Rome – The Liberator

Barrack Obama likes to say that conservative America wants to return the “failed ideas of the past.”  Are you better off than you were 50 years ago?  Has America become more than it was as a result of 50 years of liberalism?  Has Europe?  Has anywhere?

About the time President Johnson was signing into law Medicare, and other aspects of his “Great-Society,” man was taking his first steps on the Moon. American rockets, made in American factories took him there.  American science, and American will, brought him back.

The society to which these men returned to was, for the most part, despite the restless youth, self-reliant, prosperous, united. To be an American meant something more than just geography.  Our confidence in ourselves, our future, and the possibilities for both, was limitless. We were in complete control of our destiny.

This last year reality finally had to be recognized…the “Great-Society” is bankrupt. We also retired our last Space shuttle, withdrawing from manned space flight entirely. What a difference a half-century can make…

What was that difference?

Liberalism and Progressivism were new ideas at the turn of the 20th Century.  Western Civilization took a chance on these ideas mid-century.  Those ideas which had given rise to the most prosperous society in the history of man, were replaced with an academic theory, and a State managed society, which was to pursue “fairness,” and “equality.” Ivy league double-talk that was sold to the American people as the next great leap forward in the “evolution” of man.  It has failed, and in the process of failing it has replaced ancient traditions, institutions, and a united people, with a dysfunctional society filled with misery, division, and economic slavery for millions dependent on the State.

I do want to return to the principles of the past, and the political policies which assert, and nurture those principles.  When you take a wrong turn, the most effective way to get yourself un-lost, is to turn around and go back to a place that you remember.

We took a wrong turn a generation ago, perhaps for noble reasons, but now is the time to right that wrong.

So yes Mr. President, its time to go back to the policies of the past.  Individual responsibility, limited Government. A free-market economy with largely free trade. State sovereignty, and Constitutional Government with limited enumerated powers, and co-equal branches.

Any more questions?

In Liberty
Jeffery

Follow @nostalgicepoch

Mitt Romney’s much repeated promise to “on day one” sign an executive order to grant each State a waiver to Obama-Care may no longer be a target for comment regarding its effectiveness should the Supreme Court strike down the law in its entirety this month.

However, what troubles this blogger is the absence of a legitimate argument coming from Romney, and from the GOP in general on this and other issues.

There used to be a time in America when the GOP actually bothered to make an argument.  It appealed to Americans to rely on some principle that it argued was vital to sustain what our society had become.

In the 1960′s Reagan was well-known for his speeches, and recordings which warned of the dangers of socialism, socialized medicine, and the growth of Government.

The conversation was not about who pays, how much, or for how many years. Which parliamentary trick was to be used to shift momentum, Executive orders, and whether we will or wont use reconciliation to force a bill were left to the cigar smoke-filled cloak rooms of Congress.  On the battlefield of ideas the fight was clearly waged upon the moral questions, each side making its own public argument based on the principles it wished to advance.

A national debate took place 50 years ago about high ideas, and our moral responsibility.  The Conservatives lost that debate, as the country decidedly turned away from free-market principles, States rights, and limited enumerated Constitutional Government.

After the Goldwater campagne of 1964, in many ways the GOP gave up the argument.  Many joined in a half-hearted opposition to the Democratic Party, moving to the center, others disengaged from the process.  A few, like Ronald Reagan, William F. Buckley wandered in the wilderness, making the argument to any and all who would come to listen.

Since Reagan left the White House we have seen a reluctance on the part of the GOP, and for the most part, its candidates, to appeal to Americans to commit themselves to the big ideas upon which this country was founded.

50 years of progressive political policies have given us what we have today.  Its time to re-engage Americans on those high ideas.  For many who were not yet born, or were struggling to find their way to our shores, it will be their first exposure to the ideas of liberty, and the natural rights which are our first principles.  Responsible for the greatest rise of any people in the history of man.

Its time this Party once again articulates those first principles.

Government health-care is not opposed by conservatives only because it’s the least effective and least cost efficient way to provide health-care, nor solely because of the rationing of care that is inevitable, although that’s all true.  It’s opposed by conservatives because it enslaves both doctor and patient. It makes the individual a subject, not a citizen. It is contrary to the natural rights of man.  Arguing about a few hundred billion dollars, here or there, and who pays what tax makes the argument trivial, and hides the true nature of the argument.

Our opposition to the Welfare State is not solely because it is not sustainable and is certain to destroy the economic future of any and all countries which adopted it, but because it too enslaves the individual, robbing him of his self-reliance, making him dependent on the generosity of the State, and unable to resist whatever the State may require of him.  It also makes a slave of the individual who is forced to provide labor for the benefit of another, without his consent.  The noble ideas are lost when the conversation is an argument over who gets stuck paying the tab.

The history of the World is little more than a great battle between what is good, and what is evil. We, the inhabitants of this island in the cosmos, have always been caught up in that struggle. One enslaves, and one liberates.

We who are here today are all that stand between the evil which the World seems determined to imprison itself in, and a chance that at least here in America liberty’s flame will still shine bright.  Let us make this current battle for the freedom of man about big ideas.  It is important to find men and women who can articulate those ideas.  True believers.

Or we risk those ideas being forgotten.

“If you don’t, this program I promise you will pass just as surely as the sun will come up tomorrow, and behind it will come other Federal Programs that will invade every area of freedom as we have known it in this country, until, one day as Norman Thomas said, we will awake to find we have Socialism. If you don’t do this, and if I don’t do it, one of these day, you and I are going to spend our sunset years telling our children, and our children’s children what it was like in America when men were free.”  - Reagan

In Liberty,

Jeffery

Follow @nostalgicepoch

I’ve been silent lately, taking measure of the political landscape.  Sometimes listening is…in fact more often than not, listening is more important than speaking. Too many commentators, ( me included ) tend to value their own opinion as coming from Gods private reserve of wisdom.  Lincoln once noted, that “In all human contests, each side claims to be acting in accordance with the will of God.  Both may be, but one must be, wrong.”

I suppose it’s up to you, the reader, the listener, the consumer of ideas who must decide the rightness or moral value of the commentary that is out there.

I can say this with all certainty…the Republican groupies are absolutely beside themselves in anticipation of a Mitt Romney Presidency.  The Center-right freak show is proudly on parade, and the speed with which they are attempting to bury any voice of reason within the Party has intensified… now that all those pesky Santorum supporters are done away with, the “big tent” which is advocated every four or eight years by the GOP, is being purged of Reagan conservatives, in favor of the traditional blind vanilla center that is so yummy to the center-right, despite its losing record, and its toxic erosion of this Party, and of the country.

I want to congratulate my favorite center-right… you know, have you ever wondered why Hugh Hewitt, and others hyphenate their conservatism?   Because to them, there is a great divide between the truly self-proclaimed enlightened, and the “nutters” they attempt to separate themselves from.  Hugh Hewitt is defining himself as center-right, not to be confused with those “extremists” Conservatives who reject the void that is Mitt Romney, and advocate standing and fighting, rather than enabling the other Party, by virtue of apathetic resistance, and half-hearted obstruction, to destroy our institutions, our traditions, and our society in general.

but i digress…

Hugh cut off a caller this week, who was in the process of commenting on Jeb Bush, and specifically his foolish comments as a guest on a morning program this week.  Perfectly reasonable comment, and topic for a political talk show…dont you think?  The call was abruptly ended, with Hugh’s declaration, “Jeb Bush is a wonderful man.”

So now Jeb Bush is a sacred cow?  As if Jeb Bush being a wonderful man, or not, has anything at all to do with his politics, or his vision for the country…

But okay…

It’s the end of an inning, and the start of a new one.  The victories of 2010 although important, do not call the game.  It’s an early lead in a game that we can still lose.  Mitt Romney being elected is not the measure of winning the game either.  It is simply the end of another inning, and a start to the next.

Now is not the time to do less, it’s the time to do more.  More includes wrestling the Party from the hands of the self identified center-right, now building upon past failures, they claim a mandate to lead. More includes giving what you can to Senate and House races, whether in your State or district or not.  More includes your time, your voice, and of course your prayers.

If Mitt Romney is the next President, the giggling girls of the center-right will have an irrational, fanatical defense of the Romney Presidency.  Any objectivity will be suspended by the “man-crush” that suspends all disbelief in the hearts of men like Hugh Hewitt.  We must have a staunchly conservative Congress to confine and constrict Mitt Romney into being something that he never really was…

a Conservative.

In Liberty,

Jeffery

Follow @nostalgicepoch