Who is a real Republican today?
Please be in no doubt about my Republicanism. When I was growing up, I did not know what the Republican Party stood for, and I assumed that my heart belonged with the Democrats, since my family voted Dem and it seemed to be the party of 'kindness'. Forgive me, dear Republicans, but I had not known until a few years ago that it is you who guard the Constitution.
I agree in full with the basic principles of the Grand Old Party. If you elect me, you will find me to be a firm advocate of strict constitutionalism and also of national sovereignty. Moreover, I will invite all the Undeclareds and even the Dems to wise up and join our party.
Below are some articles I wrote recently. The first was in response to a posting by Senator Mike Gravel on nhinsider.com. The second, which I call "Love, Familiarity, and Conservatism," is a reply that I sent to a posting on capitolhillblue.com.
You may scroll down over those two pieces to read my comment on Walt Whitman, and my celebration of Pres Bush’s 60th birthday. I feel personally fond of the president despite the fact that I oppose a wide range of his policies.
Please go to the website of the National Republican Committee (www.gop.com/issues) and you will be amazed to see some of the ideas that are being promoted. To name just three: the privatization of Social Security, the creation of a guest worker program, and the extension of No Child Left Behind to high schools. I am proud to admit that I oppose those things, and I oppose any disturbance in the balance of power, among the three branches of government, even if it happens to bring greater power to this Republican administration.
Happily, I agree almost 100 percent with New Hampshire’s Republican principles as shown on its website, nhgop.org. These have to do with limited government, fiscal conservatism, individual responsibility, and protection of the Bill of Rights with an emphasis on the right to privacy and the right to bear arms.
In foreign policy the Republican I am most like is Pat Buchanan in his book A Republic, Not an Empire. I believe we should get out of NAFTA, NATO, and the UN.
I am also libertarian in outlook. In some of the 50 states, the Libertarian Party is an entity unto itself, but many New Hampshire Republicans call themselves libertarian. One congressman whose views I find congenial is Rep Ron Paul of Texas. His voting deviates greatly from the program pushed by Republican Senator Majority Leader Bill Frist.
If you want a good laugh, or maybe a good cry, you should click
here to read a debate that took place on the floor of the Senate between Republican Bill Frist and Democrat Russ Feingold. Frist is a heart transplant surgeon, so you think his brain would have a lot of ‘play’ in it, but all he can say in this debate is that we have to support a war-time president. I consider that position outrageous.
Now, here are my four articles:
Don’t Try to Get Around the Constitution (July 27th 2006)
Senator Mike Gravel posts a suggestion today (on nhinsider.com) that we "take America back" by
creating what he calls a National Initiative making it possible for The People to "propose and vote on legislation at the federal level."
I was moved to reply as follows:
No, no, a thousand times NO.
Do not try to change our very reliable Constitution. The problem is making our elected leaders do their duty. The Executive branch, for decades, has been breaking laws, and the Legislative branch has been playing helpless, for no good reason.
The following quotes from Article I, Section 8 of our Constitution show, in plain English, that Senators and Representatives could be sticklers about their prerogatives if they wanted to:
“Congress has the power
- to regulate commerce with foreign nations.
So what is all the carry-on with us supplying nuclear technology to potential enemies? Don’t blame the President or the CIA!
- to constitute tribunals inferior to the supreme Court. So if the Attorney General refuses to prosecute persons who should be prosecuted, let Congress make a fuss. And if the Drug Enforcement Agency plants evidence – as it famously does- blame your elected representative.
• to define and punish…offenses against the Law of Nations .
Hello? Shouldn’t Congress have stepped in against the use of torture and renditions, instead of waiting four years for the Supreme Court?
to declare war . Ah, Congress declaring war, nostalgia, nostalgia
- to provide for the calling forth of the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union. Well, then, why did Congress allow Section 503 of the Homeland Security Act to pass this power into the hands of the Executive branch?
Sen. Mike Gravel is looking for Big Trouble if he intends his National Initiative to
conflict with the responsibilities that The People have laid on Congress. Pay no
attention to Gravel. This is just a distracting technique, a time waster, a false hope raiser. Get back to basics.
Follow the Constitution.
Love, Familiarity, and Conservatism (July 25th, 2006)
“How Have Conservatives Moved Our Country Forward?” That is
a question that appears today on the ‘Readers’ Rant’ page of a blog called Capitol Hill Blue. Here is my reply:
Conservatives do not move the country forward. Rather, they conserve what we already have. That which was given to us by Mother Nature needs conserving by conservation-minded people. Such ‘tree-hugging environmentalists’ are seen as being on the political left rather than the right, but that is because modern technological developments made it normal for us to destroy nature. Hence, mere respect for the workings of the biosphere looks like change, even radical change!
Conservatives value the family and tradition and routine Actually every human values those things. The family is a fount of pleasure. When you caress your infant the act of caressing arouses the feeling of love in you. It has the same effect on the infant and also helps the two of you to bond. The biochemistry of this is now understood. The act of caressing triggers a release of oxytocin in the brain. That happens to be the chemical that evolved to make mother mammals and mother birds carry out their maternal duties. The same ocytocin in a woman who has recently given birth makes her happy to get up for a 2.00 a.m. feeding. Experimenters have found that if they deliberately suppress the production of this chemical in the brain of a hen, she will not feed or attend to her chicks. You might say she fails to love them.
Readers’ Rant mentions that conservatives have stood against socially good things such as the fixed work week. Love for one’s family would incline one to support such a thing because it means more time together, more bonding. Again, therefore, there must be a bit of a mix-up or overlap between political categories. Most Americans have absorbed the idea from their culture that profit-making is a very good thing. Support for business, which indeed is in the political platform of the conservative Republican party, is equated with opposing workers’ rights.
Conservatives out and out value the past. According to the original defender of conservatism, Edmund Burke (an Irish member of British parliament in the 1790s), it is axiomatic that we should preserve the practices and prejudices that got into the human repertoire by hard-won experience over the centuries. What Burke did not know was that such love of routine and tradition ‘the old way of doing things’ is also supported biochemically in the brain. Deviating from socially acceptable behavior triggers a feeling of pain; humans are neophobic.: they fear the new.
In rats, neophobia may have evolved to keep a rat from going near new items in the environment as those may be traps set by humans! For humans it means that we are good conformists. This helps people learn quickly merely by unconscious imitation of others.
Many political conservatives rail against any and all deviations. It is true, of course, that our love of tradition is more than neophobia. Things that are familiar, or should I say family-ar, send a few drops of oxytocin into the system. “Home” is a wonderful thing, and the known faces of family and friends, in photographs in one’s wallet can stir up a satisfying love. Attachment to home is probably entwined as well with our species’ instinct for territoriality, while fondness for one’s close neighbors is part of what is called the ‘dear enemy’ phenomenon in animals. They may routinely show hostility to non-members of the group but have a special tolerance for the ones that live very close by. Maybe it is our human sense of territoriality that makes political conservatives very protective of the flag and very nationalistic in their speeches.
So. Do conservatives move the country forward? No, they keep us on an even keel.
Reference: The oxytocin experiment was reported by Prof Jan Panksepp in an article entitled "Altruism"
in the 1989 Yearbook of Neurobiology. The 'dear enemy" phenomenon is mentioned in Sociobology, 1975, by Edward O. Wilson
New Hampshire—A State Full of Walt-ers? (July 13th, 2006)
The members of the Free State Project have come to New Hampshire on the
assumption that the local heritage of respect for liberty is going to be their key to a new life. The mere assertion of freedom may be enough, they think.
I am glad they think that, and generally speaking I agree that assertion matters – a lot.
Here is our great poet, Walt Whitman, writing in Leaves of Grass:
To a Historian
You who celebrate bygones!
Who have explored the outward, the surfaces of the races—the life that has exhibited itself;
Who have treated of man as the creature of politics, aggregates, rulers and priests;
I, habitan of the Alleghanies, treating of him as he is in himself, in his own rights,
Pressing the pulse of the life that has seldom exhibited itself, (the great pride of man in himself;)
Chanter of Personality, outlining what is yet to be,
I project the history of the future.
Just the way he says it! There is really no comeback to it, is there?
However, old Walt was from an era when the majority of Americans worked
on the land, One can have freedom from other people only if one can get food
direct from the Earth. Except for growing a few zucchinis, and harvesting my
plum tree I have depended every day of my life on many other people. Should
they choose to withhold food from me in city life – perhaps even inadvertently
because of a transportation stoppage, I’m a goner.
Yes, let’s be chanters of personality – how wonderful! (How I treasure my friends’
personalities!), but know that we need to find wonderful arrangements too. We
have to work on the problem of getting the food to hungry mouths (such as mine).
Walt says we “have treated of man as the creature of politics”
No, No – man is the CREATOR of politics!
I say:
GO FORTH AND PRESS THE PULSE OF THE LIFE THAT HAS SELDOM
EXHIBITED ITSELF – THE GREAT PRIDE OF MAN IN HIMSELF.
LET THAT BE THE HISTORY OF THE FUTURE. GO, GO, GO!!!!!
Celebrating the President’s Birthday (July 8th, 2006)
Sorry, I did not realize til I saw it in yesterday’s paper that, the day before that ,
President Bush had a major birthday. Why wasn’t there more celebration? A
nation needs to be a big family, or at least a big tribe. And we Americans are
quite capable, though we be of mixed stock, of considering ourselves a family.
We have enough in common – the language, the history, the ocean-to-ocean
territory, and many a shared memory. The president is the father figure.
I am not kidding. I think it is very unfortunate that the security of having a
national parent has been pulled away from us over the years. We deserve one!
Right now people say George Bush is unpopular. The source for that is the
polls – but can you believe polls? Can anyone believe anything one reads?
All right, maybe he is unpopular, but if that is because of Iraq, the president is
not the one to blame. The Constitution is absolutely clear on the fact that
only Congress has the power to declare war. Would you like to hear the names
of those of the 435 members of the House of Representatives who gave the nod
to the use of force against international terrorism? I can say it in one short
sentence: “Everybody except Barbara Lee, D-CA.”
Or is it that the public is unhappy with the president because he nominates
unprincipled persons to high office? But it is the senate’s job to give guidance!
Here is the long list of senators that voted against the confirmation of John
Negroponte as head of the new spy office: Sen-a-tor Ron Wy-den. D Or-e-gon
and (wait, are you falling asleep? There’s one more); Tom Harkin, D-Iowa.
Yep, all the other 98 senators, Republicans and Democrats, said “okay.”
So don’t blame George Bush. If he had come into office knowing that the senate
would confirm only excellent nominees, the Cabinet today would be a sparkling
one. Ditto the Supreme Court and federal courts. We would thrill to see such a
good president.. On July 6th every one of the 50 capital cities could have
competed for the chance to have the Great Man parcel out pieces of his birthday
cake in the town square.
And why not in the open in the town square? Would he be in danger of being
harmed? I think he is more in danger in ‘the palace’ today – I honestly worry
for his safety. Let us band together and protect our president.
