Sixties Radicals And The Future Of Conservatism

A must-read from George Neumayr at The American Spectator (excerpts):

The extent to which the 1960s counter-culture has become the culture and 1960s anti-Americanism become the new patriotism is amazing. That's why Obama could launch his political career in the living room of a domestic terrorist and pay almost no price for it. As Chris Matthews lectured Pat Buchanan on Hardball last Friday night, Ayers was a terrorist with a worthy motivation: he bombed the Pentagon because he wanted America out of Vietnam, a blameless goal indeed. Under the Left's tortured understanding of the new patriotism, even Jeremiah Wright is pro-American: his fulminations had the purpose of drawing America into the light.

Patriotism is now measured not by respect for the conservatism contained in the Declaration of Independence and Constitution but by the level of one's enthusiasm for the America to come.

To be a good American now means you nod vigorously as an Obama supporter at a cocktail party bashes the Boy Scouts as bigots while explaining to you why Obama's association with the "distinguished" education professor (as Congressman Rahm Emanuel put it) Bill Ayers is no big deal. It means you chuckle along with Joe Biden as he tells Ellen DeGeneres that conservative Californians are deluded to oppose gay marriage.

Or it means listening in hushed awe as unimpeachable American hero Colin Powell calls the most liberal Republican presidential nominee ever "narrow" and insufficiently "inclusive," and scolds unnamed Americans for objecting to the notion of a Muslim president. (I was half-expecting him to join Barney Frank in calling for the elimination of the Constitution's prohibition on foreign-born presidents. Surely that's not "inclusive" either.)

What was once considered the anti-American Left now has the power to define who is and who is not a good American. Seeing victory in sight, they grow more bold and unapologetic. Over the last few days, instead of denying charges thrown at Obama, they have readily conceded them and basically said: So what?

To them, Obama's "spreading the wealth around" comment isn't a cringe-inducing gaffe but an applause line and sound basis for policy. What's wrong with the state redistributing wealth? more than a few of them have asked, including, by the way, Colin Powell after his Meet the Press appearance before reporters.

Here, too, we see the new Americanism at work: where the founding fathers saw King George III's overtaxation as an occasion to start the country, an enlightened modern American is expected to join Joe Biden in welcoming new taxes as a "patriotic" duty.

Under the unholy triumvirate of Obama, Pelosi, and Reid, good Americans will be expected to entrust their economy to redistributionists, their defense to pacifists, and their culture to proponents of abortion and gay marriage. Expect a crisis within six months should Obama win, promises Joe Biden. Perhaps he is right, but the first one is more likely to be domestic than international.

Can we say liberalism creep, anyone?  This is some brilliant writing that is dead-on accurate.  I read months ago (I think it was Rush Limbaugh, but I'm not 100% certain) that this 2008 election would be the last gasp of the '60's radicals to seat themselves in positions of power in this country, and with Barack Obama, that is certainly the case.  He is friendly with all sorts of 60's radicals, from terrorists to racists to Marxists to socialists, and all of them hate America and what it stands for.  The giant concern about an Obama presidency (this is something Rush has talked about) is that, as President, Obama would have the power to appoint several thousand people to permanent lifetime positions throughout the federal government.  Not only judges, but also in the State Department, our intelligence services, the Department of Homeland Security, and many others.  He would have the opportunity to plant his friends -- 60's radicals -- in positions of power and leadership (with zero accountability to voters) who would almost certainly carry out their long-held beliefs that America deserved to pay dearly for all of the evil it has wrought, doing untold damage at home and abroad.

I guess Colin Powell was right after all: an Obama presidency would be very transformational.

On a related note, Tony Blankley has a great column on the future of conservatism at RealClearPolitics.com.  Here are some excerpts:

With the rise to enduring power of President Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal in 1933, a new type of Republican emerged in reaction to FDR's attractive and overawing power: the me-too Republican. Until the election of President Reagan five decades later, these me-too Republicans supported, rather than opposed, Democratic Party policies but claimed they would administer them better. Of course, this led to a half-century of Democratic dominance of American government and politics.

FDR himself cruelly mocked this pathetic breed of spineless, protect-your-career-at-any-cost Republican politicians:

"Let me warn the nation against the smooth evasion which says: 'Of course we believe all these things. We believe in Social Security; we believe in work for the unemployed; we believe in saving homes. Cross our hearts and hope to die, we believe in all these things; but we do not like the way the present administration is doing them. Just turn them over to us. We will do all of them; we will do more of them; we will do them better; and best of all, the doing of them will not cost anybody anything.'"

Now, on the cusp of what some think will be a major Obama victory, we are beginning to see emerge what I will call "me-too conservatives" -- initially among conservative commentators (politicians to follow). I have in mind, among others: Peggy Noonan, David Brooks, Chris Buckley, David Frum and Kathleen Parker.

Of course, they are not quite saying they are giving up conservatism for whatever it is Obama would bring. They are initially focusing on style or, in the newly arrived cliché, temperament -- a term made famous, interestingly, to describe FDR as possessing a second-class intellect but a first-class temperament.

Blankley goes on to cite examples of these so-called conservatives' fawning coverage of Obama.  I will only highlight one here, Peggy Noonan:

Peggy Noonan charges that Palin's "political decisions seem untethered to a political philosophy. She does not speak seriously but attempts to excite sensation -- 'palling around with terrorists.' But it's unclear whether she is Bushian or Reaganite. She has spent her time throwing out tinny lines to crowds she doesn't, really, understand. This is not a leader, this is a follower. She could reinspire and reinspirit; she chooses merely to excite. She doesn't seem to understand the implications of her own thoughts."

Oh, my. Has Peggy been napping up there on Mount Olympus through the past several generations of American politics? She accuses Palin of not engaging America in a Socratic dialogue, of using phrases untethered to a political philosophy. Exactly what philosophy are the slogans "change" and "hope" tethered to? American presidential campaigns, with very few exceptions, have been little more than slogans shouted in the hopes that crowds will be excited by them. The much-admired Obama campaign has been the greatest exemplar of style over substance. However, it is Peggy Noonan's completely unsupported sneer at Palin's mental capacities that is most revealing.

Peggy's unconscious fear may be that it will be precisely Sarah Palin (and others like her) who will be among the leaders of the about-to-be-reborn conservative movement. I suspect that the conservative movement we start rebuilding on the ashes of Nov. 4 (even if McCain wins) will have little use for overwritten, over-delicate commentary. The new movement will be plain-spoken and socially networked up from the Interneted streets, suburbs and small towns of America. It certainly will not listen very attentively to those conservatives who idolatrize Obama and collaborate in heralding his arrival. They may call their commentary "honesty." I would call it -- at the minimum -- blindness.

The new conservative movement will be facing a political opponent that will reveal itself soon to be both multiculturalist and Eurosocialist. We will be engaged in a struggle to the political death for the soul of the country. As I did at the beginning of and throughout the Buckley/Goldwater/Reagan/Gingrich conservative movement, I will try to lend my hand. I certainly will do what I can to make it a big-tent conservative movement. But just as it does in every great cause, one question has to be answered correctly: Whose side are you on, comrade?

This makes a whole lot of sense to me.  We've known for a very long time that McCain is no true conservative, though he at times acts like one.  McCain is a conservative in the same way that Bush is one: he called himself one to get votes, and occasionally governed like it.  The problem is that the GOP base has accepted diluted substitutes for real conservatism for so long that this is the state of our party now - we have no true conservatives in elected leadership positions, thus allowing a very un-conservative Rep like McCain to assume that mantle.  As Blankley indicates, the conservative movement will have to re-forge itself -- regardless of who wins the White House in two weeks -- into something more basic, more honest, and more ideologically pure.  That is what happened with Reagan, and that's what happened in 1994 with Gingrich and Co.; it can certainly happen again, if We The People accept nothing less.  All we need is someone to lead that charge, and Palin could be that person.

This idea is similar to when I've talked about the significance of Palin as VP.  It's not so much that she'll have a drastic effect on McCain's policies right now, but that she'll be positioned to take over the real leadership next.  With true elected conservatives like Palin (and Bobby Jindal, Mike Pence, Jim DeMint, etc.) actually in a position of leadership, things might actually be reformed for the better.  What we need to focus on now is not giving away too much ground to the next President, regardless of who it is.  A solid McCain victory in two weeks would be a great start, since Obama will be a disastrous blow from which the nation as we know it may not recover.

But the battle will need to be fought nonetheless, and you'll need to ask yourself which side you're on.

There's my two cents.