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A Distinction of Philosophy

Thursday, April 10th, 2008

 There is an interesting piece in today’s New York Times that discusses the influence that neoconservatives seem to have over John McCain:

Senator John McCain has long made his decades of experience in foreign policy and national security the centerpiece of his political identity, and suggests he would bring to the White House a fully formed view of the world.

But now one component of the fractious Republican Party foreign policy establishment — the so-called pragmatists, some of whom have come to view the Iraq war or its execution as a mistake — is expressing concern that Mr. McCain might be coming under increased influence from a competing camp, the neoconservatives, whose thinking dominated President Bush’s first term and played a pivotal role in building the case for war.

 I share the concerns of many of the so-called “realists” that John McCain does have a bit too much neoconservative influence in his camp-but I am very careful in my use of that word. It has become the new fad in many of the socio-political circles of the Left to label all of their conservative opponents as “neocons.” The New York Times will sometimes feature op-ed pieces which label conservatives as “neocons.” Liberal bloggers now use the term with reckless abandon, labeling nearly all of their political opponents as “neocons.” I am now labeled as a neocon by certain Leftist bloggers on a regular basis, which would seem to belie a fundamental misunderstanding of the strains of conservative philosophy: Not only am I not a neoconservative, I am nowhere near being one.  

Neoconservatives have their philosophical roots in the liberalism if the 1930’s-1960’s. Many neoconservatives became such because the radical Left took over the Democratic Party in the late 60’s and 70’s, forcing old fashioned liberals who were anti-Communist but who had a globalist worldview and who accepted a sort of “third way” approach to government (they have no problem with big government so long as the powers of government grow in the direction they are comfortable with), to redefine what it means to be conservative. The neoconservatives have been very successful, because they and their surrogates are now the dominant force in the national Republican Party.

 My own philosophy is what is now referred to as paleoconservatism. I believe in a very limited federal government, and support the idea that nearly all powers not granted to the federal government in the Constitution are to be reserved to the States or to the people. Paleoconservatives are fearful of the power of central government, but also fearful of excessive corporatism-which is why many paleoconservatives oppose the idea of the Federal Reserve and believe the United States should return to a standard of gold and silver as the means by which our money is backed.

Immigration should be limited only to those which can successfully integrated into American society with a minimum amount of federal and State spending-in other words, immigration shouldn’t be stopped, but should be placed at levels that are far easier for the established citizenry to control. Immigration laws which are already on the books must be rigorously enforced. Neoconservatives believe (along with many liberals) that it is the business of the United States to intervene around the world in situations where we deem it important to do so, though the sides may differ in what situations intervention is permissable. Traditional paleoconservatives believe that the United States should avoid excessive foreign entanglements like the plague, and believe that foreign aid should be restricted so that America’s needs are met with America’s money before the needs of the rest of the world. Nearly all paleoconservatives believe the Iraq War was a mammoth mistake, but do believe that there are situations which necessitate American military intervention-with a Congressional Declaration of War (the Constitution says so).

Labeling all conservatives as “neocons” is a rather cheap political move by the Left that is intended to paint their opposition with a broad brush, but that brush is not representative of reality. As for the Iraq War-it was a mistake, and a terrible one, but we are now there whether we like it or not. I personally fear that a unilateral withdrawal would send a signal to Americas enemies that we are weak and unwilling to fight if need be. This war should not have been started, but it must be ended when victory can truly be declared.

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Posted in Media, Politics, Presidential Election, Republicans | 3 Comments »

I’d Rather Win for a Million Other Reasons

Tuesday, April 8th, 2008

The Democratic Party, despite public claims by its leadership of a desire on the part of their base voters to unite and sing Kumbuya, appears to be bitterly divided on the basis of race:

Add this to the divisive debate over race in the presidential campaign: Whites who said race was important in picking their candidate have been about twice as likely to back Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton as Sen. Barack Obama.

Exit polls of voters in Democratic primaries also show that whites who considered the contender’s race — Clinton is white, Obama is black — were three times likelier to say they would only be satisfied with Clinton as the nominee than if Obama were chosen.

The Democratic Party loves to publicly make the claim that it has moved beyond race, that it is the champion of social equality. Its leaders may talk the talk-and a few of them may actually believe the public rhetoric-but Democratic voters are far from this notion of socio-political nirvana championed by the national party. Race is the monster in the closet of the Democratic Party, because the Democrats have spent the last 50 years (and in some cases much longer) creating constituencies based on race, and targeting demographic groups based almost solely on race and ethnicity. These same people express shock and dismay when the groups that they have politically played the game of isolate and segregate over the years are now voting so sharply according to race in a primary where there are two candidates who happen to be people of different races.

Evidence of the Democratic race monster has already reared its disgustingly ugly head in South Carolina, where Bill Clinton pointed out that Jesse Jackson made a good showing there-clearly indicating that Barack Obama is winning his victories because of black voters-and in saying so, attempted to heap a level of discredit upon Obama’s candidacy.

Many supporters of Barack Obama are making the grave mistake of believing that because Obama is doing well among college educated whites, this somehow equates to great levels of white support. Further, I’ve read and heard some Obama backers (by no means all, but a number of them nonetheless) subscribe to the hyper-elitist idea that whites who do not support Obama are only doing so because they are less educated and that the “intelligent” white Democrats are backing Obama. Most of the folks who have made that insinuation are college-educated white liberals-a group that tends to be notoriously elitist in the first place.

Both sides are playing the race card, but John McCain will not. Unfortunately for the country (Democrats, Republicans, liberals, and conservatives alike), the card will have been played like a fiddle by both Democrats, and the result will be a nasty election for surrogates. Because some group will feel alienated, the Republicans may likely win. As a Republican and a conservative, I can say that I’d rather win for a million other reasons than what may cause the GOP to win this year.

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The National Mood and Counting Chickens

Friday, April 4th, 2008

The latest CBS News/New York Times poll shows something that those of us who observe the political scene in our own home towns across America can already see-the people are in a bloody sour mood about the direction of the country:

 Americans are more dissatisfied with the country’s direction than at any time since the New York Times/CBS News poll began asking about the subject in the early 1990s, according to the latest poll.

In the poll, 81 percent of respondents said they believed “things have pretty seriously gotten off on the wrong track,” up from 69 percent a year ago and 35 percent in early 2002.

In a normal election year, that would likely equate to victory for the party out of presidential power, presently the Democrats. There is one important reality of the poll that The New York Times tried to downplay in its coverage, however:

A majority of nearly every demographic and political group — Democrats and Republicans, men and women, residents of cities and rural areas, college graduates and those who finished only high school — say the United States is headed in the wrong direction. Seventy-eight percent of respondents said the country was worse off than five years ago; just 4 percent said it was better off.

The poll confirms what I can see and hear with my own eyes. With diesel and gasoline prices climbing, drivers and truckers aren’t the only folks feeling the pinch, so are farmers. When farmers and those in related agribusiness industries begin to say that things are getting rotten, you can bet that the economy really is in bad shape. If people in rural America aren’t feeling the pinch, it can be assumed that any downturn in the economy that is being talked about in the press is a temporary thing-economic problems begin here in the sticks, and if we don’t have economic issues, the rest of the country won’t have a long-term problem.

I recall a discussion I had with my Grandfather when he was still with us about these issues. One thing I remember clearly was him pointing out that in the rural Southern West Virginia community where he grew up, they were feeling the effects of the Great Depression for several years before the 1929 Stock Market Crash-and he thought the notion that Herbert Hoover was to blame for the Depression was “a bunch of bunk” (a phrase he often used). The problems they had in those days were similar to what we are dealing with today. People borrowed money on good faith and credit, sometimes they made risky moves with the money-buying land, equipment, or supplies they could not pay for. People borrowed too much, invested without knowing what they were doing, and banks charged what in those days was considered excessive interest. The economic hardship caused by these bad decisions hit rural America first and hardest-and so it is today.

 While The New York Times says that people blame the government, a lof of people in the heartland of the country are very much aware that the problems with the economy we are now experiencing began back in the mid-90’s. While the economic downturn might be good political news for Democrats under normal circumstances, we don’t live in the 1920’s anymore. We have 24-hour news and communication, and the 82 percent who agree that the country is on the wrong track likely disagree about the means to get it on the right one.

Democrats would be politically wise not to count their chickens before they’re hatched.

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Becoming Winnable

Tuesday, April 1st, 2008

Speculation about whether the Democrats lengthy primary fight will impact their chances in November has hit the Democrats’ flagship newspaper, The New York Times:

Robert Shrum, a longtime Democratic operative who wrote that speech for Mr. Kennedy, said a bitter extended primary challenge in itself did not doom the outcome.

“It’s not the going to the convention, it’s how sulfurous and negative this gets,” Mr. Shrum said of the Clinton-Obama battle.

“What would hurt is if we had three or four months of escalating negative attacks and a huge fight over Michigan and Florida,” Mr. Shrum said. “We could have a situation where we set gender and race against each other, and we could lose the unlosable election in the bonfire of the vanities.”

Some Democrats fear just such a trajectory.

“This contest will get even more contentious, and there will be more charges and countercharges,” Donna Brazile, who managed Al Gore’s campaign in 2000 and is neutral in this race, said after Mr. Clinton told Democrats last week to “saddle up.”

“People were excited; now they’re exhausted,” Ms. Brazile said. “In the beginning, they liked one candidate and respected the other; now they love one and hate the other.”

A Gallup poll last week found that as of March, 28 percent of Clinton backers would vote for Mr. McCain over Mr. Obama, and 19 percent of Obama supporters would vote for Mr. McCain over Mrs. Clinton.

The longer this goes on, the more likely it becomes that the Democrats will lose the General Election. The reason is not Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama by themselves, since these are people with the political experience to know that for the sake of their own futures they cannot take what happens in the campaign personally. It is those who are supporters and surrogates of either candidate that could doom the Democratic ticket.

Not only has this been one of the most divisive primary season that either party has seen in many years, but the Republican Party has managed to nominate a man who, while strongly disliked by many of us in the base of the GOP, is a very popular man with independents and certain Democrats. It should come as no surprise that many of these folks would consider voting for John McCain. If the Republican nominee had been a good Republican, this might not be as much of an issue-but this is John McCain, and a divided Democratic Party could mean that the unwinnable election becomes winnable for the Republicans.

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The Unease With McCain

Monday, March 24th, 2008

MSNBC highlights one of the many reasons why so many conservatives are uneasy about John McCain:

Senator John McCain never fails to call himself a conservative Republican as he campaigns as his party’s presumptive presidential nominee. He often adds that he was a “foot soldier” in the Reagan revolution and that he believes in the bedrock conservative principles of small government, low taxes and the rights of the unborn.

What Mr. McCain almost never mentions are two extraordinary moments in his political past that are at odds with the candidate of the present: His discussions in 2001 with Democrats about leaving the Republican Party, and his conversations in 2004 with Senator John Kerry about becoming Mr. Kerry’s running mate on the Democratic presidential ticket.

None of this may seem to pose a major issue or even seem like a contradiction to Americans who are politically uninvolved in the process except to vote. However, if you’ve ever become involved as a conservative activist with Republican politics in any way, shape, fashion, or form, you know that the one thing that the GOP asks of its conservative adherants is loyalty. There is a good reason for this-with rare exceptions, the Democrats fail to offer much in the way of conservative choices. Failure of a political candidate at any level who identifies himself or herself (whether directly on the party ticket, or indirectly in some local races where party can’t be identified) as a Republican to support the party’s choices, or at least not to publicly disparage them, is usually seen as an act comparable to the Brutus engaging in the plot to kill Julius Caesar.

Lack of loyalty to the Republican Party in my heavily-Republican State Senate district is one of many issues being raised in the campaign to unseat the incumbent.

Knowing that both the party and many conservative party activists place such a high premium on the loyalty of its active members, it is understandable that those members would now feel no obligation to get excited about a presidential nominee who has not shown himself to have any loyalty to the party or to the activists who have built it. It isn’t a question of whether McCain cast a vote that dissented from conservative orthodoxy, something that he has done many times. Lamar Alexander has done the same thing from time to time, but I have no problem helping Lamar’s re-election campaign. The reason is because when we’ve asked Lamar to stand with us, he has done so when it really mattered. The problem with John McCain is that he has shown himself willing not only to vote with Democrats, but perhaps to become one as long as it gets him to the White House. Literally, McCain has taken the attitude that “I will do what it takes to get what I want,” and loyally to the party that helped bring him to the dance can be thrown to the wind.

A McCain victory in November will happen because of people’s repugnance at the Democratic nominee as opposed to their embrace of the Republican one.

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Democrats and Their Hyphenated America

Monday, March 17th, 2008

Certain of our Democratic friends are shocked-shocked, I say, to learn that playing politics with race, ethnicity, and gender will lead to infighting and even racist rhetoric. From my good friend Sharon Cobb:

Shouldn’t we [liberals] be dancing in the streets singing “We Shall Overcome” alternated with “I Am Woman?” That’s what we sang in the 60s and 70s, respectively.

This is not the way I thought it would be.

Isn’t this the payoff for the tear gassing we got during civil rights marches, sit-ins and for having the courage to practice civil disobedience? Isn’t this what we believed could happen and now that it has happened, what are we doing? We’re tearing each other apart.

The problem is that our friends on the hard Left did more than advocate for mere equality under the law, they have spent the last 50 years busying themselves with making political issues out of race, gender, and ethnicity. What’s more, they have continued to make political issues of those things long after the campaign for equal rights for all in this country had reached its zenith and achieved its primary goal of equality written into the law and equality before the law for all Americans regardless of race, gender, or ethnicity.

Some folks on the Left live under the illusion that government can do more than extend the protection of the Constitution to its people. Somehow, government is supposed to regulate the human heart. Sit-ins, marches, and civil disobedience can (and did) change the law for the better to insure legal equality. However, none of those things can erase people’s personal prejudices and it is not the government’s place to try and do so. Government can only insure legal equality, but it can’t make the people embrace in their hearts what they do not wish to accept.

Conservatives with conscience have understood this reality for years. Some of us have warned the party opposite that continuing to play politics with race, ethnicity, and gender and turning races and ethnic groups into political interest groups will cause strife within their party and the country (which is far worse). Rather than promote equality, healing, and a spirit of tolerance and acceptance, conservatives warned that politicizing race and gender would bring out the worst in people, not the best-remember the politicizing of race was practiced first among whites, and largely in the South!

The Democratic Party has hyphenated America into a million little subgroups, and now our friends wonder why all of their “work” is backfiring. The work of those who fought for real equality over the years is not truly achieved until all of us, black, white, Hispanic, male, and female, can see ourselves as every one an American first.

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The Troubled House

Thursday, March 13th, 2008

Geraldine Ferraro has left the Clinton campaign on her own accord after her remarks about Barack Obama being who he is and how it impacts his position in the presidential race:

The Boston Globe covers Ferraro’s resignation yesterday from Clinton’s finance committee. “‘I am stepping down from your finance committee so I can speak for myself and you can continue to speak for yourself about what is at stake in this campaign. The Obama campaign is attacking me to hurt you. I won’t let that happen.’”

“Earlier yesterday, the 1984 vice presidential nominee apologized to those who thought it racially insensitive for her to suggest that Obama wouldn’t be the Democratic front-runner if he were not black. But she then declared: ‘It wasn’t a racist comment. It was a statement of fact.’”

Both sides are likely making a much bigger deal of this than it actually is-does anyone really believe for a moment that Geraldine Ferraro is a racist? The press is focusing exclusively on her remarks that Obama would not be in the present position were he not an African-American. Everyone is forgetting that almost in the same breath, Ferraro also correctly pointed out that in 1984, she was in a very similar situation in that she was chosen as Walter Mondale’s running mate because she was a woman, and she knew and understood this. Barack Obama is getting just enough of the white vote and galvanizing nearly all of the black vote to win primaries and possibly be nominated-it is a big deal, and it can’t be denied that race is playing a role in the Democratic nominating process for some people. The problem is that race and gender seem to be playing a negative role between the two candidates:

Mr. Obama, speaking to reporters on Wednesday, said he did not believe that there was “a directive in the Clinton campaign saying, ‘Let’s heighten the racial elements in the campaign.’ I certainly wouldn’t want to think that.”

He said he was puzzled at how, after more than a year of campaigning, race and sex are at the forefront as never before.

“I don’t want to deny the role of race and gender in our society,” he said. “They’re there, and they’re powerful. But I don’t think it’s productive.”
Yet race, as well as sex, have been unavoidable subtexts of the Democratic campaign since the two candidates began seeking to be the first African-American or the first woman to lead a party’s presidential ticket. In the primaries and caucuses this winter, too, Mrs. Clinton has enjoyed substantial support from women, while Mr. Obama has increasingly drawn overwhelming votes from blacks.
Race has been a defining feature of the primary contests. Beyond Mississippi, Mrs. Clinton was backed by 5 percent of black voters in Illinois, Mr. Obama’s home state; 8 percent in Wisconsin, where black voters made up 8 percent of the Democratic primary vote; 9 percent in Delaware; 10 percent in Virginia; and 11 percent in Georgia, all states Mr. Obama won.
Mr. Obama’s 26 percent support among whites in Tuesday’s primary was one of his worst performances with this group.

Conservatives and Republicans have attempted to warn Democrats for years of the very grave dangers of playing the politics of race, ethnicity, and gender as specific special interest groups. Some of us were polite enough to try and tell them that doing so would eventually backfire and prove to be dangerous not only to the future of their party but to the country as a whole. For the life of me, I don’t know why we collectively bothered-we should have just stepped back and watched them implode while we had the opportunity to take advantage of their self-destruction.
If the Republicans had actually nominated a candidate that both the conservative base and the people of Middle America could have gotten behind in force, the GOP would be headed to one of the biggest landslide victories in its history for no other reason than that the Democrats’ artificially created “base” will be bitterly divided against one another, with some claiming racism, some sexism, and still more some other -ism. As it is, the only thing that could save the Democrats in the fall is that their opposition is not enthused. That doesn’t mean that any of this is good for the country: The Democrats may win in November or they may lose, but they have succeeded in doing the very thing they love to accuse Republicans of doing-they have divided America.
Proverbs 11:29:

He that troubleth his own house, shall inherit the wind: and the fool shall serve the wise.

The Democratic Party has troubled its own house. Whether this year or later, it will inherit the wind.

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The Fractured Party

Wednesday, March 12th, 2008

When I began last night’s radio podcast covering Mississippi’s Primary results, Fabian Story, Ken Marrero, and myself all commented about how the early numbers seemed to show that while Barack Obama would come away with a win, the results appeared to illustrate that the vote would be much closer than the press was predicting, and that Hillary Clinton could come out of Mississippi with a significant number of delegates.

Not to fret about any major upset or even a faux declaration of victory by the Clinton camp, because when all was said and done Obama smacked Clinton in Mississippi by 24 points. Hidden in the results, however, are some frightening numbers for Democrats. African-American voters went for Obama 91-9 percent, while white voters went for Hillary Clinton 72-21 percent. The Democratic Party is deeply divided along racial, ethnic, and gender lines, and for all of the talk in the party opposite about “unity in diversity,” the unity they seek is non-existent. Democrats love to talk about how “tolerant” and how “diverse” they are, but we see that no matter their color, race, or creed, they don’t seem to be very tolerant of one another.

On top of the Mississippi results, we now learn (as reported by David Knowles) that Barack Obama has won Texas:

The Texas Secretary of State will release the official results of the Democratic primary on March 29th. But if initial estimates hold, Barack Obama will beat Hillary Clinton in the race for delegates. CNN confirms what others have been seeing for days. While Clinton won the state’s popular vote, Obama racked up more caucus support, so that, now that the dust is settling, the Lone Star state’s delegate total reads:

Obama: 61 delegates from the popular vote + 37 delegates from caucuses = 98 delegates.

Clinton: 65 delegates from the popular vote + 30 delegates from caucuses = 95 delegates.

In spite of this, and Obama’s lead in the national popular vote, the Democratic National Convention may very well throw the nomination to Hillary Clinton via superdelegates. If the convention does so, they will have succeeded in alienating entire blocs of their manufactured voter base in order to avoid alienating women and white working class voters-among whom are many Reagan Democrats who have no problem voting Republican at the top of the ticket. If the Democrats do throw the nomination to Clinton even if Obama has the lead in pledged delegates, they will likely anger the “leaders” in some of the communities to which they seek to cater. This is the result of over 30 years of the national Democratic Party playing politics with gender, race, and ethnicity-and using those factors to get votes. Now that has come home to haunt the Democratic Party since they have a black man against a woman in their presidential primary process. If one side speaks up for their candidate, they are racist, and if the other speaks up for theirs and against the other, they are sexist.

John McCain would be in a prime position to take advantage of this politically, but as the Democrats attempt to hand the Republicans the election, he refuses to accept the gift.

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Hillary’s Strange Strategy

Tuesday, March 4th, 2008

NBC reports correctly why I believe Hillary Clinton is going to have trouble in Texas tonight:

Clinton needs to win by sizable margins in Ohio and Texas to cut into Obama’s lead in the delegate count because they are awarded proportionally. And even if Clinton wins the popular vote in Texas, she could wind up with fewer delegates than Obama because of the state’s unique same-day primary and caucus system.

Even if Clinton manages to win the popular vote in the Texas Democratic Primary, the Texas Democratic Caucuses, which decide 1/3 of Democratic delegates, start at 8pm tonight-and Barack Obama has managed to wipe the floor with Hillary Clinton in every caucus the two have been matched up in except Nevada-and Obama still managed to win more delegates than Clinton in Nevada (13-12) because of that State’s unique delegate allocation rules. Democratic delegates are awarded proportionally, and that means that it would be quite possible for Barack Obama to lose the Primary in Texas and still walk away with more delegates than Hillary Clinton. If you win the most delegates, you have effectively won the State.

One State Hillary is all but certain to win tonight is Ohio, but what is interesting is the strategy she is using to carry that State. She is counting on a series of counties in rural and socially conservative Southeast Ohio (Muskingum, Perry, Morgan, Guernsey, Noble, Hocking, Vinton, Jackson, Gallia, Lawrence, Washington, Ross, Pike, Scioto etc.) to carry her over the top, as opposed to Northern Ohio around Cleveland and Toledo-which means that she is effectively ceding the heavily African-American vote in those areas to Obama. The counties that Hillary Clinton is expecting to vote heavily in her favor and help her carry the State are counties that are just as likely to go Republican in the presidential election in the fall. Southeast Ohio is an area that is known to vote Republican for President and often vote Democratic in the downticket races, largely because Ohio Democrats are smart enough to know that they cannot win in Southeast Ohio without nominating moderate-to-conservative Democrats in key races.

The short translation of all of this is that Hillary seems likely to win Ohio with counties that she can’t depend on in the fall.

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Goodbye, Great Leader

Thursday, February 28th, 2008

William Frank Buckley Jr. passed away yesterday, and with him passed an era into history. People rightly called him influential, and I have always called him one of my great heroes-Buckley was a true believer. In an age when many so-called conservatives are attempting to label those of us who were opposed to the Iraq War as not conservative, no one would or could apply that label to Bill Buckley-they would not dare try.

Buckley never held elective office (though he did once run for Mayor of New York), but his words and the power of his tongue did more to influence national policy and the fight against totalitarianism than any American politician in the last 50 years. He had a greater grasp of policy without having held office than most so-called leaders have in a lifetime of service-and he had an unflinching belief in the hope of the American spirit and in the superiority of the American way of life.

I love to write and talk, and I enjoy politics. I like to fancy that people might actually read what I say-but I can’t ever be like Buckley. There are plenty of voices on the Right today in print and on the air, but none of these-least of all me-have the intellectual abilities or the practical grit of the Great One. Conservatives of today love to look to Ronald Reagan for inspiration, but how easily we forget that Reagan readily admitted what a huge influence William F. Buckley was on him. Buckley was truly the Godfather of the modern political conservative movement, and without him we collectively would not be the force that we are today. Had Buckley not come on the scene in the 1950’s promoting ideas in print and in speech that were then thought of as radical, conservatism as we know it would be a movement on the fringes of American political life. William F. Buckley gave conservatives a voice when others would not hear us, and gave our movement respectability when the so-called mainstream ignored us.

To read Buckley’s many books (most of which I have read) is to return to a time when the conservative movement was fresh and filled with new ideas and a world of possibilities and hope. In 2008, conservatives appear ready to enter the political wilderness because we have lost our way. We don’t have to stay there, however-the map to the promised land can be found by revisiting the works and the philosophy of the man who made our movement into a political force in the first place.

No poor screed that I might write could ever do justice to the Godfather, so I will let some of my favorite William F. Buckley quotes do the talking:


The Godfather of modern conservatism

“Though liberals do a great deal of talking about hearing other points of view, it sometimes shocks them to learn that there are other points of view.”

“I will not cede more power to the state. I will not willingly cede more power to anyone, not to the state, not to General Motors, not to the CIO. I will hoard my power like a miser, resisting every effort to drain it away from me. I will then use my power, as I see fit. I mean to live my life an obedient man, but obedient to God, subservient to the wisdom of my ancestors; never to the authority of political truths arrived at yesterday at the voting booth. That is a program of sorts, is it not? It is certainly program enough to keep conservatives busy, and liberals at bay. And the nation free.”

“I am, I fully grant, a phenomenon, but not because of any speed in composition. I asked myself the other day, ‘Who else, on so many issues, has been so right so much of the time?’ I couldn’t think of anyone.”

“The best defense against usurpatory government is an assertive citizenry.”

“Government can’t do anything for you except in proportion as it can do something to you.”

Eternal Rest grant unto him, O Lord, and let perpetual Light shine upon him. May he rest in peace, Amen. May his soul and the souls of all the Faithful Departed, through the mercy of God rest in peace. Amen.

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