Not-a-Lemming : democrat

Mr. Obama, Don't Build That Wall!

FutbolGuru — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 14:44:00 GMT

This week we are celebrating the 20th Anniversary of one of the 20th Century's most shining moments - the Fall of the Berlin Wall. A barrier that represented far more than an edifice of concrete and steel. The Berlin Wall represented a rift across Europe and a major ideological divide between East and West. And as long as that wall remained, so loomed the specter of war. And when it fell, though it signaled the beginning of much work, it also spelled a major victory for the democracies of the West.

The Berlin Wall separated not just familes in a city but an entire nation. And as I mentioned in the preceeding paragraph, it also represented, in a much broader sense, an ideological gulf. A gulf in how cultures had decided to treat the human condition. The Soviets on the east side of that wall were led by the Russians and the philosophy of Marx which claimed it could elevate the common man to his rightful place in society while punishing the greed of the wealthy. In this philosophy the State was represented by the Communist Party which viewed human rights as secondary to the needs and aspirations of the State. In the Soviet Union humans were granted rights at the whim of the State.

Opposing this philosophy, The West, spearheaded by the United States, was armed with a much different view of human rights that was backed up by a unique Constitution. In America's Constitution it is the State that derives its power from the People and there is no sanctioned Party. The west, for the first time in history, viewed human rights as the center of our world view, codified in the precepts of freedom and liberty, and indeed superceding the wishes of the State. The State, in fact, was granted power from the people. These two governments had evolved along much different paths and by 1989 had arrived at vastly different places.

The Soviets, in their attempt to place the entire service and manufacturing sectors under the authority of their government in the hopes of being 'fair', had reached an unsustainable level of corruption and inefficiency. While their government promised retirement and health care to every citizen, both were services in name only. The fastest way to die in the Soviet Union was to check yourself into a state hospital - the only legitimate hospitals in the country. And pensioners had become paupers, living out their 'golden' years in crumbling tenements, entirely reliant on increasingly slim government subsidies. The only people with access to useful services were Communist Party members who used technically illegal private hospitals and doctors. And with their hands in the government coffer Party officials skimmed enough funds to fuel private Swiss accounts that ensured their golden years would indeed be golden.

In contrast, across the sea In America, hard work was being rewarded with stability and security. Wise investment resulted, over time, in net return. Those with the energy and tenacity to pursue the American dream nearly always found it. Sure, there was no free lunch, but Americans knew that a free lunch wasn't worth eating. There was, and remains, a poor class with little desire to work. And as a reward for their laziness they received little. Those putting in the time and energy were not punished for their achievements but rose to the middle and upper classes. Perks for fortitude were comfortable retirement, quality health care, and security. It was understood by many and for the most part, backed up by laws, that if you didn't work, you were going to pay the price. The result was a vibrant growing nation whose philosophy spread to the far corners of the globe and elevated those nations it touched with booming economies and strong middle classes.

And those behind the wall could only look across and dream. Little did they know that their dreams would soon become reality, and with the fall of the Wall in 1989 their own economies exploded. Nations like Poland, Germany (East), Hungary, The Czech Republic, and others have experienced unprecedented growth and affluence in the last 20 years. Sure, their people don't have the promise of free retirement and health care, but at least they now have the opportunity to pursue these goals since the promise was never anything more than a cruel lie. The fall of that Wall, more than any other event in history, proves the wisdom of the Founding Fathers and their vision of limited government.

So why, 20 years later, is the United States, brick by brick, rebuilding that Wall? The ideologies of the East proved the greatest social failure of all time. Never had so many people been so oppressed and deprived for so long, relative to their neighbors, throughout all of recorded history! And the very country that paved the way for the destruction of that heinous barrier is now adopting the ideologies that smothered those trapped behind it. If anything proves that health care, retirement, manufacturing, banking, and economic planning have no business in government, the Berlin Wall is it. Yet the United States, after spending trillions of dollars to first halt the expansion of that Wall, and then ultimately see its destruction, is step by irrevocable step, taking over health care, retirement, manufacturing, banking, and economic planning! We are building that Wall. And the two major political parties, neither of which is endorsed in our Constitution, are making it happen. The Democrats (aided by their willing accomplices in the media) through direct action and the Republicans (aided by their willing accomplices in the upper class) through direct inaction. And once that Wall is in place, as the one in Berlin showed us, it is incredibly difficult to dismantle and often comes at great pain and only after generations of oppression.

Will we as Americans be the next generation of oppressors? Will we make the Soviet mistake even while those crushed by that terror, and those who corrected it are still alive? Many of whom are still in power? Will we doom ten generations of Americans to misery and corruption? Or is the mass suicide of the lemmings unavoidable? Lemmings, lacking a written word, a spoken language, and a culture, can be forgiven for their gullibility. Even if a lemming manages to survive being herded over a cliff by an overeager film maker, it can't warn its kin of the danger the next time around. But humans. Humans have no excuse. And should we decide to codify this path in law, not even our children - much less history - will remember us kindly. "You had a golden age and you threw it away." That's not me. Is it you?

Futbol Guru - www.not-a-lemming.com

"Any man who will trade liberty for security deserves neither." - Benjamin Franklin

Killing Conservatism

FutbolGuru — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 13:45:00 GMT

So Rush Limbaugh wants to own an NFL football team, huh? He does seem to know alot about, and have a true love for, the sport. Funny how things a person says years ago can come back from the past to haunt them later in life. Sort of like what this blog will do to my writing aspirations if ever I get the attentions of a gatekeeper (i.e., agent or editor). But for now my anonymity is doing a great job of keeping me, well, anonymous.

In reality I don't think Rush is a racist. If he were, he wouldn't make such seemingly racist comments. No, I think in this case he is a victim of his own self-honesty - at least on that subject. Then again, that Donovan McNabb comment was pretty stupid and he should have known better.

Regardless, it seems his bid for partial ownership of the St. Louis Rams has met with an untimely end in what he says is a vicious smear campaign bent on destroying conservatism. While Al Sharpton and his many detractors are definitely not conservatives, I think Rush's perception of who is destroying conservatism is skewed. Though he is right, conservatism is on the decline.

Even if the talking heads on the left are trying to destroy conservatism that sort of assault is generally ineffective. It is tantamount to Americans trying to convert Al Qaeda. Conservatives simply don't repond to those kinds of attacks. Just like Liberals don't respond to attacks from the right. In general, either camp, when under assault from the other, tends to circle the wagons. And in many cases, attacks from the opposition strengthen the base. The problem with conservatism isn't the attacks from the outside, the problem is what's happening inside the wagon-circle.

Every successful movement goes through a series of stages. There is the genesis when the group's founders carve a niche for themselves and begin attracting followers. It is their energy and the truthfulness of their message (in the ears of the converts) that builds momentum by attracting true believers. In most cases the group's founders not only preach the message, but live it as well. They become icons and examples of the ideologies they champion.

The second stage can be broadly categorized as growth. In this segment the group gains additional members not only from the truth of the message but from the appeal of a successful group. Except during this stage one begins to see that new members are less and less true believers, but simply people who want to be part of something that matters. In this stage you'll find people from the opposition flocking to the new movement like lemmings. Especially if the opposition is already in the third stage - corruption.

Success of a movement always breeds corruption because in addition to attracting true believers, success always attracts followers who have no interest in the core ideology. They just want to be in charge. It is these people who usually become the second generation of leaders. Because they have no stake in the ideology they are more free to move fluidly and are nearly always more aggressive and predatory. At the same time they are often charismatic and charming and will do whatever it takes to rise into leadership positions. For these people charisma and charm formed early in life as they realized they had nothing substantive to offer but were skillful at manipulation of others to get their way. In many cases they are sociopathic and in a primitive society would be banished because they not only offer nothing useful to survival, they demand to be served. In modern, affluent societies though they find willing followers because they personify the energy of the movement's success in themselves, and the majority of the second stage converts are only there for the party. Or rather, the partying. These leaders also tend to promote only those like themselves which but reinforces the growing problem.

Corruption of course leads to decline. A hypocritical group of leaders can only sustain the charade for so long before the acolytes doing all the work - that dwindling number true believers - get fed up and leave. When that happens the ideology collapses and all you are left with is a large group of angry people with self-aggrandizong leaders: the Republicans in 2008. It is also where the Democrats found themselves in 1994 when they were tossed out by an up and coming group passing through the second stage: Neoconservatives.

Reagan rekindled the dormant flames of Conservatism and he was, there can be no doubt, a true believer who was amply endowed with charisma and wit. True conservatives flocked to him in droves followed by millions who just thought he was a cool guy because he stood up to the Soviets. It was the second generation of his followers who took the reins of power in 1994. This included George Bush Jr., Karl Rove, Dick Cheney, Newt Gingrich, Marc Sanford, and many others, as well as popular figures such as Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity who effectively self-monetized the swelling tide. While I won't say all these people are not conservatives, their actions do identify them as people whose personal aspirations trump the mandates of their own ideology. And some of them, such as Mark Foley and John Ensign were conservatives in name only, using the ideology only for personal gain and herding their only followers like lemmings to the cliff.

It is these people, I charge, with destroying conservatism - Not Al Sharpton, Henry Waxman, Barbara Boxer, or even Barak Obama, who in fact tend to strengthen the opposition's core. From Rush Limbaugh's drug addition to Newt Gingrich's extramarital affairs, from Dick Cheney's greed to George Bush's mistaken invasion of Iraq, from the seemingly uncontrollable sexual appetites of an endless string of elected officials, the party of Conservatism has become the party of Corruption and is being killed from within. Can the Republicans take a lesson from the Democrats who have reinvented liberalism in the form of a young, charismatic outsider? With the same old names being bandied about, I got to tell you, it looks like a trainwreck in slow motion. Or a modern adaptation of the film White Wilderness. And I for one am not going to wear a furry suit for those characters.

Futbol Guru

How Republicans Can Beat the Deomcrats

FutbolGuru — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 14:13:00 GMT

I'm not a Republican. But I am a conservative.

I'm not a member of any political party. It isn't because I don't care, however. Quite the contrary, I am terribly concerned about the direction this nation is taking. I just don't have the time and energy. Like many Americans that have been called "The Silent Majority" I'm too busy working and raising a family to even get down to the courthouse and register, much less attend political rallies on weekends for people who have no more business running the country than I would have participating in a beauty pageant.

Conservatism is dying fast. Conservatism. That word's picked up a lot of baggage in the past few years as has the word liberal. Conservative simply means a conservative or limited interpretation of law. The law is what it says and there's nothing between the lines. Judges don't make law, they interpret based on what the writers of the law intended.

Liberal on the other hand is a liberal or broad interpretation of law. Liberals believe there is writing between the lines of law and a liberal judge will interpret law based on what they believe the writers would have meant had they written the law today.

Personally I think both liberals and conservatives are necessary for a healthy state. Too many conservatives and the law becomes rigid, inflexible, and merciless. A terrible burden. Too many liberals and the law becomes meaningless with little or no consistency. One balances the other. Except right now things are seriously out of balance and tipping rapidly towards the demonization of conservative thought in general.

Conservatives have been damaged through their affiliation with bad leadership. George Bush II was a Republican and was supported by conservatives. Guilt by association because, in addition to coping with an attack on our soil, he completely ignored the economy. The result is a terrible recession. We can argue all day long about who's fault it really was - an after effect of Clinton, a liberal congress, etc. In the end, a Republican was in the White House so he gets the blame. That's the mantle you don when you accept power. If you don't like that fact, don't whine when you lose elections.

At the moment conservatives are rapidly losing ground. Obama is a master politician and statesman even if he is one of the most liberal politicians in Washington. I believe that in time the people will realize this and when that happens we must have a viable alternative. The current Republican Party ain't it.

The current Republican Party is the party of greed and selfishness. They cashed in big time during the 90's and 00's. I personally know at least five people who became millionaires over the last dacade and a half. Yes, they did work hard and they deserve their reward. The potential for reward is what drove their hard work and innovation. The problem is what happened after they became wealthy. To a man they disengaged from greater society, upgraded their homes, bought vacation homes, purchased luxury automobiles, and began taking expensive international vacations. Consider the governor of South Carolina, Mark Sanford, who ran off to drive along the coast of Argentina because, "I wanted to do something exotic ... to get out of the bubble I am in." What?!? The bubble he is in? I'll tell you what bubble he is in - he's in a bubble of greed, selfishness, and self-importance. He's got no business advising anybody of anything and what wisdom he may have once had is long gone. What an irresponsible twit. He's living in fantasy land. (NOTE: So Sanford was out screwing around on his wife and children. Clearly the man has no concept of the word vow/oath. Just one more evidence that the elites feel they are not bound by rules the rest of us follow implicitely - further proof that the wrong people are there for the wrong reason. And he probably ran as a family values, Southern, Church going man.)

One of the reasons liberals succeed is because they put their money where their mouth is. The Jews have remained a powerful and viable ethnic group for thousands of years because they help one another, directly, in everything from starting businesses to publishing books. And I don't mean through charity to the local synagogue. And not through spreading their wealth thin across multitudes of low-class losers. No, they directly support the talented among themselves. Simply having talent and working hard is not enough. It has never been enough. Help is always required to break through. Help is how liberals cultivate emerging talent regardless of the initial standing of the talent because they know that in the long run strengthening their ideological base will strengthen themselves. Conservatives have forgotten this. Rush Limbaugh with his rugged individualism and pulling on his bootstraps is complete bunk. In the end, somebody who thought there was money to be made, set him up as a talk show host. It wasn't his radio license or his station, but listening to him you'd think he invented not just radio, but the concept of language itself. Rush agrees with me on many things but he's taught me nothing.

How many people do we know who possess great talent and ambition but who are stuck in life? Good, hard working men and women who have dreams and plans but who must spend their time working to earn money for their families. While this ethic is good and pure and necessary, a lifetime spent struggling prevents their values and ideals from percolating outward. Back to Limbaugh. Clearly the man hasn't spent much time cultivating family values. This is epidemic in our nation. As soon as plans are threatened, divorce follows. What wisdom is there to be gained from that? Though it does make climbing after success easier if shedding excess baggage is as easy as taking out the trash. How many wealthy elites do we know with children in rehab or worse? The wealthy among us have far more time to mingle and attend political functions while their lives of ease have robbed them of wisdom. I don't know how many times I've heard a conservative say, "I don't have time to go to a rally, I have to work!" Or, upon seeing a teeming multitude of fanatical liberals, saying, "Don't those people have jobs?"

We may laugh when we say this but it is exactly why conservatives are getting killed. Passion, wisdom, and a connection with the people don't come from wealth. Passion, wisdom, and oneness with the masses arise from struggle, perserverance, and commitments honored. Marx knew this when he wrote the Communist Manifesto with its emphasis on class struggle. He knew that the elite had no connection with the masses and was able to use basic principles of human nature to create a movement that shattered world peace for a hundred years. We can use these same tactics, but instead of using them to make everyone mediocre, we can use them to provide an avenue to greatness.

So how do we win?

First, wealthy conservatives must realize that their fortune wasn't made in a vacuum. Their hard work was a major contributing factor and should not be minimized, but a stable society full of hard working men and women was just as important. And somewhere along the way they received help.

Second, unbridled avarice is incredibly damaging to everyone. Indeed, the very privations that once drove innovation and ambition, once removed, contribute to rot of the soul. Down that path you once go, never enough will you have to satisfy. Better to have a bit less than enough. Better to stay lean and ready to fight than go soft. You did not create the society from which you benefitted, you are only a part. You will die and if all you leave is money for your children, your life will be a failure.

Third, stop whining about the media. It isn't their fault. Media or no media, if it was so great to be a conservative everyone would be one. Make conservatism something to be sought after. Right now, ideology for the sake of ideology doesn't pay bills. Just ask the Russians.

Fourth, wealthy conservatives must seek out talented conservatives from among the masses and aid them in their path to success. Whether young or old doesn't matter. In fact, one of the biggest mistakes conservatives make is in thinking that a man or woman must be young to contribute from their benevolence. In many cases, the best candidates are middle-aged, middle-class men and women, battle-hardened from a lifetime of raising children and working tough jobs so that they have developed deep, penetrating wisdom. You want to talk about perserverance? It is only because of their dedication to family that they have been unable to 'get ahead.' It is these people, that once turned loose, will destroy their liberal counterparts. DESTROY. Wouldn't you love to see that carnage and know you had a part in making it happen?

Fifth, and without this step, nothing will change. Directly help these talented individuals. How, you may ask? Form a non-profit and pay their salary. Hire them directly. Give them money so they will have the time and resources to succeed. Whatever it takes, because you know damn well the opposition is doing exactly that. We all know the Democrats are using our tax dollars to buy votes through an infinite number of programs. And how many liberal elites have non-profits that give grants to liberals? George Soros. Bill Gates. The list goes on. You want to win, you better get out and buy some of your own votes, and you'll have the satisfaction of knowing that you helped one more conservative to success.

Don't make the mistake of thinking this is charity. It isn't. This is war. And in the immortal words of Private Hudson, "We're getting our asses kicked right now!" Yes, you can accept your reward from society, retreat into your hilltop mansion and drive your expensive cars to and from the airport. You have the right to do that, but is it right? When you see the news and shake your head at the deplorable state of society, you have only yourselves to blame. You have the means to make a lasting change. A true legacy to leave your children and grandchildren. Will you not put aside your thirst for material goods, largesse, and a life of ease and entertainment that you have rightfully earned, and turn your resources towards saving the nation. Without you it will not last.

Barney the Congressional Dinosaur

FutbolGuru — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 19:01:00 GMT

I love you, you love me, we're a happy family, with a kiss and a hug and a smile -

Woops! Wrong Barney. I was thinking of that other purple dinosaur. The one who represents Massachusets' Fourth Congressional District. Barney Frank.

I'd like to say that nothing surprises me anymore, but everytime I reach that point something even more amazing or outlandish happens. As with this afternoon while listening to the radio. I heard, with my own ears, clips from a recent Barney Frank speech in which he actually said the mortgage crisis was caused by conservatives pushing people into houses they couldn't afford. Then he went on to say they were doing this while he, the purple dinosaur, was out campaigning for affordable RENTAL PROPERTY! It isn't really worth a blog post other than the utter contempt in which he must hold us, the fawning masses.

Under the Clinton Administration it was Barney Frank in particular who threatened mortgage companies with federal investigations under racial discrimination laws if they didn't start approving more mortgages to low income families. It was Barney Frank who championed Freddi Mae and Fanny Mac up to the day they collapsed. Since FDR at least the mantra of the liberals has been putting every family into a home that they own. And now he's lauding the merits of affordable rental housing? If it weren't so sick it would be hilarious. And that is the exact phrase he used: "AFFORDABLE RENTAL HOUSING." And, "...conservatives pushing people into houses they couldn't afford..." is a direct quote as well, though in the interests of readability I edited out the snake-like slurring and hissing so prevalent in the dinosaur's voice. For completeness and journalistic accuracy I include the actual quote now: "... conshuvativesh pusshing people inchoo houshesh zhey couldn't affowrd."

Of course the only way mortgage companies could get the payments low enough for low income people to afford the expensive houses they were buying was to invoke things like sub-prime, variable interest rate loans. It trundled along for a while because the economy was red-hot and energy prices were low. Throw in a bad war and a spike in fuel prices and the whole thing blew up like a helicopter in a Hollywood action flick. It isn't a stretch to say that Barney Frank, more than any other single person, is responsible for the current financial crises which began as a ripple from the sub-prime mortgage disaster - which he is now trying to push off on the conservatives (aka Republicans.)

Is this FutbolGuru-worthy? Not really. It's just politics as usual. But what is FutbolGuru worthy is the generalization of this incident. Barney Frank will get away with his latest lie. There are literally millions who will seeth at the Republicans for precipitating this disaster. And while I'm no fan of the Republicans either, they didn't cause this particular mess. They were too busy invading Iraq to think this one up. Yes, Barney Frank will succeed. He'll get re-elected. He'll continue to craft legislation that reflects his mendacity and contempt for us. And why shouldn't he? He sure as hell knows he's lying. But he also knows we're a bunch of lemmings and 99% of us won't stop long enough to see where we're headed. And those of us who do will get run over. And all the while he just smiles and watches the furry little bodies hurtle themselves into the void. Because he just thinks it's damn funny. That's just the way the purple dinosaur rolls.

Futbol Guru, http://mises.org/community/blogs/not-a-lemming

Bureaucracy In Action

FutbolGuru — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 13:30:00 GMT

I was looking over my posts the other day and said to myself, "Futbol Guru, you sure have become cynical." So I've been thinking about my attitude and trying to decide if I'm being fair or if I've gotten into a rut.

Well it's always possible to focus on doom and gloom. My lovely wife often accuses me of having gotten into a habit of seeing only the negative. And there is much to what she says. In fact, I am by nature a very optimistic person. I am always hoping for the best - which is a trap because "the best" rarely happens. When I tell her that she just frowns. Maybe she's right. Maybe I do tend to focus on the negative. At the same time, when you're headed for a cliff the global negative in your future tends to outweigh any local positives. I suppose there is a school of thought that prases the lemming who turns to his running-mate and comments on the beautiful weather. Fortunately I didn't go to that school.

The Obama administration continues to surprise me and I was especially astounded this very morning. And no, I'm not being cynical. On the way in to work I heard on the radio that President Obama has directed the Attorney General to drop all charges against Senator Ted Stevens, effectively throwing out his indictment. Honestly I don't know whether the man is guilty or not. I know he's an idiot and doesn't know the difference between the internet and a series of tubes but that doesn't make him guilty of accepting bribes.

What I wonder is why the government spent millions of dollars bringing the case against him, effectively handing his senate seat to a challenger from the other party, and then decided the case was indefensible. And how many other senate and house seats were affected by the bad press as a result of the scandal that apparently never existed in the first place? I really don't care anymore what party did what to whom. The point here is that the citizenry has a very good reason for their utter lack of faith in government because there are only two possibilities here. 1) An indefensible case was successfully prosecuted against an innocent man or, 2) charges were trumped up by the opposition part to gain a Senate seat. Either way the conclusion is inescapable.

Bureaucracy. What is it? We know its effect - corruption, inefficiency, and grid lock. But we don't often think about the actual causes of bureaucracy. Consider cancer as an example. We know what cancer does, and for a long time we just treated the symptoms. The patient (sometimes) survived a little longer and was (sometimes) more comfortable, but the end result was the same with or without treatment. Only now are we beginning to understand what causes cancer: mutations in cellular DNA that lead to rapid, uncontrolled, cellular growth. And with understanding new treatments are coming.

Though very similar in effect to cancer, Bureaucracy is much easier to understand. And as can be done with many things in life, to get at the root cause we will begin at the effect and step backwards until we find it. Soof the way science works, or following the money trail.

First Step Back: Bureaucracy comes from government officials making bad decisions. E.g., Let's invade Iraq.

Second Step Back:These decisions can be bad either because the official making them is incompetent, or they can be bad because they are driven by political considerations rather than attempts to address an actual problem. E.g., Lets prosecute Ted Stevens to get his Senate seat.

Third Step Back: So the people making the decisions are either a) incompetent, or b) politicized. E.g., Let's invade Iraq.

Fourth Step Back: This is where it starts getting muddy. The point in science where there are more unknowns than equations. Or where the laundered money comes back clean. How does an incompetent person get himself elected to public office? One way is to be the son of a former President (Bush). Or Senator (Gore). Or have a butt-load of cash (Bloomberg).This used to be called dynastic succession and is one of the reasons we fought a conflict called the Revolutionary War. Regrettably Dynastic Succession seems to have come back in to fashion, maybe because we stopped teaching history in schools.

Another way to get elected if you don't happen to be royalty is to say the right things, to the right people, in the right way. Like eloquently articulating the need for substantive change (aka - politics) in a melodious baritone (Obama). Or demanding a return to family values (Bush).

Once the desire for efficient government administrated by honest public servants is supplanted by politics or heredity in the minds of the people, as has happened in America, you wind up with incompetent people in positions of power making decisions for all the wrong reasons. The results are catastrophic. Invading the wrong country. Deregulation of the banking and investment industry. Laws to limit entrepreneurship. Presidents trying to run car companies. Prosecutions aimed at gaining control over government institutions. Trillions of dollars transferred from the poor to the rich. National economies at the mercy of enviro-political activists.

Where will it end? When will it end? Will we as a nation continue to run head long over that cliff, driven forward by fear and paranoia created and exploited by those who would profit from our deaths? Or will we, as a people, come to our senses and curtail the power of the parties. We can do it. The internet has taken the power of information away from the media and given it to the people. This very blog is a manifestation of freedom in action. But will we use it? Lord knows we could all use something to give us hope. I'm tired of being cynical. But then again, maybe I'm not cynical. Maybe I'm just reporting the truth.

-Futbol Guru, http://mises.org/community/blogs/not-a-lemming

The Religious Wrong and The Republican Retreat

FutbolGuru — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 16:31:00 GMT

Limbaugh was calling it, “…the end of the Democratic Party.” And so it might have seemed in 1994 to a party awash in victory and full of the hubris that comes with it. President Clinton had overreached with his gun control measures and secret health care meetings. His past was catching up with him – the affairs, the secret trysts, the not-so-secret trysts. He was lifting the ban on homosexuals in the military, giving the go-ahead on state-funded abortions, and had placed a number of far-left liberals in cabinet positions. The knee-jerk was swift with the Senate and the House of Representatives swinging to Republican control in an unprecedented single election.

And what was the overriding campaign message of the Republicans who swept to power? Family values. Almost to a person they claimed strong Christian values and a need to return to honesty and temperance in politics. And they were right. The flood was vast and nationwide at all levels of government, religious conservatives took offices from dog catcher all the way to Speaker of the House.

For a few years it seemed the nation had made a good choice. Certainly honest politicians are better than dishonest ones. And the old guard Democrats, in power for forty years, had lowered the bar of corruption to new depths. But in the end it was all an illusion. The Democrats who’d become so corrupt weren’t corrupt because they were Democrats, they were corrupt because their party had been in power for forty years and that’s what happens to any party in power for forty years. The Chinese have a saying, whom the gods wish to destroy they give forty years of success. Except in the case of the Religious Right it only took about fifteen.

So what happened? How did the Religious Right turn out to be the Religious Wrong? Within a few short years the new conservatives had become every bit as corrupt as their Democratic counterparts with affairs, lies, and scandals, even to the point of invading the wrong country! That’s a pretty big mistake. For a party with God on its side the fall was precipitous and catastrophic.

The answer is really quite simple and is based on the difference between religion and spirituality. While it is unfashionable to discuss politics and Bible in the same breath in this country, it is impossible to understand either without doing so. Religion is a system of rites and practices which dictate the practices of a group. Spirituality is a deep-seated, philosophical viewpoint that defines the worldview of an individual. Religion is a group activity. Spirituality is individual. The Religious Right was religious but not spiritual, a fact that is easily proven by their habits.

There was a time in this nation when the term Christianity went hand in hand with moderation. Not moderate in the political sense, but moderate as an approach to life, which is the basis of the message given by the founder of Christianity, none other than Jesus. Whether or not one believes Jesus was the son of God, it is very difficult to deny his historicity and his message of love and moderation. Indeed, one of his more well-known statements is that it is harder for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to go to heaven. He went on to say that this didn’t forbid wealth, but that wealth made the Christian walk very precarious.

In my experience with Christians over the last few decades however, very few of them practice moderation at any level in their lives. Indeed, they consider wealth – the very thing that Jesus said would keep them out of Heaven – as a blessing from God. From their houses, to their lifestyles, to their cars, to their kids, there are no practical differences between Christians and non-Christians. There is a lower incidence of sexual promiscuity among Christians and a mandatory Sunday morning club meeting, but that’s about it. And since they are every bit as fixated on wealth as their non-Christian counterparts, they also lack the one thing that Jesus said would set them apart from others; love.

The Religious Right that took over Congress in 1994 brought very little of the L-word to Washington. They did bring a lot of ideas about how a person should live their life, but other than their mandatory Sunday morning meeting and a strong outward revulsion to homosexuality, there was very little difference between them and their Democratic counterparts, many of whom also went to Church regularly.

I’ll go back to the Bible again. And this is important because whether or not you believe the Bible, it describes the lifestyle and philosophy that the Religious Right claim to embrace. Love, the Bible says, is essential to everything a Christian does. Indeed, without love, the scriptures go on to say, everything else a Christian might do will sound like a clanging cymbal. Now my son plays the cymbals in band, and I can tell you right now there is nothing more jarring and cacophonous than him walking through the house bashing those things together. The only thing you want is for him to STOP. And that was the reaction to the Religious Right when they came to town with their seemingly chaste lives yet were just as hooked on riches as anyone else and entirely devoid of love. They were a clanging cymbal. And it got old.

To make matters worse, they also brought a healthy dose of self-righteousness. While the Bible clearly states that it is those who are poor in spirit who will receive the Kingdom of Heaven, our new leaders and their ardent supporters across the hinterland were utterly convinced that God was on their side. And nowhere was this more apparent than in the actions of George II and many of his supporters who, I believe, felt he was ordained by the Almighty to smite the Arabs. It was on this basis that, even when it was glaringly obvious that he had invaded a nation unjustly and hundreds of thousands died, he remained convinced he had done the right thing. It wasn’t his decision, it was God’s, so how could it be wrong. After all, he prayed about it.

There are those who believe in a God and those who don’t. Those who profess Christianity and those who don’t. But for any of these groups it can’t be debated that true Christian behavior – social habits which are often practiced by other religions too – results in more efficient government, more honest business practices, and more peaceful interaction between people. Honesty, kindness, and mercy go a long way. But love and moderation are central to Christianity, and when you leave these out the philosophy becomes nothing more than a way to control groups of people and gain an advantage over them, which various governments the world over have been doing for over 2,000 years now.

That is why the Religious Right became the Religious Wrong. And why they failed not only themselves but the entire nation. It is why they are no longer in power and indeed, why so many in the country and the world look at the Religious Right and turn their eyes from Christianity in general. Are they Christians? That’s not really up to me to decide, I’m not in charge of Christianity. But the next time you see some guy quoting from the Bible while trying to get himself elected just remember what Jesus had to say about politics: “ ”

-Futbol Guru, http://mises.org/community/blogs/not-a-lemming

The Religious Right and the Republican Revolution

FutbolGuru — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 14:48:00 GMT

Since the election of Ronald Reagan as President in 1980 the United States has seen a monumental shift of political power.

Prior to this the South had been a Democratic stronghold as a result of the Civil War. Even a hundred years after, it had not been forgotten that Lincoln, a Republican, had invaded and decimated the South over what is still claimed by Southerners as primarily an issue of states rights.

Following the Civil War, reconstruction policy, shaped by the victorious Republicans and enacted by unscrupulous carpetbaggers, stymied economic recovery of the south for generations. Mistrust of Republicans was widespread by the Democratic white population even as the Party of Lincoln was embraced by emancipated Republican-voting blacks.

This general separation of race and party affiliation held until the election of Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1932 when his New Deal provided social programs to which the black population had access. While blacks did not leave the Republican Party en masse immediately, this was the beginning of the exodus. And even though it was the Republican Eisenhower administration that formally began the civil rights movement, it was Kennedy and particularly Johnson who parlayed it into a full-fledged welfare program complete with public housing and direct monetary disbursements. Seen by many blacks as directly benefiting them, the migration to the Democratic Party accelerated greatly.

What resulted, especially in the south, was a tense mix of politics that persisted throughout the sixties and seventies, with local Democratic Parties run exclusively by white men but supported by the vast majority of the Black population. This took time to correct and today we see these parties having become well integrated with a mix of leadership all the way to the top. For this reason it is generally believed that the rise of the religious right was in response to racial pressures when in fact, it was not.

As Blacks were leaving the Republican Party and flocking to the Democrats for economic reasons there were other very important social changes taking place. Most notably the counter-culture of the sixties that embraced faux-peace, tolerance, and came to symbolize the anti-war movement. Because the Democratic Party consisted primarily of liberals, who are less resistant to change, these counter-culture individuals found a much more comfortable home with than with the more traditional, conservative, Republicans irrespective of the changing racial makeup of the party.

But not only did these hippies, as they were called, bring their faux-peace-and-love agenda to the Democratic Party, they also brought high-profile drug use, widespread promiscuity, homosexuality, and other radical notions. Even a cursory examination of the Bible, however, shows that these thoughts and ideas are highly counter to Christian doctrine. Moreover, pro-welfare policies were seen by traditionalists as 'communist' leaning, and part of the tradition of the traditionalists is to reject anything that resembled policies of our sworn enemy, the Soviet Union. Over time these new arrivals to the Democratic Party, with their free-love, drug use, and social rebellion came into conflict with the old guard who still went to church and espoused capitalism. And as they began to infiltrate the leadership of the Party, their ideas started showing up on the platform, first in the North and steadily moving Southward.

This movement progressed and by the late seventies the Democratic Party had, among other liberal changes, become aligned with homosexuality, abortion, and socialism. It was becoming difficult to be a conscientious Christian and retain a Democratic affiliation. That is when the shift occurred. As the Democrat party moved more and more to the left, the Christian constituency of the Democrat Party rebelled and began leaving in droves. So many in fact that the majority of Southern Whites are now Republicans and the majority of Southern Blacks are now Democrats. A reversal of the situation less than 100 years ago.

While this was most pronounced in the south it happened across the nation and the result was what came to be known as “The Religious Right,” a class of religiously affiliated people who were literally forced out of the Democratic Party for ideological reasons. Its peak was probably during the Clinton Administration when numerous government figures changed party affiliation in response to well-known behavior of the then Commander in Chief. The result for the country was a huge displacement of Democrats in the 1994 election with both houses of Congress coming under Republican control.

In recent years it has become convenient for socio-political figures such as Jessie Jackson, Al Sharpton, Jerry Falwell, and George II to solidify their party base (and prolong their personal income engine) by playing race cards only adding to the myth of racially-motivated separation. And since this myth favors the Democratic Party, the Democrats have been more than willing to let it persist. The media, which also leans to the left, has completed the revision of history until it has come to be ‘fact.’ And like lemmings, the majority of the American public has dutifully joined their march towards the sea and the long drop that precedes it.

NEXT: The Religious Wrong and the Republican Retreat

Futbol Guru, http://mises.org/Community/blogs/not-a-lemming

The Conservative Conundrum

FutbolGuru — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 14:29:00 GMT

Interesting news this week with various outlets reporting that President Obama may not be able to function in a press conference without a teleprompter. It makes me wonder exactly how much information he’s being fed, and what he actually knows. Remember the disastrous Sarah Palin interview when she didn’t know what the Bush Doctrine was? If she’d had a teleprompter with a savvy technophile on the other end she might have been able to fool us. Though Ms. Palin has great legs she wasn’t, and isn’t, ready to run the country. And despite Mr. Obama’s melodious voice I don’t think he’s ready either. I wonder who is actually running the country. Perhaps Joe Biden, Mr. Gravitas himself?

I was also a bit shocked this week when Mr. Obama signed the Omnibus Budget Bill behind closed doors. Or rather, his statement was surprising. He said it was a bad bill full of earmarks but that he was going to sign it anyway. Old business needed to keep the country running. The insinuation is that it is Mr. Bush’s old business even though it was a Democrat congress that drafted, crafted, and put the bill on his desk. He’s getting exactly what he wants and telling the country it’s a bad bill. Slick, but at least he’s being honest. It is a bad bill.

This is government at its worst. Bureaucracy run amok. Even the president is enacting legislation that he is admitting is bad. So why is he signing it? I sure wish I had someone else to vote for. But who?

The problem, for conservatives at any rate, is that there’s nowhere else to turn. Mr. Bush and his administration literally ran this country into the ground. What will crawl out of that smoking hole, if anything, no one can know. Sure there was some bad left-over, Clinton-era economic policy as regards lending, but the deregulation of the investment and banking industry let the wolves into the hen house like never before. And invading the wrong country sucked trillions from the national coffers. The combined effect along with a President who was seemingly uninterested in domestic affairs put us where we are today.

I had very high hopes in 1994. Conservatives, it seemed, were finally in control of the nation, swept to power on a wave of anti-liberal sentiment born of draconian gun control policies, nationalization of health care, and various social agendas (and other things) being crammed down everyone’s throat. But they quickly became comfortable in Washington and we soon learned they were no different than their predecessors. Newt Gingrich, Mr. Family-Values himself, was found to be having an affair even while he was leading the investigation into President Clinton’s affair with Monica Lewinski. Limbaugh, the voice of conservatives, became a drug addict and, seemingly unable to have a stable long-term relationship, divorced one wife after another. The religious right became every bit as materialistic and hedonistic as their liberal counterparts with the sole exception that they didn’t practice homosexuality. At least not in the open.

The problem with the conservatives can be best illustrated by Wayne Parker’s third (failed) run for congress in Alabama’s 5^th Congressional District in 2008. He ran against Bud Cramer in ’94 and lost by a few hundred votes – mostly due to the NRA’s last-minute backing of Cramer. He lost again in ’96 by a larger margin. And when he heard Bud Cramer wasn’t running in 2008 he decided to run again.

It was a perfect opportunity for him since the opposition was weak and we desperately need a conservative in office here in North Alabama. Knowing Wayne from his previous bids, and hopeful of a strong campaign, I volunteered my writing and analysis. What did Wayne do? He went out and got the same people who led him to failure twice before, said the same things he said the previous two times, and failed again. I don’t know if my help would have made a difference but at the very least it would have been a fresh perspective on things. I have little doubt that this happened all over the country. Yes, Wayne is a decent guy and probably would have made a good congressman, but he and the Republican Party made the same fatal mistakes they made before. They’re like a bunch of lemmings – straight over the cliff.

Mr. Obama, on the other hand, is a fresh face. He isn’t from a political dynasty or a wealthy family. He’s not from Washington. He’s been a liberal all his life. But the people who control the party saw his talent and let him in. That is what separates liberal parties from conservative parties and why they stay in control most of the time. They know that new blood is the life blood of any organization. This doesn’t absolve them of bureaucratic tendencies, they have them too, but it manifests itself in different ways.

Now more than ever, conservatives, specifically the Republican Party, need to recruit new blood. They need new talent. Because the people in power right now have abused the public trust to the point that they are, in the words of Howard Dean, laughable. I can’t criticize Mr. Obama and then extol the virtues of the Republicans because they have none. They are the 2-10 coach criticizing his 1-11 replacement. There is no one to vote for. No one the average citizen can identify with or trust. No one from humble origins. No one from ‘outside’ Washington. No one ‘there’ because they are wise, and charismatic, and passionate. No statesmen. You say that Sarah Palin is new blood? We all know why she got picked. Because she’s sexy. She’s not new blood, she’s hot blooded. She got picked for the worst reason of all – Madison Avenue advertising. That’s even worse than the reason they picked George the II.

I guess it isn’t surprising the country is such a mess. The people driving the bus are only there because their daddy drove the bus. And if things don’t change, drastically, and soon, the bus is going to go right over a cliff like a giant, yellow, mega-lemming.

-Futbol Guru, http://mises.org/Community/blogs/not-a-lemming