Take Your Big Tent And Stuff It

There are a lot of people in the media, as well as people who call themselves Conservatives, who are trying to tell us that the Republican Party needs to be more inclusive. They say that we need to have a big tent. What they really mean by this is that we must abandon all of our principles, accept all people, regardless of their ideas, and everything will be OK, as long as all the Conservatives in the big tent sit down and shut up. Their interest really lies in grabbing and maintaining their own power while furthering the Democratic agenda.

They tell us that we cannot win if we continue to hold fast to our core Conservative Principles, claiming that those principles are the reason why we have lost as much recently has we have, ignoring the fact that those who have lost the most have been those who have held our positions the least. But for the sake of this argument, let's go ahead and give them the (false) premise that we cannot win on our principles, what then? I say, fine, so be it. It's not a game, it's not about winning no matter what. It's all about which principles and positions will win out in the end. If we take a stand on our principles and lose, then fine, at least it's an honest defeat, but if we abandon our principles, and move left, and just go along with all of the Democrat agenda points, then we have lost already, even if we win.

Besides this, contrary to what some are trying to claim, Conservatives fully understand that we don't all have to be in agreement on every issue, but we are saying is that we must hold to those core principles that the Country was founded on. We can have the debate, we can argue our positions, in fact we welcome it, we love having the chance to explain what we believe and why, it's just that many people aren't listening. Many times this comes down to the fact that often the Statist position is easy to grasp, it's nearly always dishonest and virtually never does the good they claim it would do, but oh how it sounds good. Conservative positions usually take a little more work to explain and understand, but they actually work as advertised, and that's the difference.

I understand that the media keeps trying to tell Conservatives to sit down and shut up because they are committed to the leftist agenda, and want to further it at all cost, including the suppression of free speech. For those who call themselves Conservatives in one breath, while proving in the next that they are not, I can only assume that they are either narcissistic, hungering for the approval of the media and elitists, or power hungry, or just too dang lazy or stupid to articulate Conservative positions and principles.

So, back to my topic for this post, I mean it, take your big tent and stuff it!

Return Of The Book Review

The new book, "Liberty And Tyranny: A Conservative Manifesto" by Mark R. Levin is in it's third week as the number one book on the New York Times Best Sellers list, and with good reason.

This book is not just some rant, but rather a very thoughtful look at the founding of our nation and the clear and critical differences between liberalism (which Mark calls Statism) and Conservatism.

As I said, this book is very thoughtful, and also very thought provoking. If you are someone who is a Conservative, but you're never quite sure how to answer people who offer challenges, this book will help you navigate the turbulent ocean of statist claptrap. If you are someone who is not quite sure where you stand Politically, but is interested in understanding where we have come from, and where we are going, this book is for you. If you are a committed, hard core statist, you probably don't stand to get much benefit from reading Levin, but who knows, maybe the light will come on.

This is just a well written and very informative book. I highly recommend it, and greatly enjoyed reading it. I hope that many of you will pick up a copy and give it a read with and open mind, and ready to do some serious thinking.

Spending Spree

Hot on the heels of the bloated so-called Stimulus package, and remember that that was $827 Billion after amendments, Congress has passed a special $410 Billion spending package. This they did quietly so that people wouldn't have the chance to call and voice their objections to it. This is simply more money that the US Government will have to borrow, assuming there are any persons or nations still willing to lend, and leave for future generations to pay back.

President Obama keeps talking about how he inherited a deficit from President Bush, and even said the other day that he is going to try to cut the deficit in half during his first term, but this is an out and out lie. Now, I don't like any deficit spending at all, I think the Federal Government should run on the same principles that most of our Grandparents did, if you can't afford it, you just do without it, but let's look at the numbers. The deficit that the new Administration inherited was about $450 Billion. Accounting for interest (sometimes people say "debt service") the deficit has exploded to over $2 Trillion, and Obama has been in office just over a month. Now, I understand that Congress passed the spending bills, but Obama chose to sign them, and in this case, the Congress did not have the votes to over ride a Veto, had the President chosen to not go along, but of course he did go along, because he's complicit in the selling out of our children, and our Nations future.

This is sure not to be the only massive spending increases this year. They now have their sights set firmly on Health Care, and they have already started laying the groundwork for Nationalizing Health Care, which, if they are successful, will be an unmitigated disaster. The fiscal burden of Government run Health Care is well beyond what most people can even imagine, although imagination is hardly required, as we have plenty of examples around the world of just how colossal a failure this system is, just look at Canada and Britain. Besides the cost in dollars though, there is an even higher cost in human lives, and human suffering, as Government managed care amounts to rationed care, and while everyone is technically covered, many are denied access due to cost concerns. This is something that most Americans today don't even comprehend.

For the moment, all we can do is to talk to people, educate people, explain to them why these policies are the wrong ones. We can stay in touch with members of Congress and try to influence the decisions they make, and certainly if your Representative or Senator is in the Minority of those that are doing the right thing, please send them some encouragement so that they might keep on keeping on. Beyond that though, the next big impact we can have is to get involved in the upcoming election in 2010, find those candidates that will fight for what is right and support them. The only way to stem the tide of Socialism in America is to take back Congress in 2010. By 2012 it will be far more difficult to alter course, and if we fail by then, it will almost certainly be too late. People have to wake up, get up, and start fighting this battle now. The future of our Children, and our Nation, depend on it.

Let's Call The Whole Thing Off

There is an old song that most of you are probably familiar with where the issue is the pronunciation of the words potato and tomato, and the point being that, since we can't agree, let's call the whole thing off. This is how I feel about the so called stimulus bill that is being rammed through Congress at amazing speed. The Democrats in Congress and the President call it stimulus, those of us who see through the nonsense call it out of control, pork barrel, Government spending which will stimulate nothing other than bigger and more powerful Government, so, let's call the whole thing off.

You also hear a lot about how this bill has no earmarks at all (although I think that some got added in the Senate, so I guess now they want to say, very few) but even that is misleading. Normally an earmark is added as an amendment to a bill, for an example, you have put forth a bill to make water filtration in your state better, and I look at you and say, OK, I'll support that as long as you support my amendment to build a bridge with my name on it in my home state. The bridge is an earmark. That's just one example, but hopefully you get the point. It's a process by which members of the House and Senate get all of their little pet projects taken care of. That did not happen to this bill, so technically saying that there are no (or maybe very few now) earmarks attached to this bill is true, but the reason for that is that the entire body of the bill is made up of funding for every body's little pet projects. So, in reality, almost the entire bill is earmarks.

They also like to claim that the bill includes tax cuts, but this is a flat out lie. The bill includes another refundable tax credit, meaning that people who make under a certain amount of money will get a check from the Government, regardless of whether or not they paid any taxes. This is very similar to the plan that was pushed by the Bush administration last year that simply didn't work. How like Government, it didn't work last time, so we're just going to go ahead and do it again, surely it will work this time, but of course, it won't. Here's why. Let's say you own a small business selling widgets, and everyone loves your widgets and really wants one, so the Government sends everyone these checks in the mail, and lots of people come down to your store and buy a widget, so business is great right after the checks come out. Now, according to what the Democrats are trying to sell us, because business is up, you're going to turn around and hire a couple more widget makers to keep up with demand, thus creating jobs. The problem with the plan is that you, as a small business owner, are not a moron. You understand that this uptick in sales is nothing more than a minor short term blip, so maybe you work some longer hours and pay the people you already having making widgets overtime for a couple of weeks to meet the demand, but once the checks from the Government stop rolling in, sales fall back to normal. The smart businessman will try to put some of these profits aside for a rainy day, but certainly will not hire more workers based on an artificial boom.

Real tax cuts, on the other hand, that is, allowing people to simply keep more of the money that they make, will cause a smaller, yet much longer term increase in sales, that will be sustainable over time and will cause you to need more widget makers in your business, thus increasing jobs.

Besides the false tax cuts, there is also the case of hugely increased spending in a large variety area's, and where is that money going to come from? Debt of course, that's the only place it can come from at this point. That means that we are putting our nation into a position that will require our grandchildren and great-grandchildren to pay that tab, and that assumes that we stop the out of control spending sometime relatively soon.

There are more problems with this bill, including the provisions moving us along the line toward Socialized medicine, which will, as I've explained before, amount to nothing more than the rationing of Health Care, with some Government bureaucrat deciding if you get the medicines and treatments that you need.

This is one of the worst bills ever to have come before Congress, and if it can still be stopped it needs to be. We simply can't afford to let it go forward.

It's All Connected

I find a lot of Christians to be relatively unconcerned with Politics, thinking that it is unconnected from their life as a Christian, but this is not how it is.

Even in politics the truth matters, the truth always matters. All truth is God's truth, there simply is no other kind. But one thing that many don't realize is that political ideals and theories often are based on other ideas and philosophies. For instance, the idea of a Constitutional Republic where the people elect Representatives and their rights and liberties are defended is based in a Biblical, God centered worldview. Certainly not that anyone is compelled to believe the Bible under such a system (belief by compulsion is no true belief anyway) but it is understood in such a system that there is a Creator God and that certain liberties are granted by Him, and therefore the Government has no authority to take them away. On the other hand, there is Socialism (in all it's forms, Communism or whatever) which is based on atheism. That system is the one that says that there is no God, that the people have only the rights that are granted to them by the state and the state (or Government) has the right to take away whatever rights it wishes, because all rights are given at the whim of the state anyway.

So, what I am saying here is that politics is not in any way unconnected from Spiritual things, it is, in fact, deeply connected. So, when I argue for our Constitutional form of Government, as instituted (though admittedly not so well carried out at times) and against Socialism, I am in fact arguing just as much for a God centered worldview, and against atheism, as I am discussing politics.

Remember, all truth is God's truth, and the truth matters.

The New Guy

As of last week the Republican National Committee has a new Chairman, Micheal Steele of Maryland. I have seen him on several news programs, and have heard and read about him in a few places, and if my initial impressions of him hold up, I'm quite happy with this choice.

It is my understanding that Mr. Steele is a true Conservative, and the only drawback that I have hear of so far is that it is said that he supports Affirmative Action (maybe one of these days I should do a post on that, and why I oppose it), but even if that's true, that's OK, little single issue disagreements can be dealt with over the course of time, and maybe we can change his mind, but again, even if not, we can still work with him quite well as long as he is, overall, the strong Conservative that I believe him to be.

The really important thing is that Mr. Steele understands that what the GOP needs to do to win elections is to clearly explain the Conservative positions and hold to them. Time and time again it has been proven that Conservative Republicans (and even Conservative Democrats as far as that goes) win elections, while "Moderate" or liberal Republicans tend to lose them, and damage the party as a whole. You need only to look as far as Presidential Politics to see this. Ronald Reagan, a true Conservative, won two landslide victories, the second one larger than the first, and both far larger and more significant landslides than the slight and overblown win that Obama pulled off in November. And, as a side note, a few million more people watched Ronald Reagan's first inauguration on TV than watched Obama's inauguration a couple of weeks ago, but the media doesn't like to let that one get out too much (make that, at all). Anyway, going forward, George H.W. Bush won the Presidency one time only, he won the first time because he had been Reagan's Vice President, and people thought that he might be as good as Reagan, but being that he was a moderate Republican instead of a Conservative like Reagan, people decided not to bother keeping him around for more than one term. The same thing would have happened his son, George W. Bush, if it hadn't been for the fact that we were in the middle of an armed conflict and people tended to trust him on that subject more than the Democrat challenger. And as we saw with John McCain, when you're so liberal that you are nearly a Democrat yourself, people will just go ahead and take the authentic Democrat.

Only be being Conservatives can the Republican party start to win again, but beyond that, even if we did manage to win by being slightly less Democrat than the Democrats, any victories would be meaningless. Contrary to what some have come to believe, politics is not a game to see which party can win the most elections, it is about ideas and doing what is going to be best of the Country, Conservative Principles work, liberal ones lead to disaster, every time.

Speaking for myself, I have high hopes for Micheal Steele, time will tell if they are well founded.

Who Needs The Constitution Anyway?

Have you ever noticed that Liberals hate the very idea of States Rights when there is an issue that clearly falls under the domain of the Several States? And yet, when something comes up, like it now has, with individual states wanting to set their own emissions standards for cars, which would clearly fall under the Interstate Commerce Clause of the Constitution, the Liberals all cry out for States Rights.

It is the legitimate duty of the Federal Government to regulate such things, being that a car will be built in one state and sold in every other state, or nearly so, and so the elected officials of one state should not be able to impose their will on the people of the other states in which they were not elected. And in the case of emissions standards, that is what will happen, the auto makers will, out of necessity, comply with the most stringent standards, because they won't be able to afford to make 37 different engines for the same model of car, so the most extreme State Government would decide for the entire nation what the standard would be, and this would jack the price of a car up well past what is reasonable, just to comply with Government mandates, and those mandates put in place by people elected in only one state.

It's too bad that the Obama Administration is already looking to tighten the Federal Governments strangle hold on the auto industry, by cranking MPG requirements even higher than they already are, at a time when they have just given them billions of dollars because they can't make ends meet. Who, exactly, thought that it was a good idea to take actions that will make cars more expensive and less safe? Yes, that's right, less safe, the current standards cost thousands of lives every year, the evidence is clear, every time the MPG requirements are increased highway fatalities increase also. That's not to say that there are more accidents because of this, but that the accidents are less survivable. Why is that? It's because you reach a point, and we have been there for some time, where the only way to increase gas mileage is to make the cars lighter, and that means that they do not offer as much protection in a crash, because some of the safety features were sacrificed in order to get the MPG rating up. The Liberals are literally willing to risk killing you and your family in order to "save the planet."

So, let's take an industry that the Government has regulated nearly into oblivion, that we the people have been forced to give billions of our hard earned dollars to in order to keep them afloat, have the Federal Government kick them while they are down with MPG requirements, and then sucker punch them by allowing each state to require different levels of standards from them. How long is it before our Government beats the auto makers into another bailout? I fear it may not be long.

The great Ronald Reagan once said, "Governments view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it."