Conservative Heritage Times

I have taken up for RSM in the past when some criticized him for being too quick to defend mainstream movement conservatives, because I knew an inner paleo lurked beneath all that.

He has now proven my faith in him was justified. Here he disses Jaffa and takes the side of M. E. Bradford in their famous (well famous in our geeky circles) debate on equality. His post gets at the heart of the issue and demonstrates that RSM clearly gets it.

Harrison, how long before Charles Johnson goes after RSM about this?

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I’ve laughed before at Andrew Sullivan’s claim to be a conservative (see here, for example). In addition to supporting Open Borders, he calls for same-sex “marriage” as part of his new and improved version of conservatism. He supported the Neocon Wars as wars of homosexual liberation.

David Frum, who accused paleoconservatives of being “unpatriotic conservatives” because of their opposition to the Neocon Wars, has been guest-blogging for Sullivan this week. While there, he decided to help Sullivan re-define conservatism. Here’s his first draft:

A reality-based, culturally modern, socially inclusive and environmentally responsible politics that supports free markets, limited government and a peaceful American-led world order.

We can guess what Frum means by “socially inclusive.” And that last part, by the way, endorses empire — as big as big government can get. Now we can see just how alien, un-American, and anti-conservative these people really are.

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Here is a good take on the Coulter vs. Kristol flap that Harrison posted on below.

It is possible that non-interventionists, grasping for any good news, have over interpreted what Coulter wrote. I came to her defense based on reading the excerpts, but the actual column as a whole is a mess, full of boilerplate defenses of the invasion of Iraq. (Reading the column first before opining is always helpful.) But there are at least some seeds of truth and movement in her column that are encouraging. At least one encouraging aspect is that she recognizes that she as an interventionist conservative is not identical to a neoconservative who she clearly identifies as something else.

Any grand “schism” is not going to have Coulter on one side and Kristol on the other, at least not yet, but it may have Joe Scarborough on one side and Kristol on the other, with Coulter having ignited perhaps more than she bargained for.

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I just now got around to reading the Chilton Williamson immigration article mentioned below. Unfortunately, I think the article comes off as snotty which detracts from its otherwise essential message that immigration is not primarily about crunching economic numbers. I agree with the article in large part, but I grow tired of Europhile bashing of American culture. I am pretty proud of and fond of my Southern American culture, thank you very much (I say as I lick the delicious Bar-B-Que sauce off my fingers that came from my Independence Day ribs.), and I’ll take baseball over soccer any day of the week. While there is some truth in what he says (especially about modern cultural degradation), to the degree it is true it is something to be bemoaned and corrected, not wagged in people’s faces.

Saying “the United States has no glorious culture” is neither a winning rhetorical nor electoral argument, and I would take issue with its truth. And second, what is the point of bashing Puritans and “bumpkin preachers” if you seek to revive a degraded culture? American culture wouldn’t be improved and less degraded if a bunch more people were going to camp meeting revival services to listen to bumpkin preachers or reading and taking seriously the sermons of John Edwards? Who does Chilton Williamson think is going to make up the foot soldiers of cultural preservation? Agnostic elitists? I think not. What you end up with is some incomprehensible elitist populism that is vaguely hostile to religion, and with Williamson arguing to preserve a culture and a people he has barely concealed contempt for. How is that supposed to work?

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because he failed to toe the party line on the “good war,” Afghanistan.

Your tenure has of course been marked by gaffes and embarrassments, but I for one have never paid much attention to them, and have never thought they would matter much to the success of the causes and principles we share. But now you have said, about the war in Afghanistan, speaking as RNC chairman at an RNC event, “Keep in mind again, federal candidates, this was a war of Obama’s choosing. This was not something that the United States had actively prosecuted or wanted to engage in.” And, “if [Obama] is such a student of history, has he not understood that you know that’s the one thing you don’t do, is engage in a land war in Afghanistan?”

Get it? Kristol is disinterested in Steele until he fails to sing the interventionist tune. Then that is intolerable and now he must go. I guess we know where Kristol’s priorities lie. Not with that whole cutting spending or saving babies thing. Fighting far off wars is what he’s all about.

Of course Steele is a buffoon and needs to go, and is factually wrong that this is Obama’s war (it is Obama’s escalation), but that it was this gaff among many that concerns Kristol is instructive.

BTW, the letter comes off as very snotty, and if I were Steele I would shove it up Kristol’s … um … well you know … the next time I saw him. You don’t say in a letter supposedly addressed to someone that “of course” his tenure has been “marked by gaffes and embarrassments” if you are actually trying to influence him.

Via AmSpec.

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Independent Political Report has the story. Sean and I have already commented there.

For those unfamiliar with this story, due to some shoddy work on the part of the California’s Secretary of State, the minuscule Keyes’ faction is the officially recognized faction by the State, and they are now technically affiliated with America’s Independent Party, Keyes’ personal vanity vehicle. Technically the Constitution Party does not have a state affiliate in California even though the CP loyal faction is much larger.

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Prototype cosmoterian Dave Weigel has been forced to resign after a storm of controversy over some leaked “private” e-mails in which he savages the conservatives he is supposed to be covering.

Some conservatives who must be unaware of Weigel’s work have called him a “standard issue liberal,” but he is not. What he is is a standard issue cosmoterian.

Weigel could be a snarky ass, and he was definitely a purveyor of cosmo opinion, but he was smart, and he seemed to understand intricacies of the conservative movement that truly outsider liberals never could. I am surprised he let himself be so stupid. E-mails to a listserv are not private.

(A related thought to ponder: why is snark and outright ridicule the main weapon of cosmos left, right and center? Is making a real argument that difficult?)

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The nomination of Nikki Haley is a mixed blessing from a paleo perspective. She may be weak on immigration. There is good reason to believe she is. But on the other hand, immigration wasn’t really an issue in the Governor’s race, and Haley was the identified candidate of the TEA Party movement (with some justification) and therefore her victory is a very public victory for the TEA Party. And it was a public repudiation of Gresham Barrett for his vote for the bailout.

That said, I fear that South Carolina conservatives may come to regret that they so vigorously rallied to her defense against the allegations of extra-marital affairs and so cavalierly turned a blind eye to them. How should a supporter of a candidate respond when these types of allegations arise? Here is my take in the replies to this post from Quin Hillyer at AmSpec. Mr. Hillyer seems to have some of the same reservations I do.

… an allegation is not untrue because we politically support the accused. Allegations must be judged on their merits just as you would if the allegations were against someone you were disinterested in. To automatically defend someone against a charge because you support him/her politically risks winding up with an enormous amount of egg on your face. Hasn’t experience taught us that these types of allegations are often true (Clinton, Foley, etc. etc. etc.)? Just ask Lanny Davis what it is like to defend someone based on political sympathy later to find out they were guilty.

I have a hard time believing that Folks, who has much credibility to lose, would just completely make something like this up. On its face, the allegation is at least as likely true as not. I won’t believe anyone in this mess for sure unless they volunteer to take and pass a polygraph. In fact, the fact that Haley didn’t DEMAND to take a lie detector test when the allegations first arose inclines me to believe they are either true or have some element of truth to them. What would you do if you were publicly accused of something you were totally innocent of? I know what I would do. I would take an army to keep me away from a lie detector. (This is the same logic I use when I conclude there is likely something fishy about Obama’s long form birth certificate or else he would release it to silence his skeptics.)

Last I read, Haley’s second accuser (the less credible one in my original estimation) volunteered to take a polygraph test and Haley, who was asked publicly, refused. (She didn’t exactly refuse. She gave a very fishy non answer.)

Here is Haley refusing.

http://www.midlandsconnect.com…..?id=466015

Here are Marchant’s results.

http://www.midlandsconnect.com…..?id=467390

I am afraid that the conservative voters in SC reacted in sympathy to Mrs. Haley, but they may be sorry if this ends up blowing up in their face before the general.

Marchant’s results were “inconclusive” but more positive than not. Read the link for an explanation.

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It must be difficult to be a centrist. They seem to live with an ever present fear that the country is on the verge of falling into the hand’s of extremists (if only) unless reasonable centrists heads save the day by dragging us back from the brink.

Consider that oh so reasonable and thoughtful bastion of centrist opinion making, E. J. Dionne. He is all ”disturbed” that the Tea Party right is growing dangerously anti-government, what with all those sinister references to the Constitution and Founding Fathers they keep making.

Daniel McCarthy has an excellent analysis of the Dionne article here. Daniel is entirely correct that once “their party” is in power the established GOP elite will co-opt the Tea Partiers, but I point out in the comment section another dynamic involved here.

“Dionne and his ilk’s,” (described beautifully by Mr. Grigg as the “custodians of acceptable opinion”) professed concern about the TEA Party movement is less about some particular new development on the right than it is a generalized centrist fear of some imagined ever-present emerging “extremism.” Just as there is an enduring GOP elite, there is an equally enduring centrist elite (sometimes one and the same) that reacts with predictable hysteria at any whiff of “extremism.” The centrist whining about polarization, hyper-partisanship, overheated rhetoric, the poor underrepresented center, extremism, blah, blah, blah is with us every election cycle.

What is ironic about all this centrist hand-wringing is how unnecessary it is. They have managed to create a political culture that couldn’t be any more pristinely centrist if they drew up a blueprint. Surely they recognize this. These periodic outbursts of concern about rising extremism from the keepers of conventional opinion are just one more tool for maintaining the centrism they so dearly love and that has served them so well. So Mr. Dionne can spare me his feigned concern. I’m not buying it.

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Here is a great article from World Net Daily on liberal’s use of ridicule as a weapon. What he doesn’t mention, but should, is that neocons and others on the “mainstream” right use ridicule to silence those to their right as well.

Remember rule No. 5 from Alinsky’s magnum opus “Rules for Radicals”: “Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon. It is almost impossible to counterattack ridicule. Also it infuriates the opposition, who then react to your advantage.”…

This is not debate, folks, it’s intimidation. Its message is not, “Let’s reason together and find a solution,” but rather, “Shut up, or be attacked and defamed.”

This is why I take up for birthers and other conspiracy theorists, even though I’m not a conspiracy theorist. Everyone should be reasoned with and not ridiculed into silence.

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Dr. Fleming is not a man to pull punches. His main point (I think), that any criticism of the Civil Rights Act should include a critique of the egalitarian assumptions that underlie it and the questionable motives that drove it, is sound.

However, I am not sure I agree with his critique of the Pauls, Ron more so than Rand. He seems to argue that politics and politicians are only useful to the degree they actually accomplish something, which requires compromise and pragmatism, but at the same time criticizes Rand for not falling on his sword and questioning egalitarianism. What I think he wants is a righteous truth teller and a political system full of truth tellers, but I am not sure how he expects to get there without tolerating some trimming (compromise and pragmatism) along the way?

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Here is Ron Paul’s take on the Civil Rights Act from 2004. He hits all the rights notes – the constitutionality question, the freedom of association question, the law of unintended consequences (quotas) issue, and the commerce clause issue. I wish Rand would have handled the issue as well.

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Well what do ya know. After finding the article below outlining all the “conservatives” who have attacked Rand Paul, I stumbled upon this article about some ”libertarians” who are refusing to back him up.

There are a few issues involved here. First, there is the constitutional issue. That the feds lacked the enumerated power to regulate private businesses in this manner is a slam dunk. If you think otherwise then please produce for me the Article and Section or Amendment that authorizes it. Conservatives, who should generally be originalist, should therefore hold that the CRA was unconstitutional as most at the time, such as William F. Buckley, National Review and Barry Goldwater, did. If someone is generally an originalist and/or an enumerated powers person, but believes the issues involved with the CRA were so important that they required extra-constitutional federal action, then he should so state. Much as a staunch constitutionalist conservative might support some federal action on abortion against his general originalist principles because the issue is so grave. This would be what you might call a principled exception. But none of the three libertarians cited here do this. They don’t raise Constitutional concerns at all. They seem to take Federal authority here for granted.  

The other issue is freedom of association. From what I can tell from the Rand Paul interview, he was primarily making a libertarian absolute freedom of association argument more than he was a constitutionalist argument. Here conservatives of good faith could disagree, because conservatives are not under the same philosophical obligation that libertarians are to value the primacy of individual rights above all else. Although a general Burkean argument could be made that imposed change from above brought about too much societal upheaval too quickly and slow change would have been more natural and brought about better results in the long run. 

But it doesn’t seem to me that for the philosophically consistent libertarian, the freedom of association argument is negotiable. So by supporting the CRA the three libertarians cited in the article are being less libertarian. Now this isn’t necessarily bad. As a conservative I wish libertarians were less libertarian on a lot of things – immigration, abortion, gay marriage, etc. – but I can’t help but think that these libertarians are being conveniently less libertarian on this hot button issue because they have either embraced or fear the recriminations of the PC thought police.

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The Atlantic Wire has a good round-up of “conservatives” who are rushing to criticize Rand Paul. With friends like these?

Here RINO RNC Chairman Steele criticizes him. Obviously, I can understand why Steele is glad the Civil Rights Act happened, but it is not his place as Chairman of the RNC to criticize a GOP Senate nominee who took a position that can easily be defended on conservative/constitutionalist/libertarian grounds. I thought Steele was in support of a Big Tent.

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Larison is critical of Frum here.

Frum responds here. He calls paleos crybabies.

Of all the many things I dislike about the paleo-libertarian faction championed by Larison, high on the list is this: they are howling Georgie-Porgy crybabies.

Frum actually misses Daniel’s point as Daniel points out in an update to his post. I agree with Daniel and Frum that paleo and libertarian rhetoric has sometimes been so overheated as to be counterproductive. But I hardily encourage a good intellectual tussle.

But the problem with Frum, and he is typical of neocons and mainstream movement cons, is that he doesn’t really seriously engage an argument on an intellectual level. He trots out conventional wisdom and calls names and questions motives and mounts his PC high horse.

The Rand Paul Civil Rights Act controversy is an excellent example. Paleos and libertarians have questioned the constitutionality of the Civil Rights Act. Frum addresses the argument here. However, he doesn’t mount a spirited defense of the constitutionality of the CRA. He basically just asserts it, and then mounts his PC high horse about injustice towards blacks. But the question of the constitutionality of the CRA is left basically unaddressed. Does Frum support original intent? Why or why not? Does Frum support the enumerated powers doctrine? Why or why not? Does he believe in an expansive reading of the Interstate Commerce Clause? What evidence does he marshall for this reading?

Again, I am all for a gentlemanly intellectual debate where everyone takes their licks and when it is over no one leaves whining. But debates have to go two ways. Calling people unpatriotic or dismissing their arguments without actually addressing them does not a debate make.

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This post is awesome. Daniel really gets his dander up over David Brooks’ pitiful whining.

As I say in the comments, there is nothing more annoying than the smug, self-righteous ideological centrist whining about the grip of the extremes. Please. Politics in this country are paralyzed by the center and today’s center is yesterday’s far left. So what we have had is a slow but unremitting drift left.

What I mean by ideological centrist is someone who supports centrism for centrism’s sake. They believe the center is inherently thoughtful and virtuous and the extremes are inherently mindless and suspect. They are very disproportionately represented in the pundit class, and David Brooks is a museum quality specimen.

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Here’s the biggest difference I see between leftists and conservatives: Leftists pursue their goal with a “damn the torpedoes” determination. Conservatives, on the other hand, break formation and scatter if the purity of their actions is questioned.

If a conservative points out that lefists march with violent radicals, the leftists’ reply is, “So what?” Then they’ll shoot back, “We don’t care what THEIR goal is; OUR goal is a lofty, noble ideal.”

However, when leftists accuse conservatives of having questionable members, the conservatives surrender without a struggle.

Here are a couple of examples of how leftists march onward, no matter what conservatives say. (Examples of conservative squeamishness are too numerous to list.) Back in January, the Southern Poverty Law Center wrote approvingly of a boycott against Dr. Kevin McDonald at Cal State Long Beach. The SPLC article specifically mentioned the Party for Socialism and Liberation as one of the organizers of the boycott. That group’s web site spells out its dedication to the bloodthirsty aims and methods of international communism, and even features iconic images of Vladimir Lenin and Che Guevara, both mass murderers.

That wasn’t a fluke. A few years back, SPLC spokesghoul Mark Potok was interviewed by Socialist Worker magazine, which has no problem proclaiming its totalitarian goals:

The ISO stands in the tradition of revolutionary socialists Karl Marx, V.I. Lenin and Leon Trotsky in the belief that workers themselves–the vast majority of the population–are the only force that can lead the fight to win a socialist society.

The Russian Revolution of October 1917 remains to this day the most decisive event of the international workers’ movement.

The standard story we hear about the Russian Revolution of 1917 is that it was a coup. The real history of the Russian Revolution can teach us a lot about both the potential for ordinary people to take action and the hope for a better world.

The “better world” Lenin and Trotsky forged required the peacetime murder of 126 million souls.

And we allow ourselves to be silenced by a shrug of the shoulders and an impatient, “So what?”

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… or more precisely that the “conservative” establishment didn’t police him out of the ranks.

Rand Paul’s victory in the Kentucky Republican primary is obviously a depressing event for those who support strong national defense and rational conservative politics…

How is it that the GOP has lost its antibodies against a candidate like Rand Paul? In the past few months, we have seen GOP conservatives rally against Utah Sen. Bob Bennett. There has been no similar rallying against Rand Paul: no ads by well-funded out-of-state groups. Some senior Republicans, like former VP Dick Cheney, indicated a preference for opponent Trey Grayson. But despite Paul’s self-presentation as “anti-establishment,” the D.C. conservative establishment by and large made its peace with him. It is this acquiescence – even more than Paul’s own nomination – that is the most ominous news from tonight’s vote.

I’m soooo… glad we have David Frum around to tell us yahoos in flyover country what conservative politics are “rational.” That whole following the Constitution as originally intended thingy is just so irrational.

Here is something TAC has to say on the matter.

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Former RINO and current Democrat, Arlen Specter, is about to lose his primary and is getting hung out to dry by Obama. Ha ha. It couldn’t happen to a better scoundrel.

Sore loser Robert Bennett is threatening to run as a write-in candidate. Bet that bailout vote, that the PTB didn’t even need you on, isn’t looking so wise and thoughtful now, is it? And he slanders TEA Partiers in the process.

And newly independent Charlie Crist is trending down in the polls since leaving the GOP.

Self-identified conservatives throwing their weigh around in the GOP is a hopeful development. Let’s just hope we end up with more Rand Pauls than Marco Rubios.

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Our discussion of the British National Party and the problem that many conservative Southerners might have with European style nationalism has prompted an interesting discussion. In America, true federalism, devolution, states’ right and secession are almost always associated with conservatism. But ethnic devolution and separatist parties in Europe (and even Canada) are almost entirely left-wing. Why is this?

Prof. Donald Livingston has commented on this. Historically in Europe, it was Communists who often talked of self determination and attempted to foment ethnic discontent against “oppressors.” Their reasons for doing so were disingenuous. They really didn’t care about indigenous peoples and just wanted to weaken the powers that be in the service of the greater revolution, but they still were behind these movements nonetheless. Those influences are still apparent today.

This also explains why “right-wing” elements in Europe often view devolution and ethnic separatism hostilely. Think Franco for example. They see separation as weakening the whole and see the separatists, often rightly so, as left-wing agitators.

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