Category Archives: Elections 2008

Updated: Republicans’ Incoherent Mea Culpa

Conservatism, Elections 2008, Foreign Policy, IMMIGRATION, Neoconservatism, Republicans

An incoherent P.J. O’Rourke dithers on about why Republicans have betrayed conservatism. On the most important national questions-cum-calamities—perpetual immigration and war—he seems to think more of each was the way to go. That is if I understand the man’s bafflegab (perhaps I don’t).

If anything, led by deracinated neoconservatives, Republicans’ move to the left on immigration has been their downfall. And if O’Rourke’s own support for an ill-begotten war doesn’t yet excite disgust deep down, what hope is there for the rest? As I said, “GOP; RIP.” Here’s O’Rourke, if you can stomach him:

“Our attitude toward immigration has been repulsive. Are we not pro-life? Are not immigrants alive? Unfortunately, no, a lot of them aren’t after attempting to cross our borders. Conservative immigration policies are as stupid as conservative attitudes are gross. Fence the border and give a huge boost to the Mexican ladder industry. Put the National Guard on the Rio Grande and know that U.S. troops are standing between you and yard care. George W. Bush, at his most beneficent, said if illegal immigrants wanted citizenship they would have to do three things: Pay taxes, learn English, and work in a meaningful job. Bush doesn’t meet two out of three of those qualifications. And where would you rather eat? At a Vietnamese restaurant? Or in the Ayn Rand Café? Hey, waiter, are the burgers any good? Atlas shrugged. (We would, however, be able to have a smoke at the latter establishment.)
To go from slime to the sublime, there are the lofty issues about which we never bothered to form enough principles to go out and break them. What is the coherent modern conservative foreign policy?
We may think of this as a post 9/11 problem, but it’s been with us all along. What was Reagan thinking, landing Marines in Lebanon to prop up the government of a country that didn’t have one? In 1984, I visited the site where the Marines were murdered. It was a beachfront bivouac overlooked on three sides by hills full of hostile Shiite militia. You’d urge your daughter to date Rosie O’Donnell before you’d put troops ashore in such a place.
Since the early 1980s I’ve been present at the conception (to use the polite term) of many of our foreign policy initiatives. Iran-contra was about as smart as using the U.S. Postal Service to get weapons to anti-Communists. And I notice Danny Ortega is back in power anyway. I had a look into the eyes of the future rulers of Afghanistan at a sura in Peshawar as the Soviets were withdrawing from Kabul. I would rather have had a beer with Leonid Brezhnev.
Fall of the Berlin wall? Being there was fun. Nations that flaked off of the Soviet Union in southeastern Europe, Central Asia, and the Caucasus? Being there was not so fun.
The aftermath of the Gulf war still makes me sick. Fine to save the fat, greedy Kuwaitis and the arrogant, grasping house of Saud, but to hell with the Shiites and Kurds of Iraq until they get some oil.
Then, half a generation later, when we returned with our armies, we expected to be greeted as liberators. And, damn it, we were. I was in Baghdad in April 2003. People were glad to see us, until they noticed that we’d forgotten to bring along any personnel or provisions to feed or doctor the survivors of shock and awe or to get their electricity and water running again. After that they got huffy and began stuffing dynamite down their pants before consulting with the occupying forces.
Is there a moral dimension to foreign policy in our political philosophy? Or do we just exist to help the world’s rich people make and keep their money? (And a fine job we’ve been doing of that lately.)”

Update (Nov. 11): John Zmirak of Taki’s Magazine concurs about the “senile” P.J.:

P.J. O’Rourke is now officially senile. Pour a stiff glass of bourbon before wading into this farrago of parrot-sh*t. The problem with conservatism, for P.J. as for Frumbag, is conservatives. They should learn to put up with forced desegregation and worthless public schools, gay marriage, abortion, colonization by hostile, nationalistic foreigners, and the use of the U.S. military to fight other country’s wars. In return they might, just might get… drumroll please: fiscal responsibility. Yeah, we’ve never spent a dime on all that federal equality micromanagement and foreign conquest, or all those uninsured unskilled laborers. That’s funded by pennies from heaven.

The same pious homilies are echoed by most of conservatism’s custodians—just enough “insight” to make themselves appear as though they’ve retained something of their faculties and have embarked on a quixotic quest to confront their excesses and errors; but not quite enough to show Republicans up for the rudderless sorts they are (for the most).

As always, Republicans are great at dimming and dumbing down debate.

Updated: GOP, RIP

Conservatism, Elections 2008, IMMIGRATION, Iraq, Republicans

MCCAIN: He was the wrong man; a progressive, as opposed to a conservative. He followed an equally wrong, wretched administration (Iraq), from which he deviated only slightly—and then to the left (global warming).

The GOP: It is no longer conservative, but neoconservative. “Strategists” hostile to principles, the Karl Rovians, have sought to “attract” intractably hostile minorities to the party by relinquishing philosophical coherence. While trying hard to appeal to minorities, who seldom vote Republican, GOPers worked overtime to marginalize the Republican base—issues most important to conservatives were mocked out of meaning and never mentioned. Immigration, for one. (Watch the chilling testimony of an architect of the central plan to overthrow America.)

As minorities move into a majority position, thanks in no part to Republican immigration policies, the GOP will become redundant.

Update: WHO’S RACIST? Here are the exist polls by race (and sex).

Related: “Why Weep For Joy?”

Why Weep For Joy?

Barack Obama, Elections 2008, Race, South-Africa

Would I weep for Joy if a Jew were elected president of the US? No (especially given my tribe’s leftist penchant). But Colin Powell, Oprah Winfrey (who catapulted Obama from anonymity), and Jessie Jackson wept for Obama’s triumph. Caught in a drama of their own making.

Now, if Americans were as good at driving a bargain as they were at coming out in droves for Obama, they’d insist that the media and their minders in Washington quit smearing them as racists. Quit talking about how those rednecks have come along way; talk about a people who do not judge a man by the color of his skin.

As some of us have always contended, Anglo-Americans are no racists.

If anything, American minorities are more deserving of the pejorative since most stated quite openly that they voted for Obama because they perceived his run as a triumph for their side. But of course, as one petty government official once wrote:

“In the United States, at present, only whites can be racists since whites dominate and control the institutions that create and enforce American cultural norms and values. … All white individuals in our society are racist, even those who have no conscious prejudice because they receive benefits distributed by a white, racist society thoughts institutions.” (Frederick Lynch, 1989)

Don’t expect the charge to be dropped when the founding people of America no longer control its institutions. As is evident from South Africa, if white, one can be among a disenfranchised minority, yet still be considered racist.

Updated: Deifying Democracy

Democracy, Elections 2008, Political Philosophy

A lot of gushing is going on about our wonderful democracy at work—the allusion being to the long lines and high turnout. Not to rain on anyone’s line, but:

America was not conceived as a democracy—majority rule was never the intent here. In a democracy, majorities get to decide what is up for grabs. In a republic, where the central government has limited and clearly enumerated functions, majorities merely determine who is to be elected.

We are thus subject to the whims of the national majority, or, rather, of its ostensible representatives.

It is these representatives who triumph in this or any election, certainly not that fictitious entity “The People.” While it seems obvious that the minority in a democracy is openly thwarted, the question is, do the elected representatives at least carry out the will of the majority?

The answer is No. The People’s representatives have carte blanche to do exactly as they please. As Benjamin Barber wrote:

It is hard to find in all the daily activities of bureaucratic administration, judicial legislation, executive leadership, and paltry policy-making anything that resembles citizen engagement in the creation of civic communities and in the forging of public ends. Politics has become what politicians do; what citizens do (when they do anything) is to vote for politicians.

In Restoring the Lost Constitution, Randy E. Barnett further homes in on why the informed voter ought to have little incentive to exercise his “democratic right”:

If we vote for a candidate and she wins, we have consented to the laws she votes for, but we have also consented to the laws she has voted against.

If we vote against the candidate and she wins, we have consented to the laws she votes for or against.

And if we do not vote at all, we have consented to the outcome of the process whatever it may be.

This “rigged contest” Barnett describes as, “‘Heads’ you consent, ‘tails’ you consent, ‘didn’t flip the coin,’ guess what? You consent as well.'”

Update I (Nov. 5): Wrote Michael Oakeshott in The Claims of Politics:

“Political action involves mental vulgarity, not merely because it entails the occurrence and support of those who are mentally vulgar, but because of the simplification of human life implied in even the best of it purposes.”