GOP Nominee
Former Candidates
Cross-posted at The HinzSight Report
I was inspired to write this blog by Doc Holliday’s comment in EPU’s excellent What Fredheads want - offering the Olive Branch (I would say that one olive I wish were on the branch were the olive of McCain not pandering to Latino hate groups, but I digress) on Redstate, where Doc says:
I do not think conservatism at its nature starts with “social conservatism”, I think it starts with economic conservatism. If you boiled this group down to the one issue they can all agree on, it is “get the gov out of economics”.
I agree that the kind of conservatism most conservatives mean when they refer to same is a variation of this basic concept, also frequently reduced to small government guaranteeing private property rights.
But in pondering Doc’s comment and E Pluibus Unum’s more extensive definitions incorporating the three-legged stool that William F. Buckley and Ronald Reagan made famous, I conclude that one must begin any talk of economic conservatism with an environment in which it can function and flourish.
The many became one as social conservatives!
That environment would be what we call civilization itself.
I realize now since I began blogging and debating over three years ago, when pressed to self identify most strongly with either the fiscal-cons, security-cons or social-cons, I always land with the social-cons.
Before I go further, let me stress that I have always been a war hawk. I was a Democrat from birth to 2000, and I was a JFK democrat. I loathed the limp-wristed weakness the new castrati democrats exuded and still exude to our enemies abroad. But I was a social liberal for most of those years for the same reason everyone is, but won’t admit: I wanted to eat my cake and yet, still get to keep it, i.e. responsibility free, consequenceless sex.
I lived through the late 70’s failed liberal policies as a teen, majored in economics in college, and saw Reagan’s Milton Friedman-Arthur Laffer conservative economic policies work in spades. We are still in the Reagan recovery.
But I think the reason, when forced, despite my strong war hawkishness and economic background, that I self identify as a social conservative is that without it, none of the others are possible for very long.
I am happy to see that John McCain understands this better than many of his apologists at Redstate and elsewhere that think the answer to GOP woes is to reach out to moderates.
A moderate has one basic meaning: social liberalism, i.e. pro choice on abortion, pro-special rights based on one’s declared preferred sexual activities and banning any meaningful mention of God from the public square, especially including from the public schools, unless it is a secular, supposed values-free God that teaches of Susie having two mommies.
The GOP doesn’t win trying to be Democrats.
And America loses.
Can we name a civilization that thrives and prospers by killing off its young or reducing marriage to sex instead of the basic unit that makes civilization of the young possible? No.
Civilization appeared precisely when one woman seduced one man to be hers exclusively.
The capitols of abortion in Russia and China face dire straits, as do the mini-capitols in Western Europe. Yes, even China. China has a great shortage of females due to selective abortion of females. Throughout history, nations with such shortages turned to war. If they turn to war with us, we will destroy them. But more acutely, China is about to face a grave obstacle to continued economic growth. They have an aging population, especially in the educated, inductrial areas.
And Europe and Russia? They are dying off.
The United States still produces enough babies to replace itself, but barely.
Let’s get back to Doc’s economic argument. Freedom is the secret to our success. The founders defined freedom as keeping the fruits of one’s labor, i.e. private property.
But they also saw that our freedom would only work for a moral and religious people, i.e. this people and their reverence for judeo-christian values as seen by the Frenchman Alexis de Toucheville.
Benjamin Franklin and many of the Founders loved to quote William Penn: “[men] must be governed by God, or they will be ruled by tyrants.”
Appeals to moderates are appeals to future rule by tyrants. The process has begun of course (see Big Government).
Yet, the dominant voice here at Redstate, despite McCain’s appeal on the most basic of areas to social conservatives, i.e. originalist judges that would restore the free religious speech rights and local self government that caused social conservatives to get into politics on defense to begin with, seems to be that the GOP can only win by appealing to moderates.
Let’s look back and see what we find among prior Presidents as the United States became the most powerful and blessed nation on earth.
Among them we find differing views on economics, oddly enough, but who among George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, William McKinley, Theodore Roosevelt, Calvin Coolidge, FDR, HST, Ike, or JFK were social liberals?
None. They were all social conservatives.
We lost our way in the 60’s and 70’s and who was it that led the comeback of America and the GOP?
Social conservatives named Ronald Reagan and Newt Gingrich.
Civilization itself begins and ends with moral values. Only via the self restraint of same can freedom produce the bounty that defines America. A bounty that makes us rich enough to be stronger than those that would take what we have.
John McCain is appealing to social conservatives, not moderates. Good.
Now, will Redstate’s powers that be join him, or will they work at cross-purposes with watered down moderate appeals, which reminds me of my God, who said in Revelation 3:16
So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth.
I will not be spued out of God’s mouth.
Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer columns
The HinzSight Report
The Minority Report
Race 4 2008
“One man with courage makes a majority.” - Andrew Jackson
May 8th, 2008 at 8:06 pm
There’s some disgusting gay-bashing in this post.
May 8th, 2008 at 8:27 pm
Point out to this lawyer (that has represented many gays and who advised a gay legislator on rights legislation) the quotes that bash.
Please make it quick, as I hate it when defamation of DeVine hangs out there!
May 8th, 2008 at 8:33 pm
http://americandigest.org/mt-archives/006007.php
New castrati and limp-wristed have nothing to do with sexual orientation. Those that assume so are the ones that exhibit stereotype bashing not me.
I have represented many gays, been a lawyer advising a gay state legislator on rights laws language and my college roommate was gay and I took care of him as he dies from aids.
Please apologize quick, as I hate for defamation to hang out there.
May 8th, 2008 at 8:33 pm
still waiting
Defamation is ongoing
May 8th, 2008 at 8:33 pm
I don’t cotton to being called a bigot.
please apologize.
May 8th, 2008 at 8:37 pm
A moderate has one basic meaning: social liberalism, i.e. pro choice on abortion, pro-special rights based on one’s declared preferred sexual activities and banning any meaningful mention of God from the public square, especially including from the public schools, unless it is a secular, supposed values-free God that teaches of Susie having two mommies.
That?
May 8th, 2008 at 8:39 pm
Values-free. A god that would honor lesbian relationships is ‘values-free’ — that’s not disgusting gay-bashing? Hah.
May 8th, 2008 at 8:45 pm
John McCain has been called many things. Lukewarm is not one of them.
May 8th, 2008 at 9:14 pm
Ummm, I think Gamecock is saying Redstate’s apologists and others who think the answer is to reach out to moderates are lukewarm.
May 8th, 2008 at 9:22 pm
Alex… are you going to be insulted every time someone opines that gay & lesbian relationships are sinful? Sounds like a tough life, man. I could understand you getting upset if someone opined that gays and lesbians should all die horrible deaths. I’d be upset if someone was threatening violence against me.
But if I got upset everytime someone said Mormons are wrong… life’s too short, man.
May 8th, 2008 at 9:28 pm
Eh, I never mind debating the issue with people. And he’s now claiming that he isn’t being bigoted in his remarks, which is just laughable.
Not only sinful — which is true, under Christianity — but “values free”!
But no way are we looked at as second-class citizens by so-cons, oh no.
May 8th, 2008 at 9:48 pm
I don’t see why there’s this fixation on sexual behavior.
Can’t people not think about sex for a moment. There is more to being alive than what sexual oddities you harbor. You’d think people wouldn’t want to endlessly act ‘hurt’ when someone mentions they don’t approve of some sort of sexual behavior. I guess the kids today are taught to be thin skinned whiners by the PC crowd.
May 8th, 2008 at 9:55 pm
Actually, I try to look at all non-Mormons as potential converts.
But what I really believe, when I’m thinking rationally, is that we’re all children of God, which makes us brothers and sisters. I tend to treat “brothers and sisters” better than I do “the kid down the street.”
May 8th, 2008 at 10:01 pm
#8 If you notice, I pointed put that McCain is not luke warm.
May 8th, 2008 at 10:03 pm
Alex
we disagree
The moral relativists, who claim “values free” is the only acceptable position under the lib false view of the establishment clause, are the ones that demand that gay relationships be affirmed even in elementary school.
May 8th, 2008 at 10:03 pm
#9 correct
May 8th, 2008 at 10:04 pm
There is nothing bigoted in this posting and I applaud the construction and worldview inherent.
Thanks for the post.
May 8th, 2008 at 10:05 pm
Alex
FTR, I never endured the wrath of my numerous gay friends, since I hold the Christian view that any sex outside traditional marriage is sin.
I have sinned as such, and am schecduled to do so again. The flesh is weak.
May 8th, 2008 at 10:05 pm
#17 thanks man
May 8th, 2008 at 10:07 pm
#10 that is so right, and it reminds me of another related subject, and that is that i have known a lot of theology professors of different faiths and denominations (sects) that could go at it in arguments trying to convert each other and save the others from Hell, and then all go out and have coffee at Shoneys!
that’s me
May 8th, 2008 at 10:24 pm
Good post. The EU is going to be in big trouble a few decades from now. Japan might never recover, that’s why they’re moving toward robots. The only reason why the U.S. has a positive birth-death rate is b/c of the hispanics. Without them, we would be in the red, though not as bad as the EU or the generational wipout in eastern europe and russia.
May 8th, 2008 at 10:41 pm
Great post as usual Gamecock. Much to mull over…
“Among them we find differing views on economics, oddly enough, but who among George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, William McKinley, Theodore Roosevelt, Calvin Coolidge, FDR, HST, Ike, or JFK were social liberals?
None. They were all social conservatives.”
To that list I would add Franklin Pierce.
May 8th, 2008 at 10:43 pm
IR-MN there are a few states where whites have a lot of children.
Utah, Idaho, Texas and Alaska have high birth rates.
ON average the white birth rate in the South is 10-20% higher than in the North or California.
It’s the white yuppie liberals who are voluntarily going extinct.
May 8th, 2008 at 11:26 pm
My wife has child #3 in the oven right now!
It wasn’t planned (for reasons I won’t go into here), but here comes baby #3 regardless. We’re excited and anxious. I’m starting to feel old to have a newborn (I’m 36), though.
May 8th, 2008 at 11:31 pm
#22 Clinton was the first social liberal ever elected President.
May 8th, 2008 at 11:33 pm
And while Clinton sold his soul, as required in the dem party, for the abortion lobby, incl vetoes of the PBA bans, he signed the DOMA without hesitation as per Dick Morris.
May 8th, 2008 at 11:33 pm
#24 congrats
and keep up the good work!?
May 8th, 2008 at 11:40 pm
Re #22, in the previous thread I was scolded for thinking social conservatism existed more than 30 years ago.
May 9th, 2008 at 12:02 am
#28 It has existed since the first time the village had to give up some wheat for a fatherless child. Only in the 60’s did the libs get brazen enough to challenge it politically.
May 9th, 2008 at 9:29 am
#22 Clinton was the first social liberal ever elected President.
And yet he still supported Don’t Ask Don’t Tell and signed the unconstitutional DOMA into law.
May 9th, 2008 at 11:36 pm
#30 yes, so in your book he gay bashed too
(he actually did against a republican in 2006)
May 10th, 2008 at 4:05 am
Lincoln, McKinley, the Roosevelts, Truman, and Eisenhower were social moderates at best. And there’s really not a whole lot of social policy to base your analysis of George Washington or Calvin Coolidge off of. Washington dealt with mostly foreign and governmental policy, while Coolidge spent his four years fighting for laissez faire. And you may or may not have very much used that verse out of context.
But other than that, good analysis.
May 11th, 2008 at 3:17 pm
#32
None were for legalizing abortion or changing the definition of marriage.
May 11th, 2008 at 4:20 pm
#33 Gamecock,
That doesn’t make them social conservatives. There are more than two social issues. Also, of the presidents that I listed, Washington, Lincoln, McKinley, T. Roosevelt, and Coolidge didn’t have widespread abortion issues to deal with. No abortion clinics, no technology, no morning after pill. It’s a much different issue now than it was, as is gay marriage. And based on their policies, Washington, McKinley, T. Roosevelt, Coolidge, F. Roosevelt, Truman, and Eisenhower all would have, at best, left it to the states.
My point is that, regardless of what conservativism meant to Ronald Reagan, it meant something different to each of these guys. If alive today, Lincoln, McKinley, and T. Roosevelt would have stood on the left of the party, or, at worst, in the other party. Conservativism now is more akin to the brand of Alexander Hamilton or the 1880s than to the era of Lincoln, the Progressives, or the early Cold War. The latter movements stood on different principles. That’s what I, a total political history nerd, find appealing about John McCain- at least before he bolted to the right after winning the nomination, a move I’ll never understand. He has the economic progressivism of William McKinley, the foreign policy gravitas of Washington or Eisenhower, the social conservativism of Reagan and Gingrich, and the laissez faire attitude of Calvin Coolidge. Guys who, if they were ever in a room together, would never completely agree on anything, are all kind of bundled together with McCain.
I love pontificating.
The end.
May 11th, 2008 at 5:10 pm
#34 We disagree. I am not just referring to political issues. I am talking about what enabled us to become the greatest nation on earth, and judeo-christian values were a necessary part.
Those Presidents would not have been laissez faire if judges were imposing Sodom and Gommorah “values” on America.