On Mia Love and Tim Scott

After last week's elections of Rep. Mia Love in Utah and Sen. Tim Scott in South Carolina, the Republican Party faces both a new opportunity in their minority outreach efforts, and a choice.

Although Love and Scott are both black conservatives, they are not the same. While they both tout personal stories that highlight 'pull up from bootstraps' narratives, the differences between them are nether subtle nor meaningless.

If the GOP wants to feel better about its rhetoric toward the poor and minorities without actually addressing their past transgressions, they should embrace Mia Love. If they actually want to address their relationship with black Americans, they could do much worse than Tim Scott.

Neither approach will bring a tidal wave of black support to the Republican Party, but resentment politics repackaged and delivered by a black person is not the way to reach out.

You can read my latest at Rare on this topic here.

bellum medicamenti delenda est

My Very Brief Thoughts on the Impending Government Shutdown

Though I prefer the term 'classical liberal,' I'm a libertarian. I am highly skeptical of government, both in intent and general competence. I wish the government, and the federal government in particular, did a lot less than it is currently charged with. All that being said, a federal government shutdown will likely be a disaster and a mindless exercise of political self-mutilation.

For one, it won't stop ObamaCare or any other entitlement or longstanding government program. Thus, all this is about being obstinate for its own sake. It won't be the end of the world if it's shut down for a few days, but what will happen is that government services upon which people depend, rely, or otherwise enjoy will be unavailable to much of the public or otherwise crippled in their effectiveness. And who will get the blame for this absence/dramatic reduction in service? Tea party/libertarian/small government types because the people responsible pay hollow lipservice to their ideals.

This is the wrong way to sell smaller government.

Think of it this way: take an addicted cigarette smoker. You want to convince him to quit for his own good, but he's not ready. Well, instead of reasoning with him or convincing him there are alternatives to smoking--nicotine gums, patches, e-cigs, jogging, whatever--you just steal his cigarettes and prevent him from getting his fix by whatever means you can.

Now this guy is going to be pissed at you. This is because you haven't convinced him he doesn't really want that cigarette--you have just taken it from him and made him angry. Very, very angry. Even though smokers know the stuff is bad for them, many who may want to quit haven't found a way that works for them. You've now made that decision for them, but you know it's only a temporary one.

But as soon as you give this guy access to cigarettes again, he'll go buy another pack and may even smoke more. You haven't convinced him there are concrete steps he can take to get over his addiction--you just convinced him you're a stubborn prig who'll make other people miserable just to prove a point. You, and others perceived to be like you, will likely have much less sway with him from that point on because you were an unthinking, uncaring, self-righteous S.O.B.

The GOP is that S.O.B.

bellum medicamenti delenda est

One last comment on this latest Paul fiasco

The reason it's important that Rand Paul seriously reexamines his approach to race and his familial ties to neo-Confederates is because to ignore it is to implicitly say "I don't give a damn what black people think." Why should that matter?

Because it is societally unacceptable to openly say "I don't give a damn what black people think." Not because black people all think alike (we don't), or because black people vote overwhelmingly Democratic and thus aren't an important constituency to Republican politicians. It's because to say so is an unnecessary insult. People who are insulted for no good reason aren't going to be very open to what you have to say. And for those of us who believe what we do because we think it's the best thing for the country, and black people particularly, that the Pauls continually surround themselves with people who reject the historical cause for our ancestors' liberation and embrace the government of those who enslaved our people--in the name of liberty, no less--is a massive and repugnant obstacle to our goals of a freer society.

For decades, "states' rights," "liberty," and a host of other codewords were used by politicians and activists to preserve slavery, and later block anti-lynching legislation, desegregation, and the Civil Rights Era generally. As libertarians, it is incumbent upon us to be as inclusive in our messaging and in convincing people that we want more liberty for all people, not just the white ones. It's hard to make that case when the most prominent faces of libertarianism give speeches in front of rebel flags to say the South was right and have people who run websites called "The Southern Avenger" run their digital PR shop.

The Southern bloc that ran the Senate for so many years didn't need to wear sheets or say "nigger" to pass (or block) laws to the detriment of black folks. Likewise, that one of Paul's staff has put his mask away is of little comfort to those who still hear the echoes of the Old South in a Southern senator's rhetoric.

This is why Paul and Hunter should be more vocal in their denunciation of the "Southern Avenger" and fully come to terms with the GOP's problematic history with race, and their own.

bellum medicamenti delenda est

Why can't the Pauls get past their race problems?

Another day, another associate of the Ron/Rand Paul political camp in race trouble. Yesterday, Sen. Rand Paul's new media chief, Jack Hunter, was outed (to those of us who ignore such people) as “The Southern Avenger,” a Confederate battle flag luchador mask wearing Southern apologist who used to host a radio show. Instead of owning up to his clear, unambiguous, and appalling behavior in his past career, Mr. Avenger Hunter blames unbalanced reporting at the Washington Free Beacon for his unceremonious unmasking:

My Statement on Recent Attacks

Today’s article that brought my not-very-hidden radio pundit background to light does not accurately reflect me or my full, or true, views.

The role of a radio host is different from that of a political operative. In radio, sometimes you’re encouraged to be provocative and inflammatory. I’ve been guilty of both, and am embarrassed by some of the comments I made precisely because they do not represent me today. I was embarrassed by some of them even then.

I am also no longer a guy who judges beer drinking contests in a wrestling mask. Things change. We all hopefully grow up.

I abhor racism and have always treated everyone I’ve met with dignity and respect as individuals. This was true in the past and it is true now.

The controversial comments are also but a fraction of my decade of writing and talking about conservative, Tea Party and libertarian causes.

I have also written columns over the years promoting African-American history and politics, and many other writings that tell a far different story than what the headlines portray today. Not surprisingly, the reporter chose not to balance her piece by citing any of those columns.

“Attacks” on “not-very-hidden” punditry, as if those of us who inhabit a social world free from nostalgic slavery-apologia were supposed to assume that a United States senator would knowingly hire a man known as “The Southern Avenger”—a hostile, vengeful, character who equates the NAACP and the Ku Klux Klan—and that hiring should or would be assumed to be common knowledge without much fanfare.

I can't speak to Mr. Hunter's past or current embarrassment about what he said or did as a pundit, but many of us seem to make our names without inflaming racial tensions that have haunted its country since its inception, don't also take charge of local chapters of slavery apologist organizations, and continue using that nickname as one progresses through our professional careers as he has. As recently as 2010, Hunter gave airtime to Tom Woods, a fellow-traveler in Civil War revisionism, on his radio show. Perhaps more telling, the above non-apology is listed on “SouthernAvenger.com,” supporting his contention his past is not very hidden, but it doesn't really explain how he's attempted at all to put his youthful indiscretion behind him, save scrubbing the many iterations of the Confederate battle flag off his website.

What exactly is he avenging now, anyway?

28 Days of Mindless Racial Pandering and Other Trivial Pursuits

It's that time of year: Black History Month is upon us again. It's that one month a year America pretends to care about black people. Woo.


I tried to unsubscribe from the GOP.com mailing list that I've been on for years after one particularly annoying email during the 2008 campaign but, alas, I am still on it. (Sorry, I don't remember what was in the email.) I never read the damned things unless the headline is particularly catching--and today, of course, my morbid curiosity made me open it:

STATEMENT FROM RNC CHAIRMAN MICHAEL STEELE ON BLACK HISTORY MONTH 

[All caps in original. RNC's New Media team apparently has yet to master common internet etiquette.]


Anyway, the banal shout-outs to our forebears is embedded below:





Not to be outdone, Senator Harry Reid penned an op-ed establishing the little known fact that black Americans are indeed Americans just like everybody else. No, really, it's titled:

Sen. Harry Reid: Black history is American history

Thanks, Hank. Perhaps you could elaborate on this obscure fact for us just a little bit more?

While the progress we've made together as a nation is laudable, those of us who've been on the frontlines know that much work still lies ahead of us. Like all communities, the African-American community is concerned with ensuring security and stability for themselves and their families. African-Americans, just like all Americans, want to have a steady job [sic; I think the 33 or so million of us want more than ONE job between us] that they can depend on, stay in their homes, afford quality health care for themselves and their children, have the ability to send their children to the best schools, know that they're safe in their homes and communities and are able to plan for retirement.

How many people on the "frontlines" of civil rights today still refer to "Negro dialect"? Furthermore, his "progressive" thinking has gotten him only so far as to take most of a paragraph to explain that black people are just like everybody else? I'll be the last person to say we're in a post-racial society, but is the above explanation really necessary? 

I want to reiterate what I wrote in an earlier post: I don't think Reid is a racist. I just think he's a putz. 

Reid is just one of many nitwits that will be pandering to black people this month--many of whom will be mistaking trivia for history. (The color of the man who invented the traffic light, though interesting and useful in it's own way, is of considerably less significance than understanding the astonishing figures of wealth represented in and created by the slave labor upon which this country was built.) 30-second soundbite commercials by black celebrities paid for by this or that corporation (::cough, cough:: speech ::cough, cough::) highlighting this or that historical contribution is better than nothing, I suppose, but missing the overall point: The way our history is being taught is sorely lacking substance, in "black" history and almost all other aspects of American and world history. Watered-down historical accounts dominated by names and dates that run together is a piss-poor way of enlightening a young mind as to how our country--and our world--developed. The old adage that those who forget history are doomed to repeat it isn't referring to date memorization.

So, if you want to do something of use for Black History Month, I suggest reading a book or two that takes a serious look at black life in America from either a literary or academic perspective. I'll post suggestions for various types of readings soon...none of which will include Harry Reid.

Last year's post on BHM here.

Where I've Been

I am acutely aware of my recent blogging drought. It isn't for lack of desire or material, believe me. Rather, I have been making a concerted effort to focus my research and, consequently, my writing on a narrower range of topics. (I was also on vacation.) This will never be a simple, one or two topic blog, but my writing has been inconsistent and, at times, too reactionary. The insta-comment is inherent to the nature of blogging, but I've noticed that my reaction and desire to get a comment out right away has compromised my analysis, even in the short term. Part of this process of focus has also forced me to reevaluate my writing style and the aims of this blog.

As far as I know, I have two primary audiences that read this blog with any regularity. The first was my primary intended audience when I started this blog back in 2007: the everyday "real" American that is too busy being a productive member of society to pay attention to much of what goes on in Washington and, probably, someone who doesn't have a sophisticated or fully flushed-out political ideology. (Perhaps a preconceived and probably right-leaning political allegiance, but without the ability to distinguish Burke from Rousseau.)

The second audience is a small number of colleagues and counterparts in the DC area: wonks, for lack of a better term.

Most of what I have written on this blog is of little interest to wonks: they know it already. My analysis, whether one agrees with it or not, tends to be simple-to-digest and more concerned with principle than  nuanced policy argument. As I try to make my transition into the established DC wonkatariat, I need to address issues that make them think, instead of making them simply nod or roll their eyes.

Thus, going forward, the intent of this blog is to integrate more nuanced policy arguments into my writing without getting too far into wonkspeak and talking beyond the people from whom this blog--and my original column at the IDS that shared its name--was originally intended. I know that, at times, I will fail one audience in favor of the other, but I hope to minimize those failures and develop my own voice that bridges the large divide between the place I come from and the place I am today.

Comments always welcome.

JPB

NB: I don't necessarily at all stand behind some of what I wrote when I was at the IDS. The transition from life-long Republican to small "L" libertarian was a process that was in its infant stages the year I was at the paper.

Cut the Taxes. Cut the Spending. Cut the Jesus.

So, what can we learn from the three two and a half electoral contests of note last night?

The gubernatorial victories for the GOP in Virginia and New Jersey showcased explicitly free market conservatism with a muted tinge of social conservatism. That, I think, is a good thing.

As for the NY-23 election, the Tea Partiers and talk radio yahoos put all their chips in against a Republican in favor of a guy whose first issue on his website is "Gay Marriage." He lost, and thus another Democrat holds a seat in the House. The nation's two newest governors-elect did have social conservative messages on their sites, but they certainly weren't highlighted and considerably down the list of priorities.

Lesson: Cut the taxes. Cut the spending. Cut the Jesus.

Jesus is all well and good for emulating his life and taking his lessons to heart. But until he starts feeding the unemployed with fishes and loaves, best leave him at home and at church on Sunday. Whether you think Jesus was just a wise man, a prophet, or the Savior of mankind, a politician he was not. Keep him in your heart, if that's your thing, but leave him out of politics.

The pundits will say what the Dems need to learn from yesterday and what it means to the president and health care and all that, but I think the Republicans should take heed as well. Last night's victors were decidedly not Huckabee and Palin Christian populists, yet all signs point to those two in leading the GOP in 2012.

Let's hope the Republicans get the message from yesterday too.

A Novel Idea

Pundits of all stripes keep lamenting the death of intellectual conservatism, as the brainier Right is reportedly "retreating and struggling to come up with new ideas."

I think those conservatives who spent the past eight years as apologists for Christian Big Government are indeed struggling to find some sort of fiscal credibility, but that hardly diminishes the intellectual power of the ideas espoused by Friedman, Hayek, Buckley, Goldwater, et al. of generations past. Their ideas were, are, and will continue to be sound in reasoning and powerful in practice. The problem is the people who were elected to implement those ideas failed miserably in living up to the standards laid out in the countless works of free market capitalism and conservative governance.

But if you need an idea that will engage the attention-deficient masses that sums up principled conservatism, may I humbly suggest:

Leave me the hell alone.

I know this hasn't the slightest chance of being heeded right now, but it's really the basic principle undergirding classical liberalism, the intellectual foundation of the Right: you know, that freedom thing. The fact that the Right is expected to develop "new" ideas implies that it needs to come up with some sort of grandiose plan of action--some bold legislation that will transform our current circumstance into a new era of peace, wealth, and harmony--with the explicit understanding that government is both responsible and capable of such miraculous works-of-wonder is misguided fantasy.

Good ideas don't lose their relevance because the advice they contain isn't followed. It's sheer stupidity, then, to revert to the old, discredited ways of thinking--increasingly centralizing economic control, for one--and then calling those ideas "new" or "progressive" with the expectation that they will work this time.

Euphememism, Schmeuphemism

The blurb from the New York Times email update this morning linking to this story:

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s centrism in California appeals less to the Republican Party’s base than the resistance push of Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky.

I'm no McConnell Republican, but if Schwarzenegger Republicanism means "centrist," "centrist" must mean "ideologically bankrupt."

Shark Jumping: 101

With the deficit approaching the point where the Congressional Budget Office will have to hire people just to count all the zeros, rising chatter and Senate hearings about torture and war crimes of the previous administration, and a health care plan coming down the pipe that could actually make trips to the doctor's office MORE of a hassle than it already is (woo forms!) in addition to decreasing the quality of care (woo disease!), the Gallingly Obtuse Party's leadership has decided to hold "an extraordinary special session" at which they...they...I can't even bring myself to type it:

A member of the Republican National Committee told [Roger Simon] Tuesday that when the RNC meets in an extraordinary special session next week, it will approve a resolution rebranding Democrats as the “Democrat Socialist Party.”

That's right: the GOP's grand strategy has literally been reduced to NAME CALLING. I'm just waiting for a Republican to get up on the floor of the House or Senate and just scream "Nuh-uh, Doo Doo Head!"

My money is on Michelle Bachmann.

The Torture Party?

At what point did Republicans become the party of torture? I wish this were simple hyperbole, but judging by my Twitter feed and no less than the pages of the Grey Lady herself, Republicans are voluntarily lining-up to defend one of the most reprehensible policies of the previous administration.

Ross Douthat in his NYT debut today laments that Dick Cheney didn’t run for President:

We tried running the maverick reformer, the argument goes, and look what it got us. What Americans want is real conservatism, not some crypto-liberal imitation.

“Real conservatism,” in this narrative, means a particular strain of right-wingery: a conservatism of supply-side economics and stress positions, uninterested in social policy and dismissive of libertarian qualms about the national-security state. (emphasis and unimaginable nightmare scenario in original)

Since when do economics have anything to do with torture? Only hacks like Naomi Klein think free markets are synonymous with torture, right…RIGHT?!?!?! (I'm not assigning this thought to Ross, but it must be prevalent enough among GOPers if he's writing about it. I'm guessing he and I have similar people in our Twitter feeds)

While I understand that the Bushies were awful by nearly every metric, the violation of human rights is not the extant Bush policy banner under which to rally the troops. Even if you believe, conveniently disregarding the numerous intelligence and military experts who have practiced and suffered through them, that these “techniques” do not constitute torture per se, I fail to see the correlation that they represent anything resembling conservative principles, nor in exaggerating their negligible intelligence value. But what, pray tell, is gained by placing the Republican standard firmly into the ground upon which one must abide by a particular definition of torture? Have we, as conservatives, fallen so far that this is what we’ve left to offer the American people: a tenuous (and I would argue, unworkable) definition of interrogation that errs on the side of barbarity?

The ban on cruel and unusual punishment was placed into the Constitution not solely to protect the innocent, but to protect the rule of law and our institutions as instruments of justice, insulated from the vengeful blood-thirst of the mob. Punishments meted out for vengeance corrupt the participants as well as our image as Americans. Furthermore, and more dangerously, allowance of these tactics opens the door to torturing Americans. For while we can agree that the full text of the Constitution doesn’t apply to foreign nationals, the arguments set forth in the OLC memos authorizing these methods allow for their application against Americans by Americans if you take them to their logical conclusion. To do so, all that would be required would be Executive diktat to the effect that it’s needed for “national security.”

Former State Department lawyer Philip Zelikow:

The underlying absurdity of the administration's position can be summarized this way. Once you get to a substantive compliance analysis for "cruel, inhuman, and degrading" you get the position that the substantive standard is the same as it is in analogous U.S. constitutional law. So the OLC must argue, in effect, that the methods and the conditions of confinement in the CIA program could constitutionally be inflicted on American citizens in a county jail.

In other words, Americans in any town of this country could constitutionally be hung from the ceiling naked, sleep deprived, water-boarded, and all the rest -- if the alleged national security justification was compelling. I did not believe our federal courts could reasonably be expected to agree with such a reading of the Constitution.

Some may argue that these methods weren’t used for retribution. Well, unless they wanted a heaping pile of crap to go along with good intel, the methods compelled Khalid Sheik Mohammed to provide “less than satisfactory” explanations to some of their questioning—even after being water-boarded nearly 200 times—according to the 9/11 Commission Report (cf. p. 514; Chap 7, fn. 4) and the still-classified memo on which their finding was based. Regardless of your take, their effectiveness is far from conclusive and with interrogation professionals undoubtedly aware of this, I find it unlikely that the powers that be would choose such unreliable methods so quickly for any other reason.

As Julian Sanchez noted earlier today, “Khalid Sheik Mohammed [probably] deserves to be water-boarded and worse. We do not deserve to become the country that does it to him.” Nor, might I add, should the Republican Party and its so-called conservatives be the people advocating it as national policy.

Hat tip to David Rittgers for the 9/11 Commission cite.

With Friends Like These...

Ugh.

So, the lineup for CPAC--think of it as a Conservative Yearly Kos/Netroots Nation with less patchouli and more Brylcreem--is coming together. Let's have a look, shall we?

The latest schedule for the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington, D.C. late February: Possible presidential candidates include Rep. Paul Ryan (WI), speaking Thursday, Rep. Mike Pence (IN), speaking Thursday -- he's invited, not confirmed -- Gov. Mike Huckabee, on Thursday, Gov. Sarah Palin, on Thursday -- invited, not confirmed, and Rep. John Shadegg (AZ). On Friday, Sen. John Cornyn speaks in the early morning; Newt Gingrich hosts a screening of a movie about Ronald Reagan. Ron Paul and Mitt Romney speak in the afternoon. On Saturday, Rick Santorum begins the day and Gov. Tim Palwenty is an invites speaker. The lovely [sic] Ann Coulter speaks at noon. And Rush Limbaugh finishes the conference.

Huckabee. Palin. Cornyn. Santorum. Coulter. Limbaugh. [I originally wrote one-word summaries of each of their respective contributions here, but prudence inspires me to delete it before publishing.] Individually, they are each loathesome in their own special way, providing nothing but inanity and fueling self-righteous rage of conservatives and liberals alike. Collectively, they represent a holy war on decency and rationality that makes me wonder if it is even worth it to fight any more. As much as I cannot stand the pomposity of Chuck Schumer, the political hackery of Nancy Pelosi, the incompetence of Harry Reid and the unbearable triteness of being that is Dick Durbin, I'm at a loss when I look across the ideological aisle and see these cross-weilding populist asses and their attack dogs.

If these are really the politcal stars of our times, on both sides, we're all pretty much fucked.

For What It's Worth, I'm Sorry!!

No, this isn't me endorsing Obama. For varying reasons, not least of which is that I work at a 501(c)(3), I'm withholding public endorsement of any candidate. I'll expound on this later, but the point of this is, of course, humor.

Amen!

Radley, as usual, hits the nail on the head.

While I'm not thrilled at the prospect of an Obama administration (especially with a friendly Congress), the Republicans still need to get their clocks cleaned in two weeks, for a couple of reasons.

First, they had their shot at holding power, and they failed. They've failed in staying true to their principals of limited government and free markets. They've failed in preventing elected leaders of their party from becoming corrupted by the trappings of power, and they've failed to hold those leaders accountable after the fact. Congressional Republicans failed to rein in the Bush administration's naked bid to vastly expand the power of the presidency (a failure they're going to come to regret should Obama take office in January). They failed to apply due scrutiny and skepticism to the administration's claims before undertaking Congress' most solemn task — sending the nation to war. I could go on.

As for the Bush administration, the only consistent principle we've seen from the White House over the last eight years is that of elevating the American president (and, I guess, the vice president) to that of an elected dictator. That isn't hyperbole. This administration believes that on any issue that can remotely be tied to foreign policy or national security (and on quite a few other issues as well), the president has boundless, limitless, unchecked power to do anything he wants. They believe that on these matters, neither Congress nor the courts can restrain him.

That's the second reason the GOP needs to lose. American voters need to send a clear, convincing repudiation of these dangerous ideas.

Powell Endorses Obama

Yet another defection from the Republican ranks--and this one is a biggie:

WASHINGTON—Former Secretary of State Colin L. Powell endorsed Senator Barack Obama for president on Sunday morning as a candidate who was reaching out in a “more diverse and inclusive way across our society” and offering a “calm, patient, intellectual, steady approach” to the nation’s problems.

...

Mr. Powell’s endorsement exposed a fundamental policy rift in the fractious Republican party foreign policy establishment between the so-called pragmatists, a number of whom have come to view the Iraq war or its execution as a mistake, and a competing camp, the neoconservatives, whose thinking dominated President Bush’s first term and played a pivotal role in building the case for war.

Mr. Powell, who is of the pragmatist camp and has been critical of the Bush administration’s conduct of the war, was said by friends in recent months to be disturbed by some of the neoconservatives who have surrounded Mr. McCain as foreign policy advisers in his presidential campaign. The McCain campaign’s top foreign policy aide is Randy Scheunemann, who was a foreign policy adviser to former Senators Trent Lott and Bob Dole and who has longtime ties to neoconservatives. In 2002, Mr. Scheunemann was a founder of the hawkish Committee for the Liberation of Iraq and was an enthusiastic supporter of the Iraqi exile and Pentagon favorite, Ahmad Chalabi, who was viewed with suspicion and distaste at the State Department when Mr. Powell was secretary of state.

I was hoping someday for a Powell presidency, but his appearance before the UN selling the Iraq War pretty much killed that. It appears that throwing him under the bus like that has come back to haunt the GOP--as well it should.

The Republican party will undoubtedly react poorly to this, distancing themselves from Powell while not being too critical for fear of racism allegations. It's very possible some lower level operatives and emerging hacks will blame this on some sort of race thing, but it won't be official line. Regardless, however, I expect the party big-wigs to be personally--if only privately--offended as some sort of grand disloyalty. They are missing the larger point that not only McCain, but the larger GOP itself has lost its bearings and has offended a large number of us in the name of Christian populism.

And the Hits Just Keep on Comin...

May I present:

The October newsletter by the Chaffey Community Republican Women, Federated says if Obama is elected his image will appear on food stamps -- instead of dollar bills like other presidents. The statement is followed by an illustration of "Obama Bucks" -- a phony $10 bill featuring Obama's face on a donkey's body, labeled "United States Food Stamps."

...

The group's president, Diane Fedele, said she plans to send an apology letter to her members and to apologize at the club's meeting next week. She said she simply wanted to deride a comment Obama made over the summer about how as an African-American he "doesn't look like all those other presidents on the dollar bills."

...

"I didn't see it the way that it's being taken. I never connected," she said. "It was just food to me. It didn't mean anything else."

She said she also wasn't trying to make a statement linking Obama and food stamps, although her introductory text to the illustration connects the two: "Obama talks about all those presidents that got their names on bills. If elected, what bill would he be on????? Food Stamps, what else!"

[Vicious, expletive-laden rant here]

Hat Tip: NJ Ray

I Give Up!

Today, I learned that Chris Buckley has left the National Review--the magazine founded by his late father and personal hero of mine, William F. Buckley, Jr. He left to quell the backlash for writing this -- and not even within the pages of the once great magazine turned hack-job rag. (Honestly, have you read The Corner recently?) It was a well-written piece by a man disaffected with a man he admires-- to the point that he does not want him to lead the country they both love. For this, and probably his libertarian leanings as well, his "resignation" was heartily accepted by Rich and Co.

I am absolutely fed up with the GOP.

I've been distancing myself from them for awhile now, but I'm just over it. The current Republican hierarchy--both within the party structure and the power players in the media-- remind me a lot of this guy:

That is, so out of touch that they are in need of a serious and unrelenting ass-kicking.

As we recovering-Republicans watch the GOP sink like the H.M.S. Titanic--hubris and all--I can't help but feel that a certain amount of justice will be served as the defeats roll-in: precinct after precinct, office after office, state after state. The oncoming Blue Period will not be one that I relish at all--I will be as angry and vociferous in my opposition to their plans as I have always been. The pseudo-socialist nanny state types will deliver what they've been promising to do for years, and we shall all reap the rewards of the sown seeds of nearly unlimited executive power--this time, in the hands of a Progressive--backed by a Congress waiting to do his do-gooder bidding with money they don't have. (In fairness, Congress should be pushing their own similarly feel-good agenda, but the current leadership is entirely feckless and couldn't lead their way out of a paper bag.)

The Republican party thought it could throw out its philosophical groundings and that, somehow, they would stay in power.

Buckley summed it up well:

So, to paraphrase a real conservative, Ronald Reagan: I haven’t left the Republican Party. It left me.

Indeed it has left many of us, and the price shall be paid come November.

Sic semper tyrannis.

A Rebuttal

Dear GOP,

It's not us, it's you.

Sincerely,

The Reagan-Goldwaterites

As penned by Radley Balko.

Race, Ron Paul, and Libertarianism

For the better part of the summer, I was surrounded by rabid libertarians of all stripes: anarcho-capitalists, minimal statists, reformed and not-so-reformed Republicans, lefties with reasonable economic policies, Goldwaterites, etc.

One thing many of them had in common, aside from a predilection for binge-drinking and political argument, was an almost unquestioning support of Ron Paul, Republican congressman from Texas running for president -- ostensibly as a libertarian Republican.

I had my doubts of the grandfatherly man a year ago when I first heard of him. I learned more about him, and liked him less the more I did.

Well, thanks to a story in The New Republic, much of America will know what I found out...and to a greater extent than I found out about him.

Just a small excerpt:

Paul's alliance with neo-Confederates helps explain the views his newsletters have long espoused on race. Take, for instance, a special issue of the Ron Paul Political Report, published in June 1992, dedicated to explaining the Los Angeles riots of that year. "Order was only restored in L.A. when it came time for the blacks to pick up their welfare checks three days after rioting began," read one typical passage. According to the newsletter, the looting was a natural byproduct of government indulging the black community with "'civil rights,' quotas, mandated hiring preferences, set-asides for government contracts, gerrymandered voting districts, black bureaucracies, black mayors, black curricula in schools, black tv shows, black tv anchors, hate crime laws, and public humiliation for anyone who dares question the black agenda." It also denounced "the media" for believing that "America's number one need is an unlimited white checking account for underclass blacks." To be fair, the newsletter did praise Asian merchants in Los Angeles, but only because they had the gumption to resist political correctness and fight back. Koreans were "the only people to act like real Americans," it explained, "mainly because they have not yet been assimilated into our rotten liberal culture, which admonishes whites faced by raging blacks to lie back and think of England."

This "Special Issue on Racial Terrorism" was hardly the first time one of Paul's publications had raised these topics. As early as December 1989, a section of his Investment Letter, titled "What To Expect for the 1990s," predicted that "Racial Violence Will Fill Our Cities" because "mostly black welfare recipients will feel justified in stealing from mostly white 'haves.'" Two months later, a newsletter warned of "The Coming Race War," and, in November 1990, an item advised readers, "If you live in a major city, and can leave, do so. If not, but you can have a rural retreat, for investment and refuge, buy it." In June 1991, an entry on racial disturbances in Washington, DC's Adams Morgan neighborhood was titled, "Animals Take Over the D.C. Zoo." "This is only the first skirmish in the race war of the 1990s," the newsletter predicted. In an October 1992 item about urban crime, the newsletter's author--presumably Paul--wrote, "I've urged everyone in my family to know how to use a gun in self defense. For the animals are coming." That same year, a newsletter described the aftermath of a basketball game in which "blacks poured into the streets of Chicago in celebration. How to celebrate? How else? They broke the windows of stores to loot." The newsletter inveighed against liberals who "want to keep white America from taking action against black crime and welfare," adding, "Jury verdicts, basketball games, and even music are enough to set off black rage, it seems."

The article was somewhat excusing of "libertarianism" as a principle, saying:

The people surrounding the von Mises Institute--including Paul--may describe themselves as libertarians, but they are nothing like the urbane libertarians who staff the Cato Institute or the libertines at Reason magazine.

One sentence, however, does not remove the stigma which will undoubtedly be placed firmly in many minds of people who already think libertarians are a bunch of nut-jobs -- if they even know what libertarianism is to begin with.

Everything Ron Paul has fought for in the past year has been unalterably tainted now. In a GOP field entirely made up of rich white men, the only one with the pronounced race problem is the only "libertarian" amongst them.

For my entire adult life, and much of my late adolescence, I have argued tirelessly against the stereotypically racist image of fiscal conservatism. It was always an uphill battle because the GOP undoubtedly makes some foolish mistakes that old white men are prone to make.

But this is worse.

Ron Paul isn't the mainstream GOP -- he is a libertarian federalist who became the face of our way of thinking, rightly or no. And now he -- and therefore we -- will be linked with racist, homophobic, paranoid, ignorant tripe and he will take our ideas down with him as he sinks. This article, a long time coming, undoes any good that Ron Paul may have done over the past year.

This isn't the end for libertarians -- but it is the end for Ron Paul.

Good riddance.