The Welfare State vs. Virtue

James Dorn offers a fine essay at The Freeman on The Rise of Government and the Decline of Morality Here's an excerpt:

Immigrants were faced with material poverty, true, but they were not wretched. There was a certain moral order in everyday life, which began in the home and spread to the outside community.

Baltimore’s Polish immigrants provide a good example. Like other immigrants, they arrived with virtually nothing except the desire to work hard and to live in a free country. Their ethos of liberty and responsibility is evident in a 1907 housing report describing the Polish community in Fells Point:

"A remembered Saturday evening inspection of five apartments in a house [on] Thames Street, with their whitened floors and shining cook stoves, with the dishes gleaming on the neatly ordered shelves, the piles of clean clothing laid out for Sunday, and the general atmosphere of preparation for the Sabbath, suggested standards that would not have disgraced a Puritan housekeeper.

Yet, according to the report, a typical Polish home consisted “of a crowded one- or two-room apartment, occupied by six or eight people, and located two floors above the common water supply.”

Even though wages were low, Polish Americans sacrificed to save and pooled their resources to help each other by founding building and loan associations, as Linda Shopes noted in The Baltimore Book. By 1929, 60 percent of Polish families were homeowners—without any government assistance.

That basic fact — that a free political system is premised on the presence of a virtuous populace — can never be emphasized too much. The great debate today, of course, is between competing ethical systems.

History gives us a guide and points to a time when Americans embraced self-reliance, self-responsibility, and self-confidence. The great open question is how to once again make those virtues the norm, especially in the face of an educational system working fiercely against them.

Suggestions welcomed.

The State of Liberty, Circa 2040, A Cautionary Tale

It is 2040. You are 17 and the world is about to break open for you, you feel sure. You may have struggles, true. But that world has possibilities, so you believe. Unfortunately, following a century-long tradition, Obama and his kind decided 30 years prior that the world is better when "we spread the wealth around," so your options are a choice between Charybdis and Scylla.

Your parents — a successful lobbyist and a solar panel engineer — played the game for your sake and were rewarded by those in power during your childhood. But the party they allied with is out of favor since last November.

You've just graduated with a good education from an elite high school (the public schools having all been reduced to literal day care clinics and indoctrination centers). But Dad and Mom's income taxes are being raised to 90%, retroactive to the date of your birth. As "advantaged couples," it's their moral obligation to pay for college for the offspring of a couple from the oppressed group du jour, you see, and that leaves none for you.

You might have made your own way without it, but small business and entrepreneurship are things of the past, a mere memory from a quaint time in America's past, like gum drop jars and soda fountains with elephant head spigots.

Your grandparents — long dead, courtesy of rationed health care — might have remembered seeing paintings of those objects. They would also have remembered tales of a different country, the country of their great grandparents.

Then, life was physically hard. A refrigerator was a luxury item and there were no cell phones. But if your poor ancestor had an itch to design and market a locomotive, he had only to beg money from a capitalist, not favors from a Congressman.

Of course, there were in his day — as there are in yours — men who traded money for favors from those with power and public funds. Such men started railroads, most of which — even after repeated subsidies — went bankrupt. James Jerome Hill used private money for his lines and sucessfully spanned a continent. Along the way he created tidy towns across the country and tidy profits for himself.

Life was hard in other ways, too, especially for those who were descendant from African slaves or Chinese railroad workers — or even Irish potato farmers, Italian bankers, and Polish butchers, all of whom suffered prejudice. But no government union teacher nagged your ancestor to the point of madness to love his neighbor, or they you. That was left largely to preachers on Sunday, who could be ignored without consequences.

Individuals loved or hated, worked or rotted, succeeded or failed. But whatever the outcome, it depended half on luck, half on character and their own choices — not on the whims or vanity or do-gooding faux morality of men who held hostage the legal system. Your ancestors were free.

That freedom offered no guarantees, it's true. Liberty never promised men a free ride, just the chance to build one without the brake of a boot on the neck or a straitjacket on the soul.

Lucky for you, even in 2040 it's still possible to refresh the tree of liberty. Godspeed.

Jefferson's Rough Draft of the Declaration, A Lesson

There are some interesting differences in Jefferson's original draft of the Declaration of Independence - particularly the section on slavery - and the final, signed document. Here is the great man's version, before the Committee of Five and Congress made changes.

A Declaration of the Representatives of the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, in General Congress assembled.

When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for a people to advance from that subordination in which they have hitherto remained, and to assume among the powers of the earth the equal and independant station to which the laws of nature and of nature's god entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the change.

We hold these truths to be sacred and undeniable; that all men are created equal and independant, that from that equal creation they derive rights inherent and inalienable, among which are the preservation of life, and liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that to secure these ends, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that whenever any form of government shall become destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying it's foundation on such principles and organising it's powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.

prudence indeed will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes: and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. but when a long train of abuses and usurpations, begun at a distinguished period, and pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to subject them to arbitrary power, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government and to provide new guards for their future security.

such has been the patient sufferance of these colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to expunge their former systems of government. the history of his present majesty, is a history of unremitting injuries and usurpations, among which no one fact stands single or solitary to contradict the uniform tenor of the rest, all of which have in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states.

to prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world, for the truth of which we pledge a faith yet unsullied by falsehood.

• he has refused his assent to laws the most wholesome and necessary for the public good:

• he has forbidden his governors to pass laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has neglected utterly to attend to them.

• he has refused to pass other laws for the accomodation of large districts of people unless those people would relinquish the right of representation, a right inestimable to them, formidable to tyrants alone:

• he has dissolved Representative houses repeatedly and continually, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people:

• he has refused for a long space of time to cause others to be elected, whereby the legislative powers, incapable of annihilation, have returned to the people at large for their exercise, the state remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within:

• he has endeavored to prevent the population of these states; for that purpose obstructing the laws for naturalization of foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither; and raising the conditions of new appropriations of lands:

• he has suffered the administration of justice totally to cease in some of these colonies, refusing his assent to laws for establishing judiciary powers:

• he has made our judges dependant on his will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and amount of their salaries:

• he has erected a multitude of new offices by a self-assumed power, and sent hither swarms of officers to harrass our people and eat out their substance:

• he has kept among us in times of peace standing armies and ships of war:

• he has affected to render the military, independant of and superior to the civil power:

• he has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitutions and unacknoleged by our laws; giving his assent to their pretended acts of legislation, for quartering large bodies of armed troops among us;

for protecting them by a mock-trial from punishment for any murders they should commit on the inhabitants of these states;

for cutting off our trade with all parts of the world;

for imposing taxes on us without our consent;

for depriving us of the benefits of trial by jury;

for transporting us beyond seas to be tried for pretended offences: for taking away our charters, and altering fundamentally the forms of our governments;

for suspending our own legislatures and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever:

he has abdicated government here, withdrawing his governors, and declaring us out of his allegiance and protection:

he has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns and destroyed the lives of our people:

he is at this time transporting large armies of foreign merce naries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of cruelty and perfidy unworthy the head of a civilized nation:

he has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers the merciless Indian savages, whose known rule of warfare is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes, and conditions of existence:

he has incited treasonable insurrections in our fellow-subjects, with the allurements of forfeiture and confiscation of our property:

he has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating it's most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating and carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither.

this piratical warfare, the opprobrium of infidel powers, is the warfare of the CHRISTIAN king of Great Britain. determined to keep open a market where MEN should be bought and sold, he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain this execrable commerce: and that this assemblage of horrors might want no fact of distinguished die, he is now exciting those very people to rise in arms among us, and to purchase that liberty of which he has deprived them, and murdering the people upon whom he also obtruded them; thus paying off former crimes committed against the liberties of one people, with crimes which he urges them to commit against the lives of another.

in every stage of these oppressions we have petitioned for redress in the most humble terms; our repeated petitions have been answered by repeated injury. a prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a people who mean to be free.

future ages will scarce believe that the hardiness of one man, adventured within the short compass of 12 years only, on so many acts of tyranny without a mask, over a people fostered and fixed in principles of liberty.

Nor have we been wanting in attentions to our British brethren.

we have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend a jurisdiction over these our states. we have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here, no one of which could warrant so strange a pretension: that these were effected at the expence of our own blood and treasure, unassisted by the wealth or the strength of Great Britain: that in constituting indeed our several forms of government, we had adopted one common king, thereby laying a foundation for perpetual league and amity with them: but that submission to their parliament was no part of our constitution, nor ever in idea, if history may be credited: and we appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, as well as to the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations which were likely to interrupt our correspondence and connection.

they too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity, and when occasions have been given them, by the regular course of their laws, of removing from their councils the disturbers of our harmony, they have by their free election re-established them in power.

at this very time too they are permitting their chief magistrate to send over not only soldiers of our common blood, but Scotch and foreign mercenaries to invade and deluge us in blood.

these facts have given the last stab to agonizing affection, and manly spirit bids us to renounce for ever these unfeeling brethren. we must endeavor to forget our former love for them, and to hold them as we hold the rest of mankind, enemies in war, in peace friends.

we might have been a free and great people together; but a communication of grandeur and of freedom it seems is below their dignity. be it so, since they will have it: the road to glory and happiness is open to us too; we will climb it in a separate state, and acquiesce in the necessity which pronounces our everlasting Adieu!

We therefore the representatives of the United States of America in General Congress assembled do, in the name and by authority of the good people of these states, reject and renounce a11 allegiance and subjection to the kings of Great Britain and all others who may hereafter claim by, through, or under them; we utterly dissolve and break off a11 political connection which may have heretofore subsisted between us and the people or parliament of Great Britain; and finally we do assert and declare these a colonies to be free and independant states, and that as free and independant states they shall hereafter have power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and to do all other acts and things which independent states may of right do.

And for the support of this declaration we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honour.

As a matter of interesting history, there were many individual declarations of independence prior to July, 1776. According to Wikipedia, some ninety separate local and state proclamations throughout the Thirteen Colonies were issued. Among them, the one "on May 4, when the Rhode Island legislature became the first to declare its independence from Great Britain."

Clearly, revolution was in the air.

History, to cite a trite but true observation, repeats itself. The question before us now is whether this time around it will be a peaceful one, brought about by democratic means, or will require more forceful measures to throw off the velvet noose of Federal tyranny tightening around the necks of today's American citizens.

Time will tell.

Folsom Fisks Obama

Dr. Burton Folsom, author of the superb The Myth of the Robber Barons has written a superb fisking of Obama. That's a bit like Roger Federer pummeling me in a tennis match, but never mind that.

In a post on NRO he effortlessly corrects several of Obama's historical errors. (Federer's backhand comes to mind, but let's move on.) Obama said,

“What bothers me,” [he] told the graduating class at the University of Michigan last month, “is when I hear people say that all of government is inherently bad.”

Dr. Folsom is too classy to say it, so I will: that's a deliberate mischaracterization, known in non-academic circles as a lie.

As Dr. Folsom points out:

Only anarchists think all of government is inherently bad. Government has a useful constitutional function in protecting contracts and providing for the national defense. We need a government strong enough to protect our private property.

It gets better. Obama asserts:

“When we needed a way to reach the Pacific, our government helped build the railroads.” Then [he] added, “When the markets crashed during the Great Depression, and people lost their life savings, our government put in place a set of rules and safeguards to make sure that such a crisis never happened again.”

Dr. Folsom patiently corrects him, thusly:

Wrong on both counts. The Union Pacific and Central Pacific were poorly built railroads, they went broke, and both cost the nation over $60,000,000 to build — a sum higher than the total national debt just a decade before they were built. By contrast, the Great Northern Railroad, which was built with private money by James J. Hill, never went broke and was arguably the best-built railroad in the nation.

On the Great Depression, government intervention did not rescue the nation. The U. S. had more than 20 percent unemployment in 1939, toward the end of FDR’s second term. On the contrary, government intervention — through the Smoot-Hawley Tariff, the Farm Board, and the income tax hike to 63 percent on top incomes — triggered the depression, and FDR perpetuated it through failed stimulus packages and higher taxes.

One of the reasons I'm such a huge fan of Professor Folsom is that he backs his assertions with historical evidence, of which he is a master. I'm very big on people who support their statements with facts. What are the odds we could get Obama to do the same? About the same as me besting Roger in the French Open, I suspect.

[Update: Once again demonstrating his mastery of history, Dr. Folsom presents a few case studies in subsidies vs the free market, i.e. political 'entrepreneurship' vs market entrepreneurship. Sadly, plus ca change where Congress is concerned. Enough facts here to give any honest Progressive pause, if you can find such an unlikely creature.]

Yet Another Pin-Up Girl: Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Robert Andrews has a terrific smackdown of Nicholas Kristof's utterly revolting NYT review of Ayaan Hirsi Ali's new book, Nomad. Defending the uber-heroic Ms. Ali is of course completely appropriate since she is one of the finest public personalities on the planet. Rational, factual, totally dedicated to the right and the true, and with the most horrific bona fides of any public intellectual in memory. Yet, she has never lost her charm and sense of life's possibilities.

How ironic the timing, then, that PBS should choose this week to re-broadcast a documentary called Cities of Light: The Rise and Fall of Islamic Spain (2007) I confess I haven't even seen it and I can already safely predict it's point of view. There's a big clue in the dead-giveaway title. One usually applies Rise and Fall to glorious civilizations (though there are exceptions, like the Nazi regime). But the "Cities of Light" moniker is the real kicker.

Still, it's the program description that really cements my certainty:

An examination of a time during the Middle Ages when Christians, Jews, and Muslims peacefully coexisted in southern Spain, and what led to the disintegration of the society.

I researched Moorish Spain fairly well for a novel some time back and I can assure you that all was not sweetness and light in early 8th to late 15th century Al-Andalus.

Set aside that nobody had any rights in Iberia during those years. That region had been, and continues to be, dominated by the Catholic Church (now overlaid with a huge dose of modern socialism). The results were not pretty even before the Islamic invasion. But forget that for now. Ask yourself instead what kind of 'peace' individuals in those groups would have enjoyed during the period.

Then, as now, any non-Muslim was a second-class citizen and, at that time and place, "second class citizen" meant something a good deal more onerous than even that of a black person in Georgia circa 1960. To a Christian or Jewish male it was: just pay your Jizya and keep your mouth firmly shut or suffer the consequences.

And what were those consequences? Then as now: imprisonment, beheading, or banishment (which often meant death by starvation). Women, of course, didn't even register on the scale as fully human, a situation that persists in Islamic countries to this day.

And, as a side note, Kristof's (and the filmmaker's) belief that Christians got by real well during that time is belied by the many armed revolts led by Christian kings over almost the entire period. That continued until Queen Isabella and her husband completed the final transfer that ended the Caliphate in all of that region. The fate of Jews, not only in Spain but everywhere prior to the mid-20th century, is too well known to require discussing.

How modern so-called liberals can decry Rand Paul's mild disapproval of one aspect of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and enthusiastically embrace Islamic Spain as a garden of delights and an era of religious brotherhood is almost beyond comprehension. It's as if one were to look at the Soviet Union in 1933 and declare that everything was hunky dory because there was 'peace' among Kulaks, Tartars, and Russians. Peace under rule by gangsters is not the same as peace of mind under freedom.

Truthfully, I don't think creatures like Kristof and that documentary maker lack historical knowledge nor are lying. I suspect their minds simply refuse any connection to reality when the facts are not as they wish. It's cherry picking raised to the level of a psychotic break.

Fortunately for us, we have Ayaan Hirsi Ali to keep us grounded, and that slender woman's weighty thoughts far outweigh any foolishness the Kristofs of the world can spew.

Madison on the Commerce Clause

According to James Madison,

It is very certain that [the Commerce Clause] grew out of the abuse of the power by the importing States in taxing the non-importing, and was intended as a negative and preventive provision against injustice among the States themselves, rather than as a power to be used for the positive purposes of the General Government.

Letter to Cabell, February 13, 1829.

I'm assuming he would know the motive for including the clause, and how it should be interpreted.

Yet, in Wickard v Filburn, the Supreme Court decided otherwise when they declared a farmer growing wheat for his personal consumption had to comply with FDR's arbitrary dictates. For the horrid details, see the book The Dirty Dozen by Levy and Mellor.

Swedes Return Danish Magna Carta

It's interesting to see how the sporadic and heroic efforts to formalize individual rights has occurred in history. Most everyone is familiar with the English Magna Carta ("Great Charter"), which enshrined some limited rights in Britain centuries ago. But, Denmark had something similar, a 1241 AD document they call the Jyske Lov (or Codex Holmeinsis in Latin). Captured centuries ago by Sweden as war booty, the two countries are now making arrangements to have it returned to a Denmark museum.

Here's a taste:

With law shall land [i.e. the nation] be built. And if all men would keep what is theirs, and let others enjoy the same rights, there would be no need of law. [...] If the land had no law, then he would have the most who could grab the most.

Not a bad start. Since Obama seems so determined to turn America into Scandinavia, maybe someone could get him to read this.

Some History of the Origins of the Progressive Assault on America

Or, in simpler words, How Progressives Screwed Us.

Professor Tiffany Jones Miller of the University of Dallas has a fine, brief article on the history of Progressivism in America, keying off the work of John Dewey. Of course, for my money she's far too 'cool' and academic about the whole thing, but for the most part she's very accurate. Here are some excerpts:

"If the progressive label seems less radical today, it is only because progressivism is less well known than its liberal progeny.

It was initially an academic phenomenon far removed from American politics. Particularly in the post–Civil War American university, professors — many of whom had obtained their graduate training in German universities, and whose thought reflected the “intoxicating effect of the undiluted Hegelian philosophy upon the American mind,” as progressive Charles Merriam once put it — articulated a critique of America that was as deep as it was wide.

It began with a conscious rejection of the natural-rights principles of the American founding and the promotion of a new understanding of freedom, history, and the state in their stead. From this foundation, the progressives then criticized virtually every aspect of our traditional way of life, recommending reforms or “social reorganization” on a sweeping scale, the primary engine of which was to be a new, “positive” role for the state.

As the progressives’ influence in the academy increased, and growing numbers of their students sallied forth into all aspects of endeavor, this intellectual transformation gradually began to reshape the broader American mind, and, in time, American political practice. “A new regime in thought,” as Eldon Eisenach writes, “began to become a new regime in power.”

While many progressive academics helped effect this philosophical transformation, few, if any, were as influential as Dewey. Through an immense and wide-ranging body of work, vigorous activism, and his many students, Dewey’s mark was deep and enduring.
...
When freedom is redefined in terms of spiritual fulfillment, the "problem of achieving freedom" radically changes. Freedom is no longer secured by constraining government interference with “the liberty of individuals in matters of conscience and economic action,” as Dewey notes, but rather by “establishing an entire social order, possessed of a spiritual authority that would nurture and direct the inner as well as the outer life of individuals.”

"The freedom of an agent who is merely released from direct external obstructions is formal and empty," for unless he possesses every resource needed to take advantage of this broad legal opening, he will remain unable to exercise his freedom and thereby actualize his spiritual potential. While the law would "exempt [him] from interference in travel, in reading, in hearing music, in pursuing scientific research[,] . . . if he has neither material means nor mental cultivation to enjoy these legal possibilities, mere exemption means little or nothing."

The essay is a little needlessly complex and assumes some background. She links Dewey to Hegel, for example, but then never explains why that's relevant to her thesis (how the Progressives undercut the idea of natural rights).

Far more worrisome, she makes a hard distinction between Hegelianism and Pragmatism, suggesting that while Dewey was instrumental in developing the latter, he never really shook off the former. That's true, but not because (as she alludes) that they are somehow opposed.

To the contrary, Pragmatism is nothing but dumbed-down Hegel, re-written for an American audience. Hegel's fractured view of reality, the irrationalist theory of knowledge (masquerading under the name Reason), the collectivist ethics and politics are all there, little changed. The only thing Dewey (and, earlier, Pierce and James) really did was to remove any shred of 'certainty' by discarding the fiction of the Absolute.

In other words, Pragmatism is a humbler Hegelianism (consistent with the shrinking of philosophy that accelerated in the 19th century, and produced the 20th).

Just to give one important example of the effect on contemporary political debate, I recently asked a 'liberal' what justified (in his view) coercing some to fill the needs of others. His answer is illuminating (scan down the comments section to near the bottom):

So in a civilized society, it's expected that everyone will give something so that the society as a whole can enjoy those rights. I include "health" as part of "life." If you become unhealthy, you cannot work, therefore cannot "pursue" anything.

If the purpose of government is to protect the rights of people in society, it has to protect their ability to exercise those rights. I can't exercise my right to property in a civilized society without a justice system, so how can I exercise my right to life if I can't afford to sustain it in the event of an illness?

If you read his entire you answer you'll see how he, like Dewey, stood Jefferson and Madison's views on their heads, while claiming to be in the American tradition. This is classic Progressive thinking, derived from Dewey (and very Hegelian in spirit).

To answer it, for now I'll just quote Peter Cresswell of Not PC (after an essay by Brook and Watkins in IBD): "Until this basic moral premise: is repudiated — that need generates an entitlement — then socialized government will continue to grow."

In any case, the NRO essay is well worth reading in its entirety (as is Brooks and Watkins) for anyone with an interest in intellectual history, or just anyone who wants to know how we — and Progressivism — got where we are today.

The Obamanous Parallels

“History is philosophy teaching by example.”—Thucydides

According to the following policies and methods, can you name this U.S. president?

This U.S. president campaigned almost exclusively against the failures of the previous administration. He would make alternating and contradictory promises depending on his campaign audience. On the one hand, he promised to cut the burgeoning deficits of the previous administration and balance the budget. On the other hand, he promised aid to just about every industry and to create public works projects that would guarantee millions of new jobs. He promised to fund the new programs with increased taxes on the wealthy.

Since the American people were severely dissatisfied with the previous administration, the president easily rode into office in his first election. The newly elected president immediately forged ahead with remaking policy by creating all kinds of centralized agencies, including the nationalization of multiple industries.

The legislation written for this authority was so haphazard and cobbled together it is still considered the worst drafted legislation in U.S. history. Not only did the programs create perverse incentives in the midst of a terrible economic downturn, the programs necessitated bloated, burgeoning bureaucracies to carry out the edicts.

As to his campaign promise to balance the budget, the president immediately abandoned the prospect by injecting steroids into the previous administration's policies (plus many newly created programs). When called to account for the increased deficit problems, the president blamed the previous administration for creating a mess that required more spending to keep the government out of the red.

The president surrounded himself with collectivist radicals. When the nature of these radicals was exposed before his eyes, he would ignore the warnings or laugh it off with mocking derision. In fact, he would take it a step further and install radicals in positions of power and agencies that were outside the purview of the constitutionally-limited republican structure.

The president would use his personal charm and gregarious nature to court favorable news coverage and loyalty from the media. He would clog the airwaves with his personal appeals to the American people. He would also use the power of government agencies to threaten and/or shut down political criticism.

Am I speaking of President Obama? No, not directly, this catalogue of policies and tactics were the cornerstone of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's administration. If one did not know any better, one would swear that the corpses of FDR's administration were dug up to serve in Obama's administration.

FDR's campaign consisted of lampooning Herbert Hoover's explosion of the deficit, the rise in unemployment, and the general economic decline. While promising to cut the deficit by 25% and balance the budget in each year of his presidency, FDR contradictorily promised a host of new programs and government spending that guaranteed a "right to a comfortable living".

Sound familiar to Obama campaigning against Bush's policies, the general economic recession, and Obama's promising to balance the budget while simultaneously promising a chicken in every pot in his nomination speech? How about his soak the rich rhetoric to pay for the chickens? FDR did the same thing, and eventually raised taxes to 90% on those making over $25,000. (I think Obama simply added a zero when promising to raise taxes on those making over $250K.)

When asked to account for the increasing deficits that significantly outstripped Hoover, Roosevelt would blame the Hoover Administration for a "reckless and extravagant past" that led to an emergency — an emergency that justified FDR's increase in spending and deficits explained thusly:

"The only way to keep the Government out of the red is to keep the people out of the red. And so we had to balance the budget of the American people before we could balance the budget of the national Government" (Burton Folsom, New Deal or Raw Deal?, pg 221).

Obama, when asked about his own increased spending and deficits and spending via the stimulus bill, likewise stated that the Bush Administration created a “mess” and justified spending by rhetorically stating: "What do you think a stimulus is?".

Or, in one of his most stupid justifications, Vice President Joe Biden instructed:

"Well, people when I say that [the need to increase spending] look at me and say, 'What are you talking about? You’re telling me we have to go spend money to keep from going bankrupt?' The answer is yes, I’m telling you."

In FDR's haste to remake the U.S. economy, legislation was poorly drafted and purposely vague so as to grant wide latitude for government intervention. The agencies created perverse economic incentives, such as purposely destroying commodities or paying farmers not to produce while people starved.

The bureaucracies became so overwhelming that hordes of new bureaucrats were needed to monitor prices, production levels, what should be produced, and how the producers should be taxed. Any different than energy plans aimed at putting the coal industry out of business or dramatically increasing the cost of electricity amidst a recession?

Or, how about the vague 1000+ page bills that are hastily pushed through Congress without being read, much less debated? How about this type of Byzantine bureaucracy labyrinth that would be imposed under ObamaCare?

FDR surrounded himself with Marxist sympathizers and radicals ready to implement their ideology, including Vice President Henry Wallace and communist spies Alger Hiss and Owen Lattimore.

When FDR was personally warned about Hiss and other communist spies by assistant secretary of state Adolf Berle, FDR laughed and told Berle to go “fuck himself”. (Ann Coulter, Treason, pg 18) For his part, Hiss played a primary role in creating the United Nations, which is now a springboard for leftists undermining the U.S. Constitution and paying heed to despots all over the globe.

The only question remains: what monstrosities will be bequeathed to us by the collectivist radicals Obama has surrounded himself with, including Rahm Emmanuel, Mark Lloyd, Eric Holder, and Van Jones?

Will it be a Kyoto-like treaty or cap-and-trade bill, spearheaded by radicals like Van Jones, which will permanently cripple the energy industry? Will U.S. servicemen be dragged into international courts on charges from America’s enemies and tried by America’s critics, as Eric Holder desires?

Will Sunstein’s goal of allowing polar bears to lawyer-up and seek redress for having their habitats destroyed be granted? Besides Van Jones, Obama thus far has either ignored criticism of these individuals or brushed off charges of socialism with the same mocking behavior as FDR did in his day.

In what is perhaps the most ominous of the Obamanous parallels, Obama called for a civilian national security force that is "just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded" as the U.S. military. Let's not forget Obama's use of “disinformation czar” Linda Douglass to ferret out “fishy” information, or Janet Napolitano’s use of the Department of Homeland Security to spy on private individuals, particularly “right wing” subversive groups.

FDR attempted the same tactics by creating the American Protective League — a quasi-secret police used to spy on private individuals. In a radio address, FDR also called on the American Legion to become his private army, stating: "I reserve to myself the right to command you in any phase of the situation which now confronts us." (Jonah Goldberg, Liberal Fascism, pg 151) Insulating one's political regime with a private army is one of the shiningrusty hallmarks of a dictator.

On cannot help shudder in revulsion at Blue Eagle program that used informants to monitor compliance with New Deal programs. Part of the Blue Eagle program was aimed at indoctrination, which included marches by thousands of schoolchildren that forced them to swear to the following oath: "I promise as a good American citizen to do my part for the NRA. I will buy only where the Blue Eagle flies." (Liberal Fascism, pg 155)

Sound eerily familiar to Obama's speech to the nation's schoolchildren in which they were initially suppose to pledge loyalty to Obama and write an essay on what they could do to “help” the administration?

Just as FDR used his personal charm to cast a spell on the media, Obama is sending a "tingle up the leg" of such media luminaries as Chris Matthews. FDR would clog the radio airwaves with his "fireside chats", while Obama is busy mugging before primetime TV cameras on every policy initiative.

These tactics, however, will only get you so far as dissent grows. To quell opposition, FDR set up the FCC with the express purpose of silencing dissent by granting the FCC the power to grant or revoke radio licenses (with a shortened renewal period from three years to six months), thus giving FDR de facto control over what was said on the radio waves.

Now, we have the prospect of Obama's FCC “diversity czar”, Mark Lloyd, proposing to tax radio stations 100% of their operating budget in order to promote "diversity" of opinion. How does that differ from FDR's chilling of free speech, except in complexity? Control ownership and you control what is said.

Why is it important to highlight these parallels? To expose the intellectual bankruptcy of the policies and the tactics used to implement them. First and foremost, one must be aware of and expose the damaging consequences that arose from these policies--many of which we still live with today, including the alphabet agencies, minimum wage laws, social security, employer-based health insurance, agricultural subsidies, and on and on.

Even a decade after the onset of the economic crisis in 1929, FDR's policies only worsened the crisis as unemployment rates had risen above 20% and industrial production was down 20-25% from a decade earlier. Or, as it was told straight from the horse's mouth, FDR's longtime friend, right-hand man, and secretary of the treasury Henry Morgenthau confessed in 1939 before the House Ways and Means Committee:

"We have tried spending money. We are spending more than we have ever spent before and it does not work. And I have just one interest, if I am wrong...somebody else can have my job. I want to see this country prosperous. I want to see people get a job. I want to see people get enough to eat. We have never made good on our promises...I say after eight years of this Administration we have just as much unemployment as when we started...And an enormous debt to boot!" (Burton Folsom, New Deal or Raw Deal?, pg. 2).

The policies are like the hydra — cut one down and two more will be proposed in its place. Even more important than highlighting the failures of these policies is exposing the methods used to implement the policies. Cut the mortal head of method off the Marxist revolutionary to prevent two more from growing with still bigger fangs.

In the parallels between FDR and Obama, notice the common methods used by collectivist radicals:

(1) Isolate and target opponents to distract attention from their own policies, (2) Use vague legislation to seize unprecedented and unconstitutional powers, (3) Use these powers to nationalize industries, (4) Insulate one’s power with agencies outside the confines of the constitutionally-limited republican structure, including a private military force, (5) Silence dissent through government control of media outlets, and (6) Attack the young and the education system with thinly veiled indoctrination schemes.

Use one of their methods against them. Isolate, target, expose, attack. And don’t let up. They are afraid of light, which is why many, if not most, of these policies are done hastily and under cover of darkness. Collectivist radicals know they cannot withstand scrutiny in the open light of day.

After a personal conference with FDR in which he revealed his court-packing scheme, New Dealer and Congressman Hatton Sumners is alleged to have said: "Well, boys, here is where I cash in my chips."

Some otherwise freedom-loving individuals have openly supported Obama. Some advocated for Democrats in 2006, have engaged in relatively muted criticism of Obama, and played the moral equivalence card with the Bush Administration. Even still, some desire to see Obama stay in office in order to promote a "backlash" against his policies. In view of the potentially irreversible havoc that could be wrought, my advice to all those people is: cash in your chips.

Scary Historical Note of the Day

"In 1981, when America's accumulated debt was creeping up on $1 trillion, President Reagan explained in his first address to Congress,

'I've been trying … to think of a way to illustrate how big a trillion really is. And the best I could come up with is that if you had a stack of $1,000 bills in your hand only 4 inches high, you'd be a millionaire. A trillion dollars would be a stack of $1,000 bills 67 miles high.'"

It's now 10-50 times that (depending on what you include). If there's any better way to destroy the Republic from within, I can't think of it.


[Hat Tip Jonah Goldberg at NRO]

Ten Oldest Still-Inhabited Cities

The author acknowledges (in the comments) missing one or two, particularly Cadiz. But this is a stunning list. Still, I can never get over the somewhat pessimistic feeling that in 10,000 years humans should have made a lot more progress. Nonetheless, these cities - and the history provided by the post - are amazing.

[Hat tip: Jonah Goldberg, NRO.]

FDR, Obama, and Congress - Fascism Then and Now

Despite the continual calls from Progressives for fundamentally changing American culture, there's nothing new about the type of Fascism they're trying to bring to America.

If you watch enough WWII-era films on DVD you'll soon become exposed to a great many film shorts that played in the theaters at the time. Many of them are inspiring. Hollywood could considerably raise its dreadful reputation by emulating a few with regard to America's current military efforts. But some of them are instructional in another way.

A percentage of those documentaries and mini-dramas are decidedly Fascist in nature, showing how the FDR administration tried mightily to urge citizens to "sacrifice for the nation." It sounds scarier in the original German ("Du bist nicht! Dein Volk ist alles!") but the meaning is the same in any language. ("You are nothing. Your people is all!")

Shorts on the WWII: Homefront DVD and others like them did much more than ask Americans to work hard and support the war effort morally and materially. They tried, with obtuse economic explanations and blatant collectivist propaganda, to get individuals to surrender their own well being for the sake of the group.

One particularly egregious example, Skirmish on the Home Front, has Alan Ladd and Susan Hayward arguing over whether they should buy a better house. Ladd puts his foot down and refuses, arguing that the war effort will be better served by them continuing to live in what the man and wife agree is a dump.

His argument is too silly to bother repeating, a complete line of non-sequiturs, ending with a post-war fantasy of the couple living in a 1950s version of a high-tech dream house because they held their war bonds to maturity.

Another, almost as bad, is Letter From Bataan, in which the ghost of a recently dead soldier writes home to his wife and family, unaware at that point of his demise. He declares "no other young soldier should die because the folks at home don't want to do without."

He then goes on to demonstrate how not screeching the family auto's tires (a sin performed in the opening by the teen son) saves rubber that can be used to build a battleship, along with other, equally myopic assertions. He makes no mention, no surprise, of how it was coercive war-time rationing (not to mention a decade of prior Progressive-inspired economic controls) that led to the need to make such trade-offs in the first place.

Both these moral and logical absurdities are closely paralleled in the arguments of today's Green fascists. They assert that if we all collectively sacrifice — use less gasoline, pay over-free-market prices for solar panels and hybrid cars, destroy dams for the sake of salmon, hobble coal-consuming power plants, convert useful agricultural land to producing material for ethanol, etc., etc. (the list of hectoring is endless) — we will in the future all be better off.

All this should sound very familiar, and depressingly so. Good people are as individual as there are individuals. Evil people are all the same. That is, after all, why the villain in romanticized dramas always has to be given a few heroic virtues, like extreme cleverness and flair. Otherwise, he would be as dull as dishwater, like all real-life villains. Not for nothing have several journalists, even those in love with Obama, candidly reported, "He's very boring." Henry Waxman is worse.

It could hardly be otherwise. A dictator is hardly the sort of man who develops his creativity. It he did, he would run from being a dictator as fast as the bullet trains we might actually have if we lived in a free country. That's a lesson it's worthwhile to keep in mind as Congress debates the Waxman-Malarky Cap and Trade (otherwise known as Hobble and Dictate) legislation, along with the panoply of fascist regulation Obama and his fellow thugs are pushing.

Teddy Roosevelt, First Steps to Dictatorship

Ronald Pestritto has published a superb editorial in the Wall Street Journal about Teddy Roosevelt (POTUS, 1901-1909). The entire article is well worth a read. He demonstrates clearly with abundant examples Roosevelt's Progressive philosophy — which started the ball rolling on all the ills of the 20th century and which is now reaching a climax. Among other helpful content, he writes:

[T]he national government, in TR's view, was not one of enumerated powers but of general powers, and the purpose of the Constitution was merely to state the narrow exceptions to that rule.

This is a view of government directly opposed by Alexander Hamilton in Federalist 84. Hamilton explains there that the fundamental difference between a republican constitution and a monarchic one is that the latter reserves some liberty for the people by stating specific exceptions to the assumed general power of the crown, whereas the former assumes from the beginning that the power of the people is the general rule, and the power of the government the exception.

TR turns this on its head. In his New Nationalism speech he noted how, in aiming to use state power to bring about economic equality, the government should permit a man to earn and keep his property "only so long as the gaining represents benefit to the community." The government itself of course would determine what represented a benefit to the community, and whether society would be better off if an individual's wealth was transferred to somebody else.

For anyone interested in learning some of the important factors that have brought us to where we are today, and which are about to be put on steroids, this piece is a great place to start.

[Mr. Pestritto is the Shipley Professor of the American Constitution at Hillsdale College and a senior fellow at the Claremont Institute. Among his books are "Woodrow Wilson and the Roots of Modern Liberalism" (Rowman & Littlefield, 2005).]

History Lessons That Resonate

The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out for himself, without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. H.L. Mencken

A recently explored source provides fact and moral from the 1930s.

A superb volume of historical source material called The Great Depression, Opposing Viewpoints is an anthology of speeches and essays from the period of the Great Depression. They were written by those actually involved in making policy or by major commentators.

The book contains pro and con contemporaneous writings by Rex Tugwell (a Roosevelt senior adviser and member of the laughably titled Brain Trust) opposed by H.L. Mencken, the great pro-freedom editorialist of the period. There are entries from Henry Wallace, Secy of Agriculture from 1933-1941 and therefore one of the chief villains of the period, as well as Huey Long on the 'virtue' of redistributing wealth. There are many others, equally well known then.

The following will give you a flavor of the content...


From Mencken's essay Notes on the New Deal:

The turning over to the President, by a subservient Congress, of the powers which, under the Constitution, could only be exercised properly by Congress, upon the plea of the President that the emergency made it necessary, is of such vital importance to the nation that the voters must pass on it.

Written as if it were only two months ago, I for one don't remember voting on HR1424, the Paulson bailout bill which the President urged on the country.

Mencken continues: "...who could have foreseen what use would be made of the powers given in the National Industrial Recovery Act?" This echoes the laments now being made about the lack of oversight provided in the hastily-passed bill.

Henry Wallace took a very different view of the New Deal, arguing it would help farmers. He said of one major component, the Agricultural Adjustment Act (passed by Congress in May 1933, two months after FDR took office): "This act provides for controlled production. Without that, no price-lifting effort can possibly work." About that, Wallace was most decidedly correct.

The aim of the AAA was to reduce production, in order to maintain or increase prices for agricultural products, such as cotton, wheat, and hogs. The method was to legally force reductions in cultivated land and animal output.

What was the result?

Farmers learned to produce more product on less land, valuable efficiency but at a terrible cost. And, in response for their heroic efforts, new legislation was passed in order to control them more directly.

In addition, millions of pigs were slaughtered and given to the unemployed. Or, in less polite language, one group of men were robbed in order to feed others who were hungry, made hungry in part by legislation like the AAA.

Quoting Wallace's Declaration of Interdependence, a speech broadcast May 13, 1933, (the title alone enough to send a chill up the spine)

In adjusting our production of basic foods and fabrics, our first need is to plant and send to market less wheat, less cotton, less corn, fewer hogs, and less of other basic crops whereof already we have towering surpluses, with no immediate prospect of clearance beyond the sea. [emphasis added]

Setting aside the paradox of millions of hungry people in the middle of "towering surpluses," let's ask ourselves why there was "no immediate clearance beyond the sea"? Might that not have something to do with the passage of the Smoot-Hawley Act, enacted in 1930 under Hoover's administration, that raised the price on over 20,000 traded products at least 50%?

The result?

Imports fell from $4.4 billion in 1929 to to $1.5 billion in 1933, a drop of 2/3 (the GDP fell by 50% during the same period). Exports fell from $5.4 billion to $2.1 billion.

The AAA didn't just control agricultural prices and quantity, either. In the words of Henry Wallace, "Second, is an accompanying authorization to refinance and readjust farm mortgage payments."

One has to wonder just how close the parallels have to be in order to wake up those in Washington. They can't claim ignorance of history, either. Several reports have outlined that Obama has been studying the period of the FDR administration. Progressive Paul Krugman of the New York Times has been pushing the idea that the New Deal was fine, except it didn't go far enough.

As if those parallels aren't spooky enough, we can read the words of Huey Long, then-Senator from Louisiana:

The theory of the Share Our Wealth Society is to have enough for all, but not to have one with so much that less than enough remains for the balance of the people.

We can move on without extensive comment on the view that this regards the economy as a static pie (created how and by whom?) to be carved up by the beneficent hand of government for all those millions of hungry stomachs. We simply note here Obama's casual "I think when you spread the wealth around, it's good for everybody."

Among the gems that formed part of Long's program were these:

1. Every family to be furnished by the Government a homestead allowance, free of debt, of not less than one-third the average family wealth of the country, which means, at the lowest, that every family shall have th reasonable comforts of life [to be provided by whom?]... No person to have a fortune of more than 100-300 times the average family fortune... [to be restricted how?]

2. The yearly income of every family shall not be less than one-third of the average family income... [this miracle to be created how?]

The questions in brackets are answerable either by realism or fantasy. In real terms, only robbing the ever-defined-down rich to give to the ever-defined-up poor can offer even a hope of achieving such goals. The fantasy consists of believing that the pie won't continue to shrink while the fantasy is pursued.

Similar fantasies are being considered or pursued today. There are still ongoing discussions in Congress about relieving struggling homeowners of mortgage debt; Paulson has recently given billions to bailout consumer credit debt, etc. All the while, they're worried about a few overpaid dunderheads who managed to con a Board of Directors into overpaying them.

I leave you today with a pair of quotes from David Lawrence's Beyond the New Deal, written in 1934.

"I wonder how many people begrudge Henry Ford his success. Not many. He rose from a mechanic's bench to be the head of a billion dollar industry. He did not float public loans or stock issues. He steered clear of Wall Street. He did not exploit labor — he paid higher wages than his competitors. He made transportation at a price that came with the reach of the average man. He opened up by his low-priced automobile a vast inland territory."

and

"Confiscation of wealth may satisfy the vengeful in us... but it is the path of national suicide."

The lessons of history are alternately enlightening or irritating, or both. But they're always there, inescapable.

Media Slant, and Why It Matters

Barring any major events I'll be moving away from writing about Obama for a while. I want to give my blood pressure a rest and also focus more in upcoming posts on how to turn the tide to capture the future. But, to launch that effort, there is one remaining topic to cover about the recently completed campaign: media coverage.


Notice that the title does not say "media bias." Bias is a lack of objectivity. Major outlets say this is less extensive or serious than their critics assert. That's a debate for another day. What's beyond dispute is that, at least on the op-ed pages and TV editorial segments, the media has a definite slant. Even they would admit this much. That slant, however they term it, is most often to the left, i.e. toward more government control for the purpose of social engineering and economic 'management'.

If you think that situation is bad now, wait another 20 years. College newspapers backed Obama 63-1. Sure, you could argue, they're just a bunch of college kids. The old saying is "if you're not a liberal at 20 you have no heart; if you're not a conservative at 40 you have no brain." The issue is a little more serious than that. It's also possible, even desirable, to have a brain at 20 and a heart at 40 and, most importantly, never ignore either.

Yes, kids will be kids. And, it's certainly true that a great many college graduates get a rude shock when they get out into 'the real world'. They learn they can no longer say do anything they like with no consequences. They have to make hard choices between their 'ideals' (assuming they had any to start with) and making a living. As a result, many move 'to the middle'. But if the center shifts, that middle goes with it and the center has been shifting for some time.

The media pundits of the left have been gleefully exclaiming the "end of a failed ideology." But their cheers come a bit late. Presidents get elected at the end of a shift in culture, not at the beginning. It's something of a myth that for the past 25 years or more America has been a "center right" country. The only way to make that view plausible is to not know what's been happening to the center over the past 100 years. Consider what America was like 25 years prior to today, and another 25, then another 25, then one last 25.

Compared to 1910, the U.S. of 1935 was already highly socialist. The Federal Reserve was established in 1913, the income tax the same year, then 20-30 years later Hoover and FDR made the country an explicit collectivized economy. Compared to 1935, 1950 was already moving rapidly toward Fascism. Some economic controls had been lifted, WWII rationing for example. But, culturally, there were the beginnings of the anti-hero alongside the beatniks (precursors to the hippies of the New Left). Truman tried to nationalize the steel industry and almost got away with it. (The Supreme Court reversed his order by 6-3.)

By 1970 the revolution was pretty much over and the New Left had won, intellectually. The mainstream defense of capitalism had become not an advocacy of individual freedom and inviolate property rights, but an argument over which system led to cheaper oil. There was a mini-revival by conservatives, but (at least as far as the media and academia are concerned) it has been largely a defensive action against the Leviathan.

It's no accident, either, that the country has been moving leftward (with some slight variations) over the past 40 years. William Ayers, ex-Weathermen founder, is now a professor of education at the University of Chicago. He has a considerable influence on the teaching of future teachers at, ironically, one of the more right-leaning universities in the country. Angela Davis, once on the FBI's Most Wanted list and the VP candidate on the Communist Party ticket in 1980 and 1984, is employed at UC Santa Cruz.

These may be two of the more extreme well-known cases, but there are thousands of others who emerged from the late 60s/early 70s New Left revolt and moved into academia and the media later in life. Many of those college radicals, editors, and reporters went on to work on newspapers and at TV stations or at colleges around the country. They took their college views with them.

Consider what may happen 20 years from now as today's college students take the reins at whatever are the dominant media outlets then. The effect is gradual, but over time, they will try to move the culture in a direction still further away from individual freedom and property rights, along with erasing all the other distinctively American values: love of reason and science, a confident entrepreneurial spirit, a commitment to self-reliance, and that "Don't tread on me" attitude that protected the country against foreign enemies inside and out for 250 years.

It's no accident that we've now arrived at a time when their perfect representative has been elected President of the United States. When a man with Sean Penn's views can proudly say that for the first time in his life he can put the word "my" before the word "president," you know something has gone terribly askew.

The fundamental reasons for Obama's election success have little to do with superior campaign organization, a cheerful grin and eloquent speaking skills, or even the horrendous financial debacle and the Bush administration's reactions. The first one is true, but not decisive. The second reason has too many counter-examples to bear the full weight (Nixon, Carter, etc.). On the final element, consider that Obama was comfortably ahead for months, McCain barely so for only a couple of weeks before the meltdown.

Media bias or slant over the past two years can't explain his success, either. The American people knew what they were getting. Ayers wasn't discussed much but he was talked about enough to tell editors that people didn't care. The Wright videos were widely seen. Despite considerable media bias, it's still true that their overriding interest is in attracting an audience. If either story had gotten traction, it would have been everywhere. The majority of American readers and viewers didn't think those alliances were important and no amount of campaign money, personal charm, or superior spin can alter that fact.

No, the American people knew what they were getting and it's what more than half of them wanted. They were ok with it because thousands of teachers and op-ed writers over a 40 year period had moved half the country enough to regard Obama's views as mainstream, as indeed they are.

Forty years ago, he would have been considered a radical. At the turn of the 20th century, he would have been deported. Today, he's just slightly more liberal than the average corporate executive. When every Wikipedia article that touches on environmentalism sides against industry and daily newspapers ran 287-159 in favor of Obama (circulation even wider, 23 million to 9 million), it's ludicrous to assert that his views are not mainstream. What was far left in the 60s has become mainstream, at least in terms of the popular culture that everyone is bathed in daily.

As things stand, the situation is poised to get worse, not better. A few of the major media outlets have admitted to open bias, or suppressing information about Obama. That's actually small potatoes. Enough information came out during the campaign that, in a rational world, an all-but admitted "non-ideological" communist would not have won. But he did. Handily. Media bias can't explain that. Media (and academic) slant — over the past 40 years — can.

So, here's where we are. The question on the minds of many who are unhappy with the outcome is what to do about it. They're focusing on who to put forth in four years, what type of candidate can shift the numbers back, what kind of Republican Party has the better odds over the coming years.

Myself, I couldn't care less about that. The Republican Party has never been very interesting and it has shown few signs of improving much over the past 20 years. Even if it did, winning elections is a secondary issue. Obama got elected because of the type of country America has more than half-become. After all, ask yourself why was the race between a far left Democrat and a moderate Democrat who happens to be in the Republican Party?

No, the way to get a non-wannabe dictator elected and, far more importantly, to have the right kind of country, is not to worry too much about party platforms and candidates. It's to reverse and then some the harmful changes in the culture of the past 100 years, particularly the past 40.

A big agenda, to be sure. More on how to do that in upcoming posts.