The Politics of Rush Limbaugh: The gloomy people vs. the happy people

A writer's best ideas or thoughts are based on inspiration and more often than not, that inspiration comes from other people. Some may be loath to give credit where credit is due but I am not.

So this piece is brought to you by blogger Daniel Larison (www.larison.org) courtesy of fellow blogger Clark Stooksbury (www.clarkstooksbury.blogspot.com)

Limbaugh it seemed, during one of his interminable rants, did actually say something profound or at least gave some insight on his primitive political philosophy. And no, this has nothing to do with Michael J. Fox. This actually occurred during a broadcast just after the Mark Foley scandal broke. To quote El Rushbo:

"You know, Republicans are said to be racist and sexist and bigoted and homophobic. The liberal policy, liberal philosophy is to assume bad behavior, bad human behavior. They assume it, they have a condescending look toward people in general. It’s what makes them liberals. People are incapable of doing the right thing without liberals’ guidance, people are incapable of making the right decisions to get ahead in life without liberal guidance, they’re incapable of earning a decent living. . . Liberalism assumes bad human behavior and then coddles it as imperfect. After they coddle imperfect, bad human behavior, they are able to say those who judge imperfections in people and come out strong for right and wrong, the simplistic black and white, good versus evil, people who come out for law and order and so forth, they’re the sinners, because none of us are perfect. The liberals understand this, they coddle the imperfections, they create victims out of those who are imperfect, turning them into a cause celebre, and blaming the right, these Draconian, intolerant, inflexible people who judge others while ignoring their own foibles."

Such a statement is an interesting one coming from someone heading up the EIB Network's Advance Institute of Conservative Studies. For any instructor at such an institute would know that the early philosophy of the conservative movement had very much to do with man's imperfections, especially given the many Catholics who were conservative intellectuals back in the 1950s and 60s. Indeed, Larison's initial take on this is as one just dumbstruck at Limbaugh's idiocy, until he stumbles onto the answer to the politics of Rush Limbaugh:

"It will hardly come as news to anyone here that Limbaugh’s conservatism was never, ever all that terribly similar to Burkean-Kirkian conservatism. It was originally, back in the old days of the early ’90s, a rehashed low-tax, pro-market conservatism that was good on mocking bureaucratic absurdity and Clintonian pretenses but basically superficial and empty. It could even occasionally border on a sort of populism given its medium on the radio, but as Limbaugh became more successful he increasingly embraced the establishment GOP views on everything and frequently became their willing propagandist in a way that was not the case when he began. Once the debate over Iraq started, he was no longer funny and became something like a WSJ-programmed robot, reaching a particularly low point when he lent his name and popularity to the lie that Atta met with an Iraqi agent in Prague to help solidify the fraudulent claim in the public mind that Al Qaeda and Iraq were working together.

For a time, to the extent that he had a touchstone, it was Reagan, which meant that conservatism was made up of Reagan (and more broadly, Republican) apologetics in the same way that it has become Bush apologetics in the new generation. There was always the sickening emphasis on optimism as the core of this “conservatism” and Limbaugh never tired of reiterating (and I should know, since I listened to him often when I was growing up) that Reagan was successful because he was optimistic and that Americans love optimists (this may unfortunately be true), and liberals are tiresome and oppressive because they are not. It was always a struggle of the happy people vs. the gloomy people, which somehow translates into believing that the gloomy people think that man is flawed–because, well, that is a gloomy thing to think. If man is fallen, flawed and imperfect, optimism doesn’t seem very reasonable, but if he is perfectible and can make progress towards that perfectibility optimism is the essence of common sense.

In this sense, there is nothing surprising about Limbaugh’s embrace of the old liberal conceit that everyone is basically OK. He would almost have to think that if we just create the right conditions (for a right-liberal, this typically ought to mean less government regulation) everything in society will work out just fine. It is perhaps why Limbaugh has had no difficulty switching gears and getting on board with the Iraq project and the “freedom agenda,” since he would have no strong, principled reasons to object to social engineering as such–he just doesn’t want social engineering run by Democrats–since he must think that injustices and imperfections in the world are the result of having the wrong kinds of structures and environments around us rather than permanent features of life here below. Give people “freedom,” make the environment optimal for “opportunity” and stand back! And throw in the occasional war or two for the sake of American greatness and the glory of the superpower. That seems to sum up Limbaugh’s worldview pretty well. It says volumes about modern “conservatives” that millions of them listen to this man daily and take what he says as some kind of wisdom; it says plenty about the vapidity of popular conservatism if Limbaugh is one of its representatives."

Thus the subtitle of this article: "The Gloomy People vs. the Happy People." Again, thanks both to Mr. Larison and Mr. Stooksbury for the inspiration.

Limbaugh once admitted during a broadcast that he wore a "WIN" button back in the 1970s. "WIN" stood for "Whip Inflation Now," which was Gerald Ford's attempt to solve the inflation problem of that time through the power of positive thinking. So you can see why "optimism" as an ideology has an appeal to Limbaugh. The problem is, there's no consistency to it. If we were living during the 1930s, Limbaugh would be on side of the Democrats and the New Dealers, because they were the ones back then who were "optimistic." In fact, it may not be a stretch that Limbaugh sees himself as a latter day FDR and his radio broadcasts a modern day version of the "Fireside Chats," dishing out the daily does of "optimism" to the American people. Meanwhile, the gloomy people were the conservatives and the Republicans and they had a lot to be gloomy about. If they were a small manufacturer, they were gloomy that their plant was going to be forcibly unionized. If they were a banker, they were gloomy about the fact that they were now going to be regulated by the federal government and have to pay a progressive tax rate of 90 percent. If they were religious, they were despairing at the march of Communism and if they were an intellectual, they despaired over never seeing the old republican form of government ever again. Yep, not exactly the fun-bunch here.

Conservatism's association with gloom lasted until the 1970s when new groups began to challenge it. One such group was the "fusionists," who believed that the American people were essentially good but were being turned bad by the government. Then there were the neoconservatives, many of them former Leftists, Socialists and New Dealers themselves who brought their 1930s cheer with them along with their faith in the "masses." And along with all of them came the politicians like Ronald Reagan, Newt Gingrich and Jack Kemp, who were tired of conservatives being portrayed as bunch of Ebenezer Scrooges or angry demagogues and were determined to put a 1970s-style happy face on conservatism.

What allowed the "optimists" to take control of the conservative movement back when it really was a movement was a philosophic vacuum that led to electoral success. The 1970s liberals began a downcast turn. They were becoming the gloomy people. It all began with the savage reaction from the chic New Left to Hubert Humphrey's "Politics of Joy," and has gone downhill ever since. Liberalism became identified with gloomy environmental forecasts about the destruction of the Earth, gloominess about nuclear war, gloominess about the economy and oil shocks and the increasing shrillness and divisiveness of the civil right movement. All of this was encapsulated in Jimmy Carter's singular "malaise" speech in 1979, which ultimately did much to undermine his presidency and liberalism in general because it gave an opening to Reagan and his Republicans charging that the Democrats and liberals had basically gave up on the American People and the American Dream and wished to live in a world of "limits." Since "limitation" was not something in the U.S. lexicon, whether as a pioneer, a homesteader or a Navy pilot, it was easy for Republicans to claim the "optimistic" label and carry it through 1984's "Morning in America," Reagan re-election campaign until the disastrous GOP convention of 1992, where the party lost the optimistic label and became not the gloomy party but the "angry party" of Clinton-haters in 1990s. That was until George Bush II's "compassionate conservatism," gave the GOP an optimistic sheen once again in 2000. Since Rush Limbaugh came to political consciousness in the late 1970s and early 1980s after his FM "stoned" age, it was natural for him to gravitate towards the happy people and thus, conservatism and the GOP. They were happy and the other side wasn't. It's that simple.

The splits within the Republican Party and within conservatism after Reagan left the scene in 1988 falls down in large part on an axis of optimist vs. gloomy, or, maybe a better term, optimist vs. realist. Gloom, for obvious reasons, is not much of a seller politically or, one would suppose, as a talk-radio radio format. The liberals can have the monopoly on gloom. But the problem the optimists have, as once described by David Frum during his better Dead Right days, is that "it prefers to avoid thinking hard about anything unpleasant." To think about anything unpleasant means being gloomy, not happy. This is why, I think, not much planning or thought was put into what a postwar Iraq would be like because the optimists naturally assumed Iraqis would welcome the U.S. liberation of their country with candy and flowers and thus all would be well after the war was over. No siren songs of warning were heeded because that would be "gloomy" thinking and that's not the way conservatives think. They think happy thoughts. And if you extend that logic even further, you can see why there was a slow federal response to Katrina, why today's so-called conservatives ignore the budget deficit and the growth of big government or the ill-affects of illegal immigration and the loss of the U.S. manufacturing base. All not happy subjects and therefore not discussed. Remember, only happy thoughts now.

So the politics of Rush Limbaugh, it seems, has nothing to do with any kind of "Burkean/Kirkian" conservatism, but a chorus of the song "Happy, Happy, Joy, Joy."

---Sean Scallon

North American Conference on Secession, Nov. 3-4

This post came from the Vermont Commons website and deals with a conference on secession that includes groups I talked about in my book, The Second Vermont Republic, Free State Project and the League of the South. This may very well be the first time such a meeting has taken place on a continental scale instead of just local groups. I hope it goes well or at least, isn't raided by the Feds anyway.

---Sean Scallon

Kirkpatrick Sale: The First North American Secessionist Convention
The First North American Secessionist Convention

By Kirkpatrick Sale
The Middlebury Institute, in keeping with its mission of “the study of separatism, secession, and self-determination,” is holding the First North American Secessionist Convention this fall in Burlington with a dual purpose: to assess the secessionist movement on the continent at this time and to bring together those with an interest in the movement for a discussion of strategies and policies to make it stronger.

There is a great deal of talk about secession in various quarters, picking up as the American empire continues with its illegal, ineffective, intrusive, and immoral actions here and abroad, and more and more people are thinking that, extreme as it may at first seem, it really is the most sensible of the various options for serious political action. As did the participants at the 2004 Middlebury conference that issued the Middlebury Declaration, they are finding do-nothingism intolerable, party politics a reformist dead-end, and rebellion and revolution useless and self-defeating. So if you want to lead a better life, with some democratic control over your affairs, without participating in the corrupt and dangerous system provided by this increasingly imperialistic failed state called the United States, secession seems to provide an answer.

As of this writing, over 30 people have signed up—most of them genuine representatives of state separatist movements, plus a few expert observers. They represent movements in Puerto Rico, Hawaii, and Alaska, the three oldest movements, the League of the South, Southern National Congress Committee, Southern Caucus, Christian Exodus, New State Movement, State of Jefferson, and groups in Texas, California, Michigan, South Carolina, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Washington City, Maine, and of course Vermont. It seems clear evidence, as Vermont’s Thomas Naylor says, that “not since the end of the Civil War has there been this much interest in political independence by the states.” (I’ll have to remind him that it was not a civil war but a war of secession, quite a different thing.)

The League of the South looks to be one of the strongest groups, with chapters in 16 states and members in ll others. It was formed in 1994, it has a national office in Arkansas, a bimonthly newpaper, a national conference, a website (Dixienet.org), and an associated LOS Institute for the study of Southern culture. Its primary goal is establishing “a free and independent Southern republic...by 1) de-legitimating the American Empire at every opportunity; 2) by proving our willingness to be servant-leaders to the Southern people; and 3) by making The League of the South a strong, viable organization that will lead us to Southern independence.” It argues that “legally speaking,” the old Confederacy still exists because it never formally surrendered, and its strategy is to get “an educated and willing public” to realize this and create “a climate conducive to Southern independence.” As Michael Hill, the LOS President, has put it: “Let us gain the confidence and support of our people by becoming their worthy servants. Then let us re-assert our independence and nationhood on the firm foundational principles of 1776 and 1861.” He adds, “Though the South is presently a nation by right, this will mean nothing until the South starts acting like a nation in fact. To bring Dixie to that point is the League’s goal.”

Alaska’s movement, the Alaska Independence Party, has been in business since 1984 and regularly runs candidates for statewide offices. It bills itself the largest third party of any state, pulling in between 10-20,000 voters and 3-4 per cent of the vote—once even electing a governor, Walter Hickel, who then tuned his back on the party and acted as an ordinary Republican in office. It has a website (Akip.org) with a great many interesting links, an annual conference, and occasional press releases, but it has been somewhat quiet in recent years—it drew only 14,000 voters at last fall’s election, at 3.03 per cent. Its chief aim is to have a revote on the question of statehood, which was put on the ballot as a yes-or-no proposition in 1958, instead of a choice between statehood, remaining a territory, becoming a commonwealth, like Puerto Rico, or becoming an independent nation—and it’s that last one that AIP favors. Some sense of its politics can be seen in its website response to the question of whether an Alaskan would lose U.S. citizenship if the state seceded: “Depending on the form of independence, several forms of citizenship would be possible, including the retention of U.S. citizenship or dual citizenship. However, considering the moral, educational, and economic decay of the U.S., Alaskans who hold themselves to a higher standard might very well decide to at least maintain an arm's length distance from a country in decline.”

The movement in Hawai’i is a bit of a mix, and some there even argue that secession is irrelevant since they regard Hawai’i as a sovereign state that has simply been conquered illegally by the United States and doesn’t need to secede from anything. But since a removal of the conqueror and an act of secession would have the same effect, there are groups willing to put their struggle in that light. Among them are the Hawai’i Nation, Kingdom of Hawai’i, Free Hawai’I, Huaka’i I Na ‘Aina Mauna, and Sovereign Hawaii’I Government, and I have no way of knowing from this distance why there are so many different groups, since they seem to be working for the same thing. The general take would seem to have been well expressed in a 1994 proclamation by a General Council of native Hawai’ians stating that “we are the original inhabitants and occupants of these islands [and] have always been in possession of our land and are entitled to re-establish our Independent and Sovereign Nation.” It concluded that the “General Council Assembled...do solemnly publish, declare and proclaim that the Independent and Sovereign Nation of Hawai’i is free and absolved from any other political connection to any other Nation State.” A representative of that Council will be at the November convention.

Two other active groups that are not strictly secessionist, but with a strong interest in the convention because to fulfill their aims would probably come down to secession, are the Christian Exodus and the Free State Project. The first of these, begun in 2003 “in response to the moral degeneration of our nation” and the failure of regular political parties to halt it, has a scheme to settle large numbers of its adherents in South Carolina, which it deems to be the most conservative and Christian state in the Union. Once a critical mass is present there, they would begin to take over local and county institutions and eventually the state government, creating a constitution that would guarantee “the protection of human life at conception, the Ten Commandments as the foundation of law, the prohibition of any redefinition of marriage, and a strong reserve clause” of undelegated powers to local government. “If this cannot be achieved within the United States,” they say, “then we believe a peaceful withdrawal from the union to be the last available remedy.”

The Free State Project similarly intends to move people in to take over a state—in this case New Hampshire, because it has the smallest tax burden of any state and is small enough to be influenced by a small number of immigrants—and create a strongly libertarian government. The project was begun by Jason Sorens, then a Yale graduate student in political science, in 2001, who determined that 20,000 active people would be sufficient to wield influence over the state government—and as of June 2006, 7, 166 have signed on. The aim is to create a government that would “support policies such as abolition of all income taxes, elimination of regulatory bureaucracies, repeal of most gun control laws, repeal of most drug prohibition laws, complete free trade, decentralization of government, and widescale privatization.” It is explicitly against secession, it says, but its literature recognizes that such a move might have to be taken if its program was resisted by Federal forces—as would seem to be likely.

It may be too much to say, as Thomas Naylor has said recently, that “once again secession fever is spreading across America just as it did back in 1776 and 1861.” But there is no doubt that something is in the air, and the November convention will be the barometer of just how strong and purposive this movement is.
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Creating a new conservative movement

I found this post linking to it from Washington Monthly from the weblog On Commons. It's quite good and I think explain what many paleos are trying to do.

---Sean Scallon

Conservative Commoners?

Posted by Jonathan Rowe on Thu, 10/26/2006 - 9:24am Tools

About half a century ago, a prominent writer described automobiles as “mechanical Jacobins” for their disruptive effects on American life and mores. It was not a young Ralph Nader rehearsing for Unsafe At Any Speed. . It was Russell Kirk, intellectual patriarch of the modern conservative movement, writing in his seminal book The Conservative Mind.

The difference between the two is instructive. Nader was writing from a standpoint of utility. He did not object to the social and cultural impacts of cars, not outwardly at least. His argument was that they weren’t safe. Kirk by contrast was talking values – the nature of our communities and ultimately of ourselves. This is the deeper territory that liberals in America pretty much have forfeited, with their focus on such things as consumer protection and safety. Safety is important; but we humans cannot live on it alone.

There are ironies aplenty. Nader himself is much more Kirkean than most people realize. He waxes rhapsodic about his small town upbringing in Winsted, Connecticut, where he could walk to the library, and then to his father’s bakery-restaurant, and from there to the courthouse where he listened to lawyers argue and where his father spoke often at Norman Rockwell-style town meetings. He once took me to Highland Lake, where he used to ride his bike. “It was great – except for the damn cars,” he said.

Ralph used to quote his older brother Shafik, who stayed home in Winsted. "Every genuine innovation in America has begun at the local level." He embraced federal regulation not because he loved the federal government and bureaucracy -- he didn't. The problem was the corporation. The federal government was the only entity with the power -- potentially -- to stand up to it and hold it accountable. There just wasn't an alternative.

Ralph’s concerns for safety were genuine. When he hitchhiked around the US he encountered gory car wrecks, the toll of which could have been reduced with simple safety engineering. But his critique of cars drew from a deeper emotional well. And Kirk, for his part, was an authentic conservative; by which I mean he was alert to the corrosive effects of market culture upon integrity and community and other values he held dear.

The automobile was a natural focus. No product so epitomizes the embedded narrative of “the market:” the glorification of mobility and self-gratification, the casting aside of community and tradition. Literally and figuratively, it is the cocoon for the solipsistic market “me.” Kirk’s conservatism did not restrain him from saying this. To the contrary, it was the reason he said it. (Though he did not say it as pointedly as I just did; and in his day the Red Menace seemed the greater Jacobin threat.)

In recent decades that kind of authentic conservatism has not been much in evidence. It has been displaced by a “movement” version that is politically expedient and cynical to the core. Movement conservatism is really market worship that embraces the disruption of traditional mores and values so long as corporations are making money in the process. It channels the truly conservative impulse into a few red-meat issues – abortion, gays, school prayer – that pose no threat to the corporate moneybags who bankroll the Republican party.

Most leftist writers are tone-deaf to these distinctions. They sneer about “conservatives” the way right wingers sneer about them; and in the process they do their adversaries a favor. Ann Coulter is to conservatism what she is to chastity. She is a screaming polemical Jacobin; and the same goes for most of the Right Wing crew. To call them “conservatives” just helps keep their act going, at the very time it is starting to fray.

Genuine conservatives are getting disgusted with the whole show in Washington; and are feeling, rightly, that they have been used. They are starting to sniff out the corporatists, market libertarians and neo-con empire builders who have been operating in conservative disguise. A spate of recent books has explored aspects of this theme, such as Rod Dreher’s Crunchy Cons. Now comes American Conservatism: An Encyclopedia, the lead editor of which is Bruce Frohnen, who teaches law at Ave Maria Law School in Ann Arbor.

The Encyclopedia is a surprisingly good read, and a rich resource for those of leftward bent who have not paid enough attention to the growth of the movement that has dominated the nation’s politics for much of the last twenty-five years. Without intending to be, the book also is a guide to the tensions and fissures in the conservative camp. The editors do not dramatize these. The free-marketeers such as Friedman and Hayek get their glowing write-ups. The performance artists such as Coulter and Limbaugh get nods as well.

Sometimes the tensions are positively repressed. The entry for Wilhelm Ropke, the free market economist and compatriot of Hayek, does not mention that his book, A Humane Society, was about the limits of market ideology and the need for a sphere of civic life that is guided by higher values and aims. Still they are there. How many of you would have expected an encyclopedia of conservatism to include Wendell Berry, for example?

I didn’t. Yet the entry lauds Berry’s commitment to community, locality, tradition and virtue. It praises too the way he lives these convictions as a farmer. (Russell Kirk was a localist and an agrarian.) There’s an entry also on Ralph Borsodi, who established an experimental community during the Depression, and whose book Escape From the City, was an early text of the back-to-the-land movement. Borsodi was seeking an alternative to the centralizing and corporatizing tendencies of the New Deal – a standpoint the left today too easily forgets.

These inclusions are not idiosyncratic. When I went to a discussion blog on Dreher’s Crunchy Cons on the National Review website, I found references to Jane Jacobs, E.F. Schumacher, Eric Schlosser (Fast Food Nation) and James Howard Kunstler (Geography of Nowhere.) There even was praise for the New Urbanism. True conservatives are not the corporate greedbags who run the Republican Party. They are localists who care about culture and community and distrust schemes from Washington that would jeopardize these.

An even bigger surprise was William Jennings Bryan, the Great Commoner. The editors admire the Scriptural basis of his economics and his small town traditionalism, which outweigh for them his advocacy of the progressive income tax. Perhaps most surprising of all is the entry on Henry George. George was the homegrown economist who deplored the way land speculators were reaping value that the society as a whole was creating. He advocated a tax on land values – not structures, just the land – to recapture for the benefit of society what the society had created.

Such a system would make it possible to reduce most taxes on income and sales, George said. It also would lead to more compact development, since the owners of close-in, higher-value land would seek to develop it more intensively in order to generate revenues to pay the tax. Sprawl would be greatly diminished. The land barons of George’s day reviled him as a kind of socialist. But the editors of the Encyclopedia are wise enough to see the justice in his plan, and its essential conservatism.

To recapture for society that which the society has created, would make it possible for individuals to keep more of what they themselves have created through their own enterprise and toil. There is of course a large social component in all individual wealth, and not just land. Where would Google be today without the Defense Department which funded the creation of the internet? Where would George W. Bush be without the taxpayers of Arlington, Texas who funded a new stadium for his Texas Rangers baseball team?

Still, it’s a good start. It is not what you hear from Sean Hannity or Ann Coulter, and it’s a lot more appealing. George’s argument is the basic rationale for environmental taxes; and for my colleague Peter Barnes’ Sky Trust proposal. You take from the common pool of earth’s resources, then you should have to pay, and enough to diminish your taking. Let’s derive public revenue more from what people take, and less from what they make.

I interviewed Frohnen on my radio show recently and found it more appealing still. He lamented what he called “Wal-Mart conservatives,” by which he meant people who worship at the alter of the “cheapest price,” and the utilitarian values of the market right generally. He expressed dismay with the Bush Administration on everything from foreign adventures to his imposition of federal standards on local schools and the diminution of local control.

His dismay was akin to that of many on the decentralist left when the Clinton Administration stumped for corporate globalism; and when his “liberal” appointees to the Supreme Court voted to affirm the power of local governments to use eminent domain to kick people from their homes and give the land to Wal-Mart. (That’s “public purpose”?) There is congruity here, if not outright convergence. It would be a stretch to call a Russell Kirk a commoner, or a father of them. He had too much of a patrician quality, too much distrust of the rabble.

Still, someone who is a friend of Wendell Berry and Ralph Borsodi, and hangs with the thinking of Jane Jacobs and E.F. Schumacher, is sniffing around the right tree. When was the last time we heard a Democrat in Washington invoke such people? Those of us who are concerned about reviving communities and rebuilding their social wealth, have got to stop heeding ideological stereotypes. There are allies out there.

Non-major party election preview

For those in the non-major party community watching the election results in few weeks, there are a couple of places to take note of:

Illinois -- The Green Party candidate for governor is taking 14% in recent polls and even Randy Stufflebeam's write-in candidacy might actually win a few percentage points with unpopular Democrat and GOP nominees.

Minnesota -- This election the Independence Party can have a place in the Minnesota political milleau instead of just being "DFL light." A good place to start would be in the Fifth Congressional District where IP candidate Tammy Lee has the unofficial endorsement of retiring Congressman Martin Olav Sabo and is facing radical DFLer Keith Ellison. She has the best chance of any IP candidate to win on Election Day and doing so would be a huge boost to the party.

Georgia - Libertarian party candiates are polling well, siphoning votes from unpopular but dominant state GOP in the face of the weak Democrats and could force governor's race into a run-off.

Florida - Reform Party Candidate Max Linn may very well be a spolier in the governor's race

Texas - Four-way governor's race with two independents plus similar situation in Georgia, unpopular but dominant GOP, weak Democrats benefiting LP candidates.

Montanta - Can Rick Jore win a state legislative seat for CP-Montana?

Conneticut - Many Greens (like Ben Manski) would pooh-pooh any alliances with the Democrats but if it means three ex-GOP Congressmen and women and ex-U.S. Senator Joe Lieberman in return for votes for complete pullout of U.S. forces, then the Greens will have accomplished what they've wanted in true third party fashion, moving Dems in their direction.

The LP does have a good deal at stake in this election. If the LP does reasonably well on Election Day, they can say present themselves and their new platform is a positive light of relevance for the first time in a long time and think seriously of strategies for long-term achievement while entertaining possibilities for national alliances with either major party or certain presidential candidates.

Book Notes...

In my line of work its rare to get a Friday night off so I want to take the free time that I have to update you on the book this blog is entitled from.

I want to thank Clark Stooksbury and the staff at Chronicles Magazine for their review of Beating the Powers that Be. You can find it in the November issue of Chronicles (pp. 35-36). I especially liked this part of the review " a story of the construction of the American political spectrum since World War II."

I've managed to get the book located on a couple of local bookstore shelves, and the shelves at the Minnesota State Historical Society bookstore. But I've passed out more free copies than I have sold at present and there's really not much more I can do this year given my schedule to promote the book, especially when I wish to start writing another work as soon as next year.

Writing Beating the Powers that Be was a labor of love that I truly enjoyed and again I wish to thank all those who I interview for their time and thoughts as well as friends and family for their help and encouragment and all those who bought the book. It wasn't perfect, I did the best I could and I have no regrets. I think I have had some impact, however small, on the thinking of those involved with non-major parties and other such movements and that was the purpose of the book. Hopefully we can get more sales at Christmas or perhaps as I become more famous as a writer, God willing.

---Sean Scallon

The Enablers: Conservative talk-radio hosts ushered the GOP to Congressional power in 1994, and may usher them out in 2006

When Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives Denny Hastert (R-Ill.) needed to get his side of the story out to the media in wake of the Mark Foley page scandal, he didn’t choose any old media.

No 60 Minutes interview with Mike Wallace. No Meet the Press Sunday morning session with Tim Russert.

Instead, Hastert interviewed with Rush Limbaugh, Lars Larson, Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, Hugh Hewitt, Laura Ingram, Mark Levine, etc. Everyone who was anyone in the so-called conservative talk-show establishment, or at least nationally syndicated.

There’s a reason for this of course.

Not just because such interviewers would shy away from finding out the truth about Hastert’s knowledge of Foley’s sexually explicit emailing to House pages and instead engage in delusional paranoid fantasies about the scandal being a Democrat set-up. It’s also because there’s a real kinship between House Republicans and talk-radio hosts. The former believe the latter helped them win control of the House back in the 1994 mid-term election, and to a certain extent that’s true. But just as these talk show hosts contributed to Republican rise to power 12 years ago in Washington, they could very well shown them the way back to minority status in Congress after this year’s mid-term election.

It’s interesting the to see the way conservative publications and pundits have been harshly critical of the GOP Congress while talk show hosts have more or less been in their corner or have defended them without hesitation. It was the Washington Times that called for Hastert to step down and resign after the Foley scandal broke while talk show hosts provided the support Hastert needed to stay on the job. Had that support not been there, maybe Hastert would be on his way out.

There’s a reason for this too. Journalists, regardless if they have “left” or “right” leanings have to have a certain level of skepticism or reserve about the subjects they report on, otherwise they are nothing more than PR flacks. The Washington Times is a very conservative newspaper, but they have to tell it like it is regardless of how it plays out and in their judgment, Hastert had to go. It was the pundit class that also the most critical of President Bush II’s nomination of Harriet Meiers to the Supreme Court.

Talk show hosts, on the other hand, will tell anyone who listens and then some that they are not journalists, only entertainers. Thus there are no parameters of journalism that tinge their thinkers, just whatever gets ratings. No doubt they must have sensed their GOP-bound listeners wanting to fight back, saw the White House supporting Hastert and then took their cue: unabashed support for the Speaker regardless whether he or the rest of the GOP leadership are leading the party anywhere but utter defeat in November.

Not only that, but unlike journalists, talk show hosts aren’t bound by any ethics rules either. So they’re free to take junkets to Iraq sponsored by the Republican Party, get interviews with top Republican leaders, sit in on strategy sessions and be speakers at Republican fundraisers or other party events as well. Why would they jeopardize that relationship with the powers that be? Since many of these hosts were nobodies before they became famous through the magic of the transmitter and the “golden microphone”, being close to power is powerful enough to dull their critical thinking (Rush Limbaugh’s reaction to being the Lincoln Bedroom of the White House is good example of this. The George Bush I administration was trying to buy him off and he could have cared less because he was in the Lincoln Bedroom.) And having your listeners believe that you have power and influence with the holders of such power is no doubt a great way to get ahead in the Arbitron ratings over your afternoon drive-time competition.

The end result is most of the talk-show host commissariat, not all but most, supported the Meiers’ nomination (and accused its critics of “elitism”), supported nation building in Iraq, and supported or at least enabled the GOP Congress and the President to approve such less than conservative measures like the Department of Homeland Security, No Child Left Behind, The Patriot Act, and a new entitlement for prescription drugs. Maybe some were opposed to this or that, but there was never the collective outrage to such proposals as there would be if, say, a Democrat, was in the White House or if the Democrats were controlling Congress. Imagine if it was Bill Clinton as President and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi held open a vote on the House floor for three-hours! in order to round up enough votes to approved the prescription drug entitlement. Just think how the phone lines would have been lit-up like Christmas trees to such an outrage and the FAX machines humming after the talk-show host gave out the numbers for the Congressional switchboard. Where was the upheaval from AM talk radio to this clear violation of House rules that there was over the Congressional pay raise of 1989, or the crime bill or the Clinton health care proposal? Hell, a Republican controlled Congress has raised its pay many times since 1995 yet no tea party that I know of organized by a talk -show host has been held to protest such raises.

It was clear by the late 1990s that political talk-radio had ceased to be a useful forum for conservative ideas and activism outside the traditional media and became nothing more than the propaganda wing of the Republican National Committee (just like Free Republic website did in largely the same manner). This was more apparent after the 2000 election when support of George Bush II became a loyalty oath among conservatives for fear of the return of the Clintons, Al Gore and the big, bad Democrats. 9-11 just sealed the deal. Anything and everything from this administration could be justified in the context that the alternative would be worse and that the nation is at war and that’s exactly what the talk-show hosts are saying now; even though many conservative writers and pundits who know their history a lot better than talk show hosts do realize a GOP defeat would do wonders in humbling the arrogant party establishment, getting rid of the deadwood of party hacks and other leaders who’ve made a mess of things of Washington and Iraq and force the GOP to decide what kind of party they want to be and what they want to stand for. Defeat in 1964 led to victory in 1966 and 1968. Defeat in 1976 led to victory 1980. Defeat in 1992 led to victory in 1994. And even in 2000, when for the third time in a row the Republicans failed to capture the majority of the nation’s vote in a presidential election, a near-defeat led to victory in 2002 and 2004. So why wouldn’t the pattern repeat itself after 2006 for 2008?

Obviously many talk show hosts would prefer to keep their access to the Speaker’s office and their seats on the plane to next junket then contemplate this on the AM dial. Instead of keeping the GOP on the right path, they followed them where ever they led, even if it meant off a cliff. Even if they did protest every now and then, how amazing with all those listeners, that they have such little influence in the overall direction of the party they are now tied at the hip with, and conservatism in general. Republicans became as spendthrift and power hungry as Democrats and not a thing they said or did changed that. And when one host, Charles Goyette down in Phoenix, did challenge this orthodoxy how was he treated? His station fired him thank you very much.

Pretty soon, such talk shows may have very little influence at all because they have very few listeners. Apparently surveys show that younger radio listeners that advertisers and radio stations crave, will not listen to the AM dial no matter whom or what is on. The folks at Clear Channel, who have so many of those stations and talk show hosts locked up in their contracts, panicked at this and decided to do something about it. Earlier this year in the Twin Cities a new FM station, KTLK begun on the 100.3 frequency with Limbaugh as its flagship program, moving the AM dial’s KSTP 1500 signal. The strength and clarity of the FM signal over AM will no doubt send many talk shows in the same direction especially if Clear Channel is leading the way (leaving AM in the same precarious state as it was in the late 1980s outside of the high powered frequencies before the talk format revived it). However, there’s a catch. A rating of 4.7, or a little higher or lower, in the context of an AM radio market, is very good. But why would advertisers suddenly switch from profitable FM radio accounts at stations that draw double the ratings that the talk shows do with their all-music formats? Your guess is a good as mine too.

Selling one soul, it seems, has become second nature in the conservative talk radio establishment. But, as always, there’s a price to be paid. And that may come in many ways, starting on November 7th.

---Sean Scallon

Conservative Democrats rising?

I got this email the other from a conservative website. It enclosed a New York Times story about Jack Davis who's running in Upstate New York vs. Tom Reynolds. I hope Davis wins, not just to remove a pedofile enabler like Reynolds, but also to put more conservative or independent Congressmen in the Democratic caucus. U.S. political parties have never been ideological constructs by themselves alone and yet Liberal and Conservative intelelctuals and activists keep trying to make them so. But they forget the cultural reasons that people vote for the GOP or for the Democrat. Right now the Democrats occupy and ideological and geographic enclave to which they have been driven to. If they want to win traditionally or culturally Republican areas or districts, they need candidates like Jack Davis or Jim Webb in Virginia. Hopefully they can win to provide a little more diversity in the GOP caucus.

---Sean Scallon


DEAR FRIENDS:



We have an announcement.


Conservatism is bigger than the GOP or any party. One should not be a party lapdog.


For example, no true conservative would support an open-borders traitor like Mike DeWine.


While we still support a number of Republicans (e.g. Tancredo, Ron Paul, John Duncan), we have decided to throw our support behind a Democrat this election, Jack Davis.


Jack Davis is a former conservative Republican running on the Democratic ticket in NY.


He is:


1) Vehemently anti-legal and anti-illegal immigration

2) anti-free trade

3) anti-outsourcing



Some of the GOP lapdogs may have a problem with the free-trade bit, but conservatives historically have been opposed to free trade. Just read TS Eliot, Richard Weaver or Russell Kirk's criticisms.


Free trade undermines national sovereignty, and it places vital economic decisions in the hands of international bureaucrats (e.g. WTO).


We now have the largest free-trade deficit of any country in the history of the world. Free trade is destroying our economy.


Conservatives always have opposed free trade, and they should once again. Unfortunately, the GOP lapdogs have been neoconned on this issue.



Some may object to Jack Davis not being pro-life enough, but the whole abortion issue has become a money making gimmick for both parties. And appointing new judges will never solve the problem. If Bush and crew were really opposed to abortion, they should just have congress pass a Bill returning it to the states and attach a rider to the bill removing any jurisdiction over it from the Supreme Court. But the GOP says "this is too radical."


The three greatest issues facing America today are Immigration, Free Trade, and Outsourcing. Although the Republican has a good record on immigration, he is in favor of free trade and outsourcing, a more subtle form of treason.


We must seek candidates that are opposed to all 3. Jack Davis is our man.



Good luck, Jack Davis


----------------



NY Times Article: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/16/nyregion/16davis.html


A Maverick Who Worries Both Parties


BUFFALO — Jack Davis, the multimillionaire businessman running here in western New York to unseat one of the most powerful Republicans in Congress, makes his fellow Democrats a little nervous.

Mr. Davis is prone to overstatement. He has warned about “Red China,” for example, and suggested he would take a bat to anyone who sent his sons sexually explicit e-mail messages like those a congressman sent to young male pages.

He defies liberal orthodoxies. He has said he wants to “seal” the nation’s borders and has held memberships in conservative groups like the Cato Institute and the Heritage Foundation.

And he is a bit of a maverick. He has banished his handlers from the room when a reporter interviews him, and he has yet to invite any national party luminary to campaign with him in the district.

His behavior unsettles some Democrats as they seek a prize trophy: the defeat of Representative Thomas M. Reynolds, the chairman of the Republican re-election committee in the House of Representatives.

“It keeps me up at night,” said one Democratic operative familiar with Mr. Davis’s independent streak. “And I’m sure I’m not the only one who stays up at night worried about what he’ll say next.”

And with good reason. Democrats in New York and Washington suddenly have a lot riding on Mr. Davis and the relatively unorthodox campaign he has put together using his own money. After months of being written off as a long-shot candidate, Mr. Davis is in what polls indicate is an increasingly tight race with Mr. Reynolds. The independent Cook Political Report is now rating the Reynolds-Davis race a “tossup.”

Mr. Davis’s fortunes changed almost overnight, after Mr. Reynolds and other top Republicans acknowledged in late September that they had been aware for months of unusual e-mail exchanges between Representative Mark Foley, a Florida Republican, and a former teenage page.

Mr. Reynolds has tried to tamp down the controversy, holding news conferences to explain himself and even running a television advertisement saying that he had alerted Speaker J. Dennis Hastert last spring when he first learned of the e-mail messages between Mr. Foley and the young page. Yet questions about whether he did enough to stop Mr. Foley are continuing to dog Mr. Reynolds, and he has not been a particularly visible figure on the campaign trail in recent weeks.

But one big wild card for Democrats is Mr. Davis, who captured 44 percent of the vote in his 2004 loss to Mr. Reynolds and who has vowed to spend $2 million of his own money to defeat him this time around. Top party officials privately acknowledge that this is one race that they will have difficulty shaping, given Mr. Davis’s independent streak.

“This one is in God’s hands,” said one party official, a national Democratic strategist who did not want to be seen as chastising the party’s own candidate.

Anyone who has followed Mr. Davis’s career should find none of this particularly surprising. In 2004, he left the Republican Party after a bitter dispute that has become the stuff of banter, if not exactly lore, among political types here.

The rift partly stemmed from an episode that occurred at a fund-raiser he attended that featured Vice President Dick Cheney. Mr. Cheney’s aides asked Mr. Davis to leave after he began talking to reporters about an advertisement he had bought in the local newspaper criticizing the Bush administration’s free-trade policies, according to Mr. Davis’s campaign.

“That really stuck in his craw,” said Curtis Ellis, a Davis campaign spokesman. “He was a member of the party his whole life. He gave countless dollars to Republicans. And they shut him down.”

Mr. Davis, who is 73 and married, with 6 children and 13 grandchildren, has deep roots in this region. He grew up in western New York and attended Amherst Central High School. In 1955, he graduated from the University of Buffalo with a bachelor’s degree in engineering.

He went on to serve in the Marine Corps Reserves and in the Coast Guard Reserves. In 1964, after leaving the Coast Guard with the rank of lieutenant, he started a company out of his garage that would eventually make him a millionaire. The company, I Squared R Element Company, makes special heating elements for electric furnaces.

Politically, Mr. Davis is hard to define, though he has a strong libertarian streak, supporting, for example, both abortion rights and gun rights.

He says that he was a Republican for 50 years, first as a Goldwater Republican, then as a Reagan Republican. But he says he became disillusioned with the party because it did not share his disdain for free trade and the multinational corporations that reap its benefits. (He is also critical of Democrats in the free-trade camp.)

In fact, until the Congressional page scandal erupted, he had made his anti-free-trade message a focus of the campaign. Again and again, he has argued that free-trade policies supported by Mr. Reynolds have been a major reason that the economically beleaguered region has lost manufacturing jobs to other countries.

“Reynolds cannot be trusted to defend your rights, your children’s rights, your job, your farm or your industry,” he said in a speech earlier this year that typifies the populist message he has carried throughout the campaign.

But the Reynolds camp has hit back. In a televised ad that began running last month, Mr. Reynolds asserts that Mr. Davis’s plan to increase tariffs on foreign goods to protect American companies “is really a tax increase” on working families. “Millionaire Jack Davis: raising taxes, hurting families,” the spot concludes in a line that irritates Mr. Davis.

“He’s trying to make people jealous of my wealth,” Mr. Davis said in a recent interview at his plant, where he employs 75 people. “I got my money the old-fashioned way.”

Mr. Davis is an amiable man with a slender build, a thick head of white hair and a penchant for letting his emotions flow. He got teary several times during the interview at his plant. And on Thursday, during an appearance at a union hall, he was surprisingly blunt in talking about Mr. Foley’s behavior in the page scandal. “If any of my sons had received that kind of letter from anybody, I’d have looked for a baseball bat and gone after the guy,” he said.

Democratic officials closely monitoring the race like to say that Mr. Davis would not have had a prayer of winning a Democratic primary if a traditional Democrat had challenged him for the party’s nomination to run against Mr. Reynolds.

But the fact that Mr. Davis does not have a pure Democratic pedigree may turn out to be one of his greatest assets running in New York’s 26th Congressional District, a Republican bastion that runs between the suburbs of Buffalo and Rochester.

“All the ways that Tom Reynolds would normally try to defeat a Democratic rival are off limits with Jack Davis,” said Blake Zeff, a spokesman for the New York State Democratic Party. “He can’t call Davis a liberal because it clearly isn’t true. He can’t tie him to national Democrats who might be unpopular in the district because people know Jack’s a maverick who isn’t taking his pointers from anyone but himself.”

Glad to have met you John Randolph

In an hour I'll be heading back home to Arkansaw, Wisconsin after a wonderful weekend of camaraderie at the 17th annual meeting of the John Randolph Club hosted by the Rockford Institute.

Many of the Institute's events like the JRC or their summer schools or its international trips have a coterie of people that makes paleoconservative movement almost like semi-large, extended family of cousins and second cousins in many ways. There were people I had met five years ago at the summer school that I talk about in my book that I became reacquainted with again, not to mention meeting the Rockford Institute staff after a long, long while.

The theme to this year's club meeting was "Global Problems, Local Solutions" and it really sums up what the Rockford Institute and paleoconservatism is about. You can't get more local as a think tank than TRI. It's right on Main St. itself in Rockford, Ill. which is a industrial Midwest town, the "heartland" so to speak. It's in a small two story home that blends into the neighborhood and not in a glass tower. It is not a Washington or New York or Los Angeles institution and thus allows itself to think of practical ways the average citizen can affect global issues right where they live and they don't have to even "think globally," they just need to love they place where they are.

Thus the discussion topics ranged from immigration to the judiciary, to the culture at large, especially as it is being affected by open borders immigration, abortion and the state of American manufacturing and the economy. All of these questions have local angles or ways to deal and think about these issues from a local perspective. The most important aspect of "paleoism" is not basing one's hopes on an "election," or a session of Congress, but trying influence where you live first and foremost. It is a way to break through the political paralysis and deception about issues that has crippled the nation's politics and policy. The Minutemen movement is a perfect example of this, border residents in Arizona doing something about illegal immigration when the federal government clearly would not. If it was not for them, then George Bush II would not have stationed National Guard troops at the border. It is a simple as that.

The JRC also celebrated the 30th anniversary of the founding of the Rockford Institute and the founding of Chronicles Magazine. Institute founder John Howard, the former president of Rockford College, was on hand during the banquet dinner to give a speech on the history of the institute and reasons for its founding. As he said, the cultural upheavals of the 1960s had changed the ethos of the nation that Howard felt threatened the College's ability to fulfill its mission to its students and that the College needed to develop a cultural institution to maintain and fight against the trends that were damaging higher education. Needless to say the Rockford College Institute was not successful in that calling since the College severed all ties to the Institute sometime later. But it was successful in incubating a movement that right now is the only thing out there that willing to defend and promote the traditional conservatism against its bastard children (literally and figuratively).

The founding of the institute as a place to help maintain the mission of Rockford College to its students comes to mind as I reflect on my first JRC meeting. There clearly were a good number of young paleos around my age and a little older and younger who attended and who have maintained contact and correspondence with each other over the past couple of years online. You could see the old and new generations clearly marked in the lounge off the Cliffbreakers Hotel where all gathered after the traditional JRC debate. Clearly for us there is a movement to inherit but are we as young paleos going to value that inheritance or spend it as foolishly as the Prodigal Son did even if we don't intend or mean to. Sometime after the election, after I finish a couple of articles in mind that I wish to write, hopefully on a regular schedule again, I wish to start a dialogue of young paleos who both were here at JRC this past weekend and around the country and the world starting with an article entitle "Reflections of a Young Paleo," about my hopes and concerns about the Generations X, Y (and maybe even Z too) as they, like all young generations, rise into prominence. Are we going to continue on with what has been started, or are going into different directions affected by our own experiences and education? This is what needs to be discussed.

Thanks again to the Rockford Institute, Cliffbreakers Hotel and the wonderful people I met and met once again for a wonderful weekend.

--Sean Scallon

Please to meet you John Randolph

I'll be attending my first John Randolph Club meeting this weekend. It is the paleoconservative club of the Rockford Institute. I'll report back on Sunday.

--Sean Scallon

It takes a police state to raise a child

This article came to me courtsey of Doug Newman
--Sean Scallon

In the aftermath of Wednesday's hostage taking and murder-suicide at Platte Canyon High School in Bailey, Colorado, I can just hear all the gun grabbers proclaiming that it only goes to show that we cannot tolerate guns in -- or anywhere near -- schools. Well, one of their dream billss has just been passed by Congress.

On September 23, World Net Daily reported that the House of Representatives has passed an anti-drug and anti-weapon bill – HR 5295 -- that “would require local districts to develop search policies – including strip searches – with immunity against prosecution for teachers and staff.”

HR 5295 reads in part as follows:

"A search referred to in subsection (a) is a search by a full-time teacher or school official, acting on any reasonable suspicion based on professional experience and judgment, of any minor student on the grounds of any public school, if the search is conducted to ensure that classrooms, school buildings, school property and students remain free from the threat of all weapons, dangerous materials, or illegal narcotics. The measures used to conduct any search must be reasonably related to the search's objectives, without being excessively intrusive in light of the student's age, sex, and the nature of the offense."

Five things came to mind immediately.

First, the requirement of “reasonable suspicion” of a teacher or school staffer is not nearly as strong as the Fourth Amendment’s requirement of a judge’s warrant that shall not be issued “but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or Affirmation.” In the case of Tinker v. Des Moines (1969), the Supreme Court stated that students do not "shed their constitutional rights when they enter the schoolhouse door". These rights also include the right of the people to keep and bear arms.
Second, student-teacher sex is happening more and more frequently across America. Moreover, there is a new trend of female teachers having sex with male students.
Third, while schools have been gun-free zones for years, this do-gooderism did not prevent the orgy of blood at Columbine. The Harrises and Klebolds of the world do not give one flying rip about anyone’s little pantywaist gun laws. On that horrible morning in 1999, the students, faculty and staff were absolutely defenseless as those two little pukes sprayed bullets all over the school.
Fourth, the War on Drugs has been a monumental failure. There is now one drug arrest every 40 seconds in America. Largely because of the War on Drugs, America – the land of the free – has the world’s highest incarceration rate. America has more drugs than ever and more dangerous drugs than ever. Drug prohibition has not solved anything and has created a whole new host of problems that did not exist when we started down this road decades ago.
Fifth, there is no constitutional authority whatsoever for federal intrusion in education. Article 1, Section 8, which spells out the 18 duties of the federal government, does not even mention the word "education". The Tenth Amendment forbids Uncle Sam from intruding in any area not authorized by the Constitution. (The Constitution thereby forbids the drug war as well.)
The same folks who laughed convulsively when Hillary Clinton stated that “It Takes a Village to Raise a Child” evidently have no problem with the idea that it takes a police state to raise a child.

Well, I have some news for police state groupies: disarming students did not stop Columbine and it did not stop Wednesday's bloodshed 38 miles southwest of Columbine. Duane Morrison, 53 -- totally undeterred by everyone's stupid gun laws -- entered a classroom, fired a warning shot and ordered all the students out of the room, except for six girls. Over the next four hours he sexually assaulted several of the girls and killed one -- 16-year-old junior Emily Keyes -- before killing himself.

I can hear people saying: I basically support the Second Amendment, but do we really neeeeed guns in schools?

Let me give you a little thought experiment.

Let's say that one of the students ordered to leave the room on Wednesday at Platte Canyon High had a gun in his book bag. And let us say that, fearing for his life and the lives of those around him, he shot Morrison. The innocent life of Emily Keyes would have been saved and no girls would have been sexually assaulted and traumatized.

Let me give you two more little thought experiments.

Let's say that students were not forced to "shed their constitutional rights when they enter the schoolhouse door". Let us say that Eric Harris and Dyaln Klebold would have been deterred by the mere possibility that someone somewhere on the Columbine campus could have busted a cap on them on that horrible morning in 1999.

Let's say that the mere thought that someone somewhere on the Platte Canyon campus could be packing heat could have been enough to deter psycho sicko Duane Morrison from doing what he did on Wednesday.

When you disarm innocent people, bad things happen.

Insanity has been defined as doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. In the seven-plus years since Columbine, nothing has changed. We throw more and more money at schools, and they just get worse. We lock up more and more druggies, and things just get worse. We continue to disarm students and we get more school shootings. We continue to beg for our government to "do something" after every crisis, and things get worse.

It takes neither a village nor a police state to raise a child. It takes loving, dedicated, involved parents. Nothing will change in America until enough people realize this and starting acting accordingly. No law or "policy" can bring about this change. The needed change has to come in the hearts and minds of the American people.

It takes a police state to raise a child

This article came to me courtsey of Doug Newman
--Sean Scallon

In the aftermath of Wednesday's hostage taking and murder-suicide at Platte Canyon High School in Bailey, Colorado, I can just hear all the gun grabbers proclaiming that it only goes to show that we cannot tolerate guns in -- or anywhere near -- schools. Well, one of their dream billss has just been passed by Congress.

On September 23, World Net Daily reported that the House of Representatives has passed an anti-drug and anti-weapon bill – HR 5295 -- that “would require local districts to develop search policies – including strip searches – with immunity against prosecution for teachers and staff.”

HR 5295 reads in part as follows:

"A search referred to in subsection (a) is a search by a full-time teacher or school official, acting on any reasonable suspicion based on professional experience and judgment, of any minor student on the grounds of any public school, if the search is conducted to ensure that classrooms, school buildings, school property and students remain free from the threat of all weapons, dangerous materials, or illegal narcotics. The measures used to conduct any search must be reasonably related to the search's objectives, without being excessively intrusive in light of the student's age, sex, and the nature of the offense."

Five things came to mind immediately.

First, the requirement of “reasonable suspicion” of a teacher or school staffer is not nearly as strong as the Fourth Amendment’s requirement of a judge’s warrant that shall not be issued “but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or Affirmation.” In the case of Tinker v. Des Moines (1969), the Supreme Court stated that students do not "shed their constitutional rights when they enter the schoolhouse door". These rights also include the right of the people to keep and bear arms.
Second, student-teacher sex is happening more and more frequently across America. Moreover, there is a new trend of female teachers having sex with male students.
Third, while schools have been gun-free zones for years, this do-gooderism did not prevent the orgy of blood at Columbine. The Harrises and Klebolds of the world do not give one flying rip about anyone’s little pantywaist gun laws. On that horrible morning in 1999, the students, faculty and staff were absolutely defenseless as those two little pukes sprayed bullets all over the school.
Fourth, the War on Drugs has been a monumental failure. There is now one drug arrest every 40 seconds in America. Largely because of the War on Drugs, America – the land of the free – has the world’s highest incarceration rate. America has more drugs than ever and more dangerous drugs than ever. Drug prohibition has not solved anything and has created a whole new host of problems that did not exist when we started down this road decades ago.
Fifth, there is no constitutional authority whatsoever for federal intrusion in education. Article 1, Section 8, which spells out the 18 duties of the federal government, does not even mention the word "education". The Tenth Amendment forbids Uncle Sam from intruding in any area not authorized by the Constitution. (The Constitution thereby forbids the drug war as well.)
The same folks who laughed convulsively when Hillary Clinton stated that “It Takes a Village to Raise a Child” evidently have no problem with the idea that it takes a police state to raise a child.

Well, I have some news for police state groupies: disarming students did not stop Columbine and it did not stop Wednesday's bloodshed 38 miles southwest of Columbine. Duane Morrison, 53 -- totally undeterred by everyone's stupid gun laws -- entered a classroom, fired a warning shot and ordered all the students out of the room, except for six girls. Over the next four hours he sexually assaulted several of the girls and killed one -- 16-year-old junior Emily Keyes -- before killing himself.

I can hear people saying: I basically support the Second Amendment, but do we really neeeeed guns in schools?

Let me give you a little thought experiment.

Let's say that one of the students ordered to leave the room on Wednesday at Platte Canyon High had a gun in his book bag. And let us say that, fearing for his life and the lives of those around him, he shot Morrison. The innocent life of Emily Keyes would have been saved and no girls would have been sexually assaulted and traumatized.

Let me give you two more little thought experiments.

Let's say that students were not forced to "shed their constitutional rights when they enter the schoolhouse door". Let us say that Eric Harris and Dyaln Klebold would have been deterred by the mere possibility that someone somewhere on the Columbine campus could have busted a cap on them on that horrible morning in 1999.

Let's say that the mere thought that someone somewhere on the Platte Canyon campus could be packing heat could have been enough to deter psycho sicko Duane Morrison from doing what he did on Wednesday.

When you disarm innocent people, bad things happen.

Insanity has been defined as doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. In the seven-plus years since Columbine, nothing has changed. We throw more and more money at schools, and they just get worse. We lock up more and more druggies, and things just get worse. We continue to disarm students and we get more school shootings. We continue to beg for our government to "do something" after every crisis, and things get worse.

It takes neither a village nor a police state to raise a child. It takes loving, dedicated, involved parents. Nothing will change in America until enough people realize this and starting acting accordingly. No law or "policy" can bring about this change. The needed change has to come in the hearts and minds of the American people.

A coalition unraveling - Foley exposes the fault lines of the GOP and conservatism

There's a dirty little secret that the Republican Party doesn't want you to know about. The party that is supposedly for "family values" and is prominently against homosexual marriage and homosexual rights, is chock full of homosexuals, like disgraced former Florida Congressman Mark Foley.

This may seem very strange. How can the GOP function when one-half of the party - its conservative, white Baptist and Pentecostal base - wants see another part of the party either go through mass reconciliation or burn in hellfire? But those who know and study how U.S. political parties have traditionally been organized know it's not strange at all to see two seemingly opposite groups belong in the same political party. However, how long that arrangement lasts is another question.

Unlike European or Third World political parties, U.S. parties have never been exclusively created for one class of people, one religion or tribe, or one ideology. A good example of course is the Democrats. They were formed in 1796 as a matter of political expediency. Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, representing the landed Southern gentry, needed allies to compete against the then dominant Federalists. They found them amongst the middle and working class people of the large cities in the form of a political machine called the Society of St. Tammany (eventually to be known as Tammany Hall) in New York City, run by Aaron Burr. Madison and Jefferson visited Burr while supposedly on a "butterfly hunting expedition," in New York and cemented an alliance that created the Democratic Party. It was two of the most unlikeliest groups of people ever working together to win elections.

But even unlikeliest groups have to have something in common to stay working together. And for the Democrats, their something was the fact they opposed what its voters felt were their rivals, the commercial and moneyed elite of the East, whether they were known as Federalists, National Republicans, Whigs or Republicans. Likewise, the Republican Party formed with some pretty odd groupings as well: Puritan moralizers from New England, big business, including the nation's new industrial base, anti-slavery Democrats and Protestant ethnic groups in the Midwest. Yet their opposition to slavery and to the South and its way of life helped to bind them together for many years.

Nothing lasts forever of course, and such political alliances come to an eventual end. For the Democrats, their partnerships ended in 1964, when Southern whites started voting for Republicans for the first time en masse and Strom Thurmond switched parties and when reformers took control of the New York County Democratic Party away from Tammany Hall, which signaled their and other political machines' death knell in the years to follow. The Democratic Party could not be a party of political reform and yet have corrupt machines in their midst. They could also not be the party that supported civil rights and opposed segregation while also being a party of segregationists, North or South, especially after World War II. Something had to give.

Now in 2006, we may be very well witnessing the unraveling of another coalition, one that not only defined a party, but a political ideology as well.

Like your average political party, there were many kinds of different people and ideas that made up the conservative movement in the 1950s and 60s, from traditionalists, monarchists, Buckleyites, Ayn Rand libertarians and John Birch anti-communists. What brought all these groups together was their strident anti-communism and a theory called "Fusionism," which welded the tradition-minded to the libertarian. If public morality was on the decline, the people were not at fault, it was the government's fault! If education is on the decline due to bad standards, the government is to blame! If the American people are decent, God-fearing folk, that decency will show if only the government can be removed from the equation! That's Fusionism in a nutshell and it has worked for the last half century.

Some of those libertarians, however, were homosexuals. They were attracted to libertarianism and to Barry Goldwater-style conservatism because it promised a government that would not pry into their private lives which was fine with them. They wished to remain anonymous. Plus, the people that were considered social conservatives back in the 1950s and 60's were urban and Midwest Catholics and Southern Protestants and both groups were aligned with the Democratic Party. So to the Republicans and to Barry Goldwater, such homosexuals were attracted to (in a political way). That attraction survived even when the specter of communism disappeared because such homosexuals were opposed to their counterparts on the left's desire to turn them into another special interest group willing to codify special rights, protections and privileges on their behalf. These were not people interested in being a part of the civil rights movement because philosophically, they opposed it.

But the connection is starting to unravel and it started when the GOP began incorporating large numbers of those very Catholics and Baptists into their ranks who used to be Democrats. They may not have liked homosexual rights anymore than the libertarian homosexuals did, but they also didn't like such people period, especially when the Bible says, according to Rev. Fred Phelps, "God Hates Fags." So long as such homosexuals stayed in the closet, there weren't any problems. But in this day and age of exposure, that's very hard to do. And once such persons became "outed," their lives and careers were wrecked. Terry Dolan, who's National Conservative Political Action Committee (NCPAC) helped the GOP win control of the U.S. Senate in 1980, was disowned by the conservative movement when he was diagnosed with AIDS. When the secretive Arthur Finkelstein, who was a part of Jesse Helms' political organization, "married" his long time companion in a ceremony in Massachusetts, he suddenly found himself no longer in politics. Homosexual Republican Congressmen like Jim Kolbe of Arizona and Steve Gunderson of Wisconsin found their careers short-circuited. Indeed, there is a "gay-ceiling" within the GOP. One can be homosexual and be a member of the party. One can belong to the Log Cabin Society. One can even be in public office on the local level or in a legislative district. But a statewide office? Never. Something Foley found out the hard way when rumors of his sexuality wrecked his planned run for the U.S. Senate back in 2004.

Now Foley has been "outed" in the worst way possible, as a potential criminal pervert. In fact, he really didn't try to hide himself all that well to begin with (Maf54? Are you kidding me? Why don't you wear a name tag too?). Holding public office and remaining in the closet becomes virtually impossible, especially if you are a Republican. Leading a different life from the way you vote and the way you speak in public is a cognitive dissonance that can drive a person crazy, crazy enough to start sending sexually explicit emails to a teenager. Republican House leaders were certainly driven nuts enough to try and hide and protect Foley's peccadilloes in order to protect their Congressional majorities.

That's a lot of hiding to do, almost too much. At some point, something's got to give. Either the social and religious conservatives are going to walk away from the GOP and the conservative establishment in disgust at their hypocrisy and manipulation of their honest views they have no desire to follow through on, or the libertarians are going to walk away because they cannot stand to lead double lives in both their orientation and their votes. Nor can they no longer stand a "conservatism" that wishes to expand the government's reach in U.S. citizen's personal lives for their own political purposes or to advance their own religious views. One group will be true to itself and its political views and the other will be true to the party and consolidate its control of it.

The bet is it's the libertarians that walk. After all, what place do they have in a GOP that's now the party of federal intervention in the Mary Schiavo case, the party of the Patriot Act, the party of torture, the party of immigration restrictions, the party of the Iraq war, the party earmarks and farm subsides every other non-libertarian thing you can imagine? With Democrats more and more chafing at the expansion of federal power in the Bush II Administration, the libertarians are going to find themselves allied with a group of unlike people once again, united only by what they dislike more than they like.

And thus the cycle of U.S. politics repeats itself.

--Sean Scallon