There’s a case to be made that Wyoming’s “First Couple” has been pushing the ethics envelope from the start. Shortly after Dave Freudenthal’s 2003 inauguration as governor, Mrs. Freudenthal became a paid lobbyist. She also gained notoriety by haunting the statehouse and personally spooking a number of spineless legislators into changing their votes to comport with gubernatorial preference.
For his part, “Gov Dave” has raised the politically advantageous distribution of non-competitive sole-source contracts to an art form. Enough unscrupulous Republicans have benefited over the years to plausibly explain the larger RINO devotion to keeping the Freudenthals in power. Less easy to comprehend is why the press, and Wyomingites as a whole, have shown little interest in investigating or correcting such abuses.
But this could be changing. Last week, Mr. Freudenthal revealed that a couple of months ago he recommended his own wife, along with two political donors, to the White House for a very lucrative and coveted lifetime federal judgeship. This time, the press is covering the story. This time, many Wyomingites are disgusted.
Despite the fact that Wyoming’s modest campaign contribution limits are often exceeded without any penalty from legal authorities, Mr. Freudenthal admitted that he didn’t check the campaign contributions of his choices or “weigh it one way or the other.” This not only suggests that such regulatory complacence goes straight to the top, but that there is only one candidate that really matters to him.
Even without this, it’s difficult for most Wyomingites to imagine that the fix isn’t already in. Who does President Obama owe the most: an obscure district judge, a small-town liberal lawyer, or a chief executive who served him as a “super-delegate” and who flew across the country to campaign for him? About the only way those other guys can impress the President as to their worthiness is to prove that they cheated on their taxes.
Sure, most of us understand that Wyoming is such a small state that nepotism and cronyism seem unavoidable at times, but that needn’t make it standard operating procedure. Our governor begs to differ. He told the press that Mrs. Freudenthal shouldn’t be “penalized for having married me.” In other words: This is exactly what it looks like, but so what? Not making her a federal judge would be mean.
No wonder so many Wyoming folks are insulted. It’s like hearing a couple of embezzlers plead they shouldn’t be penalized because they work in a crooked bank. Would Mr. Freudenthal have us believe he wouldn’t benefit from Nancy’s federal judge salary of at least $169,000 while he’s cutting budgets in secret and importing loony-left energy policies that could throw thousands of Wyomingites out of work? (Provided Wyoming’s newest federal judge cooperates. Wink-wink.)
It’s pure chutzpah. Naked gall. And it sounds familiar. Remember listening to the tape of Illinois Governor Blagojevich asserting that nobody would cheat him out of the proceeds of selling Mr. Obama’s Senate seat to the highest bidder? Remember listening to Mr. Obama pontificating last week that the United States (and thus his Presidency) can no longer withstand unlimited borrowing and deficit spending?
Liberal politicians and their spouses appear increasingly obsessed that they are the victims of problems that they themselves have authored. Perhaps we should call this the new “Chicago School” of politics. Now that we’ve got a president with zero executive experience, whose conception of leadership is a corrupt-to-the-bone Windy City amalgam of hype and political payoffs, it seems to be trickling down the Democrat daisy-chain in the form of an aggressively amoral arrogance.
Mr. Blagojevich didn’t see a conflict of interest in politically leveraging a $144,000 job for his wife, any more than Mr. Obama felt a need to retract that preposterous trial balloon about giving poor Michelle a government salary for having to endure being First Lady.
The Freudenthals seem to have become similarly emboldened. After echoing their mutual talking-point that he’d thought “long and hard” about how it would look, Gov. Dave added: “fortunately it’s up to the president and not me.” Nancy couldn’t resist digging them in even deeper: “It’s not easy,” she said of the marriage factor, “you have to consider and weigh in terms of what additional controversy and criticism that would take.”
Never mind ethics and the rule of law. Protect one’s image and pass the buck. This is the Obama regime in a nutshell and the future of Constitutional jurisprudence in the hands of liberal federal judges. Think of how many more of them will be appointed in the next three and a half years.
You have to hand it to Gov Dave, though. He’s getting Nancy a higher-paying job than Mrs. Blagojevich, and unlike what Mrs. Obama has, it’s a real lifelong lawyer job to boot. It just goes to prove that experience adapts to arrogance more perniciously than arrogance adapts to experience. Too bad so many unelected judges oppose term limits.
Thursday, May 28, 2009
Monday, May 4, 2009
Cowboy Tea Party: One Lump or Two?
Last week on Tax Day I took my lunch to the “Cowboy Tea Party,” where hundreds of good humored folks converged in front of the Wyoming Capitol Building to vent and poke fun at the federal regime. Similar gatherings occurred all over Wyoming and all over America. If you weren’t at one of these, you missed a rare display of “grassroots” democracy where people show up without even knowing one another. Don’t let the spotty and biased press coverage fool you. We all know the drill.
Speaking for myself, I haven’t voluntarily attended a “street protest” since I was about seven and the fuzz chased a score of us little scofflaws out of our favorite climbing tree to allow corporate interests to raze it for a parking lot. So maybe it was a “tree protest,” but the point was not lost on me that you can’t fight City Hall, much less Uncle Sam, unless you are more “invested” than some frivolous hippy out to annoy pedestrians.
This is the basic reason why conservative picketers and demonstrators are so scarce. It’s not that we don’t care, it’s just that we figure nobody else does. Plus we have jobs. Your average conservative is not likely to take to the streets unless liberals finally try to settle our differences by force of arms. Then conservatives will turn out in droves, because a) we won’t have any choice, and b) we are better shots.
In the mean time, the Culture War is a cold one, as we watch the greatest nation the world has ever seen being slowly ground to paste under an inexorable glacier of socialism and decadence. Like frogs in water being gradually brought to a boil, most Americans are too busy staying afloat to otherwise react to such consistently creeping corruption.
But now we have the Obama Administration. This brood of tax-evading hotshots makes the Clintonoids look stodgy. It took them merely three months to take on more permanent debt than was generated in the previous 232 years of U.S. history. Mr. Obama, who even the French President calls a wuss, thinks he can stuff the universe into a hole that only a Harvard law professor could invent, while his sorely deluded followers are still jumping up and down waiting for the magic show.
It took malfeasance and hubris of this magnitude to prompt regular Americans to overcome their inhibitions against publicly brandishing homemade signs. But it may have been worth it. To borrow from the leftist lexicon, these nation-wide tea parties were a “consciousness raising” event, like a mini 9/11. Remember air travel before then? But now, instead of staring at our laps like Soviet subjects, we make eye contact with fellow passengers to affirm that: Yes, WE won’t hesitate to take down a terrorist with our bare hands.
Triumphalist liberals are trying to laugh it all off, but down inside, they’re rattled. Governor Freudenthal didn’t so much as stick his noggin out his office window, leaving it to his fellow Obama fans to skulk around the edges of the crowd, yammering endlessly on their cells asking their comrades why ACORN wasn’t staging a counter-demonstration. Dang, stimulus dollars just don’t go as far as they used to.
By happy contrast, Governor Rick Perry of Texas attended three tea parties in one day, reaffirming his support for state sovereignty and the 10th Amendment, joining the legislatures of at least 10 other states determined to check further federal usurpations. Wyoming, of course, is not one of them. Our ruling elites are some of the most compromised and cowardly in the nation.
You can bet the ranch that our homegrown tea partiers hope to change this. They are remembering who they are as Americans, and have put their ancestral enemy of tyrannical government on notice, slapping its larcenous hooks right over the lip of the national cookie jar.
They also sense that victory is far from assured, but have awakened to the probability that a failure to take their country back will result in the loss of everything they still love about it, forever. For what else are the endless permutations of liberalism but novel infatuations that never satisfy, breeding subcultures of envy, dependency and resentment that endlessly enslave. A socialist America would have no religion but power, no morality but theft.
Thus, in the same week that Somalian pirates swore to hunt down Americans for daring to resist them, our own power-drunk Secretary of Homeland Security let slip that she intends to do the same thing. She means to hunt down “right-wing radicals”—people who are, say, against illegal immigration, abortion or high taxes, might be inclined to support third party political candidates, are veterans, or are simply—gasp—religious folk with guns!
In other words, the U.S. government is now targeting the very kind of people who founded our nation in the first place. The Obama Administration might as well dig up every last one of our Founding Fathers and put them trial.
See you at the next tea party on July 4th. Expect a bigger crowd.
Speaking for myself, I haven’t voluntarily attended a “street protest” since I was about seven and the fuzz chased a score of us little scofflaws out of our favorite climbing tree to allow corporate interests to raze it for a parking lot. So maybe it was a “tree protest,” but the point was not lost on me that you can’t fight City Hall, much less Uncle Sam, unless you are more “invested” than some frivolous hippy out to annoy pedestrians.
This is the basic reason why conservative picketers and demonstrators are so scarce. It’s not that we don’t care, it’s just that we figure nobody else does. Plus we have jobs. Your average conservative is not likely to take to the streets unless liberals finally try to settle our differences by force of arms. Then conservatives will turn out in droves, because a) we won’t have any choice, and b) we are better shots.
In the mean time, the Culture War is a cold one, as we watch the greatest nation the world has ever seen being slowly ground to paste under an inexorable glacier of socialism and decadence. Like frogs in water being gradually brought to a boil, most Americans are too busy staying afloat to otherwise react to such consistently creeping corruption.
But now we have the Obama Administration. This brood of tax-evading hotshots makes the Clintonoids look stodgy. It took them merely three months to take on more permanent debt than was generated in the previous 232 years of U.S. history. Mr. Obama, who even the French President calls a wuss, thinks he can stuff the universe into a hole that only a Harvard law professor could invent, while his sorely deluded followers are still jumping up and down waiting for the magic show.
It took malfeasance and hubris of this magnitude to prompt regular Americans to overcome their inhibitions against publicly brandishing homemade signs. But it may have been worth it. To borrow from the leftist lexicon, these nation-wide tea parties were a “consciousness raising” event, like a mini 9/11. Remember air travel before then? But now, instead of staring at our laps like Soviet subjects, we make eye contact with fellow passengers to affirm that: Yes, WE won’t hesitate to take down a terrorist with our bare hands.
Triumphalist liberals are trying to laugh it all off, but down inside, they’re rattled. Governor Freudenthal didn’t so much as stick his noggin out his office window, leaving it to his fellow Obama fans to skulk around the edges of the crowd, yammering endlessly on their cells asking their comrades why ACORN wasn’t staging a counter-demonstration. Dang, stimulus dollars just don’t go as far as they used to.
By happy contrast, Governor Rick Perry of Texas attended three tea parties in one day, reaffirming his support for state sovereignty and the 10th Amendment, joining the legislatures of at least 10 other states determined to check further federal usurpations. Wyoming, of course, is not one of them. Our ruling elites are some of the most compromised and cowardly in the nation.
You can bet the ranch that our homegrown tea partiers hope to change this. They are remembering who they are as Americans, and have put their ancestral enemy of tyrannical government on notice, slapping its larcenous hooks right over the lip of the national cookie jar.
They also sense that victory is far from assured, but have awakened to the probability that a failure to take their country back will result in the loss of everything they still love about it, forever. For what else are the endless permutations of liberalism but novel infatuations that never satisfy, breeding subcultures of envy, dependency and resentment that endlessly enslave. A socialist America would have no religion but power, no morality but theft.
Thus, in the same week that Somalian pirates swore to hunt down Americans for daring to resist them, our own power-drunk Secretary of Homeland Security let slip that she intends to do the same thing. She means to hunt down “right-wing radicals”—people who are, say, against illegal immigration, abortion or high taxes, might be inclined to support third party political candidates, are veterans, or are simply—gasp—religious folk with guns!
In other words, the U.S. government is now targeting the very kind of people who founded our nation in the first place. The Obama Administration might as well dig up every last one of our Founding Fathers and put them trial.
See you at the next tea party on July 4th. Expect a bigger crowd.
Monday, March 9, 2009
WYOMING’S RULING ELITES CIRCLE THEIR WAGONS
Even though Barack Hussein Obama has been sworn in as the 44th President of the United States, Wyoming’s conservatives are still proving more content and emotionally stable than Wyoming’s RINOs, neocons, and their liberal fellow travelers, who have been lashing out, suffering panic attacks, and perfecting their schtick as inconsolable sore-winners.
If none of this makes sense yet, think about the following: Whereas most states have a two-party political system, ours has something closer to an elite ruling class. These entrenched boodlers basically own and run Wyoming as their own 400-mile wide social clique. Winning and holding power is everything to them, so they switch parties and principles as casually as they change socks. They also share the same narrow circle of cronies, interests and values, along with an intense dislike for those they dismiss as “social conservatives.”
But above all, our ruling elites share a fear of losing the near monopolistic control over Wyoming’s politics that they believe is their birthright. This might seem odd at first, seeing as how the ambitious new Obama Administration shares their effete contempt for limited government, free markets, original constitutional intent, Christianity and western civilization. But then, the Obamanoids lack even a residuum of wisdom and measure, and will treat Wyoming like a conquered province.
But this isn’t what frightens our ruling elites. They not only intend to collaborate and survive, but to profit handsomely along the way. No, what scares them is that it’s going to be hard for the people of Wyoming not to notice who’s selling them out from within (and why).
Indeed, by the time Mr. Obama and his pliant Congress have begun cracking down on political dissent, infringing the right to keep and bear arms, imposing punitive fees and regulations, invading us with new hordes of federal bureaucrats and bankrupting the coal industry, Wyoming is going to experience a robust conservative backlash. We won’t be able to do much about the socialist regime in Washington, but we’ll have all of our local traitors and collaborators within easy reach.
That’s what’s making our ruling elites so jittery. They’re circling their wagons, hoping to hold out until either real conservatives go extinct or Obama’s collectivist cavalry arrive to subdue the impending resistance. In the mean time, they’re deploying their heaviest guns in an attempt to intimidate the rebels and buy some time.
Take, for instance, retired U.S. senator Alan K. Simpson. After years of railing against the influence of Christians and other cultural conservatives within the Republican Party, and having recently described Mr. Obama as a “healer” who will “get rid of rid of this stench of partisanship” and put together a solid government: (“I just know he’s going to put good people in,”) Mr. Simpson returned to grind his axe before the 60th Wyoming Legislature. Granted the rare privilege of addressing the House members immediately after their swearing-in, he recounted the history of the Simpson dynasty before patronizing all with the most important theme of his autumn years: do not waste time with “social issues” because “you will not change a single vote!” (Sure we can—it’s called “changing legislators.”)
Then there’s Governor Freudenthal, who delivered his State of the State address in the very same chamber the very next day. Our governor, who recently flew to Pennsylvania (in one of our state jets) to campaign for Mr. Obama, had the cheek to warn against partisanship too. And, he told our legislators not to waste time debating “divisive” social issues. (As if social divisions were the product of partisanship instead of the other way round!)
One could almost picture these two Episcopalian lawyers--one Republican, one Democrat--writing their speeches together on some cocktail napkins back at the ‘ol country club. Though they might have minor disagreements about the logistics of spending other people’s money to grow the size, cost and power of government, they are wedded in their shared contempt for any toleration of conservative values, ethics, morals, heritage or faith in the legislature: Taxation is for the rabble; representation should be left to the elites.
It will be interesting to see how well their wagons are circled as the 2010 elections approach.
If none of this makes sense yet, think about the following: Whereas most states have a two-party political system, ours has something closer to an elite ruling class. These entrenched boodlers basically own and run Wyoming as their own 400-mile wide social clique. Winning and holding power is everything to them, so they switch parties and principles as casually as they change socks. They also share the same narrow circle of cronies, interests and values, along with an intense dislike for those they dismiss as “social conservatives.”
But above all, our ruling elites share a fear of losing the near monopolistic control over Wyoming’s politics that they believe is their birthright. This might seem odd at first, seeing as how the ambitious new Obama Administration shares their effete contempt for limited government, free markets, original constitutional intent, Christianity and western civilization. But then, the Obamanoids lack even a residuum of wisdom and measure, and will treat Wyoming like a conquered province.
But this isn’t what frightens our ruling elites. They not only intend to collaborate and survive, but to profit handsomely along the way. No, what scares them is that it’s going to be hard for the people of Wyoming not to notice who’s selling them out from within (and why).
Indeed, by the time Mr. Obama and his pliant Congress have begun cracking down on political dissent, infringing the right to keep and bear arms, imposing punitive fees and regulations, invading us with new hordes of federal bureaucrats and bankrupting the coal industry, Wyoming is going to experience a robust conservative backlash. We won’t be able to do much about the socialist regime in Washington, but we’ll have all of our local traitors and collaborators within easy reach.
That’s what’s making our ruling elites so jittery. They’re circling their wagons, hoping to hold out until either real conservatives go extinct or Obama’s collectivist cavalry arrive to subdue the impending resistance. In the mean time, they’re deploying their heaviest guns in an attempt to intimidate the rebels and buy some time.
Take, for instance, retired U.S. senator Alan K. Simpson. After years of railing against the influence of Christians and other cultural conservatives within the Republican Party, and having recently described Mr. Obama as a “healer” who will “get rid of rid of this stench of partisanship” and put together a solid government: (“I just know he’s going to put good people in,”) Mr. Simpson returned to grind his axe before the 60th Wyoming Legislature. Granted the rare privilege of addressing the House members immediately after their swearing-in, he recounted the history of the Simpson dynasty before patronizing all with the most important theme of his autumn years: do not waste time with “social issues” because “you will not change a single vote!” (Sure we can—it’s called “changing legislators.”)
Then there’s Governor Freudenthal, who delivered his State of the State address in the very same chamber the very next day. Our governor, who recently flew to Pennsylvania (in one of our state jets) to campaign for Mr. Obama, had the cheek to warn against partisanship too. And, he told our legislators not to waste time debating “divisive” social issues. (As if social divisions were the product of partisanship instead of the other way round!)
One could almost picture these two Episcopalian lawyers--one Republican, one Democrat--writing their speeches together on some cocktail napkins back at the ‘ol country club. Though they might have minor disagreements about the logistics of spending other people’s money to grow the size, cost and power of government, they are wedded in their shared contempt for any toleration of conservative values, ethics, morals, heritage or faith in the legislature: Taxation is for the rabble; representation should be left to the elites.
It will be interesting to see how well their wagons are circled as the 2010 elections approach.
Thursday, January 1, 2009
AMERICA FOLDS BUT WYOMING HOLDS
Election Day is behind us at last and the constitutional republic of our ancestors has been repudiated. On January 20th, the most radical leftist ever elected to the presidency will take over our country, with the most radical leftist Congress and federal judiciary in U.S. history at his complete disposal. The grinning messiah with the missing birth certificate will swear, without a hint of irony, to preserve, protect and defend a constitution that he and his supporters show no inclination to respect.
Conservatives always knew it would end this way. We just thought it would take another 30 or 40 years before the majority demanded a full-blown welfare state. Democracies, like Wyoming’s cottonwood trees, have mighty potential, but limited life spans. They decay from within, unnoticed by all but the wise, until the elements take them in sections, or sometimes all at once. To this law, there is no exception in history or nature.
Harder to predict is the occasional “perfect storm,” like we saw this year. Though the Republicans had presidential candidates aplenty, most vying to be the most conservative, they cancelled one another out. With no competition in the left corner of the Republican bullpen, John McCain bumbled into his party’s nomination by default, with an insipid neocon agenda that was almost as statist and globalist as Mr. Obama’s, minus the mob-pleasing red meat of class warfare.
Then, at the eleventh hour, the bill from decades of unsound Democrat lending mandates came due. Congress panicked and nationalized the lending industry. By election night, nineteen years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, people were waving the hammer-and-sickle flag in front of the White House. The mob not only tolerated it but hooted like frat house inebriates, jigged and wept with joy. We thought this day would never come!
“A bloodless revolution,” one reliably old Red congressman called it. This remains to be seen, of course. After they come for our firearms. After they throw open our borders. After all of our troops retreat so that Russia, China, Cuba, Venezuela, Syria, Iran and every terrorist organization on the planet can fill the vacuum. (I’m thinking there’ll be blood.)
Still, the news isn’t all bad. Cynics, the only true optimists in a dying country, assure us that our new El Presidente will do what his predecessors have done: move to the center and change little. Obamaniacs assure us this will never happen, but they are not optimists, they are Kool-Aid drinkers who dodged disappointment at the polls only to position themselves for more crushing betrayals over the next four years as they gradually discover that government, while necessary, ain’t anybody’s friend.
Conservatives, jolly pessimists that we are, can soon take pleasure and amusement in watching the disillusionment creep in as “Camelot II” sours in the bellies of our latest crop of Bolsheviks. Soon enough we’ll be doing what conservatives do best, building civilization from the ground-up (instead of from the reefer cloud-down.)
This is where Fortress Wyoming comes in. No state (not even Alaska) is better situated than ours to serve as a staging area for a future American renaissance. True, Oklahoma is the one state that gave Obama an even lower popular vote, but they’re also stuck with a Democrat congressman.
None of Wyoming’s representatives to Washington belong to Obama’s party, and the Wyoming legislature only lost one seat to the Democrats (a throwaway, in which no Republican even filed.)
Thus, the irresistible high-water mark of the fringe-left Obama tide couldn’t even reach Fortress Wyoming. We held, after another year of being outspent, out campaigned, out planned and out thought by the Democrats’ national machine. The worker bees from their Orwellian hive have planted eggs in every Rocky Mountain state, but their larvae have yet to hatch in Wyoming.
Our friends the cynics would reply that it is not conservative principle or sound institutions, but Wyoming stubbornness and ignorance of danger that have preserved us from the Red Tide. And they would be right. Inertia is a poor justification for continued existence. The liberal media, liberal schools, liberal bureaucracy, our liberal governor, and the RINOs who run our state’s Republican Party have probably failed for the last time in their quest to break us from within.
Unless, of course, we endeavor to rediscover who we are. If America’s Founders were able to articulate the best elements of western civilization and establish a constitutional republic for the ages against overwhelming odds, there is no good reason we can’t renew and defend it all against a third-rate intellectual contrivance like Mr. Obama’s promised nanny-state.
Unlike the passing fancies cranked out by the Left, our Founders’ basic resources are forever available to us: eternal truths, the history of human experience, the revelations of Scripture, and wise discernment, each transcending the generations, written on the hearts and minds of individuals and families, communities, congregations and free associations. These “little platoons” as Edmund Burke called them while he labored to turn back the evils of the French Revolution, can, with time, reassert ordered liberty, even in the face of tyranny.
The socialists have hit us with their best shot. Let us resolve to hit them with ours.
Conservatives always knew it would end this way. We just thought it would take another 30 or 40 years before the majority demanded a full-blown welfare state. Democracies, like Wyoming’s cottonwood trees, have mighty potential, but limited life spans. They decay from within, unnoticed by all but the wise, until the elements take them in sections, or sometimes all at once. To this law, there is no exception in history or nature.
Harder to predict is the occasional “perfect storm,” like we saw this year. Though the Republicans had presidential candidates aplenty, most vying to be the most conservative, they cancelled one another out. With no competition in the left corner of the Republican bullpen, John McCain bumbled into his party’s nomination by default, with an insipid neocon agenda that was almost as statist and globalist as Mr. Obama’s, minus the mob-pleasing red meat of class warfare.
Then, at the eleventh hour, the bill from decades of unsound Democrat lending mandates came due. Congress panicked and nationalized the lending industry. By election night, nineteen years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, people were waving the hammer-and-sickle flag in front of the White House. The mob not only tolerated it but hooted like frat house inebriates, jigged and wept with joy. We thought this day would never come!
“A bloodless revolution,” one reliably old Red congressman called it. This remains to be seen, of course. After they come for our firearms. After they throw open our borders. After all of our troops retreat so that Russia, China, Cuba, Venezuela, Syria, Iran and every terrorist organization on the planet can fill the vacuum. (I’m thinking there’ll be blood.)
Still, the news isn’t all bad. Cynics, the only true optimists in a dying country, assure us that our new El Presidente will do what his predecessors have done: move to the center and change little. Obamaniacs assure us this will never happen, but they are not optimists, they are Kool-Aid drinkers who dodged disappointment at the polls only to position themselves for more crushing betrayals over the next four years as they gradually discover that government, while necessary, ain’t anybody’s friend.
Conservatives, jolly pessimists that we are, can soon take pleasure and amusement in watching the disillusionment creep in as “Camelot II” sours in the bellies of our latest crop of Bolsheviks. Soon enough we’ll be doing what conservatives do best, building civilization from the ground-up (instead of from the reefer cloud-down.)
This is where Fortress Wyoming comes in. No state (not even Alaska) is better situated than ours to serve as a staging area for a future American renaissance. True, Oklahoma is the one state that gave Obama an even lower popular vote, but they’re also stuck with a Democrat congressman.
None of Wyoming’s representatives to Washington belong to Obama’s party, and the Wyoming legislature only lost one seat to the Democrats (a throwaway, in which no Republican even filed.)
Thus, the irresistible high-water mark of the fringe-left Obama tide couldn’t even reach Fortress Wyoming. We held, after another year of being outspent, out campaigned, out planned and out thought by the Democrats’ national machine. The worker bees from their Orwellian hive have planted eggs in every Rocky Mountain state, but their larvae have yet to hatch in Wyoming.
Our friends the cynics would reply that it is not conservative principle or sound institutions, but Wyoming stubbornness and ignorance of danger that have preserved us from the Red Tide. And they would be right. Inertia is a poor justification for continued existence. The liberal media, liberal schools, liberal bureaucracy, our liberal governor, and the RINOs who run our state’s Republican Party have probably failed for the last time in their quest to break us from within.
Unless, of course, we endeavor to rediscover who we are. If America’s Founders were able to articulate the best elements of western civilization and establish a constitutional republic for the ages against overwhelming odds, there is no good reason we can’t renew and defend it all against a third-rate intellectual contrivance like Mr. Obama’s promised nanny-state.
Unlike the passing fancies cranked out by the Left, our Founders’ basic resources are forever available to us: eternal truths, the history of human experience, the revelations of Scripture, and wise discernment, each transcending the generations, written on the hearts and minds of individuals and families, communities, congregations and free associations. These “little platoons” as Edmund Burke called them while he labored to turn back the evils of the French Revolution, can, with time, reassert ordered liberty, even in the face of tyranny.
The socialists have hit us with their best shot. Let us resolve to hit them with ours.
Sunday, July 6, 2008
Fortress Wyoming Needs Champions
Have you ever wondered what it would be like to participate in one of those decisive battles that changed how we view ourselves as a people? Have you ever spoken with or read about those who were there at a great turning point in history? Have you ever dreamed of having something like that to tell your grandchildren about?
Wyomingites, here’s your chance. On November 4th, 2008, you can vote. Better yet, you can run for office and rally your troops. You’ll have to file between May 15th and May 30th, so decide SOON. Sit this one out and you’ll regret it.
You laugh? I’m not talking about politics at the national level. No, the excitement in America is at the state level, and there is no state at a more important crossroads than ours. This year, Wyoming is like Waterloo or Gettysburg: an obscure spot on the maps, hitherto ignored or unknown, destined to enter the popular imagination as the place where something big happened, where something changed forever, where everybody, at least once, wished they had been there to see it, if not to have had a hand in it.
The stars in their courses are aligning above our high windswept desert where, as with those other confrontations, a few hundred thousand warriors and their leaders will contend upon unforgettable terrain for history’s verdict. The warriors are you the voters of Wyoming; the leaders are you the candidates, incumbents and prescient newcomers alike, eager for the day to come, confident of the rectitude of your cause and the inevitability of your vindication.
The situation is this: After a quarter century of struggle, the Democratic Party is on the cusp of mopping up the last remnants of the Reagan Revolution, which had very nearly vanquished New Deal liberalism and returned the United States to its constitutional republican foundations. But the modern American addiction to big government proved strong, and the Democrats battled back, entrusting the Clinton Administration to restore them to their former power and glory.
It was not so easy. Electoral setbacks were to plague them for the next 16 years. The Democrats had restored their mastery over the teeming cities, then New England, up and down the coasts, along the borders, and into the Rust Belt. But there the Democratic counter-reformation stalled, unable to crack the South, the Heartland, or the Rocky Mountain West. Year after year of stalemate ensued. America settled in to a new identity as a “50-50 nation,” evenly split between liberal and conservative electorates: skirmishing, sniping, fortifying, watching, waiting.
Now, eight years into the Third Millennium, A.D., the stalemate appears to have reached a tipping point. After decades of wasted effort in the solid South, liberal field marshals have discovered easy pickings in the soft underbelly of the West. A demographic accretion of liberals--transplants from California and the cities of the East, speculators, trust-fund loafers, illegal aliens, neo-hippies and government employees--have been willingly fashioned into an ideological vanguard that has comprised a Maoist “Long March” up through New Mexico and into Colorado.
Now this army of Democratic restoration is massing against Wyoming’s southern border, eager for its definitive push. Democratic strategists know that the West is the key to their hegemony over the nation. And Fortress Wyoming is the crown jewel of the West. Here awaits their new liberal frontier, with vast stores of minerals to be nationalized, energy resources to be sequestered, wildlife to be mollycoddled, casinos to be built, water to be diverted, guns to be confiscated, parks to be overrun, babies to be aborted, hunters to be harassed, homesteads and workers to be taxed, gays to be married, smokers to be fined, children to be indoctrinated, government to be expanded, and lawsuits to be multiplied.
The Democratic battle plan is in place, its goals are clear, its funding is bottomless, and its candidates are lined up for every office on the ballots. Despite a huge numerical superiority, the Republican defenders can claim none of these advantages. Lazy from too many years of supremacy, infiltrated and betrayed by RINOs, compromised by economic expediencies and collusion with the Governor, unable to articulate their party’s principles, and paralyzed by their fears, Republican leaders and foot soldiers alike survey the barbarian hordes at our gates and many panic, making ready to abandon their posts, throw down their arms, and run for their mommies.
There it is. All you Democrats need to do to make history is to repair to the polls every year until there are enough of you to throw open the gates of Fortress Wyoming and await those fabled crumbs from the tables of your new masters. You Republicans have it tougher, as voting isn’t enough. As of this writing, some 14 state legislative offices don’t even have GOP candidates. You Republicans need to find some brave leaders to incite defiance, from the bottom and from the top, to stand against great odds and cost the invaders dearly before our bastions. (Buy us conservatives some time and we’ll be able to deal with those liberal/moderate Republican cheese-nibblers who got us into this mess!)
The coming siege may not be resolved for decades, but this is the year that seals our course. Fortress Wyoming awaits its champions: our Churchill; our Horatius; our Wellington; our Crockett; our Stonewall Jackson. Register to vote. File your candidacy. Win, lose, or draw, you can tell your grandchildren what you did.
Who says politics ain’t fun?
Wyomingites, here’s your chance. On November 4th, 2008, you can vote. Better yet, you can run for office and rally your troops. You’ll have to file between May 15th and May 30th, so decide SOON. Sit this one out and you’ll regret it.
You laugh? I’m not talking about politics at the national level. No, the excitement in America is at the state level, and there is no state at a more important crossroads than ours. This year, Wyoming is like Waterloo or Gettysburg: an obscure spot on the maps, hitherto ignored or unknown, destined to enter the popular imagination as the place where something big happened, where something changed forever, where everybody, at least once, wished they had been there to see it, if not to have had a hand in it.
The stars in their courses are aligning above our high windswept desert where, as with those other confrontations, a few hundred thousand warriors and their leaders will contend upon unforgettable terrain for history’s verdict. The warriors are you the voters of Wyoming; the leaders are you the candidates, incumbents and prescient newcomers alike, eager for the day to come, confident of the rectitude of your cause and the inevitability of your vindication.
The situation is this: After a quarter century of struggle, the Democratic Party is on the cusp of mopping up the last remnants of the Reagan Revolution, which had very nearly vanquished New Deal liberalism and returned the United States to its constitutional republican foundations. But the modern American addiction to big government proved strong, and the Democrats battled back, entrusting the Clinton Administration to restore them to their former power and glory.
It was not so easy. Electoral setbacks were to plague them for the next 16 years. The Democrats had restored their mastery over the teeming cities, then New England, up and down the coasts, along the borders, and into the Rust Belt. But there the Democratic counter-reformation stalled, unable to crack the South, the Heartland, or the Rocky Mountain West. Year after year of stalemate ensued. America settled in to a new identity as a “50-50 nation,” evenly split between liberal and conservative electorates: skirmishing, sniping, fortifying, watching, waiting.
Now, eight years into the Third Millennium, A.D., the stalemate appears to have reached a tipping point. After decades of wasted effort in the solid South, liberal field marshals have discovered easy pickings in the soft underbelly of the West. A demographic accretion of liberals--transplants from California and the cities of the East, speculators, trust-fund loafers, illegal aliens, neo-hippies and government employees--have been willingly fashioned into an ideological vanguard that has comprised a Maoist “Long March” up through New Mexico and into Colorado.
Now this army of Democratic restoration is massing against Wyoming’s southern border, eager for its definitive push. Democratic strategists know that the West is the key to their hegemony over the nation. And Fortress Wyoming is the crown jewel of the West. Here awaits their new liberal frontier, with vast stores of minerals to be nationalized, energy resources to be sequestered, wildlife to be mollycoddled, casinos to be built, water to be diverted, guns to be confiscated, parks to be overrun, babies to be aborted, hunters to be harassed, homesteads and workers to be taxed, gays to be married, smokers to be fined, children to be indoctrinated, government to be expanded, and lawsuits to be multiplied.
The Democratic battle plan is in place, its goals are clear, its funding is bottomless, and its candidates are lined up for every office on the ballots. Despite a huge numerical superiority, the Republican defenders can claim none of these advantages. Lazy from too many years of supremacy, infiltrated and betrayed by RINOs, compromised by economic expediencies and collusion with the Governor, unable to articulate their party’s principles, and paralyzed by their fears, Republican leaders and foot soldiers alike survey the barbarian hordes at our gates and many panic, making ready to abandon their posts, throw down their arms, and run for their mommies.
There it is. All you Democrats need to do to make history is to repair to the polls every year until there are enough of you to throw open the gates of Fortress Wyoming and await those fabled crumbs from the tables of your new masters. You Republicans have it tougher, as voting isn’t enough. As of this writing, some 14 state legislative offices don’t even have GOP candidates. You Republicans need to find some brave leaders to incite defiance, from the bottom and from the top, to stand against great odds and cost the invaders dearly before our bastions. (Buy us conservatives some time and we’ll be able to deal with those liberal/moderate Republican cheese-nibblers who got us into this mess!)
The coming siege may not be resolved for decades, but this is the year that seals our course. Fortress Wyoming awaits its champions: our Churchill; our Horatius; our Wellington; our Crockett; our Stonewall Jackson. Register to vote. File your candidacy. Win, lose, or draw, you can tell your grandchildren what you did.
Who says politics ain’t fun?
Gov. Dave Comes Out
For that very considerable portion of the population of Wyoming who do not feel the slightest compulsion to watch NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday mornings, I am here to report that you missed the exceedingly rare occurrence of Governor David Freudenthal going out on a political limb.
In a cozy interlude during a confab of the Western Governors’ Association in the shadow of the Grand Tetons, Governors Freudenthal of Wyoming and Bill Ritter of Colorado did their level best to lend the desired air of inevitability to NBC’s thesis that the Democratic Party is taking over the West, and thereby, the United States of America.
Drive-by media emeritus Tom Brokaw was brought out of retirement for this mission, breathless as ever, and flush with leading questions, which the governors compliantly adapted to their more specific ambition of installing, as chief federal executive over themselves, their states, their lands, their peoples and their futures, the single most radical left-wing U.S. Senator out of the whole 100. President Barack Hussein Obama, these supposedly “conservative” Democrats agree, is exactly what the West needs and deserves.
On its face, their claim is ridiculous, but knowing what’s going on along the Front Range in Colorado, we can probably expect that Governor Ritter will get away with it. Governor Freudenthal, however, is another kettle of pemmican. Stop your average Wyomingite on the trail and ask if they want an ultra liberal big city Chicago machine politician running America and they’ll tell you no. Ask if they appreciate the fact that their own governor is doing everything in his power to help to foist precisely such a character upon them, and their reply cannot be printed in this fine family newspaper.
During the course of the interview, Mr. Freudenthal confirmed that he thought Senator Obama understood western energy and environmental issues far better than Senator McCain, that Obama was correct in assuming the Second Amendment need not be respected by urban authorities, that Obama would know best what to do about the War in Iraq when the time comes, that Obama would “make a great president”, and that he was proud to have endorsed him.
That Mr. Freudenthal will be backing such an extreme liberal is not surprising to anyone who has followed his career. What is surprising is that he is finally beginning to lower his guard and talk like an extreme liberal himself. As late as last December, he was still not sticking his neck out, and said he didn’t like either Hillary Clinton, or Barack Obama for president. It took until April, when it was safe to assume Obama had the nomination in the bag, for Freudenthal to jump on the bandwagon.
This would be obligatory for any Democratic governor, and thus forgivable, but further elaboration would inevitably put Mr. Freudenthal’s considerable powers of cautious obfuscation to the ultimate test. Under Mr. Brokaw’s huffing out of powder puff questions, our governor retained his customary methods even as he “Obamafied” his meanings. He hemmed and he hawed, avoided answering most questions directly, went off on folksy tangents, transformed evasion into evenhandedness, and made slipperiness sound like common sense. You had to listen between all those distractions to hear what he really thought, but there it was, coming out like a liberal, big-government genie impossible to get back into the doggone bottle.
Mr. Freudenthal has crossed the Rubicon. He’ll be saying plenty more before the election and appears to be gambling his own political future on the hope of an Obama presidency.
But Mr. Freudenthal didn’t get where he is today by taking big risks. Becoming a two-term Democratic governor in a very Republican state required holding the loyalty of most all of the Democrats while capturing the confidence of a decisive portion of the Republicans at the same time. He did this by perfecting the art of reassuring Democrats and RINOs that he was a good liberal, even as he persuaded just enough regular Republicans that he was actually a conservative.
So why does he appear to be signaling his regular Republican supporters that they have been useful suckers all along? There is one simple explanation that ought to be considered: Mr. Freudenthal is auditioning for a permanent transfer to Washington, D.C. and doesn’t need them anymore. After passing up his chance to run for one of the two U.S. senate seats up for grabs this year, and being legally prohibited from seeking a third term as governor in 2010, he’s running out of respectable options for his hitherto invincible political talents.
Sure, there’s his ongoing hobby of turning Wyoming into America’s preeminent graveyard of taxpayer dollars through the coming carbon sequestration boondoggle, but few men are satisfied to grow old with extraordinary wealth when they can grow old with extraordinary power. Indeed, most men would rather grow old with both. And how better to do that, than as a domesticated westerner in President Obama’s cabinet? Secretary of Energy, for instance, or Secretary of the Interior.
Yes, the beauty of that sort of a promotion is that “Gov. Dave” would never have to answer to the people of Wyoming at the polls again. He could start talking as liberal as he pleases about piling on more federal regulations, controls and taxes, and help Obama to pick the West as clean as a rib cage in the Red Desert. All Obama has to do is win. Every scheme has its flaw.
In a cozy interlude during a confab of the Western Governors’ Association in the shadow of the Grand Tetons, Governors Freudenthal of Wyoming and Bill Ritter of Colorado did their level best to lend the desired air of inevitability to NBC’s thesis that the Democratic Party is taking over the West, and thereby, the United States of America.
Drive-by media emeritus Tom Brokaw was brought out of retirement for this mission, breathless as ever, and flush with leading questions, which the governors compliantly adapted to their more specific ambition of installing, as chief federal executive over themselves, their states, their lands, their peoples and their futures, the single most radical left-wing U.S. Senator out of the whole 100. President Barack Hussein Obama, these supposedly “conservative” Democrats agree, is exactly what the West needs and deserves.
On its face, their claim is ridiculous, but knowing what’s going on along the Front Range in Colorado, we can probably expect that Governor Ritter will get away with it. Governor Freudenthal, however, is another kettle of pemmican. Stop your average Wyomingite on the trail and ask if they want an ultra liberal big city Chicago machine politician running America and they’ll tell you no. Ask if they appreciate the fact that their own governor is doing everything in his power to help to foist precisely such a character upon them, and their reply cannot be printed in this fine family newspaper.
During the course of the interview, Mr. Freudenthal confirmed that he thought Senator Obama understood western energy and environmental issues far better than Senator McCain, that Obama was correct in assuming the Second Amendment need not be respected by urban authorities, that Obama would know best what to do about the War in Iraq when the time comes, that Obama would “make a great president”, and that he was proud to have endorsed him.
That Mr. Freudenthal will be backing such an extreme liberal is not surprising to anyone who has followed his career. What is surprising is that he is finally beginning to lower his guard and talk like an extreme liberal himself. As late as last December, he was still not sticking his neck out, and said he didn’t like either Hillary Clinton, or Barack Obama for president. It took until April, when it was safe to assume Obama had the nomination in the bag, for Freudenthal to jump on the bandwagon.
This would be obligatory for any Democratic governor, and thus forgivable, but further elaboration would inevitably put Mr. Freudenthal’s considerable powers of cautious obfuscation to the ultimate test. Under Mr. Brokaw’s huffing out of powder puff questions, our governor retained his customary methods even as he “Obamafied” his meanings. He hemmed and he hawed, avoided answering most questions directly, went off on folksy tangents, transformed evasion into evenhandedness, and made slipperiness sound like common sense. You had to listen between all those distractions to hear what he really thought, but there it was, coming out like a liberal, big-government genie impossible to get back into the doggone bottle.
Mr. Freudenthal has crossed the Rubicon. He’ll be saying plenty more before the election and appears to be gambling his own political future on the hope of an Obama presidency.
But Mr. Freudenthal didn’t get where he is today by taking big risks. Becoming a two-term Democratic governor in a very Republican state required holding the loyalty of most all of the Democrats while capturing the confidence of a decisive portion of the Republicans at the same time. He did this by perfecting the art of reassuring Democrats and RINOs that he was a good liberal, even as he persuaded just enough regular Republicans that he was actually a conservative.
So why does he appear to be signaling his regular Republican supporters that they have been useful suckers all along? There is one simple explanation that ought to be considered: Mr. Freudenthal is auditioning for a permanent transfer to Washington, D.C. and doesn’t need them anymore. After passing up his chance to run for one of the two U.S. senate seats up for grabs this year, and being legally prohibited from seeking a third term as governor in 2010, he’s running out of respectable options for his hitherto invincible political talents.
Sure, there’s his ongoing hobby of turning Wyoming into America’s preeminent graveyard of taxpayer dollars through the coming carbon sequestration boondoggle, but few men are satisfied to grow old with extraordinary wealth when they can grow old with extraordinary power. Indeed, most men would rather grow old with both. And how better to do that, than as a domesticated westerner in President Obama’s cabinet? Secretary of Energy, for instance, or Secretary of the Interior.
Yes, the beauty of that sort of a promotion is that “Gov. Dave” would never have to answer to the people of Wyoming at the polls again. He could start talking as liberal as he pleases about piling on more federal regulations, controls and taxes, and help Obama to pick the West as clean as a rib cage in the Red Desert. All Obama has to do is win. Every scheme has its flaw.
Reform We Can Believe (Change is not reform)
We live in interesting times. Things are moving fast and very little stays the same. Americans have seen so many changes in recent years that many of our present and potential political leaders have come up with a response that they consider to be pure genius. What we need, they’ve decided, is even more change.
Never mind that change is inevitable without their help. Never mind that change is the natural way of things as all the laws of the universe unfold. Never mind that as a campaign slogan, “Change!” is more vague than “Gravity!” Never mind. The most inspiring and intellectually compelling political concept of 2008 is “Change!”
As might be expected, the people being energized by this catchword are liberals. This is not because conservatives are “against change” as is commonly alleged, but because conservatives insist on asking what kind of change is being proposed. (There are good kinds and bad kinds.) The good kind of change is called “reform.” This is a concept familiar to any true conservative, but liberalism is a jealous ideology, with small tolerance for either the word or the concept of reform. I can think of at least three good reasons why this is, and these are worth sharing because they shed light into the flawed nature of modern liberal thinking.
First of all, liberalism does not find the concept of reform to be new, exciting, or radical enough for serious consideration. Indeed, reform implies a return to things that are proven and established rather than speculative and esoteric. Reform is also more specific than change, less grandiose, and far less ideological. Thus, reform movements are insufficiently ambitious or adversarial to fulfill the individual need of liberals to feel superior to previous generations. And collectively, liberals find calls for reform to be downright threatening, because reform movements require a people to become informed about the history, philosophy, theology and traditions of the civilization they have inherited. By comparison, the liberal flavor-of-the-month will always prove inadequate.
Conservatives find calls for reform to be exciting and reassuring for the same reasons liberals do not. History demonstrates that a revival of all that is best in a civilization typically leads to an efflorescence of peace and prosperity. Liberals would rather discard these things and experiment, or start over entirely with some abstract theory, usually another tiresome variant of Marxism. Thus, in practice, reform movements tend to emerge from a shared affection for things that are known and imagined, while change movements tend to emerge from a shared resentment of things that are known and imagined. (And modern liberalism is nothing if it not the political expression of resentment.)
This resentment reveals to us a second reason why liberals tend to dislike the concept of reform: it contains a metaphysical aspect. Because reform is, by definition, good change rather than bad change, one can’t pursue reform without also making moral value judgments. Liberalism does not admit of such a necessity because liberalism is metaphysically monistic. Put another way, liberalism is deeply skeptical about the worth, if not the existence, of moral, non-material reality. A metaphysical dimension would completely invalidate the liberal notion of a man-centered universe with manmade rules. This is not to say that individual liberals are not religious, it is just to note that liberals prefer to invest their greatest faith and trust in things of the mundane and merely human world, such as secular education, technology and politics.
In contrast, conservatism is metaphysically dualistic, viewing reality as the interplay between both a material realm and a decidedly non-material moral realm. As a result, conservatives instinctively consider the liberal insistence on material solutions to metaphysical problems to be dangerously unrealistic and pridefully idolatrous. Reform is only possible in a God-centered universe where objective truth exists in conjunction with absolute moral boundaries. Otherwise, there would be no permanent norms, standards or achievements worth returning to. Thus, by reaffirming the moral dimension to human existence, reform brings meaning to our lives, while change for its own sake deprives us of both.
In addition to recognizing that: 1) only God can make all things new, and that: 2) man can not exist in a moral vacuum, the concept of reform humbly recognizes limits: upon human nature; upon human goodness; upon human government; upon political power. The militant denial of such limits is a third reason why liberalism is incompatible with reform. Constrained against their arrogant wills by the complexities of a God-created universe in which they are briefly privileged to make an appearance, liberals construct a false religion built on false assumptions and preach utopian dreams. This false religion is liberal politics: pretending to be new, pretending to be true, and pretending to be the last best hope of mankind.
Conservatism is the older and wiser alternative to this cult of perpetual malcontent, which coarsens and cheapens our modern age so completely. While there will always be false political messiahs such as Barack Obama who spread their resentment of everything that is, promote the nihilistic creed of secular humanism, and offer us progress without limits, they will continue to fail until the end of time. Why? Because change is not a solution for the human condition but merely one feature of it, proceeding as indifferently as always, whether we believe in it or not.
And as for liberalism? Wherever politics is once again understood to be the art of the possible, rather than an end in itself, or the means of man-made salvation, reform will have done its work, and liberalism is restored to its humble place as a term for economic liberty.
Ultimately, reform can correct a multitude of man’s arrogant presumptions, so long as we believe in absolute truth, moral reality and the limitations of everything that is alienated from them.
Never mind that change is inevitable without their help. Never mind that change is the natural way of things as all the laws of the universe unfold. Never mind that as a campaign slogan, “Change!” is more vague than “Gravity!” Never mind. The most inspiring and intellectually compelling political concept of 2008 is “Change!”
As might be expected, the people being energized by this catchword are liberals. This is not because conservatives are “against change” as is commonly alleged, but because conservatives insist on asking what kind of change is being proposed. (There are good kinds and bad kinds.) The good kind of change is called “reform.” This is a concept familiar to any true conservative, but liberalism is a jealous ideology, with small tolerance for either the word or the concept of reform. I can think of at least three good reasons why this is, and these are worth sharing because they shed light into the flawed nature of modern liberal thinking.
First of all, liberalism does not find the concept of reform to be new, exciting, or radical enough for serious consideration. Indeed, reform implies a return to things that are proven and established rather than speculative and esoteric. Reform is also more specific than change, less grandiose, and far less ideological. Thus, reform movements are insufficiently ambitious or adversarial to fulfill the individual need of liberals to feel superior to previous generations. And collectively, liberals find calls for reform to be downright threatening, because reform movements require a people to become informed about the history, philosophy, theology and traditions of the civilization they have inherited. By comparison, the liberal flavor-of-the-month will always prove inadequate.
Conservatives find calls for reform to be exciting and reassuring for the same reasons liberals do not. History demonstrates that a revival of all that is best in a civilization typically leads to an efflorescence of peace and prosperity. Liberals would rather discard these things and experiment, or start over entirely with some abstract theory, usually another tiresome variant of Marxism. Thus, in practice, reform movements tend to emerge from a shared affection for things that are known and imagined, while change movements tend to emerge from a shared resentment of things that are known and imagined. (And modern liberalism is nothing if it not the political expression of resentment.)
This resentment reveals to us a second reason why liberals tend to dislike the concept of reform: it contains a metaphysical aspect. Because reform is, by definition, good change rather than bad change, one can’t pursue reform without also making moral value judgments. Liberalism does not admit of such a necessity because liberalism is metaphysically monistic. Put another way, liberalism is deeply skeptical about the worth, if not the existence, of moral, non-material reality. A metaphysical dimension would completely invalidate the liberal notion of a man-centered universe with manmade rules. This is not to say that individual liberals are not religious, it is just to note that liberals prefer to invest their greatest faith and trust in things of the mundane and merely human world, such as secular education, technology and politics.
In contrast, conservatism is metaphysically dualistic, viewing reality as the interplay between both a material realm and a decidedly non-material moral realm. As a result, conservatives instinctively consider the liberal insistence on material solutions to metaphysical problems to be dangerously unrealistic and pridefully idolatrous. Reform is only possible in a God-centered universe where objective truth exists in conjunction with absolute moral boundaries. Otherwise, there would be no permanent norms, standards or achievements worth returning to. Thus, by reaffirming the moral dimension to human existence, reform brings meaning to our lives, while change for its own sake deprives us of both.
In addition to recognizing that: 1) only God can make all things new, and that: 2) man can not exist in a moral vacuum, the concept of reform humbly recognizes limits: upon human nature; upon human goodness; upon human government; upon political power. The militant denial of such limits is a third reason why liberalism is incompatible with reform. Constrained against their arrogant wills by the complexities of a God-created universe in which they are briefly privileged to make an appearance, liberals construct a false religion built on false assumptions and preach utopian dreams. This false religion is liberal politics: pretending to be new, pretending to be true, and pretending to be the last best hope of mankind.
Conservatism is the older and wiser alternative to this cult of perpetual malcontent, which coarsens and cheapens our modern age so completely. While there will always be false political messiahs such as Barack Obama who spread their resentment of everything that is, promote the nihilistic creed of secular humanism, and offer us progress without limits, they will continue to fail until the end of time. Why? Because change is not a solution for the human condition but merely one feature of it, proceeding as indifferently as always, whether we believe in it or not.
And as for liberalism? Wherever politics is once again understood to be the art of the possible, rather than an end in itself, or the means of man-made salvation, reform will have done its work, and liberalism is restored to its humble place as a term for economic liberty.
Ultimately, reform can correct a multitude of man’s arrogant presumptions, so long as we believe in absolute truth, moral reality and the limitations of everything that is alienated from them.
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