of promoted policies to the right to occupy the policy space abandoned by the increasingly extreme Republicans. As Klein put it: “President Obama’s record makes him look like a moderate Republicans from the late-90s.” Andrew Sullivan supports this view, and has called Ross Douthat “delusional” for not agreeing with him. You might disagree with Douthat on a given issue, or even on most issues, but when you start calling somebody that level-headed “delusional,” you might want to slow down and consider your own premises for a minute.

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On government spending, GOP faces a reckoning

(Hat tip: John H. Detweiler) It is not surprising that House Republicans have chosen to embrace sequestration’s arbitrary reductions and promote even harsher cuts to government health and education services. Reducing government’s size has been the central goal of the conservative coalition in Congress for at least a decade. ✧ But the so-called sequester may well be the beginning of the end of the budget wars that have long gripped Washington, because Republicans may soon face an electoral reckoning they cannot overcome. The rising coalition of African Americans, Latinos, Asians, women and young people that helped reelect President Obama does not share the anti-government sentiment of the conservative base. Time is running out for those on the right who are seeking to slash the size of government. Read more at the Washington Post...

Related: Chicks on the Right: This Is Conservatism's Biggest Challenge Read More......

A Conservative finds clues from a Liberal to fight Liberalism

This 2009 article from blogger, A Goy and his Blog, with video and graphs is interesting. Essentially, the conservative's job is education not compromise. Find out why (fairly long piece but valuable).  He starts with this question, "Why do leftist ideologues persist with each new decade in clinging to a perennially discredited Utopian fantasy?"

Compromising with Moral Adolescence: A Losing Strategy Read More......

The Education of a Compassionate Conservative

National Review editor Rich Lowry doesn't seem to care much for Texas Governor Rick Perry. In a recent essay entitled "The Rise of Uncompassionate Conservatism" Lowry admonishes Gov. Perry for "stomping all over [compassionate conservatism] with cowboy boots emblazoned with the words 'Freedom' and 'Liberty.'" Lowry, who considers Gov. Perry the "Republican noncandidate flavor of the week," aches for the luminous days when George Bush won over "the center as well as the right" with his signature insight into the wonders of compassionate conservatism.

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Hecker: Six Steps to the Right

THE CORNER, 1/5/2011 by Ryan Hecker - "Based on Speaker Boehner’s performance today, I am very hopeful that the Republican leadership will stick by the principles of limited government and economic conservatism in the coming term. Speaker Boehner and the new Congress listened to the American people and enforced a rule today that requires each bill introduced to identify the specific provision of the Constitution that gives Congress authority to do what the bill does. This idea was the top vote-getter (82 percent support) in the grassroots, crowd-sourced Contract from America. What this reflects is that the Speaker recognizes that the election victory in November was not a mandate for Republican rule, but rather a last chance to stand up for conservative ideals and fix the tax-and-spend Capitol Hill mindset.

Going forward, the new majority must remain bold in passing legislation that will fundamentally change Washington D.C. culture. The tea party movement does not want weak attempts at deficit reduction with minor spending cuts. We want a balanced-budget amendment and enforced spending cap limits. We want Republicans to arduously fight to defund Obamacare and to take real steps to curb lobbyist power that ultimately harms the American consumer.

President Obama has moved our country five steps to the left. Speaker Boehner needs to lead a charge that moves our country six steps to the right, not just one or two."

— Ryan Hecker is a lawyer in Houston and organized the Contract from America. Read More......

Excepts from 'Outline of a Platform for Constitutional Government'

By Larry P. Arnn
President, Hillsdale College
At the dedication of Hillsdale College’s Allen P. Kirby Center for Constitutional Studies in Washington, D.C.

IMPRIMIS, a publication of Hillsdale College, November 2010 - In the previous greatest crisis of the Constitution, when our College was very young, we also served in its defense. In the summer of 1854, with the extension of slavery not just a threat but a reality, the people of Michigan were invited to join together “to protect our liberty from being overthrown and downtrodden.” The result of that meeting was the birth of the Republican Party on July 6 of that year, in Jackson, Michigan, just over 30 miles from the Hillsdale campus. Several College faculty and administration members were leaders of this movement. One of them, Austin Blair, later governor of Michigan, was chosen to be on the committee on resolutions. The first president of Hillsdale College, later lieutenant governor of Michigan, also played a leading role. Among the resolves of that Michigan gathering was the following:

That slavery is a violation of the rights of man as man; that the law of nature, which is the law of liberty, gives to no man rights superior to those of another; that God and nature have secured to each individual the inalienable right of equality, any violation of which must be the result of superior force . . . .

Remembering this history, we have set our minds, in beginning our work at the Kirby Center, to thinking about what a platform for constitutional government today might look like. As was the case in 1854, the specifics of what to do amidst changing circumstances, and in light of the need to enlist the agreement of the American majority, are complex and difficult and require statesmanship. Solving our deepest problems will take years, and will require imaginative policies not yet contrived. But the general principles and goals seem to us clear. They were laid out for us by our fathers. We have set our hands to begin writing them down in the document that follows.

Outline of a Platform for Constitutional Government

On June 17, 1858, Abraham Lincoln said in his House Divided Speech, “If we could first know where we are, and whither we are tending, we could better judge what to do, and how to do it.” His analysis was founded upon a profound contemplation of the Declaration of Independence and its embodiment in the Constitution of the United States. It issued in a set of proposals designed first to limit and then to extinguish slavery by strictly constitutional means.

We require a similar kind of analysis today. Our most difficult policy issues are embedded in a vast administrative state that is built without regard for the principles of the Declaration in their true meaning, or for the proper constitutional operation of government.

The Declaration of Independence articulates the place of man in nature: below God and above the beasts. It says that we may be governed only by our consent. Woodrow Wilson and the founders of modern liberalism called these doctrines “obsolete.” They argued that we live now in the age of progress, and that government must be an engine of that progress. This idea changes how we view not only the purpose of government, but also the rights of its citizens.

Franklin Roosevelt added economic security to the natural rights, as the Declaration of Independence states, of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” Government grew as a result, especially under Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon. And it continues to grow—all in the name of progress. Indeed, the current administration is the most aggressive proponent of the doctrines of Progressivism since they were first introduced.

Under the influence of these new doctrines, the government has grown to be, in simple quantitative terms, the largest single force by far in the land. It now consumes nearly half of all we produce, and it is soon to accumulate a public debt as a percentage of Gross Domestic Product equal to the largest in our history, matching our debt level at the end of the Second World War. This debt leaves us vulnerable to every mischance that may come upon the nation from abroad or at home. The burden of it stifles enterprise and closes opportunity for all but the well connected.

As the government has grown, it has become a powerful interest in the everyday affairs of the nation. Increasingly, bureaucracy is a factor in every operation our citizens undertake. In the management of our businesses, in the accomplishment of our jobs, in the rearing of our children, and in the very caring for our own bodies, there now are rules too numerous to count. Ominously, these rules now seek even to intrude into the electoral processes by which our free people choose their representatives.

These rules originate in laws passed by Congress that are much too long for anyone to read. After these laws are passed, they are enhanced, expanded, interpreted, and complicated by regulatory agencies. We forget therefore the words of the Father of the Constitution, James Madison:

It will be of little avail to the people that the laws are made by men of their own choice if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood; if they be repealed or revised before they are promulgated, or undergo such incessant changes that no man, who knows what the law is today, can guess what it will be tomorrow. Law is defined to be a rule of action; but how can that be a rule, which is little known, and less fixed?

All these developments, so long entrenched in our politics, are presented by their proponents as a natural extension of the original principles and the original institutions of the nation. Doubtless those who argue this also believe it, but it cannot possibly be true.

Gone now is the caution about human nature that recognizes that human beings must live under law in order to protect their rights, and that those who make and enforce the law are no more likely to be perfect—or less likely to violate the rights of their fellow citizens—than others. The current tendency toward unlimited government undermines the foundation of constitutional rule in our country. That foundation is stated by Madison in a few words: “If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary.”

Men must be governed because they are imperfect—less than God, less than angels. But then so too are those who make and enforce the law imperfect. They also have interests. Therefore government must have strong powers, but these powers must be limited and checked.

If this is where we are, then it is easy to see “what to do, and how to do it.” We must return to the principles and institutions of the founding of our country. We must revive constitutional rule. To do so, we propose the following four pillars of constitutional government.

1. Protecting the equal and inalienable rights of individuals is government’s primary responsibility.

1. By rights, America’s founders meant those things naturally belonging to us, and those things earned by our own labor. The protection of rights understood in this way breeds harmony in the society, because each of us claims for himself what he can also give to all others. We may all speak, worship, assemble, and keep our justly earned property without taking from another.
   
2. Each branch of government is subservient to the Constitution.
   
3. The federal government has the constitutional duty to ensure that each state maintains a republican form of government. This obligation is strengthened and clarified in the 14th Amendment. It must ensure that no state infringes on the rights or the “privileges or immunities” of citizens. Yet it must also recognize the constitutional standing of state governments.
   
4. The duties of Congress are clearly delineated in Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution. It should do no more, lest liberty be endangered. It should do no less, else anarchy ensue.

2. Economic liberty is inversely proportional to governmental intrusion in the lives of citizens.

The platform upon which Abraham Lincoln was elected president stated “that the people justly view with alarm the reckless extravagance which pervades every department of the Federal Government.” It urged “a return to rigid economy and accountability” that “is indispensable to arrest the systematic plunder of the public treasury by favorite partisans. . . .” Likewise today:

1. American economic recovery requires that we liberate the American people to work, to save and to invest, secure in their property, confident about the dollar as a store of value, and sure that the government will be an impartial enforcer of the law and of contracts.
   
2. In all administration of federal programs we must demand the utmost economy, and that every care be taken to avoid further growth and sprawl in the federal administrative establishment.
   
3. Our massive public investment in entitlement programs must be protected through privatization programs, which should utilize the real practices of insurance against catastrophe and of savings for future needs. In this process our investment must be safeguarded from loss, as the government must keep its contracts.
   
4. Sound money is among the most sacred of the federal government’s responsibilities, and price stability should be the aim of monetary policy.
   
5. The federal government must not subsidize corporations or individuals in its tax code or any other policy.
   
6. Philanthropy is the natural outgrowth of American principles and institutions. It should be encouraged and relied upon, along with local and state government, as the great engine of social reform and the amelioration of distress.

3. To accomplish its primary duty of protecting individual liberty, the federal government must uphold national security.

1. National defense has been for most of American history the chief undertaking of the government under the Constitution. It has been supplanted by the federal entitlement and regulatory state. This reversal of priority hampers growth at home, deprives the American people of scope for self-government, and undermines the defense of the nation.
   
2. We should pursue relentlessly every form of defense against foreign threats. Especially is this true in the case of attack by weapons of mass destruction. Therefore missile defense and a vigorous policy to combat Islamic and other forms of terrorism are urgently required.
   
3. We must overcome all international and domestic efforts to undermine American sovereignty, including those mounted through the United Nations and other international organizations, or through efforts to impose new treaties.
   
4. Promotion of democracy and defense of innocents abroad should be undertaken only in keeping with the national interest.

4. The restoration of a high standard of public and private morality is essential to the revival of constitutionalism. As the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 states, “Religion, morality, and knowledge being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged.” The Constitution itself says nothing about education, for the same reason it says nothing about families or marriage or child-rearing: the federal government should not control or regulate these things. Parents and teachers, not the federal government, teach children. What they teach them matters most, for without proper moral and civic education a republican form of government will falter. With it, and with a strong defense of our right to religious liberty, republican government can flourish.

We close again with the words of Lincoln, from the same speech with which we began. Quoting the Bible, Lincoln said that “a house divided against itself cannot stand.” We shall be governed either by ourselves, under a Constitution, or else we shall be governed by the new kind of master invented in our day, the bureaucrat, and by the impenetrable web of rules that he fabricates and enforces.

Let us stand together against the rule of bureaucracy, and for liberty and the Constitution.

Copyright © 2010 Hillsdale College. The opinions expressed in Imprimis are not necessarily the views of Hillsdale College. Permission to reprint in whole or in part is hereby granted, provided the following credit line is used: “Reprinted by permission from Imprimis, a publication of Hillsdale College.” Read More......

WSJ: The Death of Conservatism Was Greatly Exaggerated

WALL STREET JOURNAL/OPINION by Peter Berkowitz - In 2008 liberals proclaimed the collapse of Reaganism. Two years later the idea of limited government is back in vogue. Last August left little doubt that a conservative revival was underway. Constituents packed town-hall meetings across the country to confront Democratic House members and senators ill-prepared to explain why, in the teeth of a historic economic downturn and nearly 10% employment, President Obama and his party were pressing ahead with costly health-care legislation instead of reining in spending, cutting the deficit and spurring economic growth.

Still, whether that revival would have staying power was very much open to question. A year later—and notwithstanding the Democrats' steadily declining poll numbers and the mounting electoral momentum that could well produce a Republican majority in the House and a substantial swing in the Senate—it still is.

Sustaining the revival depends on the ability of GOP leaders, office-holders and candidates to harness the extraordinary upsurge of popular opposition to Mr. Obama's aggressive progressivism. Our constitutional tradition provides enduring principles that should guide them. Read more at WSJ...

Keep up the good work conservatives! --bc Read More......

News from CPAC

BREITBART, 2/20/2010 - WASHINGTON (AP): Glenn Beck says it's still morning in America: a head-pounding, hangover morning. The conservative commentator drew cheers from conservative activists Saturday night in a speech that implored Republicans to renounce profligate ways in Washington, let big banks fail and honor true conservative principles. ∴ Beck was keynote speaker for the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington. The TV and radio host said the GOP should confess its adherence to big government in the way golfer Tiger Woods admitted a problem with women—and show the same remorse. ∴ Democrats didn't get off the hook. Beck called "progressivism" a disease imperiling the morning in America that Ronald Reagan saw as full of promise.

CPAC Presidential Straw Poll Results per Washington Post:

Ron Paul 31%
Mitt Romney 22%
Sarah Palin 7%
Tim Pawlenty 6%
Mike Pence 5%
Newt Gingrich 4%
Mike Huckabee 4%
Mitch Daniels 2%
John Thune 2%
Rick Santorum 2%
Haley Barbour 1%

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The Reemerging Republican Majority?

THE CLAREMONT INSTITUTE, Summer 2009 - "Especially in a democratic age, statesmen are careful students of social trends. They know that the art of political leadership can't afford to ignore the science of political demography, even though the former can never be reduced to the latter. Conservatives who seek a revival in their movement must exhibit similar wisdom and closely examine how America has changed since the glory days of President Ronald Reagan, and how those changes pose new challenges to, and may impose new limits on, conservatism today." Read more at TCI... Read More......

Roots of Liberalism

FORBES.COM by Peter Robinson - The movement may be 100 years old, but conservative ideas are even more deeply rooted in America's history. ∴ A near quadrupling of the federal deficit in 2009 alone. The nationalization of the Detroit automakers. The reduction of the biggest banks in the country to mere factotums. Plans to force legislation through Congress this very summer that would amount to a government takeover of health care, which makes up one-seventh of the entire economy. ∴ May I ask a question? Where does President Barack Obama's agenda come from? Read Robinson's answer at Forbes... Read More......

Subject: A Way Back to Conservatism

Excerpts from a letter to the Republican leadership from Mr. Richard D. Cushing

Dear Madam or Sir:
I am writing to you because you are involved in Republican party leadership and I trust that you are both awed and dismayed by the direction in which and speed with which this present Congress and the Obama administration are taking the United States. If you are like me, you probably did not think that there could be such a huge and rapid shift toward socialism by any single administration or Congress elected by U.S. citizens. ∴ Not many weeks ago I was sitting in my office entirely disheartened by the actions of the Bush administration and its own proclivity to discard the restrictions of the U.S. Constitution in the midst of the so-called "economic crisis." Then, along came the Obama administration accompanied by an entirely unleashed Democrat-controlled Congress and WOW! What more can be said? ∴ I am fully persuaded, however, that there is a way back from where we are being led. We do not have to fully succumb forever to being what the radical left wants this nation to be. ∴ Please read the attached article which, I believe, sketches out a pattern for recovery of limited government, free markets, and a return to a sound monetary policy. The road will not be an easy road, but I am fully persuaded there is a way.

Too Late for Conservatism
By RD Cushing
Mar 27, 2009

The true meaning of "conservatism" is to preserve or keep from change - especially degrading change. However, we may have reached a point in US politics where "conservatism" must become the real "liberalism," as the term is used in Europe. We must struggle, not to "conserve," but to restore what has been lost. This article describes a road back.

In the strictest sense of the word “conservative” connotes that which tends to conserve or preserve a present state or condition. If it is or was the intent of political conservatives in the United States to preserve our federal government as limited in scope and held within any semblance of the boundaries established by our Constitution, then we – and those who have gone before us – have failed at that aim. We live, today, in a post-conservative nation. The question is no longer, “How may we preserve our nation as the founding fathers entrusted it to us?”

The question has become, “Have we any hope of returning and restoring our nation to something akin to its original greatness, and once again setting boundaries on a federal government that has far transgressed its intended Constitutional limits?”

Until a few weeks ago, I would have said, “There is little hope.” The so-called Economic Stimulus Packaged passed in a flurry of political activity, obscurity and haste on Friday, 13 February 2009 (perhaps Friday the 13th being prophetic in this instance). The haste was purposeful as it was the specific intent of the Democrat-controlled Congress to keep the general public from closely inspecting the contents of legislation. (Indeed, we have since learned that even the Democrats had no idea all that was in the legislation.) The Democrats sought to hide from public scrutiny all of the matters being thrust upon the U.S. citizenry by those who dare yet to call themselves “public servants.” This attitude alone ought to stir public sentiment against such conspirators; for if they were doing well, what fear have they from public knowledge of their deeds?

However, my hope is been – at least to some degree – resurrected by having come upon the book Renaissance – The Rebirth of Liberty in the Heart of Europe (Václav Klaus, Washington, DC – Cato Institute, 1997). It seems almost surreal that the U.S., having been a “city set on a hill” for so many over the last more than 200 years, should in these last days take lessons in liberty from a formerly communist nation – the Czech Republic. Renaissance, however, is a compilation of speeches and other writings of Václav Klaus, the first prime minister and now the second president of the Czech Republic. In this book is the telling of how the former Czechoslovakia successfully made the transition from communism (socialism) to a democratic free market state without bloodshed – the so-called “Velvet Revolution.”

If a former Soviet state can make such a peaceful, yet effective, recovery from socialism, then there is hope also for the United States to recover what has been surrendered to socialism over the last century incrementally and over the last several months en masse. That is, of course, if there are men and women yet in this nation with the courage and conviction to undertake such an effort. It will not be easy.

Turning fish soup into an aquarium
Tom G. Palmer, who authored the forward for Renaissance, tells of a saying used to describe the unwinding of the devastation wrought by socialism under the former communist regime: “It is easier to turn an aquarium into fish soup, than to turn fish soup into an aquarium.” So, too, will we find it a dramatic challenge here in the U.S. – though we have not gone so far, yet – to unwind our socialist and protectionist politics and economics in the hope of restoring our free republic and our free market.

What will it take? Václav Klaus tells us that resurrecting a free market, creating a constitutionally limited government while building political pluralism, and establishing a sound monetary policy after the collapse of communism in the former Czechoslovakia required three things:

1. Men and women leading in the political sphere having a sound mind and filled with integrity, boldness and courage.
   
   
2. To be successful, these leaders must formulate and “sell” to the citizens of the country a positive vision for the future.
   
   
3. The leaders that emerge must recognize, in advance, the hazards – social, economic and political – of undertaking systemic transformation, and they must be prepared to face the challenges head-on.

It will take men of sound mind, filled with integrity and courage
Though Klaus makes no mention of Ronald Reagan in the early portion of Renaissance, I could not help but recall Reagan’s steadfastness in the face of a clearly declining Soviet state. More importantly, however, I could not help but recall the steadfastness of Reagan in the face of a constant flood of bad economic news as he – almost single-handedly and by the sheer force of his personal fortitude – brought the U.S. out of the economic doldrums triggered mostly by bad policy in Washington through the Jimmy Carter administration.

I was reminded of Reagan again when Klaus described what it takes to create and sustain a systemic transition such as the one he oversaw in the emerging Czech Republic. Klaus reminds us that the accomplishment is not simply a matter of applying the right principles of “economics” or “political science.” The travail that must come to pass will have real effects on real people. The process will create “new gainers and losers” and will disrupt the political, social and economic equilibrium. Reagan saw and empathized with the common man suffering the effects in his or her day-to-day life, and he articulated his sympathies when he repeatedly took his message “to the people,” as the media used to describe his going on-air to speak with the nation.

But Reagan had what Klaus says is the first and critical prerequisite to taking a nation through such trying times – Reagan had a “vision” of what the nation could look like on the other side of the travail. Klaus says, “To be successful, political leaders must formulate and ‘sell’ to the citizens of the country a positive vision of a future society.”

It will take a clear controlling vision
What launched this great nation? What brought our nation to birth out of a world dominated by kings and princes on the one hand, or by serfs and peasants on the other? What sustained the people through the travail of our war for independence with all its great suffering and loss? For what were our founding fathers willing to pledge “their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor”?

The answer is simple: What carried the people – what sustained them – was a group of men who came together as one; men who established and articulated for the general citizenry a clear and controlling vision of a bright future of liberty for all and opportunity for prosperity. These honorable men articulated for us all a vision for the future of a free nation “conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.”

Yes, we are not flawless now, and they were not flawless then. The warts of hypocrisy were present even amongst those who signed their names to our precious Declaration of Independence and our timeless Constitution. But, despite their personal shortcomings, the men stood together as one and – to a greater or lesser degree, with greater or lesser success – managed to articulate a vision of the future that was positive, uplifting and inspiring to the hearts of the men and women.

So today, if the United States is ever to make its way back from a rapidly expanding national socialism and increasingly Marxist programs to the ground of free markets and limited government, it will take men and women to rise up – those who have a clear controlling vision. The men and women holding to this clear vision must also – like Reagan and like our forefathers – be able to clearly articulate this vision as a positive hope for a future of every American citizen.

In Renaissance, Klaus puts it this way: The vision “must be positive…; it must be straightforward (not fuzzy); it must motivate; [and] it must speak to the hearts of men and women….” Reagan is gone, but still there must be those alive today who will rise up with a clear vision, clearly articulated, speaking hope to the hearts of men and women across this nation once again.

Formulating the vision is not difficult, but it will take leaders who are willing to understand and follow proven and time-honor principles. The principles have been laid out clearly long, long ago by such men as Adam Smith and these same principles were reiterated in the 20th century by men like Hayek and Mises. It was, in fact, these very principles that have delivered into our hands – for our safe-keeping, if we will undertake it – the prosperity and greatness of these United States of America.

Remember, it was free market principles that have given to us advances in technology and science and a standard of living that makes the U.S. the envy of the world. Indeed, it is the principles of the free market at work that still today provide President Obama with the finely tailored suits he wears in his frequent appearances on television – and his limousine and the aircraft and helicopter in which he rides. No Marxist or socialist economy has ever – or ever could – deliver such a wide array of quality goods at such reasonable prices.

It will take leaders who recognize the hazards
It will take leaders – and here I emphasize the word “leaders,” as opposed to “politicians” – who not only understand the time-honored principles that have made this nation great, but who also understand the real-world pain that must be endured by its citizens for our nation to be restored to these first principles. It will take a revolution, but (hopefully) not one in which the pain is inflicted by sword or rifle; but a revolution nonetheless.

Bold and inspiring leaders must emerge to carry the message of the controlling vision to the people. “Leadership” will be an essential quality – similar to that leadership displayed in the 1990’s when Newt Gingrich, Dick Armey, John Boehner and others presented the “Contract with America” and reintroduced an age of national fiscal responsibility, the reassertion of personal responsibility, a national commitment to safety and security, common sense legal reforms and more. This essential leadership will be demanded in order to generate sufficient political and social cohesion to get the plan moving and to keep it on course.

This new revolution will require some “shock therapy” to enable the nation to recover from the damage being inflicted by this present administration. Attempts at small “reforms” will inevitably lead to a vicious cycle of small, partial and overcautious actions with almost certainly more negative impact than positive results. If this is, indeed, the path taken, then whatever political capital may have been garnered by setting forth a positive vision and by action from bold leadership will most certainly evaporate into a cesspool of economic, political and social disintegration.

The revolutionary leadership must:

• Keep moving forward – do not stop
• Do not set improper expectations – don’t minimize, cover up or lie about the pain
• Obtain visible results from strong actions – not risking failure through half-measures, hesitation or lack of courage

Those taking up the leadership challenge for this new revolution will face many challenges. Some of the challenges will be very familiar, others will be new:

• No roadmap – Because a free market is defined by the fact that every individual acts independently seeking personal “happiness” (i.e., welfare – not to be confused with “entitlements”), there will be no “roadmap” that can be offered by the leadership to the liberal media, “talking heads,” or challengers on the other side of the aisle. Instead, the leadership must demonstrate themselves to be genuine leaders by boldly asserting and articulating the “vision” in a clear way in lieu of a “roadmap."
  
• No quick fix – While the leadership must be careful to not set improper expectations, even the proper expectations will be seized upon by the opposition. Aggressive social and political demagoguery organized by left-leaning parties, organizations and media outlets will seek to engender class hatred, distrust and otherwise to undermine the transformation efforts. In such cases, it will be up to the leadership to undertake a patient explanatory crusade in order to once again rally public support of the vision.
  
• New winners and losers – The dismantling of various forms of price controls and market over-regulation, trade liberalization, the readjustments necessary in the money supply, and the changes in taxes and entitlements will – as stated above – create entirely new groups of “winners” and “losers.” It is likely that some short-term concessions may be necessary to reduce the volume of pain borne by any one group during the transformation. These concessions should, reasonably, take the form of transition programs granting special tax treatment or (rarely) subsidies to smooth market-driven transitions.

During these trying times, it will be important for the revolutionary leadership to keep in mind that human society is not, by nature, filled with class-based antagonisms – especially not antagonisms that burst forth into outright hatred. The leftists, on the other hand, thrive on class hatred. Pick anywhere on the spectrum of leftist ideologies – from radical communism to heart-felt socialism – and one will find those to espouse, support, indulge and even take effort to stir up envy and hatred between races, genders, religions and social classes. Then, having engendered the hatred, they next leverage the class warfare for their own gain – or the gain of their ideologies.

In the midst of the demagoguery of the partisans across the aisle, the new revolutionary leadership must reinvigorate the clear controlling vision of our universal bright future. The principles of limited government, free markets and a sound monetary policy are what will provide the best and surest welfare, largest opportunity and most hope for happiness for all – rich or poor, black or white, of any creed or gender.

Recall how Ronald Reagan reminded us all: “The experts tell us there are no simple answers to our difficulties. They are wrong. There are simple answers, just not easy ones.”

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Please let me know what I might be able to do to aid in building up a grassroots movement to move us toward recovery of principle in our American politics. ∴ Thank you for listening and taking time to read the article.

Richard D. Cushing
c: 612.805.6029 | f: 815.327.9518
rcushing@ceoexpress.com
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/rdcushing
Blogs: God Bless USA [Good blog! --Admin]
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You're not paranoid if they really are out to get you

NRO: THE CORNER, 3/26 posted by John J. Miller (H/t: Dr. Sanity) - Paranoid Style with a Ph.D.

From UC-Berkeley, the school that told us about the "psychological factors" underpinning conservatism (i.e., "fear and aggression," "dogmatism," etc.), comes a brand-new effort to expand the horizons of human knowledge:

Now, with backing from an anonymous donor, the University of California, Berkeley ... is creating a Center for the Comparative Study of Right-Wing Movements. According to experts in the field it is the first of its kind in higher education.

Caution: This stuff is dangerous. --bc Read More......