A Facebook Friend of mine and fellow Madison La Follette alumnus, Mike Maynard, posted this on Facebook. His blog entry, which you can read in its uninterrupted unitalicized original version on Facebook, deserves a larger audience, and additional commentary (which is not in italics). The language is his, for those easily offended:
Let’s face it here: The Republican Party has gone to the proverbial shitter. How did that happen? The near-extinction of the Lincoln-Buckley Republicans is how.
(I’d ask where the “proverbial shitter” is, but then I’d be accused of being an ’80s smartass. Oh, wait a minute …)
Now, you may be wondering, “what is a Lincoln-Buckley Republican?” If you Google it nothing will come up–I made it up. I coined the term “Lincoln-Buckley” because I had to. I had to give it a name and I thought the one I picked fit the best. It also rolls off the tongue really nicely–try saying it!
Let me tell you about the two great wise men I named the term after, Abraham Lincoln and William F. Buckley, Jr. Most of us know who Lincoln was. The 16th President of the United States. The Great Emancipator.
Honest Abe. Lincoln was a statesman who was guided by the principles of our Founding Fathers, and should be the model of conservative leadership today. He believed in natural rights, not the expansive definition of positive rights, without any grounding in nature, advanced by today’s Left. He believed in equality before the law, but he also noted that the Declaration of Independence does not declare that all men are equal in their attainments or social position. He understood and obeyed the Constitution, rather than viewing it as a living and evolving document or simply ignoring it altogether.
William F. Buckley, Jr. was a conservative statesman who founded the periodical National Review and had his own television show (that I loved and watched as a kid), “Firing Line.” Buckley used his magazine and television show to define the boundaries of conservatism and to exclude people or ideas or groups they considered unworthy of the conservative title, such as Ayn Rand, the John Birch Society, white supremacists and anti-Semites. Buckley also thought it was a waste of time and energy to outlaw marijuana and strongly advocated its decriminalization.
Mike and readers might be interested to know that some conservatives today don’t consider Lincoln a conservative in that he suspended habeas corpus during the Civil War and that the Emancipation Proclamation and the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments are examples of federal power squashing states’ rights. My answer to that is if you’re defending slavery, you’ve already lost the argument. Such presidents as Woodrow Wilson (jailing socialists), Franklin Roosevelt (Japanese detention) and George W. Bush (the Patriot Act) would argue that the rules change in war. Slavery was a violation of natural human rights, and if the slave states weren’t going to stop slavery, the Union did.
As for whether Buckley self-identified with Lincoln’s points of view, you’d have to read one of Buckley’s numerous books to find out.
Now, to be as thorough as I can be, I’ll state what the Lincoln-Buckley Republicans stand for today. Socially, they are not hands-on like their Christian counterparts. They don’t care if you are Christian, Muslim, atheist, or whatever–it doesn’t reach their dinner tables. They don’t care if you are gay, straight, or asexual–it doesn’t reach their bedrooms. They, unlike their Christian counterparts, believe that what you do behind closed doors is your own business. They live and let live. They believe in the 2nd amendment through and through. Fiscally, they are very conservative. They hesitate voting for the passing any bills that would raise taxes, and must be convinced with empirical evidence when they do. There’s no rubber stamps with them. On foreign issues they believe in free trade with other countries and to stay out of their business, it’s much more fiscally sound that way when wars don’t have to be financed. William F. Buckley Jr. was staunchly against the Iraq invasion from the start and later on when he was making suggestions for it they mistook him as changing his mind on the subject–he didn’t–he was just giving realistic advice on something that is already happening.
Well, on the subjects of gun rights, taxes and free trade there is little difference between Christian conservatives and Lincoln–Buckley Republicans. It’s certainly more consistent to argue that if the government doesn’t belong in your wallet, it doesn’t belong in your bedroom either. (Buckley was a daily-Mass Catholic, by the way.)
Christian conservatives who believe that life begins at conception and abortion therefore is murder would argue that their tax dollars should not support abortion rights. Support for the first Iraq invasion and the war in Afghanistan was bipartisan. Even though intervening in other countries’ affairs is a marvelous environment for the Law of Unintended Consequences, “hawks” would argue that in today’s world isolationism succeeds only in letting influences contrary to America (for instance, radical Islam) flourish.
Let’s talk about why and how the Lincoln-Buckleys are so irrelevant or worse yet, completely an afterthought. There’s a lot of factors including the Christian conservatives, the Democratic party, the dumbing-down of America, and wingnuts such Rush Limbaugh and just about everyone on FOX NEWS. I’ll detail them below with numeric bulletin points:
Before Mike starts firing bullet points: One fact of the human condition is the belief that your life would be much better if you only lived your life the way I live mine. That fact has shaped American political parties since approximately the debate over slavery, and probably before that. “Live and let live” is easier as a theory than as practice.
The purpose of political parties is to promote the political fortunes of their members, not, since sometime in the 20th century, to promote lofty ideals. The assertion that mainstream Democrats want more control over your wallet and mainstream Republicans want more control over your private life appears to have succeeded in generating votes and campaign donations for each. In the political marketplace, there may not be as much support as Mike and I would like for the Keep Out of Our Lives caucus.
1. THE CHRISTIAN CONSERVATIVES
First, before I go ballistic with words on this group, I want to strongly emphasize that I am not condemning religion. I am all for it if you find solace or whatever positive from it. I personally know and love Christians who do not impose anything on anyone. Now having said that, let me get to the meat on the bone here. The Christian conservatives in power are some of the most intolerant, narrow-minded people I have ever known. Their Bible trumps my Constitution. They will do anything to stay in power and to try to assimilate those who don’t believe and severely punish those who remain independent-thinking. They will bully, coerce, blackmail, and even murder to advance their agenda. I view them as the true enemy of liberty. They alway assail the Lincoln-Buckleys for not conforming to their ways and they do everything they can to eliminate them in the name of Jesus.
At the risk of igniting a politics vs. religion war: Matthew 28:19 and Mark 16:15 quote Jesus Christ as instructing his followers to “make disciples of all nations.” I’m not a theologian, but I’m familiar with no part of the Bible where Christ instructed his followers to “make disciples of all nations” through legislation. (That applies to Christian conservatives and Christian liberals.) But Christians are supposed to answer to God before man, which means that, yes, the Bible should trump the Constitution. The First Amendment’s protection of freedom of religion was to make sure that a specific religion didn’t get the imprimatur of the government (as the Church of England did in Britain). The Founding Fathers, who were a mix of Christians and non-Christians, felt the First Amendment was sufficient protection of their religious rights.
2. THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY
Yes, I am serious here. Dead serious! The Democratic party likes the GOP exactly the way it is now–one dimensional. It helps them a lot. How does it help them? They don’t have to worry about contending for the moderates’ votes when the Republicans are like the way they are now. If there was a Lincoln-Buckley running for office against them, the moderates are appealed by their stance on the middle of the road and they have to campaign much harder and more honestly. The Democrats did a lot of behind-the-scene work to derail presidential candidate Ron Paul (a true Lincoln-Buckley to the core) by airing questionable reports that he has a racist background. Even my own friend Larry Lefkowitz from Brooklyn was doing that deed. When he told me about that about Ron Paul, I investigated it and found everything he said in dispute as there was nothing factual to go on with.
I can’t comment on what Democrats may have done to derail Paul’s candidacy; some would argue that Paul’s own candidacy, specifically seeing moral equivalency in various Middle East actors, and what are derisively called the “Paulbots” have derailed Paul more than anything else. Paul is also 76 and not particularly photogenic (like it or not, the more media-friendly presidential candidate, by such conventional aesthetic standards as amount of hair, voice quality and public personality, more often than not wins), though as a quote-of-the-day machine the media really should be nicer to Paul.
As for Mike’s assertions about moderates, to paraphrase Bill Clinton, it depends on what the meaning of “moderate” is. Many people like to think of themselves as “moderate,” which is why the term is helpful more as a comparison to someone else’s views than as the name of a political philosophy. Hillary Clinton was supposedly the more moderate Democrat than Barack Obama (which was a ridiculous assertion) in 2008. A lot of “moderates” voted for Obama in 2008 instead of John McCain, who supposedly was the moderate Republican presidential candidate. Those same people then turned around and voted for Republicans for Congress and in statewide races two years later.
Before Obama, Bill Clinton was seen in the 1990s as a moderate, a Third Way alternative to those evil Republicans and those crazy liberal Democrats. And yet Clinton got 50 percent of the popular vote in neither of his presidential election wins. Before Clinton, Ronald Reagan was seen as not merely excessively conservative, but dangerously right-wing, and yet he won the 1980 and 1984 elections easily. “Moderate” and “electable” are sometimes synonymous, and sometimes not.
On an unrelated note, the Democrats do the same thing to African-American Republicans since their presence in the GOP takes away the race card they like to use against the Republicans for the purpose of brandishing them racists as a whole. What the Democrats do to the Lincoln-Buckleys (and African-American Republicans) is so laughably transparent.
The Wall Street Journal’s James Taranto recently observed that “the left for years has portrayed frank discussion about illegitimacy, welfare dependency and other social problems among blacks as race-based attacks. As a political strategy, this has succeeded, as evidenced by blacks’ overwhelming propensity to vote Democratic. As a program for improving the lives of blacks, the results have been less impressive.”
3. THE DUMBING-DOWN OF AMERICA
Is America any longer an intelligent nation? Fuck no. The adage “if you don’t succeed in your line of work, you can always teach” is so sickeningly true. That’s what our colleges are full of, especially community colleges where the vast majority of America receive their higher learning. We just don’t think objectively like our grandparents did. When the conscientiously objective thinking is gone, so are the Lincoln-Buckleys. Conscientious objectivity is the core value of the Lincoln-Buckleys.
I agree that many people don’t think objectively. Having read a lot of old newspapers back when my job included writing columns from culled old newspapers, I would not necessarily claim that clear, objective thought was always present in past generations either. We have more information sources than ever before, and more people go to college than ever before. But are we making better decisions than previous generations? The federal debt would indicate otherwise, not to mention our various social pathologies. Education and knowledge do not necessarily trump human nature, and education and knowledge does not necessarily translate into wisdom.
4. RUSH LIMBAUGH and FOX NEWS
We all know who Rush is, that fat pig-faced asshole who likes to needle at anything he can to draw emotional responses from his listeners on his disgrace of a radio show. We all know what FOX NEWS is, a one-sided political indoctrination of a news network. They do nothing but promote fear that has accompanied our economic slump has made the fear that right-wing demagogues sell a more attractive product. What I mean, is, when we already have lost our conscientious objectivity, these assholes like Rush Limbuagh just pounce on the mental midgets and feed their weak minds with demagouging bullshit that is so laughable such as “Obama wasn’t born in America” just to name one. Those mental midgets will repeat what they hear from Rush to other lemmings and in turn, they keep the Lincoln-Buckleys out of power. I probably should have combined this paragraph with the one above (#3) as they are almost parallel.
I don’t listen to Limbaugh, and I don’t watch much of Fox News, and I think the “birthers” are misguided. (Obama’s three years in office should be more than enough to prevent him from getting years five through eight, not because of his alleged birth certificate, his alleged actual religion or lack thereof, his alleged lack of correct draft registration, or other fabricated distractions.)
Fox News fans would argue that Fox News (which is the number one rated cable news network, by the way) is the conservative alternative to MSNBC (which makes no bones about its leftward list), CNN, and the over-the-air networks’ news operations. Limbaugh, meanwhile, has been skewering Democrats, liberals, progressives and others who deserve skewering for nearly 30 years. (And as I said last week, anyone who claims that private businesses should be forced to pay for their employees’ birth control or, I kid you not, sex change surgery deserves criticism, though not as Limbaugh put it.) Limbaugh stays on the air because people listen, which means that advertisers advertise on his show to capture those ears. Whenever that stops happening will be the end of Limbaugh’s radio career. Your opinion about Limbaugh’s credibility can be expressed in the same way as your opinion about Madison’s Sly in the Morning or anyone else — choose to listen, or not.
Those who have studied the history of journalism would tell those who haven’t that the assertion that we once had a halcyon era of objective, bias-free journalism is false, at least in print. The Chicago Tribune reflected the far-right isolationist views of its founder, Col. Robert McCormick. William Randolph Hearst famously told his Havana correspondent in early 1898 to supply stories and Heart would “supply the war.” Since approximately World War II, newspapers have done a better job of keeping their institutional views to their opinion pages, but bias shows up in which stories get covered and which don’t, how stories are approached, and, yes, the personal views of the reporter.
The key to being a media consumer in the 21st century is to decide for yourself which media outlets reflect the most accurate view of the world, so that you can have an informed view of the world, not necessarily to watch, listen to or read media outlets that seem to agree with your view of the world.
Now, what should we do about this? What can we do about this? First, we must always be tolerant of other people who are different than us in whatever ways, and listen to them always.
Well … that depends. It’s morally wrong to discriminate against those with different characteristics from you — skin color, ethnic background, sex, religion or lack thereof, etc. However, I feel no need to be tolerant of John Spiegelhoff, the AFSCME Council 40 “leader” who calls Sen. Pam Galloway, M.D. (R–Wausau) a “pig” on an apparently regular basis. I feel no need to be tolerant of HBO’s Bill Maher, who not only calls Sarah Palin words rhyming in “hunt” and “swat,” but unlike Limbaugh refuses to apologize. I feel no need to be tolerant of those who express stupid ideas or stupid arguments. (Which eliminates much of Mike’s and my home town, as you know.)
Back in my business magazine days, I adopted the opinion philosophy of the Wall Street Journal, whose staff-written opinions and guest editorials are expressions of the opinion section’s philosophy, not the usual newspaper practice of assuming all points of view are valid, because they’re not:
We believe that the ultimate function of the editorial pages is the same as the rest of the newspaper, to inform. But in opinion journalism we have the additional purpose of making an argument for a point of view. We often take sides on the major issues of politics and society, with a goal of moving policies or events in what we think is the best direction for the country and world. We recognize that others may disagree but see little value in equivocation. In stating our own views forcefully, we hope to raise and sharpen the level of debate and knowledge. And we hope that our editorials reflect not merely the passing whim of passing editors, but a body of thought shaped by a century of tradition.
Given how Mike feels about Christian conservatives, I hope he appreciates the irony of my quoting from the Bible here, specifically Mark 7:20–23: “And he said, That which comes out of the man, that defiles the man. For from within, out of the heart of men, proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders, Thefts, covetousness, wickedness, deceit, lasciviousness, an evil eye, blasphemy, pride, foolishness: All these evil things come from within, and defile the man.”
Secondly, we must always have a conscientious objectivity and be in charge of our minds. Don’t let anyone else do your thinking for you, espcially not Rush Limbaugh or Bill Maher. The Democrats need to let go of their bullshit “Republicans are evil” mantra because as long as they hold onto it, we’re just going to keep on going in circles getting nothing done. We must always condemn the Christian conservatives when they use Machiavellian tactics to advance their agenda. Let’s keep working on it, we can do it. It won’t happen overnight or maybe not even in my lifetime, but as long as we make the effort to, we can look at ourselves in the mirror with a smile.
We can agree with the “be in charge of our own minds” part. The name-calling that has been going on between Democrats and their supporters and Republicans and their supporters is a silly distraction from the real issues this country faces.
But here’s the thing: There is little agreement on what to do about the real issues facing this country. The federal debt currently equals the entire economic output of this country for one year. If this is an economic recovery, I’d hate to see what a recession looks like. (The unemployment and underemployment numbers and percentages are much higher than President Obama will admit.) If gas hits $5 a gallon soon, we may get to enjoy both a recession (negative economic growth) and inflation at the same time, just like the late 1970s. Neither the end of the Cold War nor the U.S.’ pullout from Iraq or Afghanistan changes the fact that the U.S. still has enemies, whether we engage in the world or ignore what’s going on outside our borders. And there are the usual cultural wars.
The Democratic and Republican parties agree about what to do for not a single one of the issues in the previous paragraph. And you may not agree with what the Democratic and Republican parties want to about any of those issues. Voters change their minds frequently — they voted for a Republican in the White House and for Republicans to control both houses of Congress in 2004, and by 2008 they switched to Democrats across the board. And then in 2010 they gave Republicans the House, and Obama’s current poll numbers make him look like a one-term president.
How does all of this get solved? By politics. Messily, noisily, and usually disagreeably. You’re not going to find perfection on this world.
Steve Prestegard.com: The Presteblog 