Category Archives: Republicans

Neocon Deluxe, David Frum, Damns Rush

Conservatism, libertarianism, Neoconservatism, Political Philosophy, Republicans, The State, War

Neoconservative David Frum has really done it this time. Recall, for disavowing the war in Iraq, and being critical of the amorphous, ever-morphing War on Terror, he went after paleos, daring to call the likes of Pat Buchanan unpatriotic. (I responded on LewRockwell.com: “FRUM’S FLIMFLAM.”)

Now Frum is gunning for Rush Limbaugh in the most poisonous manner. As you know, I’m no ditto head. I’m beholden to nobody and nothing but the truth, as I call it (and I’ve called it quite well, I might add).

However, I’d defend Limbaugh over and above a neoconservative of the deepest dye such as Frum, who has likened Rush to Jesse Jackson:

“Rush is to the Republicanism of the 2000s what Jesse Jackson was to the Democratic party in the 1980s,” writes Frum, a former Bush speech writer who stabbed his own boss, George Bush, in the back.

The encomiums Frum offers to Obama have certainly landed him many a favorable interview in mainstream media—don’t those unwatchful dogs love centrists, even when the latter have been instrumental in agitating for unjust wars. (Ones where young people not their own fight and die.)

Here’s Frum juxtaposing Obama to Limbaugh (I’ll tell you now-now why this comparison is so singularly statist):

“On the one side, the president of the United States: soft-spoken and conciliatory, never angry, always invoking the recession and its victims. This president invokes the language of “responsibility,” and in his own life seems to epitomize that ideal: He is physically honed and disciplined, his worst vice an occasional cigarette. He is at the same time an apparently devoted husband and father. Unsurprisingly, women voters trust and admire him.”

And Rush:

“And for the leader of the Republicans? A man who is aggressive and bombastic, cutting and sarcastic, who dismisses the concerned citizens in network news focus groups as “losers.” With his private plane and his cigars, his history of drug dependency and his personal bulk, not to mention his tangled marital history, Rush is a walking stereotype of self-indulgence – exactly the image that Barack Obama most wants to affix to our philosophy and our party. And we’re cooperating! Those images of crowds of CPACers cheering Rush’s every rancorous word – we’ll be seeing them rebroadcast for a long time.”

[SNIP]
What left-liberal pabulum. The focus on Rush’s exterior and the “self-indulgence” dismissal is repulsive. The free market, for the most, is how Limbaugh has earned the dough with which he feeds his alleged insatiable needs. I grant you that the man is excessively enmeshed with political power, but, overall, it’s fair to say that Limbaugh did not capture the market share of ditto heads he enjoys by political force.

Obama, on the other hand, has never earned an honest dime in his life. The president may be lean, fit and ascetic, but he has done so on the backs of taxpayers; he’s the very definition of a PARASITE of the political class.

For the most, and as much as I disdain his Bush alliance, Limbaugh has made his living via the economic means. The political class and its sycophants—senators, congressmen, presidents, their speechwriters, lawyers, and lobbyists—they utilize the political means to earn their keep. The first relies on voluntary associations and is free of coercion; the last is coercive and involuntary.

As libertarian economist Murray Rothbard reminded, these “are two mutually exclusive ways of acquiring wealth”—the economic means is honest and productive, the political means is dishonest and predatory…but oh so very effective.

The fact that Frum can’t tell the two apart tells us all we need to know about David. In this particular tiff, better to cheer Rush Limbaugh than slip between the sheets with Frum and his ilk. These effetes also campaigned against Sarah Palin because they look down on her. (And perhaps because their wives are such gossips.)

An excellent start for movement conservatives in reclaiming conservatism, the Republican Party, and exciting the base, would be to distance themselves from neoconservatives, starting with David Frum.

Let me preempt: Too many libertarians sit on the fence, holier than thou, refusing to engage the issues of the day, because oh-so superior. I disagree with such aloofness. Although I come from a different ideological solitude than Frum/Rush, I am convinced of the need to remain engaged, so as to keep proving that mine is the better perspective. This cannot be achieved without getting involved in the day’s rough-and-tumble.

Update II: Addicted To That Rush

Barack Obama, Bush, Conservatism, Drug War, Music, Republicans, War on Drugs

“The title of this column comes not from Rush Limbaugh’s unfortunate addiction to prescription drugs, but from the eponymous ‘Mr. Big’ hit. (They don’t make musicians like Paul Gilbert and Billy Sheehan any longer, but I digress.) Nevertheless it alludes to another of Rush’s missed opportunities: Speaking against a war into which he was involuntarily drafted and almost destroyed.”

“Rush rightly denounced the State’s failed war on poverty. It failed not because fighting poverty is not a noble cause, but because, given the perverse incentives it entrenches, government is incapable of winning such a war. The same economic and bureaucratic perversions make another of the State’s stalemated wars equally unwinnable and ruinous: the War on Drugs.”

“Lysander Spooner, the great, American 19th-century theorist of liberty, defined vices as those acts ‘by which a man harms himself or his property. Crimes are those acts by which a man harms the person or property of another.’ A conservative worth his salt should know the difference; and should know that government has no business treating vices as crimes.”

“If for harming himself a man forfeits his freedom, then he is not free at all. …”

The excerpt is from my new WND column, “Addicted To That Rush.” It brings together, somehow, the Steele-Limbaugh spat, the Bush/Barack death wish for America, the progressive rock group “Mr. Big,” and much more.

Update I (March 6): Sigh. Over at The View From The Right, Larry Auster and readers discuss (rather obsessively) the one-word change I made in quoting Auster in “Addicted To That Rush.”

Auster had written:

“…their criticisms of Obama will have the stink of rank partisanship.”

I changed that to:

“…their criticisms of Obama will have the [odor] of rank partisanship.”

Let me indulge Auster’s readers: First, the change was introduced quite appropriately, encased thus []. Next, there was no deep deception, just an editorial choice. The reader Leonard D. got the issue of redundancy right, writing:

“My guess as to what Mercer did not like about ‘the stink of rank partisanship’ is that it is redundant, ‘rank’ being almost synonymous with “stinky.”

However, and not withstanding Leonard D.’s valid point, I’d have expected traditionalists to get that “stink” is rather crass and certainly very earthy. A good word, no doubt, but not the most refined one when used by a woman. Again: an honest word, for sure, but I don’t like “stink” because of its connotations (bodily fluids, etc., say no more).

Traditionalists, generally hip to the vulgarization of society, should have been hip to this preference. I simply chose a daintier, less vulgar word.

There is a time and a place for everything, and I have indeed used strong language to describe elected officials on the blog (but not in columns).

Update II: The spouse, also the best guitarist I know, tells me that Paul Gilbert located to Japan, where there is a vast audience for maestros of guitar and progressive rock. It figures: the Japanese also have aggregate higher IQs than the local Coldplay fans, to whom complexity and competence are cuss words.

Update II: Mr. Constitution?

Conservatism, Constitution, Federalism, libertarianism, Republicans, Ron Paul

At 13 percent, Ron Paul and Sarah Palin were tied in a presidential straw poll at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington, D.C. A point made in “Sensational Sarah” obtains: “Would that Rep. Ron Paul, the only politician who adheres to America’s founding philosophy, was Palin’s running mate, wisely steering her boundless energy and excellent instincts in excising the cancer from the body politic.”

As for the other straw “winners”; they’re real losers. Mitt Romney came first (“best 2012 GOP presidential candidate”). Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal was the runner-up.

My colleague Vox Day sums it up:

“These results tend to indicate that a little more than one-quarter of the ‘conservatives’ at CPAC have a functional brain. Romney is a liberal technocrat. Jindal is a little goblin who just blew his first moment on the national stage.”

An award for upholding the Constitution belonged to Congressman Paul but went to Rush Limbaugh.

On the merits of that award collected by Rush, I once angered ditto heads for pointing out, in “It’s About Federalism, Stupid!”, Rush’s ruthless and unconstitutional case against actor Michael Fox on the matter of stem cell research and the fetus fetish:

“The pompous talk-show host’s sneering assault on a deformed Michael J. Fox was utterly depraved. Aping Fox’s Parkinson’s-induced spasms, Limbaugh told listeners: “He is exaggerating the effects of the disease. He’s moving all around and shaking and it’s purely an act.” Rather than lampoon an-obviously afflicted human being, someone with a head and a heart would have stuck to the issue.

And the issue is this: The founders bequeathed a central government of delegated and enumerated powers. Intellectual property laws are the only constitutional means at Congress’s disposal with which to “promote the Progress of Science.” (About their merit Thomas Jefferson, himself an inventor, was unconvinced.) The Constitution gives Congress only 18 specific legislative powers. Research and development spending is nowhere among them.

Neither are Social Security, civil rights (predicated as they are on grotesque violations of property rights), Medicare, Medicaid, and the elaborate public works sprung from the General Welfare and Interstate Commerce Clauses—you name it, it’s likely unconstitutional. There is simply no warrant in the Constitution for most of what the Federal Frankenstein does.”

Update I (March 2): About the welfare clause, “and Congress will have the power…to provide for the general welfare”: Article I, Section 8 our overlords have taken to mean 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.”

The complete column is “The Hillary, Hussein, McCain Axis of Evil.”

Update II: With respect to Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, Barbara makes a good point. Having spoken openly about decentralization and devolution of power to the states, Jindal is considerably more conservative than most of the Republican governors. Not being as pale as Palin—he is of Indian descent—Jindal has diversity on his side. He is therefore less likely than, say Sarah, to be condemned as a “conservative zealot.”

Update II: Rush To Judgment: Limbaugh’s CPAC Speech

Conservatism, Constitution, Foreign Policy, Free Will Vs. Determinism, IMMIGRATION, Inflation, Republicans, Ron Paul

We want to give credit where it’s due. Rush Limbaugh at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington, D.C. was charismatic, well spoken (he even corrects his mistakes mid-sentence, which points to a welcome fastidiousness about the language), passionate, and sincere.
As opposed to most pundits, Limbaugh doesn’t require lengthy de-Nazification efforts; he needs only a few weeks at the feet of Congressman Ron Paul.

I optimized the time Limbaugh talked by both listening and mopping the wooden floors. Here are some of the problems I have with Limbaugh’s impassioned CPAC speech. Feel free to add to them:

• I didn’t hear a word about the reliable role of Republicans as engines of government growth. And Bush, in particular. Bush set the scene for Barack. Bush began what BHO is completing. Stimulus, bailouts, a house for every Hispanic—these are programs Bush developed, or signed on to, as I and other libertarians have documented. For an account of the Republican’s “inglorious tradition” of growing government, I recommend “Republicans and Big Government,” by my pal Jim Ostrowski.

• Rush failed to religiously pair the need for tax cuts with a ruthless slashing of government. Bush grew government while, at the same time, cutting taxes. Deficit spending, however, is financed by borrowing or inflating the money supply. The latter is the most vicious and insidious of taxes. (Read why.) Until conservatives get beyond piss-easy populism and stretch their minds to learn some REAL economics, beyond the “tax cut” mantra, there is no hope for them. Rush mentioned von Hayek; why not read his work on the business cycle?

• When it comes to his view of human nature, Rush is a big egalitarian. What do I mean? As an impediment to individual achievement, he cited the disabling and crippling role of the welfare state. Fair enough. However, that is not a qualitatively different argument than the one advanced by left-liberals.
In the nature-nurture debate, liberals reduce man’s plight to adverse social conditions: Crime, they say, is because of poverty, patriarchy, powerlessness (I’ve lots count of the “P”s). Rush is merely rendering his deterministic complement to that of the liberals: they say too little intervention; he says too much of it. The conservative truth is that people differ in potential. Live with it! Phenotype or genotype: our genes encode both the way we look and, to a large degree, how well we can think. Once again, Rush’s view of human nature doesn’t depart significantly from the view his liberal foes hold.

Egalitarianism is the enemy of liberty. As I’ve said, just as most of us can’t aspire to Heidi Klum’s countenance, no amount of freedom will imbue us all with an equal standard of living, which is a function, to a large extent, of out abilities.
A conservative view of nature is one that acknowledges the kind if differences that make the reality of poverty and other evils inescapable. Capitalism may amplify differences in wealth as it allows the able to fully express their abilities. But it also reduces levels of poverty. The poor are richer under capitalism because employment and opportunity are optimized.

• Not a word did Limbaugh say about the Warfare State, which is every bit as corrupt and corrupting as the welfare state. We spend over a trillion annually on empire. What kind of a nation neglects its own borders while defending borders not its own? A nation of cowards. There is a war on the border with Mexico. It’s spilling over. Where is the brave military? This is quintessential neo-conservatism as I defined it on January 16, 2004 (mentioned here by Larry Auster): “Inviting an invasion by foreigners and instigating one against them are two sides of the same neoconservative coin.” Rush did not denounce this borderless, expansionist agenda.

• I have news for Rush: contrary to his assertion, freedom is not the natural condition of the human heart. That’s liberal/neoconservative claptrap. All people want freedom for themselves, that much is true. But not everyone is willing to let his adversaries enjoy their freedoms. I wish Republicans would try thinking beyond clichés–the kind that led to their invasion of Iraq.

Update: Speaking of Larry Auster, this is what the traditionalist commentator writes under the heading, “This is our leader?”:

Rush Limbaugh is addressing the C-PAC conference. Am I supposed to care? Am I supposed to see this loud-mouth as the leader of conservatives against Obama’s attempted socialist takeover of America? Where was El Slowbo for the last eight years? I’ll tell you where he was. He was, with all the energy and devotion of which he is capable, carrying George W. Bush’s water while Bush advanced such proposals as the “American Dream Down Payment Plan,” which landed us in our current situation.

Update II (March 2): Michael Steele, chairman of the Republican National Committee, trashed Rush Limbaugh. Steele called the Talker an entertainer, and his show incendiary, ugly entertainment.

Ann Coulter has expressed her disappointment. The Conservative Queen Bee also spoke favorably about Steele being good on TV. I guess she meant eye candy, because she immediately launched, on the Glenn Beck Show, into a paean to the babes of the Republican Party. (Here is the story of one such brassy babe.)

In any event, I say let Limbaugh and Steele have at it. I’ve listened to Steele; he’s utterly eager to pacify, placate and attract the ethnic vote. This is a black John McCain. The Republicans have a deficit in principles, not diversity. Yet Steele keeps carping about the need to “appeal” to those voracious minorities. With what? More stolen stuff?

Yes, stealing Steele is among the cadre of Republicans (a Rovian) calling for a more upbeat and diverse GOP, when in fact that GOP has gone all out for minorities (to no avail) and stuck it to the base.

I hope the two men smart for some time to come, and that more chasms open up like gashes in the GOP. Out of chaos maybe some order will come, by which I mean an articulation of a rightist, ordered liberty. Let the rightist faction break away, recapture the base and then the Party.