Category Archives: Conservatism

UPDATED: Crazy Like A Fox (Bush & Laissez-Faire Capitalism)

Barack Obama, Bush, Capitalism, Conservatism, Political Philosophy, Propaganda

The following is taken from my new column, “Crazy Like A Fox,” now on WND.COM:

“From Cleveland, Ohio, Obama issued forth this week with renewed vigor. Media plaudits notwithstanding, the president’s words were either inane or simply insane.

An instance of “insane” was Obama’s professed fealty to a “lean and efficient government.” The trillion-dollar deficit man declared: “I believe government should leave people free to make the choices they think are best for themselves and their families, so long as those choices don’t hurt others.”

On the sly side was the president’s confession that he was propelled to run for president because for much of the last decade, a very specific governing philosophy had reigned about how America should work … The idea was that if we just had blind faith in the market, if we let corporations play by their own rules, if we left everyone else to fend for themselves that America would grow and America would prosper.

Evidently, Oprah’s backing and naked ambition had nothing to do with Barack Obama’s selfless ride to the nation’s rescue; it was the philosophy of laissez-faire capitalism, RIP.

Not for nothing did Ayn Rand call capitalism “the unknown ideal.” This ideal has not been practiced in the US for a very long time; it is a fable that George W. Bush was an unfettered capitalist.” …

Read the complete column, “Crazy Like A Fox,” now on WND.COM.

Read my libertarian manifesto, Broad Sides: One Woman’s Clash With A Corrupt Society.

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UPDATED: Bush & Laissez-Faire Capitalism. Bush gave the economy its first stimulus, or “shot in the arm,” as he called it, in 2002. Like Obama, Bush believed with all his brutal little heart that consumption undergirds the American way of life and that any slack in consumption must be filled by government spending.

Bush gave us the Sarbanes-Oxley Act by which Bush federalized corporate law, and ensured that the SEC’s politically voracious prosecutors were able to pursue any business executive as long as a lay jury could be convinced the unfortunate chap intended to mislead or stiff shareholders. The same “capitalism” saw the detestable Decider pass an enormous prescription drug entitlement program, Medicare Part D, and “No Child Left Behind,” which further federalized education and increased the reach and size of the federal government. Let us not forget the “Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP)” of 2008, which showed the way for Obama’s American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) in 2009.

Traitor-In-Chief Tattles On Arizona

Conservatism, Federalism, Glenn Beck, IMMIGRATION, Nationhood, Republicans, States' Rights, UN

Another turn of the screw for Arizona comes courtesy of the traitor-in-chief and his administration. A “Report of the United States of America Submitted to the U.N. High Commissioner,” issued by the State Department, states the following, on page 23, under the heading “Values and Immigration”:

“A recent Arizona law, S.B. 1070, has generated significant attention and debate at home and around the world. The issue is being addressed in a court action that argues that the federal government has the authority to set and enforce immigration law. That action is ongoing; parts of the law are currently enjoined.”

Why would the traitor class’s actions surprise anyone? Abe Lincoln, whom Glenn Beck, tellingly, and thousands of Americans honored on the week-end, sicced American brothers on one another in order to sunder states’ rights and bring the sovereign states under his totalitarian thumb. (Yes, “TAKING AMERICA BACK MEANS TAKING LINCOLN DOWN.”) What’s a bit of tittle-tattle to the despotic Unites Nations by BHO’s administration, in comparison?

Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer is furious; she tends to foam incoherently instead of asking Kris Kobach to speak for her.

Brewer’s right and obligation to protect her citizens was, alas, defended on Fox News by Michael Reagan, with reference to the dangerous concept (in the hands of his ilk) of American exceptionalism. Apparently property rights and state sovereignty are not enough; American presidents must go forth and tout the the American State as a force for good in the world.

Hey, Michael and the Messiah have a lot in common. The first heading in the just-mentioned report the US is mandated to hand over to the global government reads:

“A more perfect union, a more perfect world.” Out of Honest Abe’s mouth (Which corner? That fork tongue spoke out of both).

UPDATED: J. D. Hayworth Betrayed

Conservatism, IMMIGRATION, John McCain, Republicans, Sarah Palin

In addition to their creedal Keynesianism, another measure of the movement conservatives is the manner in which they betrayed J. D. Hayworth, who ought to have beat Senator John McCain in the Arizona GOP primary. Hayworth had a strong record as an immigration patriot—his was not a “desperate lurch to the right,” for electoral expediency as was McCain’s successful bid.

Read VDARE’s Washington Watcher’s analysis of the one-two punch Hayworth sustained from Palin, Brewer, and the gang at Fox:

“… no Beltway groups endorsed [Hayworth]. Mark Levin and Michelle Malkin supported J.D., but few other prominent conservative personalities supported him. This is despite Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, etc. repeatedly stating how important it is for us to support ‘true’ conservatives over liberal Republicans.

Without any major conservative help, the fact that Hayworth raised 3 million dollars was an accomplishment. But that cannot fight McCain’s $20+ million.

“Not only did most conservatives fail support Hayworth, many went to bat for John McCain.

The NRA, Arizona Right to Life and, (in an unusual but all-too-typical move), National Review, all endorsed him.

Most effectively for McCain, the two most significant people for the Arizona Republican base, Sarah Palin and Arizona Governor Jan Brewer (benefiting, arguably undeservedly, from signing SB 1070) actively campaigned for him.”

UPDATE (Aug. 29): John McCain wanted everyone to believe that he has only just stumbled into the fleshpots of Washington. And Arizonans did, despite the fact that McMussolini was right by Bush’s side as the latter presided over the greatest expansion of government since Lyndon B. Johnson.

McCain had informed Hannity (who didn’t seem to mind) that he’d resume his work for amnesty as soon as the border was secure, which is, by my calculations, round about NOW—the time of the senior senator’s GOP renomination.

Greg is right. Arizonans have chosen their political poison. Alas, it will percolate into our drinking water as well.

Now comes confirmation, via CNSNews.com, that the Obama administration has resolved “not to build the border fence and to follow a catch-and-release policy with illegal aliens.” It goes without saying that “Recent steps the administration has taken regarding the border, including the deployment of 520 National Guard troops in Arizona,” have been “insufficient and amounted to ineffective pre-election posturing.”

The next defining date for Mr. McCain: the Tuesday following the first Monday, in November, when both houses will probably be stormed by Repbulicans. Then, it’ll be time for talk amnesty again. You do know that the economy will have turned around on that day too.

And Dana and SE Cupp will have grown a brain (not to mention a facility with economics and rational thought). If you believe all that … here I’ll leave it up to you the reader to fill in with one of those underwater property-sale jokes (let’s have some southern ones, please, to lift sagging spirits).

Big-Government Gerson

Bush, Conservatism, Constitution, Natural Law, Neoconservatism, Political Philosophy

BUSH’S Bastardized Conservatism is also Michael Gerson’s. As a committed ideologue, formerly of the Bush administration, Michael Gerson is a completely consistent, dangerous statist. He imagines that the General Welfare Clause gave our overlords, and the Little Lord Fauntleroys who serve them (the female version: Dana Perino), authority to enact the New Deal, Social Security, Medicare, federal civil rights law; direct what Gerson terms “economic growth,” and pursue the national greatness agenda.

To oppose “Alexander Hamilton and a number of Supreme Court rulings” that affirm such overreach is “morally irresponsible and politically disastrous,” says Gerson.

Today, Laura Ingraham referred to Gerson, affectionately, as being part of that wonderful big tent that makes the GOP so inclusive. Yet Gerson, whom BAB celebrity Myron Pauli long ago identified as the most dangerous kind of (crunchy) conservative, holds that the welfare clause, “and Congress will have the power…to provide for the general welfare”—Article I, Section 8—implies that government can pick The People’s pocketbooks for any possible project, even though the general clause is followed by a detailed enumeration of the limited powers so delegated.

Asks historian Thomas E. Woods Jr.: “What point would there be in specifically listing the federal government’s powers if the general welfare clause had already provided the government with an essentially boundless authority to enact whatever it thought would contribute to people’s well-being?” Woods evokes no less an authority than the “Father of the Constitution,” James Madison: “Nothing is more natural nor common than first to use a general phrase, and then to explain and qualify it by a recital of particulars.”

You’d think Madison knew one or two things more than Michael about this document.

I once wrote that “sometimes the law of the State coincides with the natural law. More often than not, natural justice has been buried under the rubble of legislation and statute.” When Gerson and company (you’ll find that Rove, Perino, and the rest, currently masquerading as conservatives, are no different) reject “a consistent constitutionalism,” namely a critique of the current promiscuous applications of the 14th, the “General Welfare” clause, and so on, and embrace the concept of the Constitution as a “living, breathing” document—they rely for their case on layers of that rubble.

Having shoveled the muck of lawmaking aside, constitutionalists base their case on the natural justice and the founders’ original intent.

Gerson is the enemy of liberty. But even more so, because so deceptive, are the Ingrahams of the world. Ms. Ingraham wanted to know how Gerson could bad mouth the tea part, yet still call himself a Bush conservative. Ms. Ingraham has set up a dichotomy where there is only congruity and consistency on the part of Gerson: now that is dangerous.