Credibility is a problem for Conservatives 

One of the problems that Conservatives have, when expressing their concerns about the direction that our country is headed, is to be taken seriously. Specifically, I am referring here to what this Democratic administration, with cooperation from the Democratic controlled Congress, is doing not only to America’s economy but also to the very foundations of our laws, our republican system, and our way of life. There are several reasons for this credibility issue, all of which must be overcome if we are to be successful in reversing that direction. 

I would first refer my readers to two articles that recently appeared, closely paralleling each other but originating from widely diverse sources. They are included here primarily because their authors are not the normal conservative columnists that appear in the major newspapers or on the popular conservative websites. The first article, entitled   Something of Historic Proportions is Happening, was written by Tim Wood, a history professor at Southwest Baptist College. It first appeared on December 16, 2008 at waronyou.com. The second article was written by a Russian blogger, Stanislav Mishin, entitled American Capitalism Gone With a Whimper. It appeared in the April 27, 2009 at Pravda.ru, the English website of Pravda. They provide both an insider’s view and an outsider’s view of what is happening to America, but they are eerily similar. So grab a cup of coffee or a shot of Jack Daniels (maybe a double), sit back, and check out these articles. A link at the bottom will bring you back here. 

Mr. Wood wrote, “Yes, a perfect storm may be brewing, but there is something happening within our country that has been evolving for about ten - fifteen years. The pace has dramatically quickened in the past two.” It is not a mystery. It is Liberalism/Progressivism. It is a cancer that has been not only feeding on the entitlement society that our nation has become, but has been encouraging in our schools, in the media, and in most of the facets of entertainment that Americans dote on. It is a false ideology that has convinced far too many Americans that not are our traditional values of hard work, ambition, and personal responsibility out of date, but that those who subscribe to those values have been taking advantage of the rest of us. They say that it is time that we correct this social injustice. They say that they themselves can do a better job of running our banks, our auto industry, and our health care system. They tell us that we have been wasting our money on national defense, and that if we would be more tolerant and less aggressive in foreign policy, there would be no need for a strong military. 

There are also influential people in the Republican Party who are telling us that in order to change things, the Party must become a “big tent”. Hogwash! If having a “big tent” means accepting the unprincipled pragmatism and inconsistencies of “moderates” like Arlen Specter, Susan Collins, and Olympia Snowe, we might as well surrender to the policies of the Left, for those Republican Moderates (RM’s) are all too frequently nothing but rubber stamps for the liberal agenda.  

My fellow Coloradan, Phil Mella, takes on moderate Republicans on his website ClearCommentary.com with his article entitled Why We Must Reject Moderate Republicans. Specifically, he goes after David Brooks, an RM who recently castigated conservatives for placing too much emphasis on “untrammeled freedom” and “rugged individualism”. Brooks stated that instead, conservatives should focus more on “civic order”. That sounds like it came straight from Obama’s teleprompter or Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals. Mella responded to Brook’s ramblings:

As President Obama so frequently reminds us, today’s economic morass began long before his name was even known to more than a small handful of Americans. It began when the Republican majority in Congress (yes, there once was such a thing) lost sight of the principles that gave them that majority in 1994, and we had a president that, in a misguided spirit of bipartisanship, never vetoed bills coming his way from Congress regardless of their cost. It was a Republican Congress and a Republican president that allowed crooks like Barney Frank and Christopher Dodd to call the shots on regulating the financial markets. It was the misconduct of a Republican Congress that squandered what should have been the advantages of a robust economy that helped Democrats regain a majority in 2006.  

The antidote for out of control liberalism is not moderation or compromise. The answer is a return to conservative principles and values. Anything else means acceptance and acquiescence. It would mean an acceptance of the status quo and a defeat of traditional American values. Moderation and compromise validate the words of Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer, who recently said, “The old Reagan philosophy that served them well politically from 1980 to about 2004 and 2006 is over. But the hard right, which still believes ... (in) traditional-values kind of arguments and strong foreign policy, all that is over.”  It is time to prove the good senator wrong. But just how do we go about accomplishing this? 

House Minority Whip Eric Cantor recently announced that a Republican "Listening Tour" would be traveling around the country seeking the public’s opinion on the issues. In general, the plan was belittled by many of my fellow conservatives who are confident that they themselves know what it is that Americans really want, and that it is not unbridled government spending and intervention in every aspect of our lives. I am not so sure that this is necessarily correct. Certainly, it is for the half-million people who turned out for the tea parties, but that is not necessarily indicative of the public as a whole. I see some value in listening to what Americans will say--not, however, to determine if the Republican party should move to the right or to the center, but rather to develop the strategy that will be needed to change public opinion to reject the Democrats’ Far Left agenda.  

We Conservatives have a huge task before us. We must not only overcome the Obama mystique and popularity, but we are also confronted by a hostile media and by a confused society that is more concerned about its “rights” than about its freedom and liberty. I suspect that in time, Obama’s policies and performance will take care of the former, and that education will help overcome the latter. More important than either, however, is that we have to offer clear policy alternatives, ones that reflect and demonstrate conservative principles and values. Just talking about those principles and values will accomplish little; we have been doing that for far too long. Success will only come if we are able to apply those principles and values, and shed the image of being a party that just says, “No!”
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Related Articles:

Why We Must Reject Moderate Republicans
By PHILIP MELLA
May 6, 2009 at ClearCommentary.com 

When the premise of an argument is mischaracterized, either deceitfully or ignorantly, its conclusions are inherently suspect.  An annoying theme of moderate Republicans is that conservatives cherish freedom and individualism to their detriment.  David Brooks, the scrupulously moderate Republican, makes that case in a recent New York Times editorial, using the motif of Western movies as his backdrop.

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Wanted: Political Counter-Terrorists
By GRANT ELLIS
May 07, 2009 at American Thinker 

Without an effective strategy against modern leftist political terrorism, America is doomed to a fate called France.

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Finding the center
By LLOYD BROWN
May 07, 2009 at American Thinker 

It is disheartening to hear some Republicans calling for the party to be more "centrist." That would only be desirable if the meaning of the word had not been redefined by the Old Media.
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An Apparent Hoax 

If you happened to be browsing on the internet late last night and stopped by here at The Drum and Cannon, you may have seen an article entitled Special Report, which appeared for only 30 minutes or so before being taken down. The article dealt with a news item supposedly first reported on April 2, 2009 by the Associated Press. The subject of the report attributed to AP was the release of Barack Obama’s college transcripts by Occidental College that indicated that Obama had registered as a foreign student and had received a scholarship normally reserved for foreign students at American colleges and universities. My original tip came from an article that had appeared in what I consider one of the most reliable conservative websites available, which shall go unnamed here for privacy reasons. Because of the website’s strong credibility, I felt it to be unnecessary to verify its accuracy. Apparently, however, my source had been taken in, as had many other conservative websites, by a cleverly constructed hoax. AP has denied ever releasing such a report, I later discovered, and a search of its website did not yield any record of such a report. 

I would not speculate as to who was the instigator of this hoax, but later contemplation of the alleged facts in the report should have made me far more cautious. If Barack Obama had indeed registered as a foreign student under the name “Barry Soetoro”, as the report alleges, surely someone who knew him or knew of him at school would have come forward with this information long before now. One human characteristic that conspiracy theorists consistently overlook is that people are very poor at keeping secrets, especially in an age of in-depth investigative reporting. Furthermore, to suspect that a conspiracy existed as long as 25 or 30 years ago defies all logic. 

Until Obama provides definitive proof of his eligibility to serve, the question will remain an open one. It serves no useful purpose, however, to disseminate false information, unless the purpose for doing so is to discredit those who seek the truth, whatever it may be, in the first place.

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Colorado’s Electoral College allocation bill defeated in State Senate

On an issue that mostly affects Colorado voters, but affects other states indirectly, the State Senate on Friday (5/1) failed to vote on a bill that would have changed the way in which Colorado’s Electoral College votes would be allocated. The bill, which earlier had been passed by the State House of Representatives, was tabled in the Senate for the remainder of this session, which ends this week. This move effectively ends this third attempt to change the process. 

In an effort led by Senate Republicans to defeat the bill, its sponsor, Senator Chris Romer, finally recognized that he did not have enough votes to get the bill passed and agreed to have it “held over” until after this session ended. Any new effort to change the process would require the introduction of a new bill in next year’s session. 

The bill called for Colorado’s electoral votes to be awarded to the U.S. Presidential candidate who obtains the greatest number of popular votes nationwide, regardless of which candidate was favored by Colorado’s voters. Today they are allocated to the candidate that receives the greatest number of votes in Colorado.  

The new method of allocating electoral votes would have become effective only when similar measures had been passed in any combination of states that have a combined total of 270 electoral votes or greater, the number of electoral votes needed to elect a president. Thus far, only a small number of states have adopted the new arrangement. 

Those in support of the bill argued that Colorado’s Electoral College votes should reflect the will of the American people as a whole. Opponents countered that this could eliminate the ability for  Colorado to have any influence in the election of a president, and that candidates would, in the future, completely ignore the state while focusing entirely on larger states such as California and New York. It was seen by many as a blatant attempt to minimize the power of conservative voters in the West and Midwest. 

On the same day, the State Senate Appropriations Committee approved and sent to the full Senate for a vote a bill that would put all of the state government’s checkbooks online for easy access and search capabilities by the public. House Bill HB09-1288, entitled the State Transparency Bill, had been earlier approved by the House, and is expected to be passed by the Senate. Colorado would join several other states, including Texas, Missouri, and Nebraska in implementing full transparency of state expenditures, a process that has been found to save millions of dollars in wasteful spending. It sounds like something that should be used in California, but it is doubtful that a sufficiently large computer has been developed thus far.

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Suppressing dissent by any other name 

The rationality and value of any ideology can best be measured by the extent to which its followers must go to suppress competing ideologies. The most obvious example, of course, is extremist Islam, whose adherents justify the use of the most brutal punishments known to man to ensure conformity with its teachings, self-justifying that brutality with their own interpretation of the words contained in their “Holy Book”, the Q’uran. Moderate Islamists find no need for these methods of coercion, for their ideology is rational and reasonable, at least for them. Left to themselves, they can be at peace with each other and with the world. Unfortunately, they are the primary targets and most numerous victims of their irrational brothers. 

The concept of ideological coercion is the antithesis of the traditional concepts of freedom and liberty; freedom to believe what one wishes to believe and liberty to do what one perceives to be in his best interest within the law. The phrase “within the law” creates a problem however, and is subjective and relativistic. For example, I could claim that those under the control of the Taliban have liberty, subject to compliance with Sharia Law. I could even go one step further and ask, what makes the U.S. Constitution a better source of law than the Q’uran? The answer is quite simple. Even using the most liberal (small “L”) definition of liberty, the Q’uran does not also provide for freedom—freedom of speech, freedom of religious belief, freedom of association, freedom of the press, and freedom to petition our government. In other words, the Q’uran does not have a Bill of Rights, other than those that allow honor killings or wife beating. How you define it, liberty without guaranteed freedom is meaningless, and it requires coercive compliance. 

However, a discussion of Shariah Law is not my purpose here. I used it simply to illustrate a point. In his best-selling book Liberty and Tyranny, Mark Levin defines any suppression of freedom and liberty to be tyranny, and I would agree with that definition. It is only a matter of degree. Shariah Law, along with Communist Law as we see in North Korea, or Nazi law as we saw in Germany in the 1930s and 40s, are merely the extremes. Here in the United States, the Obama Administration and the Democratic Congress are promoting new laws that, although less egregious than those we have discussed, constitute tyranny nonetheless. The recent memorandum issued by the Department of Homeland Security regarding potential threats posed by certain “rightwing extremist” individuals is but one small example of the current trend to stifle dissent. It followed an earlier memorandum warning of potential threats coming from the Left, especially those who feel that America is not moving to the Left at a satisfactory pace. 

The most notable move to suppress dissent in this country is that which seeks to silence conservative talk radio. Originally, this effort planned to re-impose the “Fairness Doctrine”, the now-defunct law requiring that radio and television outlets that provide political opinion were to provide “equal time” to opposing points of view. The Fairness Doctrine was eliminated by President Reagan because it was deemed to impede freedom of speech, and also because it had become difficult if not impossible to enforce with the rapid growth of radio and television media.  

Another reason why this approach was rejected was that it did not specifically target that portion of the media that was the actual thorn in the side of the Liberal/Progressive movement—talk radio. It was decided that a different approach would be required. 

That approach was to be taken would localize government control of the material that was being provided by the radio stations, with the threat of FCC license revocation for those stations that refused to fall in line. In 2007, a think tank headed by the eventual co-chairman of the Obama transition team, John Podesta, issued a recommendation calling for equal opportunity “diversity” in local radio station ownership and control. It was felt that female and minority owners of radio stations would be far less inclined to air conservative talk radio programs such as the Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity shows. The realization that such an approach might also negatively affect liberal programming was felt to be acceptable because these shows had low listenership and were generally considered ineffectual. 

Although the Podesta Plan went nowhere, a similar plan was developed by the recently formed FCC “Advisory Committee on Diversity for Communications in the Digital Age", which will meet this week to lay out its intent to require certain stations to be “operated by female and minority owners” in an effort to increase the likelihood of liberal-oriented content over the airwaves. If this assumption is correct, and I believe it is, the reach of nationally syndicated talk shows would be sharply reduced, while leaving few if any reasonable legal challenges for conservative broadcasters, producers, and sponsors.  

Not too surprisingly, the new FCC committee has no conservative representation in its membership. Of the 31 members, more than a dozen are members of liberal/progressive organizations. Seton Motley, writing in NewsBusters, stated, “Chairing the meeting is Henry Rivera, a former FCC Commissioner who was (and presumably still is) a strong proponent of the Censorship Doctrine, also mis-known as the "Fairness" Doctrine.”  Rivera was handpicked by the President as committee chairman, a move calculated to guarantee the desired outcome. Motley also quotes a statement by the Presidential Candidate Obama, who stated, "I'm committed to having the FCC review what our current policies are in terms of media diversification. And part of what I want to do is to expand the diversity of voices in media, or have policies that encourage that." Of course, the Committee is not investigating, nor is it expected to investigate, television news channels such as MSNBC or CNN.  

If the Obama Administration is successful at stifling talk radio, I would fully expect that an alternative delivery method will be found to extend the careers of the Rush’s and Sean’s and Hugh’s of the world, and it would probably be via the internet or cable and satellite radio. After all, conservatives are the champions of free-market technical innovation and individual initiative. However, it would come as no surprise at all to see the liberals move to suppress free speech on the internet as well.  

“The old Reagan philosophy that served them well politically from 1980 to about 2004 and 2006 is over. But the hard right, which still believes ... (in) traditional-values kind of arguments and strong foreign policy, all that is over”, according to Democratic Senator Chuck Schumer. One of those “traditional-values kind of arguments” that conservatives hold dear is the natural rights of the individual, which is embedded in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. Today’s Democrats no longer hold to this value, and many of them have admitted as much. For them, primary rights today pertain to society as a whole, rather than to individuals. That is why they find it easy to suppress the basic rights of some, if they perceive it to be beneficial to society as a whole.

It is not difficult to understand why this new ideology is accepted by so many members of the American electorate. First of all, there has been the intentional effort to “dumb-down” Americans through our educational system, as every formal or informal civics-awareness poll clearly illustrates.  

Secondly, Democrats have very successfully implemented the “victimization” strategy taught and promoted by the radical Socialist Saul Alinsky, in which large segments of society are convinced that they have intentionally been held down by those in power, and that the government is their only hope to achieve social justice. This was the true meaning of the campaign goal of “Hope and Change.” In order to achieve this goal, the traditional American concept of “the rights of the individual” had to be replaced. 

There are many Americans, however, who do not agree with this ideology of hope and change. They could be seen by the hundreds of thousands at last month’s “Tea Parties”. Their message can be seen posted on thousands of internet websites, and heard broadcast over 3,000 radio stations around the country. The American Left realizes that if it wants to see its ultimate goals realized, it will have to silence these voices of opposition. In doing so, they have to conceptually adopt the same strategies and tactics of the Taliban to suppress the opposition. It is merely a matter of degree. Therefore, their ideology is likewise irrational and valueless. _________________ 

As I would not want to be a slave, nor would I want to be a master. – Abraham Lincoln

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