David Brooks says that if the Republican Party is again to earn the right to govern, it ought to start out by looking overseas:
(Tory Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer George) Osborne is not merely offering pain, but a different economic vision — different from Labour and different from the Thatcherism that was designed to meet the problems of the 1980s.
In the U.S., the economic crisis has caused many to question capitalism. But Britain has discredited the center-left agenda with its unrelenting public spending, its public development agencies and disappointing public-private investment partnerships.
Osborne and David Cameron, the party leader, argue that Labour’s decision to centralize power has undermined personal and social responsibility. They are offering a responsibility agenda from top to bottom. Decentralize power so local elected bodies have responsibility. Structure social support to encourage responsible behavior and responsible spending.
Now that would be change that I could believe in. Sadly, I don’t believe that the Republican Party in the US is there yet:
A new poll in the November 3 special election for the congressional seat, NY-23, vacated by Army Secretary John McHugh, confirms what knowledgeable observers have suspected for a while: The candidacy of the official Republican nominee, liberal Dede Scozzafava, selected by local party officials and supported by the national Republican establishment, is collapsing. The Republican who has a real chance to defeat Democrat Bill Owens is Doug Hoffman, the Conservative Party candidate—a Republican with a profile far more like the popular McHugh, and one far more in sync with the district. What’s more, if elected, Hoffman would caucus in Congress with Republicans—whereas Scozzafava could well pull an Arlen Specter and defect to the Democrats.
Putting foreign policy aside, the Republicans while in power governed as a reduced calorie version of the Democratic Party vision – with tax cuts! Thus we got ever-increasing public spending, creeping entitlements and intrusion in to the private sphere at the expense of mushrooming deficits, which – from the standpoint of conservatism as it is lived in the heartland – was the worst of all possible outcomes.
In opposition, Republicans are once again being pilloried as the “party that says no” by Democratic partisans: No to immensely higher budget deficits, no to public option health care policy that threatens to crowd out private insurance, no to crippling cap and trade policies based on self-serving pseudo-science, no to federal ownership of private means of production. In fact, the only place the party has said “yes” is to General McChrystal’s Afghan troop surge, which might be helpful if ever the president can formulate an opinion of his own.
Now, these are useful things to say “no” about (or “yes” as the case may be) but they do not formulate a positive theory of government that can be pitched to the American people in a way to give them a valid choice between the party that wants to do everything for them – whatever it might cost – and the party that wants to give them the tools to do what they might for themselves and get out of their way, to free them to think, innovate and create.
Leftists will say that Ronald Reagan’s vision of smaller government at home and unapologetic exceptionalism abroad was a failure – I would submit that it has never really been tried.
If the people find the promise of government bureaucrats taxing them until they bleed in order to dispense them tid-bits government largess hollow, tire of more government in favor of more liberty, come to favor fiscal restraint rather than debt-laden redistributionism, come to prefer unabashed apologias to global apologies for the inherent evils of Amerikkka, where are they to go?
The Republican Party cannot answer them. They have not even asked it of themselves. But they will have to, just as Britain’s Tories have, if they are to offer the people some other choice than smothering paternalism and smothering paternalism-lite.
From what I see from my vantage point in Occupied Northern Virginia, Republican leaders are not asking the right questions. They are not asking what is good for the country. They are asking what will get us back in power. Or even worse, what will get me favorable comment from the Washington Post. The Republican Congressional leadership who ran the party to almost total defeat is still largely intact. Conservative Republican candidates are largely disdained by the Beltway elite. Where indeed are conservatives, hoping for American revival, to go?
Chaps, I would agree that the weakness of the RP is that their primary desire is whatever will get them back into power, not what if best for the country. Still far too much “Democrat Light” for me to be enthusiastic about.
If a third party, with a strong conservative/libertarian core, had a chance of winning on the National level I would vote for them. The only person I see out there in the wilderness that might be able to do it is Palin.
Well, they must be doing something right, leading the polls as they are in the Gov. race.
On the gubernatorial races, I am hoping that VA and NJ will go conservative, and further hope that if so it is a trend that will continue next year.
I do believe that the States are far more responsive to its citizens than the Federal Government is though.
Not sure what the historical trend/connection is between elections of Governors and Federal Reps.
Regards,
“Leftists will say that Ronald Reagan’s vision of smaller government at home and unapologetic exceptionalism abroad was a failure – I would submit that it has never really been tried.”
That sounds like a right-wing version of communist apologia. “There’s never actually been *real* communism anywhere. If there had been, it would have worked.”
The Reagan Revolution did work – as far as it went. When you see the comparison figures for unemployment today the are often cited as the worst in 27 or so years – or when Ronald Reagan became President on the heels of the Carter years. Funny I don’t remember hearing much from Reagan’s administration blaming everything on Carter but I digress. Reagan got the tax cuts passed that re-energized the private sector and led to the longest expansion in our nation’s economy. Not for nothing he revitalized a badly depleted military and stood down the Soviet Union (all while being skewered by the Democrats as being a lunatic because he wouldn’t kow-tow to the Soviets and called them an evil empire. His own State Department cringed when he spoke at the Brandenburg Gate and demanded the Gorbachav should “tear down this wall”. We know now that not only were the millions enslaved behind the Iron Curtain inspired with the prospect of hope for freedom the leaders of the Soviet Union heard as well knowing that the game was up. Of course, Reagan failed, or Congress failed, to do the sort of restructuring required to avoid long term deficits. Remember Reagan actually proposed in all seriousness to eliminate the Departments of Education and Energy – the former being viewed an unnecessary intrusion of the Federal Government in local school decisions and the latter an unnecessary fantasy of Jimmy Carter formed to “end our dependence on foreign oil”. While killing these two useless departments (hows that foreign oil thing coming?) would not, in itself, have cured the fiscal red ink it would have set a powerful precedent that the Federal Government isn’t full of kingdoms for life and worthless waste can flat out be eliminated.
So now we didn’t try the kind of small government Reagan truly championed. But the parts of his agenda worked wonderfully. If you don’t think so go to Eastern Europe and ask the man on the street old enough to have lived through the Cold War what he thinks of the America of Ronald Reagan.
Sadly I don’t see anyone to match his character on teh scene today.
The splintering is symptomatic of the Party not enunciating clearly what it stands for. “Slightly to the right of Obama” is not a platform.
Damn your good! That should be an op-ed piece in NYT or WSJ!
Just think how good his BOOK is going to be!
Reagans great advantage is that he didn’t give a damn about what the WAPO or NYT said about him. It takes a person who truly knows himself and has thoroughly thought through his views and political philosophy. And further, has gone past that point to package them in coherent programmatic public policy prescriptions that isn’t “wonk talk;” that doesn’t attempt to take the watch apart to tell people what time it is. In this Reagan was unfortunately perhaps unique in that, in addition to his Hollywood training as an actor, he had all those years at GE to hone his public speaking skills in front of small groups across the country for GE. And the time on the bus and plane to write down his thoughts (there is an excellent book by a young black female PhD which compiles all of those yellow-pad writings, etc., he made while traveling–I’ll try to find a link. FWIW his boss at GE all those years was my next-door neighbor in Louisville [Louisville has a huge GE appliance plant there on east side of town at Appliance Park and is a big GE retirement community as well] Old Gus had some interesting stories to tell about Ronnie Ray-Gun)
The problem is that we are all waiting for the second-coming of Ronnie in a “Waiting-for-Godot” fashion. News Flash: He is not coming. Reagan was unique not only for the reasons already mentioned, but had the utterly unique experience as a Republican of having been President of a bona fide union as well as a twice elected Governor of the largest State in the Union–in short a combination of background experience/qualifications not likely to be repeated.
There is an excellent post on this subject, the finest I have EVER read, by a young 29 yr-old home-schooling Mother in Ark. named Freeman Hunt entitled: “He is Not Coming.” Go to her blog and scroll down to her Fri., 12 June post (It’s all on first page–she posts infrequently)and read. It’s a MUST READ, really, REALLY is. @
http://freemanhunt.blogspot.com
Virgil, I believe you may be referring to “Reagan’s Path To Victory: The Shaping Of Ronald Reagan’s Vision: Selected Writings” co-edited by Dr. Kiron Skinner, http://bit.ly/4aepJG. Excellent book.
Another book that I enjoyed reading was: “The Reagan Diaries” by Douglas Brinkley, http://bit.ly/1apYbN. Mr. Brinkley’s book added to my respect for Ronald Reagan.
As you mention, not many people know of Mr. Reagan’s background with GE and his tenure as the President of the Screen Actors Guild; two formative experiences for the future President.
Agree that not reading “He is Not Coming” is to deny yourself a pleasure and a thoughtful moment. Most impressive. Would that I could write with such insight (and do so coherently).
Virgil
Wow. Freeman Hunt’s post is really rather amazing, but in an extremely sobering way instead of a pleasing one unfortunately. The level of thought is pleasurable to see on account of it’s unique clarity and depth but it is not a fun truth to contemplate.
I am in my late twenties, have a BS and MS (in a hard science albeit) and had the extreme fortune of going to a fairly well respected private high school. This is by no means meant to boast but I think I could fairly claim to be “educated” by the standards of my generation. Yet around February I read Allan Bloom’s “Closing of the American Mind” and it made me realize that I’m not really. My engineering degree is useful and has paid dividends I am extremely grateful for, but I’m not educated. I have never been asked to contemplate human nature in all of my schooling. I have never had to make a single moral judgement in any assignment unless the “answer” was already given, un-surprisingly usually in favor of something trivial, farcical and barely value oriented such as learning about the “benefits” of solar power. I have never had to read the Illiad, the Odyssey, the Aeneid, Dante’s Inferno, a single Philosopher (Socrates, Plato, Descartes all absent) or any of the major classics of our civilization beyond MacBeth and Pride and Prejudice. I do however recall my senior year history textbook claiming in all honesty that even though the Mayans would slaughter tens of thousands from neighboring tribes a year for no other purpose than to please their “gods” that this did not take away from them an “innocence” which the Europeans lacked! (And of course led them to happiness while evil white Europeans were the scourge of the planet.) It is even more PC and useless in the schools today.
Like Bloom I think the prognosis is bleak. Also like Bloom the best I can come up with is to try to crash educate myself in a program consisting of the “great books” in my (not too great) spare time, but this will not do much for society. We are witnessing a corrosion of culture into not just ignorance, cloaked in superficial knowledge of vast trivia or hidden in natural cleverness which only gains usefulness if employed in a morally valuable direction, but vapidity. When was the last great work of beauty produced by the West? Instead we get crucifixes in cow urine as “art.” Technological advance is more certain than moral upkeep or cultural greatness, but even here I wonder. In the 1960’s we put men on the moon. In the 2000’s we have apps on our iPhones that super-impose a moustache on any picture, or will make a mouth picture’s lips move up and down while you talk into the phone. It’s all very un-satisfying if you ask me. (Meanwhile the Chinese work on DF-21 ABSM’s and Dark Sword dogfighting UAVs . . .) I fear this is the culture getting ahead of politics. While many Americans claim to be conservative, we are a liberal culture. I pray it is not just a matter of time for our government to catch up with this trend.
As a PS this all reminds me (as I’ve posted before) of Tytler’s cycle of Democracy.
“A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government. A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover that they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy, which is always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world’s greatest civilizations from the beginning of history has been about 200 years. During those 200 years, these nations always progressed through the following sequence:
From bondage to spiritual faith;
From spiritual faith to great courage;
From courage to liberty;
From liberty to abundance;
From abundance to complacency;
From complacency to apathy;
From apathy to dependence;
From dependence back into bondage.”
I can choose nothing other than a blind and ideological hope that we can break out of this cycle, and actually I don’t think we are fated to follow it, it really is our choice. But if we keep making choices like the one last November, we’re fast-tracking our way on this cycle to dependence.
Lex and Ron and Virgil … Before the conservatives in this country can return to power, they must be willing to take the pejorative comments made about them and turn them from weakness into strengths. So the Democrats condemn the Republicans as “the party of no.” The Republicans should snatch that descriptive up and glory in it. No is sometimes the perfect word, as I pointed out in another connection. ‘No’ says “hey, wait a minute” to unjustifiable assumptions which are regrettably common among the liberals. ‘No’ says “let’s reconsider this and see if it’s what we really want or need to do.” It seems to me that a favorite method of Democrat power grabbing is to set up a false emergency. The so-called ‘crisis’ in the American healthcare is a perfect example of this. Of course there are problems in our health care which need to be remedied, but there is no real ‘emergency.’ It’s not going to collapse tomorrow. And vast hasty interventions can bollix the whole system up in such major ways that it may indeed be much worse condition after the Busybody Brigade institutes their major changes.
Another horrifying example of thoughtless intervention is the cap-and-trade bill, with which the environmental lobby and the anti-fossil-fuel lobby hope to take over control of our energy needs. Here is another invented ‘emergency’ with which the Democrats hope to gain more control over our formerly free market economy. They, with Al Gore’s help, have invented the ’straw man’ of manmade global warming so that they can rush in with more restrictive controls, grab power over the energy sector of our economy and tax it and restrict it into submission. And again, ‘No’ is the perfect answer here. In spite of Gore’s machinations and captive climate scientists, it is becoming more and more clear that there is very little, if any, manmade global warming. And the rest of the world is catching on, is realizing that Mother Nature or whatever you want to call it has had systems in place for hundreds of thousands of years which keep the global climate pretty well in balance. So … ‘No’ there is no immediate emergency, and ‘No’ there definitely is no “settled science.” Any real scientist would get the giggles at that, knowing that science is never settled. But then, Mr. Gore is not a real scientist. He just plays one on TV.
So, let’s embrace the idea of “the party of No” and run with it, the way Maggie Thatcher embraced being described as the Iron Lady by her political enemies, and turned it into something to be proud of.
‘No’ is a wonderful word, if you look at it the right way. We grown-ups use it all the time, when it’s appropriate.
Marianne
Marianne,
“No” is what an adult says to a child, over and over again.
Zane/
Those thirteen words you just wrote would be the perfect “zinger” one-liner sound-bite retort conservatives could use in reply to those snide comments constantly made by the Chris Matthews of this world about the GOPs lack of a positive program and it being nothing but the party of “no.” You just may have concocted/contributed the perfect antidote.
And “change” is what cynical candidates say to childish voters over and over again.
MM, finding a politician that says “NO” is one of the guidelines that I am using to filter out the crapweasels that want my vote for office. (Actually it can be either NO or YES, depending upon the situation, though we both agree on the purpose and intent of the answer.)
I do not want another McCain getting any support. McCain has turned into a creature of Washington just as the Dole’s had.
None of the philosophical or intellectual arguments/positions mean anything if those who profess to be in agreement with those arguments/positions do not vote.
Two weeks ago we had a critical vote in my town and county about the school system. Basically it was either continued bussing and transferring students to achieve a “social good” as determined by the school board, or, return to true community based, neighborhood schools. Altought only NINE PERCENT (9%) of registered (let alone eligible voters) turned out, we did get rid of the social do-gooders and elected those that agreed we needed to return to traditional American values.
I made a comment on FaceBook about WTF (pardon the language) was up with the 9%! The school issue is a hot topic here, as it should be, and most of my acquaintences were up in arms about the issue. Until it came to actually doing something. There was only one reply on FB, by a very vocal, passionate and fervent advocate of changing the school board to one staffed by conservatives -though neither he nor his wife voted. And they have two kids in school.
Knew that my comment about voting would not improve my popularity index amongst friends and colleagues. Don’t give a hoot. Vote or shut the hell up about political conditions. Voting does matter. As the decades roll-on, I am liking Heinlen more and more.
I think saying “no” IS a positive policy in the eyes of the swing center voters. Why do you think a coherent policy is needed to win when the Dems won the White House on a platform of unspecified “change” and are still without a specified, coherent policy on anything.
By the way, Prowler, I think you are very perceptive. But may I offer a word of encouragement? Most of the best minds in our country are in effect self educated. In the final analysis, educational institutions don’t just provide you with information, then test you on it, and certify you with a degree, as one may think when one is young. The best schools and colleges teach you *how* to think, how to gather information when you approach a new subject, how to organize it in your mind so that it makes sense.
I graduated from college in 1951. That’s a while ago in anybody’s language. I took five years of French, and now I can barely read a menu. But I remember how to find out what I need to know in French. I spent my working life as an editor and writer, and I’ve never stopped reading and learning and discussing what I know, to freshen and enlarge and sharpen my knowledge. That’s what all of the commenters on Lex’s blog, and Lex himself have done, and why it is such a challenge and a pleasure to read this blog.
Politics is a dirty business, no matter how hard we try to clean it up. But it remains the only way we can protect ourselves and our families without killing each other. And just when you start to get really discouraged, something wonderful can happen. The right people emerge from the scrum, like Ronald Reagan or Maggie Thatcher, and put us back on the right track.
Marianne
Marianne. Thank you, you are of course right. And people need to keep learning their entire lives because high school and college is way too short a period to really learn all that much. But to put my complaint more succinctly, and to basically just be an echo chamber for Freeman Hunt, our schools are teaching our children that morality doesn’t exist, that there is no need to choose between alternatives each with perhaps both good and bad moral consequences. There are also some foundation stones to our civilization that you should touch upon in higher education, but which are actively shunned. Like the title of Bloom’s “Closing of the American Mind” college education today extinguishes the desire to seek a moral life in a world of tough decisions, and replaces it with a program of relativism and “self-confidence” (based on NO accomplishment!) that I do think is increasing the sense of entitlement and decreasing the desire to learn, to live a moral life (beyond being fervently “green”) and to live an examined life.
While I do hope for a lightning rod conservative/libertarian leader to emerge (I don’t see any right now) democracies are defined more by their people and institutions, which is why even a Reagan could only provide a temporary bulwark agaisnt our current drift into soft despotism. Another Reagan or Jefferson or Madison would only have the same fleeting effect I fear without social change starting in “taking back” our schools, our media, our culture, etc.
Prowler, you are sure she is right about your being very perceptive?
Whoops . . . that may not have come out right. No, I’m sure she’s right that:
“Most of the best minds in our country are in effect self educated.”
“The best schools and colleges teach you *how* to think”
And so on and so forth in her post. Me barely have original thought from time to time, mostly repeat what other people say.
Just kidding of course. I agree with MM that your posts have been quite good. OTOH, not sure I would disagree with the good MM in any event.
Over the past eight or ten years I’ve become even more convinced of the importance of State and Local elections (non-Federal). Gerrymandering has become outrageous and made certain districts darn near bullet-proof for the incumbent- not good for the country.
Wish that even more intelligent (i.e. they agree w/me) people participated in the discussions.
Mona Charen of the National Review has a good article up on portents for 2010: http://bit.ly/3ob00z
V/R
Ron
Thanks for your kindness. I’m glad it looks like I haven’t gone completely crazy just yet and that there are some people out there who share at least some similar views I do. Between yourself, MM, our great host Lex of course and many others who post regularly I’m very happy I stumbled upon this corner of the blogosphere.
I agree with you as well on federalism and the importance of participating in state and local elections. Wanting to read the federalist papers and de Tocqueville here as soon as I can to learn more about the historical reasoning behind federalism. I remember a good Mark Steyn post on the subject that I’ll butcher in trying to relate. Basically it was along the lines of a recent natural disaster in his neighborhood of rural new england had dropped a couple of small bridges (literally dirt covered causeways) in two different states that each connected a small grouping of a dozen or so houses to a nearby major road, vice having to use back roads to get to town. Since each bridge only served a very small number of farmers and retirees there was no way the people who most used the bridges could afford their re-construction entirely on their own, i.e. contract it out themselves, so they each went to their towns for help. In one of the affected towns they did a survey, got a design and an estimate and then decided they didn’t want to pay for it either so they referred it to the state for aid in paying for the bridge. Well, the state did it’s own survey, it’s own design, got it’s own (much higher) estimate and then decided they didn’t want to pay for it so they referred it to the federal government, who repeated the whole process. The other town just issued bonds to pay for the bridge themselves. In the end the first town’s bridge got re-built much, much later at a much higher cost than the town that paid for it by itself. Possibly an apocryphal story, but it seems plausible. The federal government needs to concern itself with the things that affect the entire nation, mainly defense and national courts, interstate commerce, etc. Leave the rest to the locals who know what’s going on and how best to fix it. It doesn’t take a team of bureacrats in Augusta, Montpellier and Washington D.C. to build a dirt bridge over a tiny creek.
IIRC, I believe a good number of the founding fathers believed schooling should teach about character, and felt that Plutarch was the place to go to learn about it. Rome and Greece inspired them (look at our architecture in the Capitol) and there’s a parallel here to Augustus commisioning Virgil to write the Aeneid to try to re-introduce traditional Roman moral values. I don’t see any avenues of our culture doing anything similar.
Marianne/
As Mark Twain once famously said: “Never let *schooling* get in the way of a good education.” LOL. How true, how very, very true.
The Northwest ordinance said that learning morality was part of education and that such means were to be forever encouraged. Ohio University, then oldest in the old northwest territory, has that carved into their main gate. They don’t listen to it, however.
Hey, virgil … My email has been attacked by my server or whatever. I sent you an email a couple of days ago. Did you get it?
Marianne
Marianne/
LOL Your system is screwed up too? I just found yours–was in the spam–my spam filter is on the fritz. I’ll get a reply out today.