Reflections on Conservatism and Christianity

May 10, 2009
By Larrey Anderson
Are social conservatives hurting or helping the cause of conservatism? The answer to this question has not yet been decided. Christian conservatives can be the saving grace of the conservative movement — if they can step back and carefully consider how they are perceived in the abortion debate, imagined (and actual) racial and religious bigotry, and in the temptation to claim to know that these are “the last days.”

Conservative Christians love and respect the law and the Constitution. Most recognize that the Constitution was founded, at least in part, on the Judeo-Christian principle that all human beings are equal in the eyes of God, that everyone is a sinner, and that no one is above the law.

Since our country’s inception, social conservatives have helped make America a more just regime. For example, the abolitionist movement to end slavery in America was a movement lead by people who were, essentially, white conservative Christians. These pioneers of freedom recognized that slavery was not only incompatible with God’s truth; slavery was at odds with a basic premise of both the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. To wit:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

Though rarely recognized for their work by the mainstream media, conservative Christians in today’s America have led the continuing fight to end the slave trade in Africa and the Middle East. Conservative American Christians have contributed millions of dollars in aid to Christians in Africa who are being persecuted and murdered by Islamic extremists.

The left and the media can persist in their efforts to rewrite and deconstruct history; they cannot change the twin facts that the Founding Fathers were deeply inspired by the essence of the Bible and that social conservatives have always played, and still play, a major role in making America the greatest — and freest — nation in the world.

But there are problems. America has reached a tipping point. We are in real danger of losing our constitutional republic. Now is not the time for theological nitpicking and infighting amongst social conservatives, fiscal conservatives, and libertarians. Social conservatives will determine whether or not this bickering continues.

Here is why: There are three specific issues that pose a special challenge to social conservatism. Some on the social right misunderstand the relationships of these issues to the political process and the Constitution. These misunderstandings have hampered — and may continue to impede — the cause of the conservative movement in America. Read the entire article here.

GOP Leaders Try to Polish Party’s Image

Washingtonpost.com readers have posted 110 comments about this item.

By Perry Bacon Jr.
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, May 3, 2009

A group of prominent GOP leaders yesterday launched an effort to improve their party’s sagging image, hosting an event at which they did not directly attack President Obama, rarely used the word “Republican” and engaged in a healthy dose of self-criticism.

At a pizza restaurant in Arlington, where they officially unveiled the National Council for a New America, party leaders attempted to portray Republicans as sensitive to the concerns of average Americans and to shake off the “Party of No” label that Democrats have tried to affix to the GOP.

House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (Va.) rejected the idea that yesterday’s event, the first in a national series, was about “rebranding” the GOP, but it gave the impression of a party looking for a fresh start. Cantor, former Florida governor Jeb Bush and former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney sat on stools and lobbed criticism at “Washington” and “liberals.” They took few shots at Obama as they pledged to start a “conversation” with voters around the country.

The three men were flanked by banners bearing the name of the council and its Web address (http://www.wethepeopleplan.org), but there were no obvious signs that it was a major Republican initiative. They repeatedly noted that they were speaking about policy, not politics, and they touted conservative ideas on issues such as health care and education while bemoaning initiatives that involved more government intervention. Read entire article here.

RSCC Principles

Declaration of Principles
As members of the Republican Study Committee of Colorado (RSCC), we commit ourselves to advancing the constitutions of the United States and Colorado, the principles of our historic Republic, mainstream American values, and the Republican platform. We agree to support the bylaws of the RSCC. We agree to use the following guiding principles as our standards for drafting and voting on legislation:
Click here.http://tinyurl.com/c4m8hu

Useful Idiots, and How Not to be One

By Fred Holden
The term “useful idiots” was attributed to Russian dictator Vladimir Ilyich Lenin describing intellectual idealists persuaded to adopt communism. With a fait accompli, their intellectual idealism supremely disappointed and dangerously reactive, they would have to be eliminated.
Wikipedia explains how Lenin’s, “‘useful idiots of the West,’ described Western reporters and travelers who would endorse the Soviet Union and its policies in the West.”
From www.usefulidiots.com , the question, “Why This Web Site?”:
“Useful idiots is a name no group of people would like to be called. It is however, what most Americans are relied upon to be by the powers that be. When the voting segment … allows itself to fall for the same old word games and mind manipulation, it sadly earns the title of useful idiots … too many Americans are naive about their political ‘system’ and its politicians … America is a land of plenty. Plenty of food, plenty of money, plenty of gods, plenty of corrupt politicians and alas, plenty of useful idiots that repetively (sic) vote for them.”
From five million Coloradans, 65 House and 35 Senate members emerge to serve public office in the Legislature. They take an oath to support the Colorado and U. S. Constitutions. This is their only required oath — not to their constituents, the government, their political party, nor the citizens, voters and taxpayers of Colorado, not even to their families or themselves. Just to the rich heritage, words, A meaning, expression, majesty and magnificence of those documents.
Question: How many elected officials have read both documents, before or after entering office? The oath presumes familiarity with, understanding of, and a full, recent read and determination to honor them. Otherwise it’s easier to create, cultivate and control “useful idiots.”
Officeholders are protected in this ignorance. Those who voted them into office too are “useful idiots.” They have little familiarity, interest or knowledge of those documents whose power is to contain and control only the government, not the people.
Once public officials, they are in intimate contact with “the system” – elected colleagues, special interests, partisan political parties, government bureaucracy and employees, bond dealers, lobbyists and friends of same, and far removed from those who sent them there.
The Legislature meets for 120 days creating legislation presumably to make Colorado a better place. However, officeholders’ limited political, economic, business, financial, constitutional and governmental acumen put them at the mercy of the true, long-term professionals, well-paid, who know how to manipulate people, opinions, legislative bills and votes.
With accompanying “spotlight and applause,” many of these “useful idiots” can be persuaded to perform in ways anathema to what they otherwise would want done, or perhaps more importantly, not done. They sponsor, sign on to, or support bills that on their face violate their oath of office and the Constitution.
Examples of the Useful Idiot Dodge, UID, are abundant. Colorado’s executive, legislative and judicial branches too often misapply, misinterpret or ignore the Constitution when it threatens their agenda or very existence.
Good job, “useful idiots,” on the following:
** “FASTER” legislation politically morphed an in-fact tax increase into an automobile fee increase, to obtain more revenue, and avoid submitting it to the electorate, in compliance with the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights, Article X, Section 20 of the Colorado Constitution.
** The General Assembly could have put on the ballot a gasoline tax increase, but no. Instead, this UID was an intentional end-run around TABOR, depriving taxpayers of their power to accept or reject this tax increase.
** The general assembly enacted a mill levy freeze to increase tax revenue to the schools, to provide the general fund more money to spend, again without a vote of the people, a UID for a billion dollars over the next ten years.
** Boisterous assault on TABOR, with a power-hungry and derelict Democratic Majority in the House, Senate, Supreme Court and Governorship. The next TABOR-forbidden UID target, is the 1992 Bird-Arveschoug six percent growth limit to the General Fund, conservatively interpreted and highly respected for 17 years, is now being plundered to allow for easier, less confined state spending.
** The current target is to throw Colorado’s nine electoral votes into a consensus pool of other states, making null and void the Founder’s concepts. The 222-years-old Electoral College was crafted to protect the small versus big states. Requiring a consortium of states to support one national candidate/party is an UID that shrinks the power of Colorado voters. Is there no limit?
William Shakespeare said in Julius Caesar, “The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones.” That’s the tragic tale of today’s “useful idiots.” While in office they are conned into legislative action s that are long-term anathema to what their Founders and Freedom Documents, their children, grandchildren, even themselves; and unborn, unrepresented generations in the future would want. But once in, laws stay. Good job, “useful idiots.”
Conversely, realization is how legislators can get beyond being “useful idiots.” They first realize the Founders created a system of limited government and self-governing people, that government is to protect the peoples’ rights and property, that its financial impact was not to overspend, overtax or over borrow, that its Founding document, the Constitution, was meant to control the government, not the people. When the people put in place an amendment to the Constitution, it is not up to the legislators to flail it to oblivion, but to respect and abide by it. Inconvenient, frustrating or difficult? Deal with it.
How can one avoid becoming or being an elected official or citizen “useful idiot?” Six steps:
1. Read, understand, know, preserve and protect America’s and Colorado’s Freedom Documents–Declaration of Independence, Constitutions and their incredibly important Bills of Rights. Lesson: Master the basics, the fundamentals of a successful society.
2. Build your knowledge and understanding of history’s fundamentals — its ideas, philosophies, ideals, events and actors, heroes and villains. “Who knows only his own generation remains always a child,” is chiseled on a building at the University of Colorado, Boulder. Lesson: Grow up.
3: Read. Watch. Listen. Think. Understand. Lesson: Get and stay informed.
4. Quit being a civics dropout, constitutional illiterate or citizen slug. America’s Republic (not “Democracy”) is not a spectator sport. Lesson: Become aware, interested, informed, concerned, involved and active in what is going on.
5. Share your information, knowledge and concern. America’s educational system leaves too much out. On many talk shows I told listeners too many Americans are “dumbed down, numbed up, tuned out and turned off.” We need to turn them back on, to a country and future of Freedom and destiny. Lesson: Share true personal Freedom and political Liberty.
Sixth: Seeing a “useful idiot” committing a UID, pounce on it. Lesson: It’s up to you.
President George Washington=2 0said, “Government is not reason; it is not eloquence; it is force! Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master.”
Louis D. Brandeis said, “The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men (and women) of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding.”
George Santayana, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
Nobel Laureate Economist Dr. Milton Friedman, “Our problem is not ignorance. It’s what we know that’s not so.”
Endnote: The term “useful idiot” is not meant in any way to disparage, deprecate, defame, denigrate or demean the word “idiot.”
# # #
Fred Holden is public policy specialist, speaker and author of the 600-page citizen power manual TOTAL Power of ONE in America: Discover What You Need to Know, Why and How to be a More Powerful Person and Citizen ($25). He has been Independence Institute senior fellow-fiscal policy for 12 of its 24 years, and has been listed in Heritage Foundation’s Annual Guide to public policy experts since 1 987 in 15 categories. Fred and wife Dottie have lived in Arvada 37 years, with three daughters and six grandchildren for whom they with to help create a better Colorado and America, particularly through a better awareness, knowledge and understanding of America’s Freedom Documents–Declaration of Independence, U. S. Constitution and its incredibly important Bill of Rights. Contact: TOTAL Power, PO Box 1900, Arvada, CO 80004, 303-421-7619.

POLL

1.What single word would the general public use to describe the Republican Party?

2.When the General Public thinks of a Republican, whose image do they think of?

3.Who is primarily responsible for the current Republican image?

4.What importance do you place on a candidate’s “public image?”

5. What would be the most important action Republicans could take to improve their public image?

Conservatism, GM And Afghanistan

I understand why conservatives balk at the notion of a politician running a car company. Obama hasn’t done much with GM yet, but if he is not careful, he could easily get trapped, as David Brooks notes, in a hell of a pickle. He will face political pressure to hang in, even as the company continues to fail. And he has no expertise of the kind needed to run a car company. And this is the core conservative insight here: success is hard; it requires close attention to the details of a business or an enterprise;

it takes experience and judgment and practical knowledge that no politician or economist or analyst has.

Now I know GM’s management has sucked as well – but that doesn’t mean that government won’t suck a lot more. This is a classic case of a mismatch between what a politician can do and what he is trying to do: an over-reach, a categorical error.

But why, pray, does this not equally apply to running Iraq or Afghanistan? Why does our conservative elite believe that these vast, complex, foreign cultures and countries are somehow more manageable than GM? What expertise does Barack Obama have in running Afghanistan?

All he knows is Chicago, Hawaii and America. If you think of the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan as essentially foreign government take-overs of failed states, why would a conservative believe that it could be successful? If government cannot run a company within its own borders, why do we believe it can build a nation thousands of miles away? If it cannot control its own borders or balance its own books, what on earth is it doing trying to run or reorganize or pacify parts of the world it knows next to nothing about?

There is at present a massive disconnect between conservative economics and conservative foreign policy. The first is all about the wisdom of markets, or local knowledge, of irreplaceable specific expertise. The second is all about empire, control, liberal hubris and abstract ideology. At some point, conservatives will have to pick. I fear it will only happen when they have learned the lesson of why liberalism always fails

A Leninist View of the American Media

Conservative exasperation with media bias is a tired refrain, a waste of energy. Complaints of bias start from the premise that press coverage ought to be fair and objective. But is this the premise on which today’s mainstream media is based?

It’s not. The premise that now guides the mainstream media is something we haven’t seen before in this country – thus the never-ending consternation of conservatives at the blatant bias of the media and the nonchalance of its practitioners when caught in the act. We have seen press behavior like this before, though – not here, but in China and the Soviet Union during their classical Leninist eras.

When studying Chinese and Soviet politics back in the 1960s and 70s, I lived on a constant diet of the People’s Daily, Pravda, and their companion publications. It was clear from the first day that the press in Communist China and the Soviet Union was fundamentally different from ours. It had a different purpose, a different relationship not only to the political power structure, but to the truth itself. Railing at Chinese or Soviet media bias the way that today’s conservatives whine about ABC or the New York Times would have been foolish. Instead, it was necessary to understand the assumptions and objectives that underlay media that was under Leninist control. How did they see their role in society? What did they see as proper and improper practice?
Read all here.
David G. Muller, Jr. is a writer in Northern Virginia.

Leondray Gholston Brings Fresh Blood Beside Experienced Dick Wadhams in Colorado GOP Leadership

Posted on March 21st, 2009 in Colorado Politics, Fiscal Policy, General, My Life, PPC, liberty | Written by Ben |
Update: El Presidente has more of the details surrounding what went down at today’s state party officer elections.
I was not able to attend today’s Colorado Republican state central committee meeting in Castle Rock, but I’ve had a chance to follow developments remotely. As reported at Rocky Mountain Right, Dick Wadhams was comfortably re-elected to the chairman’s position.

The more competitive race was for vice-chair, in which DougCo GOP reports on Twitter that Leondray Gholston beat out Nathan Chambers on the 3rd round of voting. For many conservative grassroots supporters, Gholston’s election represents a new and exciting direction for the state party. Let’s hope their optimism is justified. Certainly, Gholston’s passion, enthusiasm, and dedication cannot be denied.

Fundraising should be a strength the Wadhams-Gholston team. Also, from a Colorado Statesman article published before today’s proceedings:

Wadhams listed his goals as improving high-tech communications, registering new Republican-affiliated voters, recruiting and training candidates and continuing to work closely with elected officials.

To hear more about these gentlemen’s plans for the future of the Republican Party in Colorado, I invite you to listen to archived episodes of Rocky Mountain Alliance Blog Talk Radio: the March 10 episode for Dick Wadhams and the February 10 episode for Leondray Gholston.

Congrats to all those who put their names in the hat to run for office. Now is the time for Republicans to unify and work together toward our shared commitment to limited government, personal responsibility, and a strong national defense.

Rocky Ride

The Republicans’ fall from power in Colorado — and how the Democrats hope to replicate it

ROB WITWER

The day before Barack Obama accepted the Democratic nomination at Invesco Field in Denver, a group of progressive activists gathered nearby to discuss what Democrats call the “Colorado miracle.” The story is by now well known. Through a network of wealthy donors called the Colorado Democracy Alliance, Democrats turned Colorado — until recently, a reliably Republican state — a deep shade of blue.

Soon the conversation turned to something less well known: a quiet little project called the Committee on States, through which Democrats plan to export their Colorado success across the country over the next 20 months. “As we know, 2010 is redistricting, there are 35 governors’ races, so it’s going to be a critically important year,” said Rob Stein, founder of the Democracy Alliance, a national Democratic fundraising group. To prepare for 2010, Stein said last summer, architects of the “Colorado miracle” and a lawyer named Frank Smith would be working hard to get progressives in 18 other states “up to Colorado’s level of sophistication and organizational development.”

It wasn’t empty talk. In the past 30 months, the Democracy Alliance’s donors have put over $110 million into 30 state-level groups. “There are a bunch of states,” Stein continued, “where over the next couple of years a lot of development is going to happen.” Later in the presentation, Smith named a few: Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, New Mexico, North Carolina, Ohio, Utah, Wisconsin, and Wyoming.

For Republicans in these states, understanding what happened in Colorado isn’t just a matter of curiosity — it’s a matter of political survival. Read the complete story here.

Notes from Newt

The Situation
The top legislative priority for organized labor and their allies in Congress is the so-called Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), also known as “Card Check.” EFCA is an enormous power grab by big labor bosses that would strip workers of their right to decide by private ballot whether to join a union, and their right to freely negotiate their contract. Instead of a secret ballot election, workers would be asked to publicly sign cards in front of union organizers, potentially subjecting them to harassment or intimidation.

Simply put, EFCA is a threat to workers’ rights. This campaign is not anti-union; in fact, we believe that workers have the right to organize, but they must be able to vote in secret. Get the complete story here.