?Listen? Stop Calling me a Crypto-Nazi??

I have always found it interesting that we like to believe in the unparalleled importance of the historical window of time and space we currently occupy.? Apparently, for many people progress is two-fold: it is the manifest movement of the zeitgeist forward, meaning for the better.? Secondly, as technology becomes more sophisticated (ie. ?better? as many people would have you think) so do the problems faced by people.? I like to think that this idea is articulated best by Biggie Smalls, when Puff Daddy (at the time), Ma$e and Notorious BIG performed the song Mo Money Mo Problems.? Since we do not have ?mo? Money? we have to settle with the belief that we have more problems because we general tend to have ?mo?? of everything else (including elapsed time).? What kills me is when people make comments like ?I just think it?s so hard for kids today,? because having to take buses across town to co-mingle races was not hard.? In the political spectrum, people tend to quip that ?political attacks have gotten to personal and ugly;? because meeting a man for the purpose of dueling and shooting a former Secretary of the Treasury dead just wasn?t personal enough (see Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton).? We have a tendency for generational narcissism.?

The latest personal smear being employed in today?s debate regarding Health Care is calling someone a ?Nazi? or comparing another to Hitler or the likes.? I say this in jest, because any Conservative knows that this technique has been used against Conservatives for years and years.? Just to throw in a personal anecdote: I was once caught up in a friendly debate with the ?College Democrats? table at my respective University, when my opposition to some of the ideas espoused by the young lady I was engaging warranted me being called a ?Klansmen? (to which I told her I was unaware they had changed their membership guidelines to allow Catholics in now) and then I was called anti-Semitic a mere five minutes later.? No name calling exchange is quite as infamous as the 1968 exchange between Messrs William Buckley Jr. and Gore Vidal.? A cult classic.

Now we are seeing both sides using the old Nazi name-calling with a tenacious fervor.? Both sides are invoking the images of a regime none of them know much more about than what they have seen in the movies or read in books (I would likely place my bets on the former).? Interestingly enough, nobody dares bring what Nazism entailed; the slaughter of 12 million people.? It?s like we don?t have the gonads to actually say what we mean, leaving those in the audience to deduce this on their own.? Nazis equal Holocaust.? Obama equals a Nazi.? Therefore, Obama will lead to the Holocaust.? What is the point of invoking the memory of one of the most heinous regimes known to mankind if you are not going to invoke the outcome of that regime and what made them so Notorious?? Because your comparison is disingenuous and loathsome; any intellectual nincompoop can call another person a Nazi, and each time that happens, the memory of those who actually knew the Nazis diminishes little by little.? David Frum has a decent article which expresses this sentiment at NewMajority.?

Unfortunately for Conservatives, there is a populist uprising that is including many average Americans as well as ?below-average? Americans.? I don?t say this from the point of view as though I am ?better? than them or an elitist.? I mean this as Americans who know little about their own country, history, or even politics.? The good thing: they are getting involved in politics.? This is the point of a liberal democracy, no?? The bad thing: they are getting involved in politics, and they are tending to be the more boisterous and in the end, the ones on the news.? Funny how short-lived our memory span is however, when not but years before people had signs of President Bush as Hitler, and Republicans as Nazis, and accused us of killing babies for oil and the likes.? Obviously that is proper discourse when utilized by the fringe left because we expect that from them; perhaps we should be proud of the fact that the Right is held to a higher standard, even by the left.? I believe that we should do a better job living up to that standard.? I do not think that the people protesting should stop, they are doing their country a service, they ARE making a difference in politics and their regime, they should be damn proud!? Using the terms ?Nazi? and ?Hitler? loosely is disingenuous and abominable in the end (Leo Strauss use to refer to reducto ad Hitlerum), but it is selfish of us to pretend like we are bearing witness to a hostile politics like none that has ever been seen before.

-rj

Hypocritical Leaders Should Not Sink Social Conservatism

On June 25 I wrote a piece on New Majority- you can see it here. Below is what I wrote originally, before it was edited for space and content:

By now, everyone knows South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford has admitted to an affair in South America. Within hours of his admitting to the affair the frontrunner Republican to replace him has taken his picture down from her campaign website and conspiracy theories about what REALLY happened in Argentina appeared on a blog. Sanford has also resigned as the head of the Republican Governor?s Association.

After Sanford admitted to the affair, one of my co-workers mentioned he thought the Republican Party should perhaps give up its mantle as the party of family values- not a bad opinion, given what happened with Nevada Senator John Ensign and former Congressional members Mark Foley, Newt Gingrich, Larry Craig and other Republicans who have had sordid and underhanded parts of their personal life come to light in recent years. However, as Dinesh D?Souza put it in Letters to a Young Conservative- to paraphrase- Republicans accept that people aren?t perfect, and that even those who proclaim family values will fail (the reference, written in 2002, compares former President Clinton to then- Majority Leader Gingrich), but that the movement should not follow the failures of the imperfect beings who are family values proponents. Instead, the fight must continue through its supporters’ failures.

The question remains for the Republican Party, however, as to whether or not social values should even BE a leading issue, especially with such prominent leadership failures. What does it mean for the party? Personally, I think that while that question is relevant, it’s more important to find reasons to keep up the good fight- it’s easy to forget WHY these flawed and immoral people supported family and social value policies in the first place (besides, of course, to win elections).

I think there are three reasons rank-and-file Republicans should not give up the fight, both on a grassroots and national level- first, there are definitive links between family and economic success that should be put in the public eye; secondly, all political “values” are hypocritical at the leadership level, so why target the social values; and lastly, there are undeniable societal and cultural benefits of upholding conservative social values.

Regarding the links between family values and economic success and security, Robert Patterson defended the idea of social values as a leading fight for Republicans on June 3- he says the Republican leadership must “fully [recognize] the interplay between the economic and social conservatism that the party claims to represent, and holding up what [David] Goldman terms ?impoverished demography? as the key domestic concern of the 21st century.” Included in Patterson’s analysis are the fact that in the first part of the last century “American families were vibrant and strong, which helped hold the welfare state in check” (something that is missing today, with our massive divorce and illegitimacy rates), and instituting a variety of Social Security, Medicare and other tax breaks for families in the nearby future. He also believes we should look to Teddy Roosevelt- apparently he was quite the family man, and considered it his topmost priority even as president.

Secondly, one only has to look at the D.C. school voucher issue to understand the far-reaching hypocrisies of the Democratic Party. See my piece here from several weeks ago, where I talked about how the school voucher system in our nation’s capital took 1,700 children and put them into a voucher system that has them almost a full half-grade ahead of their equivalent peers in the normal D.C. public school system for half the cost to the taxpayer, less than half a decade into the program. Yet, for some reason, President Obama and Education Secretary Duncan- the former who claimed on the campaign trail he would support what worked for education- are allowing Democrats to kill the plan once the current crop of students graduate. Considering that Wall Street Journal, The Heritage Foundation and the CATO Institute are fully in support of the voucher program for its success, one would think the Democrats (who claim they support the poor, minorities and children) would jump on the chance to help these kids. Apparently, though, unions and government control of schools is more important. Of course, there is simply NO questioning that Democrats care about poor minority children- isn’t that why most of the media hasn’t jumped on this hypocrisy, even though it will take literally thousands of students in the nation’s worst education district and put them on the economic, educational and cultural path to success?

Generally, I would avoid the prior paragraph in arguing for supporting Republican social and family value policies- tit-for-tat is not a wholly productive or wide-ranging way to win elections, appear above the fray of petty politics or prove solid leadership. However, since the Democratic hypocrisies have much larger effects on the general populace (see Charles Krauthammer’s piece on drilling policies in the United States last August) than a simple, immoral affair, I think they are worth pointing out.

Beyond the political, however, are the simple facts of upholding socially conservative values and their unquestioned benefit for society. As Patterson pointed out, strong families help the economy. Furthermore, Concerned Women For America points out that teenagers are happier when abstaining from sex before marriage and women are less depressed when following the same habit. Numerous studies also show that Natural Family Planning methods of sexual activity lead to a less than 5% divorce rate as opposed to the 50% average rate in America.

Unfortunately, the rest of us are flawed, too- we may not be having affairs but we are judging these politicians, shallowly looking at the social conservative movement through THEM as opposed to through the people it truly affects on a grassroots and local level and getting wrapped up in the “reality show” that is the 24-hour news cycle. For those who really believe in the family values movement, we must convince the rest of America through constant, unceasing examples of upstanding moral behavior, forgiveness for those who fall short, and the ready reminders that it IS the conservative social movement that will help keep America great, not the low moral standards of the Democratic Party. As someone at my college explained a few years ago, Democrats aren’t shocked at the behavior of other Democrats because of the party’s own low moral standards- is this really who we want leading the social value fight in America? A failed high standard is certainly better than a successful low moral standard.

- dustin

Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell A Sticking Point for Homosexual Democrats

President Obama, continuing to put feet in multiple camps, asked the Supreme Court to not take the case of a military officer dismissed under Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell because his administration was trying to end the policy under its own terms. However, many homosexuals and homosexual activists are angry at this, saying they put a lot of effort into electing President Obama and are waiting for the dividends.

I wrote a piece on New Majority in April about Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, stating my support for the policy. In Friday’s Washington Post, however, a column by retired Army general and former chairman of the Joint Chief of Staffs not only supports repealing the policy but also asks his readers to look at the literally worldwide evidence against Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. His piece is very compelling, especially in its lack of condemnation for those who disagree with him. I recommend people take a good look at it.

Obviously, gay Democrats will almost certainly support President Obama’s presidency even if his promised repeals of the Defense of Marriage Act (another of his campaign declarations) and Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell fall through, as Rep. Barney Frank has done regarding DOMA. However, I wonder if they are finally seeing through the charm, and realizing that perhaps President Obama really isn’t all that much better than a) most politicians, and b) Carrie Prejean.

-dustin