POLITICS AND NATURE

“The enemy of freedom is unrestrained power, and the champions of freedom will fight against the concentration of power wherever they find it.”

Barry Goldwater, The Conscience of a Conservative, 1960.

Mud Slinging and American Tradition:

The United States is a revolutionary society. This does not mean illogical, bland, thoughtless violence leading down the dark path toward tyranny. It does mean the people of the nation move pragmatically to deal with change. Goldwater’s realm of conservative thought based itself on limited government. He pointed out the inabilities of either party to deal with the changing nature of governmental involvement in individual lives.

The Republican Party has grown in its support for government power. All of a sudden, when there is little to stand in the way of doing things however they wanted, hubris set in.

I spent one semester working on a paper comparing President Clinton’s first two years in office and legislation passed, with a Democratic Congress, to what was passed in his third and fourth years with a Republican Congress. What I discovered seemed to be a more successful run of work for the nation when the President and the Congress battled over ideals and actual policies.

The same thing can be seen during President Reagan’s term of office. Tales are told of the President and House Speaker Tip O’Neil fighting tooth and nail over policy during the day and then sitting together and chatting as old friends in the evening.

Now, differences of opinion have devolved into angry, partisan, extremist negativity and the nation is divided, as we are consistently informed of by sources throughout the media. But, if you look at a map of county voting records, the blue/red divide blends into a cool looking purple. There is little in the real world throughout the nation that justifies this ideological battleground.

There are serious philosophical differences between myself and conservatives in government. That being said, statesmen exist, including; Chuck Hegel, Dick Lugar, John McCain, Arlen Specter, Orrin Hatch, and many more in Congress and in state houses nationwide. Still, I find fault in the Republican leadership for the poverty of honor existing in political debates in the current day.

Let me be clear, politics always has been, and likely always will be, sometimes more, sometimes less, vicious. Cartoons of George Washington as King existed during the first elections this nation saw. The election of 1800 pitted the Federalists under VP Adams against the Republican-Democrats under Jefferson in what would turn out to be one of the least honorable and most brutal and unruly elections the nation has seen. And we almost got Aaron Burr as President after the election went to the House of Representatives after 36 votes taken over 6 days in February that year. But, for whatever reasons, we got Jefferson by one vote and history unfolded the way we know it. People were afraid of Jefferson. People thought he was far too radical.

Today’s Dissenting Voices:

And this quick tangent brings me full circle to the point being made. Attacks will continue to be part and parcel of American elections. But the Republican think tanks and the loud voices of the Grand Old Party have elevated ruthlessness to a new level. Whether it is the loud and boisterous voices on talk radio or the revisionist history promulgated by the most extreme right wingers, the self righteous outrage at anything different is amazing…..and effective.

Attacking John McCain worked for Rove and Bush in South Carolina in 2000. Questioning the patriotism and war records of John Kerry, Max Cleland, and Wes Clark is unquestioned in the ranks of normal Republicans.

Questioning normal Americans’ motives when they disagree with the narrow mindset of the White House appeals to the baser angels of our nature.

The distribution of band aids with purple hearts at the 2004 Republican Convention was not funny.

The Bill and Hillary dog chew toys they had at the Republican Convention were kind of funny, but it just shows the Grand Old Party is dominated by anger.

Simplify, Label, Attack

Rush Limbaugh, successful, media savvy voice of the right wing, claims to not want to offend in “The Way Things Ought to Be” and yet he couldn’t get past the first page of his Advisory chapter without warning of the dangers of “Communists, Socialists, Environmentalist Wackos, Feminazis, Liberal Democrats, Militant Vegetarians, Animal Rights Extremists, Liberal Elitists—who will try to prevent you from reading this book.” I have never been questioned by anyone for reading Rush, or The National Review, or the American Spectator. The point is the right wing wants to boil down all arguments to the “us versus them” variety.

As a self-proclaimed liberal, there is so much that is offensive to me from the right wing that I find it hard to understand how anyone supports these individuals. But, Rush boasts twenty million, I think I’ve read, listeners every week. It’s easy to call names. And I’m not above it myself and there are efforts by liberals to do the same. In reality, I don’t find it works very well, or at least they have not sharpened their blades like those on the right have. They just aren’t as efficient at negativity as the right is.

In my own simple minded thought processes, I believe they are not successful because there is a great deal of diversity within the Democratic Party that does not exist within the ranks of the GOP. I’m not saying Republicans are stupid, far from that, but they have come to a pleasant and cohesive compact based on Reagan’s 11^th commandment requiring Republicans to play nice with each other and attack mercilessly those of us on the other side of the proverbial aisle.

I think it’s too bad because it has led to the creation of a party with a big tent filled with very few people. Where does the government get cut? What programs are eliminated in the pursuit of a more limited government? Who gets left out?

The Pursuit of Recklessness

People loved Ronald Reagan. Of this, there can be no denial. He left office with a 64% approval rating, which is pretty amazing. He was only 1% behind the approval rating of Bill Clinton who left office with a 65% approval rating.

The Republican Party gained the Congress in 1994 and headed into history, following Clinton’s coat tails into power as the nubile administration pushed too far and too hard on the people with efforts to allow gays in the military and generate American Socialism by passing health care reform. Conservatives hated Clinton and his uppity wife…still do, with a passion bordering on insanity.

They would ride her around DC on a rail if they could after tarring and feathering her, and rumors abound of efforts at getting a restraining order to keep her away from 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. The disappointment many feel in President George Walker Bush and the revulsion exhibited over the current pool of GOP presidential hopefuls hold no sway compared to the utter spite the rank and file have for the former first lady and junior senator from New York.

With all that, it is hard to find a more effective legislative period than under the sax player and philanderer in chief from Arkansas. The pragmatic spirit of America combined to form a sense of historic purpose under Clinton. Then came 2000.

People were tired of cheap scandals and the ever present symbol of a perverted special prosecutor who could find no real wrong doing despite years of investigation into every nook of the President’s and first lady’s adult lives, and tens of millions of public dollars spent. But Starr uncovered White House sex and the rabid Republicans foamed at the mouth to avenge the injustice which plagued poor Richard Nixon. Once again, Clinton survived and left office with a positive record and a higher approval rating than the Gipper.

Al Gore refused to associate with the President, Karl Rove attacked John McCain’s character, Ralph Nader ran a self aggrandizing campaign, a governor from Crawford argued he would never nation build, and the election went to the Supreme Court for a decision based on partisan lines, all leading to the 43^rd President of the United States of America, George Walker Bush, taking the oath of office on January 20, 2001. And still they whine.

Reason #1 I Am Not A Republican: Whiny Sissies

The Republican leadership are whiners. They say they’re not. In booming voices they assert their prerogatives based on being in the minority beset with liberal evils at every turn. They openly fight for the rights of the poor, beleaguered business class who can hardly stand up to the openly Communist Democratic Party. The conservative narrative boasts its own minority status at the same time they claim the forty year old “silent majority”. They not only want, they demand it both ways.

Richard Nixon put his hand on the Bible Earl Warren held sixteen days before I was born. He had won the election by about 500,000 votes. Despite a fairly healthy lead in the electoral college, his victory over Vice President Hubert Humphrey, a creepy and slick scion of the Democratic establishment who jumped on the bandwagon after Bobby Kennedy was shot in the kitchen, must have scarred the new President (a man with a lifetime of political wounds) with dark memories of losing to John by just over 100,000 votes in 1960. Nixon stomped McGovern in ’72 but visions of the past lead him astray and he left with his tail between his legs, having squandered one of the widest victories in American political history.

Be that as it may, since then, this nation has had two Democratic Presidents and five Republicans. The peanut farmer president was voted in because people were tired of scandal and war and his White House residence was an anomaly. So, in my 38 years, a Republican has been in the White House for 26 years and when Clinton was President, they had strong majorities in Congress. Republicans have come to see the White House as rightfully theirs.

Yet they continue to cry as if they have been in the political wilderness for ages. They continue to blame liberals, environmentalists, feminists, or whatever branch of government they don’t control, as being the cause of all social ills. It’s funny…..the party that prides itself on individual responsibility and accountability refuses to believe any of its rules apply when facing itself in the mirror. They can’t get anything done because the liberal media, the liberal, coastal elite, the liberal colleges, and the liberal Hollywood stars, are keeping them down. Ronald Reagan, Newt Gingrich, Tom Delay, G.W. Bush, et al are pawns in mean, liberal games. You never need to define liberal beyond, tax and spend.

#2: No Government Is Good Government:

How have the Republicans limited government? Until this year, they had the reigns of power since 1995. Since January 20, 2001, they’ve had it all. Tom Delay couldn’t ask for more in bug killer heaven than the heights reached during his tenure as the hammer in the House. The government continues to grow.

I have met many business people who encourage married individuals who have a spouse working for the government to get their health care through the spouse. I know people who need government funded health care, Social Security, Medicaid, and Medicare. The effort to privatize Social Security shows how hard it is to reduce governmental influence in the public arena. Of course, there was a massive lack of leadership and compromise in the half hearted efforts W provided but there it sits, a future financial problem. Ronald Reagan gathered Democrats and Republicans to work on the Social Security problem. W said he wanted to privatize and let things go at that. Good Luck.

#3: Security

Torture is never a viable option for the United States of America. We should strive to be that “shining city on a hill” and realize it a constant struggle to keep our values intact and to keep the government at bay. Once we head down the road to security at all costs, liberty is in jeopardy.

The United States took the lead in forming the failed League of Nations, the successful United Nations, the Geneva Conventions, the Nuremburg Trials, and the list can go on. We hide behind an isolationist curtain at our own, and the world’s peril.

I disagree with the current Republican leadership’s ideals relating to diplomacy. Reagan met with Gorbachev at the same time as he called for the tearing down of the Berlin Wall and he joked about bombing the Soviets. They need to learn about talking over issues. It is never easy to negotiate solutions, but every situation is not analogous to Neville Chamberlain.

#4: Fiscal Responsibility:

Again, they talk a good game but they haven’t walked the walk, as they say. Barry Goldwater took on his own party in the Conscience of a Conservative, when he wrote: “deeds are what count, and I regret to say that in actual practice, the Republican Party, like the Democratic Party, summons the coercive power of the federal government whenever national leaders conclude that the States are not performing satisfactorily.” The same thing has gone on in the current model of Republican leadership.

They have failed miserably and the hilarious part is that each of the presidential hopefuls in the GOP argues they are the ones to restore fiscal sanity.

#5: Judgment is Mine

They are an awfully judgmental lot, the right wing pundits. Whether it is marriage, children, sexual conduct, patriotism, drug use, prison, or God, they have the answers and they are determined to move government power in the realm of intrusiveness on individual rights and beliefs. No matter if Jimmy Carter is an evangelical, he is not of the political persuasion that God approves. We know this because televangelists tell us so.

#6: Capitalism v. Corporatism

Republican leaders argue that the most productive citizens are those at the top of the food chain. There is a difference between capitalism and corporate power. We see what happens sans regulation in industrializing nations. Human rights and environmental values take a back seat to profit. Small business is a major engine of innovation and change in the United States. The more concentrated business is, the less freedom there is, I believe Republican control heads toward the concentration of power.

#7: Free Speech is Inviolable

There is no right of the government to infringe upon the freedom of individual speech.

#8: Environmental Health

Environmental health is attainable but it will require a great deal of effort on the part of business leaders and government action. Ignorance of problems based on some strange ideology that things should be the same as they were two hundred years ago will not help. The demonization of all individuals that work on environmental issues will not be likely to prove beneficial.

#9: Personal Health

Like it or not, healthcare has reached the top of the federal agenda, whoever wins the ultimate game. Simple beliefs based on ideological purity won’t lead to action. The end result of the fight against the issue fifteen years ago is 45 million uninsured and even more under-insured. Freedom is squandered when individuals can not keep coverage from job to job and a wide ranging consensus has developed requiring something. I don’t believe the Republican leadership will do anything.

#10: Finally……Privacy

I do not believe it is the government’s prerogative to interfere in individual lives, people’s decisions about what to do with their bodies, or to outlaw abortion. I don’t think it is good for liberty to elect individuals who have a litmus test for Supreme Court nominees that demands them to overturn established law or to restrict personal freedom.

Conclusion:

There you have it. Some of the reasons I do not consider myself a conservative or a Republican and why I think their ideology is actually anathema to personal liberty. There is an odd combination in the Republican Party that includes fiscal and social conservatives. If people want to reduce the size and scope of government and to ease the contamination of private life by federal institutions, I believe the Democratic Party will prove to be the surprising answer to many of the questions that arise out of such concerns. It is always necessary to watch the government and to restrict the powers of those that would be kings. Republicans are no less susceptible to the addiction to power than any other group.