The Republican Party of Texas state convention was held 11-12 June, at the Dallas Convention Center. Speakers were all quick to include Tea Party activists as part of their “conservative” Republican coalition. The mood was generally upbeat and encouraging. There was tremendous unity displayed too, in terms of rededicated effort aimed at getting out the vote and influencing the elections in November. Most of the ire was directed against “Obamacare”; for less government spending and more fiscal discipline; and for security along the U.S. and Texas borders with Mexico. The 2010 convention was nothing like the depressed atmosphere at the previous convention two years ago, when Republicans knew they were about to be trounced and held their noses to vote for McCain anyway. Republicans smell blood this time with Obama’s approval ratings so low, with so much oil in the Gulf and the government’s crisis management as incompetent as what went on during Hurricane Katrina, with the economy still in a slump Republicans think 2010 could be a banner year, and yet there is also great angst and high anxiety. The overwhelming feeling among Republicans is that this could be the last hurrah for the U.S. Constitution or for anything resembling the old Republic. If we don’t get it right this time, there may not be a next time.
Barack Hussein Obama is the first president after all who doesn’t even like the Founders and who fervently believes that there were critical mistakes made at the very beginning of the Republic, and at the Source of Original Intent. He faults George Washington, James Madison and Thomas Jefferson for the institution of slavery and its legacy, and quite frankly bears a grudge. Good for him but I don’t have to. Nobody alive does, in fact (unless perhaps they are over 150 years old). Post-racial prejudice doesn’t have to be post-political partisan, as if that meant it were a good thing. If the president’s view of his country is at all entwined with his governing philosophy and his policies (which they have to be), you can put me down as being highly partisan against them. Indeed my view is that from the president’s perspective on America, it really doesn’t matter much if he was born in Hawaii or Kenya as some allege—he isn’t American.
It has often been said that America is an idea or a complex of ideas. One indeed may come from anywhere on planet earth and some have apparently come from outer space, but to be an American one has to subscribe to the central idea of Freedom. Based on this standard, there have always been and probably always will be “foreigners” in and among us, even fellow citizens who simply do not accept the central idea of Freedom or the complex of ideas that are built up around it. Nonetheless, we should avoid electing one as president the way we have unfortunately done. President Obama is working to impose his own set of ideas and urging on the final transformation of our Republic. He is serving an explicitly progressive agenda and trying to complete transformation to a positive liberal state; whereas, the Founders emphatically chose to create and give us a negative liberal state and federal republic.
The difference is that a positive liberal state involves government mandates and coercion, in order to guarantee the people’s equal rights, opportunities and final outcome. The negative liberal model mostly removes the government and gets it out of the way, in order to leave people and their voluntary associations, i.e., individuals and society, free to compete and jockey for outcome. Results emerge over time through a process, but they are never predetermined. At the level of the individual and to large degree the community and state, one can make a mistake, even a big one, but then go back or turn in a different direction. Freedom never guarantees anything, at least no more than itself. Some people get a raw deal, while others get lucky or seem favored or blessed. Freedom, however, is the most important value involved in the schema of a negative liberal state. The positive liberal state values need above freedom. The positive liberal state is socialist or communist.
Obama believes that someone else’s healthcare need (one among many other needs) imposes the obligation on you to pay for it. Likewise, he believes that as long as one atheist objects, then no public prayer can or should be uttered. The negative liberal perspective on the other hand, is one that leaves values to local majorities and self-determination to the level at which the people live and work and determine their local environment. No one’s particular need imposes mandatory obligation on anyone else to pay for it. Churches and families used to come to the rescue practically speaking, or people did the best they could, but we’ve largely replaced these functionaries with the government already. We are probably now more like a positive liberal state than the negative liberal one the Founders gave us, albeit that final transformation to pay for it all is yet to be accomplished, i.e., the transformation from free market capitalist economy to socialist economy—exactly what Obama and the Democrat majority in Congress plan to complete by 2012, or 2016 on the outside.
Churches have their precious tax exempt status, but they are stultified from doing anything infringing on the government’s claim of social prerogative or its latest regulatory edict, or anything that bumps presumptively against domestic legislative parameters. Churches have moved their charity overseas and they do miraculous things abroad, when charity begins at home. Many mission trips carry the mistaken belief that charity at home was solely for the material benefits delivered, when it was mostly about teaching and example, and about helping American families. Families are absolved now of their responsibility, precisely because they are absolved of the necessity to care for their elderly or children. But everyone pays, and everyone is the poorer. And everyone works, so no one cares—physically or emotionally, no not for the children or the grandchildren, for grandparents, or for each other. The social worker and healthcare professional do care I know it, at a certain level and to a certain degree. But it is not so personal and never so attached as family or the extended family of the Church. We have built a health care equivalent to the way we farm our beef: arguably more efficient though not less expensive, and quite a bit more sanitized if not as sanitary.
We have watched the disintegration of the greatest Western culture that ever existed—it was right here in America. We have bridled the so-called evil white man and denigrated the breadbasket he created for all free men and women of good will to enjoy. The president invites locusts now to devour whatever remains. If you do not understand the metaphor or feel the rhetoric you just read, then it is lost. I had a particularly stupid reader once ask, ‘why do people still speak this way?’—as if we had to wipe away the ugly old reminders of the King James Bible and Shakespeare, not to mention the English used in the Declaration of Independence or the U.S. Constitution. Why not “Text it” instead? LOL. At least LOL can mean anything you want it to mean. Why get stuck on what’s right or even what’s best. It is indeed a new mode of thinking required in this postmodern post-Republic. The government will care for you from cradle to grave whether you want it to or not. Friends, it is past time for discussion or debate, and you are either so thoroughly afflicted by the palsy of political correctness and what passes for knowledge in the public schools, which of course you paid for too—or you are ready to swear allegiance to the central idea of Freedom and take your stand, even if it is your last, resolving now to save the Republic!
