Conservative Donnybrook

In the summer of 2013, with the United States’ attention focused on the home front with terrorist attacks and threat assessments, Israel bombards Iranian nuclear centers, military bases and outposts.  Iran quickly responses with a salvo of missile launches at U.S. carrier groups, military bases and the Israeli homeland.  Hezbollah rockets and short range missiles over tax the Iron Dome system and cause much destruction and loss of life in Tel Aviv and other cities.  Israel is now in full blown war on at least two fronts.  The United States is forced to respond to the Iranian assault on its soldiers and seaman with heavy bombardments of Iranian oil interests and military assets and nuclear facilities.  Iranian ground forces invade Iraqi Kurdistan, with support from Turkey and possibly Iraq, to eliminate the massing threat of a declaration of independence from a Kurdish nation that would benefit from a strategic relationship with Israel.  And here we go.  The United States is now committed to another war in this region.  One’s imagination need not stretch too far to foresee this situation.

What if China, seeing the U.S. bogged down in its fourth war in the Middle East decides that the time is now or never to expand its control over vast portions of the South and East China seas?  Imagine that China surrounds the Senkaku Islands and deploys a radar station on Japanese claimed territory or has a regiment of marines dig in.  Will Japan respond by re-taking the islands?  Will China counter by threatening Okinawa or further deploying ships and troops to Japanese waters?  China may very well bet that the U.S., wrapped up in a devastating war with Iran, et al., will fail to respond to Japanese calls to confront the Chinese threat.  After all, the U.S. is busy and the Senkakus are uninhabited.  Will Japan back off or use its considerable naval and air advantage over China and engage in uncertain warfare?  Will the Chinese assumptions about U.S. response be wrong and result in war between the world’s two largest economies? 

What if North Korea seizes the opportunity to attack Japan or South Korea?  After all, they are not getting the attention they deserve.  And by pushing forward on an impressive albeit minor military maneuver, they may secure a peace treaty and concessions from the U.S.  What if the Russians jump on the bandwagon and retake islands claimed by Japan which hold vast oil and gas interests?  They’d be right that no better time had come and such an opportunity may not surface again for decades or even centuries.

These threats, while forward looking are outgrowths of almost 70 years of U.S. policies.  From the 1940s through the 1990s we, the United States, were the mother on the playground that faced down many small time bullies, one hulking dangerous killer and hid our allies in our amply sized apron.  We assured them that no contingency could occur that we couldn’t either prevent or repel.  Times have changed.  We have proven our ability to take on a single bad actor.  We have, since World War Two, demonstrated our enormous power potential and exercised military restraint for the whole world to see.  We have the ability to hit any target anywhere in the world within minutes and to destroy entire nations from a command center in North Dakota.   We have also, most notably under President Obama, demonstrated a complete lack of strong and meaningful foreign policies.  Our President has drawn a “red line” in Syria should the regime there deploy chemical weapons.  They did, we did nothing.  Russians have flown nuclear armed bombers around the U.S. mainland as well as strategic military basis thousands of miles from Russian territory.  We did not respond.  North Korea has threatened to annihilate U.S. and allied cities.  We offered direct talks.  In short: We have no credibility.  The Obama administration has taken the United States image from that of a strong and able superpower that will confront any enemy, at any time with vigor and determination to that of a waffling old codger who might have been fearsome once but now has no appetite, no backbone for full scale war…even in defense.  We look weak.  Looking weak is arguably more dangerous than actually being weak.  There is no doubt that the United States could win any war it is forced to fight.  The problem is that we have promised to fight more wars for more nations that we are really willing to fight.  By spreading our considerable nuclear-umbrella-backed might willy-nilly across the globe, we have encouraged our enemies to test our resolve.  Now, with the United States embroiled in wars all over the Middle East and Africa, and facing terrorism at home and abroad, our Asian-pacific enemies may sense and opportunity, one too glorious to pass up should all the pieces fall in place.    

Back to the hypothetical:  What would we do if China and/or North Korea and (dare I say it) Russia takes advantage of the Iranian mill stone around our neck should that war break out?  Would we, as we’ve promised to do, head long in to World War Three or would we, as our enemies suspect, surrender ground and allow a rebalance of power in the Pacific?  It is simply too much to contemplate and certainly more war than we should ever offer to fight.  And mostly likely much more war than the American public would accept.  And it’s a scenario we can do a lot to avoid. 

America’s projection of power is only as effective as long as it prevents war.  By giving security assurances that cover every inch of our allies’ soil, we have painted ourselves in to a corner. Should China seize the uninhabited Senkaku islands, we won’t respond militarily, either because we cannot effectively do so considering the other wars we are waging or because we simply do not think it is worth the cost.  But if we do nothing the façade of American security guarantees will be shattered.   Once it is shattered, it cannot be rebuilt.  Once it is shattered, the whole world will know that the United States is unwilling to go to war over minor land grabs.  Then intermediate land grabs then who knows what. But as long as the façade stands appearing strong, other nations will be hesitant to challenge its extent. 

Iran is a threat but a regional one that Israel and Saudi Arabia can contain.  Our time to fight Iran was when they were actively killing our soldiers in Iraq.  Our time there has come and gone.  It is just not in our interest or our allies to fight another preemptive war at the moment.  It is in our interest and that of our allies to keep our eyes on the bigger threat, one that is less likely to blow up if the United States is not already embroiled in multiple wars on multiple continents.  The Iranian threat is a regional one that could turn global but only with U.S. intervention.  Without U.S. intervention, the threat remains regional.  The Chinese situation is unlikely to become a real threat unless the U.S. turns her weary war gaze back towards unending conflict in the Middle East.  War is often brought on by perceptions of weakness.  Another U.S. war this time with a pre-nuclear bellicose Iran would sap U.S. resources and demonstrate such global weakness.  Peace is often obtained by projections of ready strength; standing ready to protect our interests in the pacific against enemies that do have nuclear weapons and huge number of soldiers without the distraction of a faraway regional conflict demonstrates such ready strength.

Republicans, led by Mr. Rubio, are falling for it again.  Senator Marco Rubio’s star has risen too far, too fast.  His first major policy fight will be over immigration reform.  Mr. Rubio is teaming with other liberal republicans and democrats in the Senate to concoct a plan that will legalize illegal immigrants, grant them work permits, offer them green cards and ultimately a chance at citizenship.

What’s the price you ask?

The illegals must pay back taxes, not have been convicted of a felony and possibly learn English.  Of course, Mr. Rubio will stand firm that his plan not be implemented until the boarder is secure.  The likes of John McCain, Lindsey Graham and Jeff Flake have joined the Jr. Senator’s coalition and will push the plan through the Senate.  The hope is that with such broad support in the Senate, the House Republicans will pass the bill or forever lose Latino votes.

Of course, it is all hogwash and balderdash.  Does Mr. Rubio or any other senator or representative on the “right” really believe that Democrats will allow them to claim victory?  With either outcome (passage of a bill or death in the House) the liberals will win at a game they could not have even played without the help of hapless Republicans. 

Let’s go to the three dimensional blackboard….

Outcome Number 1.
The Senate passes “comprehensive immigration reform” that provides a pathway to citizenship for millions of illegal immigrants.  The House takes up the bill.  Obama and his liberal machine mobilizes and demands that the bill be amended to extend the Cuba Adjustment Act policies to all immigrants, regardless of nationality.  It is only old racist tendencies that confined the special immigration benefit to the largely lighter skinned Cubans in the first place.  There is no room in modern America for such age-honored racism.  Besides, with the drug war raging in Mexico and the rest of Latin America, “refugees” from these nations have a better claim than any other group to legal residency as a result of persecution.  It is, after all, America’s love of narcotics that forced them to flee the lands of their birth.  Besides, the Southwest United States is their ancestral land anyway. 

The Republican leadership gin up enough support to pass the bill as amended and send it to conference where the deal is struck.  President Obama hails his hard work and the tenacity of millions of immigrants and young people without whom the bill would have been stalled by angry, racist and out of touch Republicans.  Obama will provide a stunning oration on how it took real guts for the Republican leaders to take on their own party and defeat such engrained racism.  Obama issues an executive order granting Latinos automatic residency and access to entitlements under penalty of withholding federal funds if the states do not comply. 

Within six years ten million new names are added to the voter roles.  As high as 87% are now registered Democrats.

Outcome Number 2
The Senate passes “comprehensive immigration reform” that provides a pathway to citizenship for millions of illegal immigrants.  Obama demands much more.  The House takes up the bill but the Republican leadership is unable to muster the votes needed to bring the bill to the floor.  Obama leans on Boehner to achieve this momentous civil right that is long overdue for our hardworking migrant families.  Paul Ryan hits the campaign trail with charts demonstrating the positive economic effect that a change in status of millions of immigrants will have.  Once we bring these people out of the shadows, Mr. Ryan demonstrates, tax revenues will increase. Left over housing stocks will transform the fate of these hardworking families from migrant workers to permanent and valuable members of our communities while simultaneously improving housing starts.  The new cultural diversity will be a shining light to potential college students and highly skilled immigrants that will come to our nation, feel at home and add to the economy.  Yes, its true that the glut of newly documented aliens will result in a short term increase in entitlement spending.  But once they have been given a free education, free healthcare, free places to live and raise a family and a little cash in their pockets they will have the means to join the workforce and do nothing but add to our prosperity.  There is almost no chance of them simply accepting the welfare benefits while refusing to assemilate. 

House Republicans defy their leadership and block the bill.  Democrats are joined by Republican presidential hopefuls in lambasting the elitist conservatives and downright racist Republicans who voted against the bill.  Marco Rubio appeals for passage of the bill as a way to put the immigration issue behind us as a nation. He tells the nation that when he is president, he will work with both parties to put aside their differences and rally around the Ryan plan. 

Obama, now free to campaign for other liberals, offers his strongest chastisement yet.  Opposing immigration reform is dangerous and confirms his suspicions that the GOP is out of touch with what it means to be American.  Republican divisiveness on the issue is threatening to send our culture back to the times of Southern segregation.  Only Hillary or Biden or…name your liberal candidate… can stop the unwinding of our American way of life.  Even Rubio and Ryan agree that the Left has it right.  Boy those Republicans are danergous and out of touch. 

Here we go again.

Democrats get to choose the game, write the rules for the game and even get to bat last.  The best part?  Even if the Republican plan succeeds, the Democrats win!   It must be nice to have such friendly fools as foes.

Paul Ryan (you know, the “conservative” on the 2012 presidential ticket?) wants to fold on the issue of the increasing the debt ceiling… but only for three months. 

Nice. 

It seems the plan is to appease the liberals in Washington by allowing nearly unfettered borrowing and spending (almost makes you miss the old plan of taxing and spending, no?) in order to convince them to see the error of their spending ways in a few months.  What was it the Sir Winston Churchill said about feeding crocodiles?

What is really happening here is that Republicans are not fighting for the voters in their districts.  They are not fighting for a fiscally sound republic.  They are not fighting for a secure future for our nation, our children or our American way of life.  No.  They are not fighting at all.  This is the real strategy: appease the liberals and in so doing ensure the continued existence of the Republican Party.  Speaking to reporters, Rep. Ryan addressed the planned appeasement.  “We have to recognize the realities of divided government that we have,” Ryan said. “We’re discussing the possible virtue of a short-term debt limit extension so we have a better chance of getting the Senate and the White House involved in discussions in March.”

“So we have a better chance of getting… involved in discussions.” Not exactly a strong negotiating position.  The Republican plan seems to be taken directly from that 1987 classic, Can’t Buy Me Love.  The problem is that, unlike the nerdy Robert Miller (Patrick Dempsey), the Republicans have nothing to bribe the popular kid (Obama) with. Sure, they will take the debt ceiling like it were a $1,000 suede dress but unlike Cindy Mancini (Amanda Peterson), they will never fall in love with the appeasers.  Not unlike young Robert miller, the Republicans are very much at risk of losing their true friends: Voters in their congressional districts. 

How can we possibly sit back and watch as Republicans continue to appease the crocodiles by feeding our future to them?  Well, at the moment we have no choice.  The appeasers will sell our future in exchange for possibilities. I have heard of living to fight another day but the Republican tactic looks a lot like losing in order to lose another day.  I see no victory here.  I see no honor in feeding the crocodile.  I see no dignity or brilliant tactician in Mr. Ryan or Mr. Boehner nor any of their following minions.  I see appeasement, I see attempted bribes.  I see the Republican Party apparatus searching for a future for its retreats and the occasional cabinet post.  And I see myself and, I suspect, most of you on the chopping block.  George Washington warned about this in his 1796 farewell address:    

However [political parties] may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion.

He was rightly suspicious of political parties.

So, what was it the Mr. Churchill said?  Simply his best quote ever (and there were many great quotes):  “An appeaser is one who feeds the crocodile hoping it will eat him last.”

Now’s your chance. You and your colleagues in the Democrat caucus of the Senate have failed to introduce a budget for around 1,350 days now. Stop fretting. We can all see you guys are frazzled and shaken up by that trauma. So here’s what you do: simply defer that responsibility to the Secretary of Veterans Affairs. Pass a Joint Resolution (Boehner will accede, trust me) that cites all the problems sleeping you’ve had, all the golf you’ve had to half-heartedly enjoy, all the trillion-dollar coins you haven’t yet made in a litany of “whereas” clauses, and jump right into “therefore be it resolved” that “Eric Shinseki shall henceforth and until his natural death or incapacity write, propose, deem passed, and execute all future budgets and monetary policy decisions. He may consult with the fourth-most senior Associate Justice of the Nebraska Supreme Court,” but that Justice’s “decisions, opinions, or speculations shall not constitute force of law” nor shall it in any way be “binding upon the Secretary of Veterans’ Affairs” in his budgetary capacity. The Secretary of Veterans’ Affairs shall have “sole and ultimate discretion, and none shall question him under pain of indefinite military detention pursuant to the NDAA.”

I think this Iraq “War” (ha ha, it wasn’t a war, we were just kidding) Resolution by Congress thing, being all legal-like as my attorney friends here have now made clear to me, is the wave of the anti-constitutional Constitutional future. God Bless America!

I thought I enter my two cents into the fray.

I’ll admit I don’t know why Mike is talking about the United Nations or even why the United Nations is relevant in a discussion about whether it was legal for the United States to invade Iraq the second time. In our Constitution, Article I, Section 8 grants to Congress the power to declare war. Congress never declared war. Of course, it is not as simple as that – there is this War Powers Act of 1973 which authorizes the president to introduce the armed forces into battle without a declaration of war.

The Act declares, “Within sixty calendar days after a report is submitted or is required to be submitted pursuant to section 4(a)(1), whichever is earlier, the President shall terminate any use of United States Armed Forces with respect to which such report was submitted (or required to be submitted), unless the Congress (1) has declared war or has enacted a specific authorization for such use of United States Armed Forces, (2) has extended by law such sixty-day period, or (3) is physically unable to meet as a result of an armed attack upon the United States. Such sixty-day period shall be extended for not more than an additional thirty days if the President determines and certifies to the Congress in writing that unavoidable military necessity respecting the safety of United States Armed Forces requires the continued use of such armed forces in the course of bringing about a prompt removal of such forces.”

So there is the answer. Congress authorized use of the United States Armed Forces and therefore the war in Iraq is legal. I don’t think anyone is really arguing otherwise. Just because an act is legal, however, does not make it just. Bill’s argument appears to be that the invasion of Iraq for the purpose of regime change is justified because Saddam Hussein was a bad guy. Specifically, he writes, “Saddam was a sadistic tyrant. The only way to prevent him from killing more of his own people and others in the region was to depose him.” This statement presumes that it is the role of the United States to intervene in the affairs of other countries when we determine that their leaders are acting tyrannically. I find this assumption dubious and dangerous. I would hope that some more immediate threat to the United States itself would be required before our sons are sent into battle.

There are seven requirements that must be met in order to declare the initiation of armed conflict just: 1) the cause must be just; 2) it must overcome the presumption against war by establishing that the injustice suffered by one party is greatly outweighed by the other; 3) it must be initiated by a competent authority; 4) it must have a right intention; 5) there must be a probability of success; 6) it must be the last resort; and 7) the resulting war must be proportionate to the evils avoided.

I would start by establishing the competent authority – in this case the United States is a competent authority to initiate a war. Indeed, any nation is competent to make that determination. Moreover, by declaring the United States the competent authority we have named one of the parties. The other party is more problematic. Was it the nation of Iraq? Was it the Hussein government? Was it Hussein himself? Bill is forced by his formulation to answer that the other party is Saddam Hussein himself because the evil to be dealt with is his tyranny. Indeed, Bill’s prescription of a surgical strike or an assassin’s bullet removes any doubt on this score. If the U.S. is one party and Saddam is the other, how could we ever establish that the United States has suffered injustice far greater than Saddam Hussein (or said the other way around, how could a single man inflict a greater injustice on an entire nation than the other way around)? What injustice, specifically, could the United States be said to have suffered?

Bill, would of course, attempt to replace the United States as the aggrieved party with that of the Iraqi people. And if it were the Revolutionary Guard who had instituted these hostilities, I would be in lockstep with him. But it was not. The United States Armed Forces are not commanded by, beholden to, or in any way related to the Iraqi people and the dissipation of the assets of the U.S. military (our boys, chiefly) in service to a completely unrelated problem is unjust on its own terms. How does one offer to the parents of a slain American serviceman, the assurance that their son lightened an injustice suffered by his neighbors when he hasn’t done anything of the sort? The true injustice has been done to the soldiers and their parents and their communities. And the injustice done to the parents and communities of those slain finds no answering solace in justice done unless it be solely in altruism.

I am going to skip the justness of the cause and the right intention so as to finish with them. With regard to the probability of success, there was little doubt about the outcome of the war. It was a simple matter of will and effort. Bill himself points out at least two other options that were never tried prior to committing to war (focused attacks designed to eliminate Hussein and assassination). By Bill’s own terms, he cannot maintain that war was a last resort. To the extent that one might argue that assassination of foreign leaders is illegal, I would point out that invading a foreign country for the purpose of deposing its leader is of questionable legality. The argument begs the question. If we are substituting one illegal act for another, there is little reason to rule out either unless one is grossly disproportionate…which, come to think of it, the full-scale invasion of a country by thousands of troops for the purpose of removing one person from office might. just. be.

On the proportionality question not only did war constitute the least proportional response to the threat of Saddam Hussein’s continued reign, it was not responsive to the evils suffered by the United States. (We’re back to the problem that aggrieved party must be viewed as the United States and the evils suffered are difficult to identify in that case). Essentially, I would argue that war was not even responsive to the evils because the United States largely suffered only injury to its pride in that Hussein refused to obey commands made upon him by the United States through the United Nations.

The question of right intention is difficult. The opponents of the war contended it was about oil and there is some merit to this attack. American and British companies directly benefited from the invasion, but the American people saw little benefit. In fact, measured at the American gas pump, there has been an inexorable rise in gas prices ever since the invasion, which makes it hard to argue that America invaded Iraq for its oil. Moreover, there is the problem that the Bush administration knowingly used falsified reports that Hussein was seeking uranium to allege that he was stockpiling weapons of mass destruction. If the United States had the proper intentions in invading Iraq, this blatant falsehood told on the world stage is entirely unexplainable. Whatever else it does, it proves bad motive behind the invasion – the United States cooked up a pretext in order to invade.

So, was the cause just? It’s hard to say. If the cause was to free the Iraqi people from tyranny, then clearly this is a just and laudable cause. Although the wisdom of whether that could be accomplished through war and by foisting upon another people Democratic Capitalism is dubious, one cannot argue with the intention. But, this is if you believe that that was in fact the intention or if it was merely the window dressing used to get American parents to pack their sons off to battle. In the end, the fact that the U.S. concocted a pretense to justify the invasion casts serious doubt on the justness of the cause. Regardless, even if one were to grant the benefit of the doubt and declare the cause just, the war in Iraq did not meet several of the requirements for a just war. So while the war might have been legal, it was not just.

Bill asserts that the US action in Iraq in 2003 was just and that it was authorized properly by Congress, and that said authorization did not violate the Constitution. I disagree.

I’ve been trying for some time now to find which treaty lawfully entered into and binding upon the United States or what law passed by Congress joined the US to the United Nations. Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin attended a conference at Yalta and, subsequently, Roosevelt sent the text of the so-called “Atlantic Charter” to Congress as a fait-accompli. I haven’t ever been much of an FDR booster, but perhaps Bill is.

In any event, the 107th Congress passed public law 243-107 in 2002. As the text of that long-winded bit of legal puffery makes clear, the Congress told the President that he could take such action as he deemed necessary to “(1) defend the national security of the United States against the continuing threat posed by Iraq; and (2) enforce all relevant United Nations Security Council resolutions regarding Iraq.” Since, as the “whereases” make clear, the only threat posed to the US by Iraq was because US troops were in the Gulf region pursuant to another UN set of resolutions from 1990, and which were the direct result of US provision of Saddam’s regime, it would seem manifestly apparent that the basis upon which the US felt threatened was its own actions, and not those of Iraq as a sovereign nation.  Furthermore, Al Qaeda under Bin Laden existed only because the US entered Saudi territory, considered holy ground to the Wahabbist fanatic who created Al Qaeda. Hence, Al Qaeda would not have threatened the US (and could not, therefore, have been a threat to the US in Afghanistan, Iraq, or Antarctica) had the US not decided to have the UN Security Council give it resolutions to disarm the country it originally armed (Iraq).

Many a reprobate dictator has laden his people with a yoke impossible to bear. Indeed, some still do; yet, the US does not feel and is not threatened by said despots, nor are her interests threatened by these. Consequently, it is not just, is not a last resort, and is not necessary to intervene from a Constitutional standpoint. The US is a legal entity, a nation of laws. It is not a moral or religious institution. Assuredly, it has often appealed to moral and ethical standards for justification for its actions; however noble this may seem or in fact be, the fact remains that it is a legal entity, governed by laws, and bound to uphold them most especially in the Constitution, as per the Supremacy Clause. Its mandate is to form a more perfect Union, not free the world’s oppressed and downtrodden.

The Congress does not have the authority to cede its Constitutional delegated powers, to wit: “To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions;” indeed, there was no threat of invasion. There was no insurrection. There was no violation of US Law. There is no treaty with the United Nations. Invading Iraq was not a last resort. It was not better than the chaos which was foreseeable and which has ensued. It was and remains a failure of gigantic proportions which has placed Shiite extremists in power (and which we were before and supposedly are now opposed to, as they are supported by Iran, further allowing them to foment the very terror we ostensibly set out to thwart). Finally, it is a failure of conservatism, of traditionalism, of limited government and the rule of law.

The National Cathedral in Washington, D.C. has hosted its share of historic events.  From state funerals, to marriages and the annual Red Mass, the National Cathedral has been a major part of Washington culture. With the Episcopal Church’s heresy now extending to “The National House of Prayer” the damage done by nature in August of 2011 looks minor. 

But all is not lost.  America still has its “National Shrine.” If you have not visited The Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception , do so next time you visit the Capital.  I particularly like the crypt church and the Creation Mosaic (it has a dinosaur).

I suggest that whether or not one agrees with how the Iraq War was handled or how one views the aims of the war, that it was legally authorized by an Act of Congress.  Furthermore, removing Saddam from tyranny was a just and right cause.

Now, what say you?

I quit smoking finally in March. If you asked me how, I’d have to say, “I just quit.” And that is true enough. But I didn’t just quit. I quit. And then I quit again. And again. And so on until I quit quitting because I found that the last time I quit I actually had quit unlike every other time before it.

One of my best friends, Nick, who quit smoking years ago and who I (erroneously) believed would be the very last person on earth to quit would always tell me, “Karl, you’ll quit when you’re ready.” It’s all very zen, I suppose. But, what I really wanted Nick to tell me was when, exactly, that time would come, or at least to tell me how I would know when this time would be the time. I never did know and I was as surprised as anyone when it turned out that I had finally quit smoking.

Indeed, I can’t really tell you the precise date on which I smoked my last cigarette. Because I never really thought that the last time I smoked would actually be the last time I smoked. I just thought I was quitting again for however long that lasted this time. And it was only long afterward, when I realized that I had, in fact, probably smoked my last, that I began to think back and try to reconstruct when I smoked the last one. Some time in March is about as good as I can do.

That being said, it was very much a conscious decision and a concerted effort to quit. The decision to quit had been made at least a year earlier. And, in representative fashion I had chosen a day, trumpeted my goal publicly in order to provide myself with a support group and peer pressure to stay on the wagon, and dutifully savored my “last” cigarette with much public fanfare. Two days later, after three beers in a local tavern, I bummed a smoke off my buddy, promising myself that it would be just this one.

Of course, as everyone but me was keenly aware, it did not wind up being just that one. Soon enough, I was sneaking smokes all the time and trying to keep the fact that I had failed to quit from my wife, who I knew would be saddened and probably a little angered by my latest failure. Even more crazy, I was dishonest with myself about the fact that I had failed; I kept telling myself that soon I would quit again and no one needed to be the wiser about this little setback. It was always a setback, not a failure. Continue Reading »

Ten o’clock on Monday night, I sat across the table from my beautiful wife in a local tavern talking about our plans for the upcoming year. I mentioned that I thought I would write a “resolutions” post for Conservative Donnybrook and she reminded me of my oft-repeated proclamation during my late political campaign for State Representative that I hated politics. And she expressed surprise that I had waded back into the mire so quickly after the campaign by resurrecting the website.

She is correct that, toward the end of the campaign, the last thing on earth I wanted to discuss was politics. It is quite clear to me that I am not cut out to be a candidate. That being said, there were parts of it that were an absolute blast – candidate forums in particular were fun (wish we’d had more of those). But there are different levels of politics and retail politics is not the same as what we do here (or at least to what I aspire to do here). I hope we resist devolving to the level of a Sean Hannity on this website, in which politics is simply code talk for apologia for the Republican Party.

Today, when I think of politics, I am thinking of the Aristotelian definition of the term as a partnership of citizens working together to promote the virtuous life in the citizenry. As time goes on, I am more and more convinced that this view of happiness – that is a life lived in accordance with virtue – is the correct one as it becomes clearer with each passing day that material wealth or the maximization of license does not bring happiness. It is through our relationships with friends, family, and neighbors, and the achieving of excellence through the practice of virtue that we find the true purpose of our existence.

It is through these interactions that we first learn, then support, exhort, confirm, and correct the formation of virtues like courage, duty, justice, integrity, charity, and so on both in ourselves and in those around us. The practice of these virtues corresponds to our creation in the likeness and image of God and is, therefore, proper to the human person. To the extent that we embrace and exhibit these virtues, we apprehend happiness.

In this new year, I resolve to develop these virtues to the best of my ability. That seems fairly abstract. Whatever does developing these virtues mean in actual life? In all candor I am not entirely sure. But, I believe the goal to developing any virtue is to convert the behavior that conforms with the virtue into a habit. Each day, upon rising from bed, I have been reminding myself that it is my resolution to live a virtuous life (I’ve thought about putting a Fighting Irish-esque sign above my bedroom door that says “Be Virtuous Today” that I would dutifully tap as I passed under the lintel).

No one can know what the day ahead may bring, what opportunities there may be for the exercise of virtue. But, one can always review at the end of the day whether the opportunities that were presented were met with virtue or if the opportunity was missed. This retrospective assessment, I believe, is crucial in achieving a current awareness of and expectation for virtue in real-time, so that when subsequent opportunities arise, more times than not, we are in a position to recognize them and to capitalize on them. If we begin to do so consistently, the virtues will eventually become habits.

In so resolving, it necessarily means that my notion of these virtues must be properly formed. What does it mean, for instance, to practice justice? Justice is one of those words that in modern life has begun to lose any meaning. So even as I strive to inculcate these virtues in myself, I will be simultaneously forming and honing my understanding of them.

Those who know me on Facebook know that I got all excited about my former professor, Bruce Frohnen’s, article on The Imaginative Conservative, in which he stated that “we will not ‘take back’ our culture and way of life, or even preserve room within which to lead lives of decency and virtue, through any grand political effort to construct a national political coalition.” I think this is correct. It is precisely this fact that has brought me to the conclusion that it is through individual conversions and commitments to virtue that large-scale change will be had, one heart and mind at a time.

How then does politics enter into it? I am but one person who commits to live my life in the upcoming year according to these permanent things. As politics is a partnership of citizens each helping the other to live these virtues, I will commit my writing on this blog to exhorting our readers to embrace the permanent things, to develop a love for them, and a desire to see them bloom in their communities. It is, I believe, through just such a revitalization of virtue in neighborhoods and communities that America can be lifted from the abyss. This happens one person at a time, one family at time, and one neighborhood or parish at a time. As communities begin to develop habits of these virtues, before we know it, radical change will be upon us.

I thought I would throw the following out for discussion. Are there such things as conservative poets? Certainly, it seems there are poems that resonate with conservatives. It seems like everywhere I turn lately I am tripping over Yeats’ The Second Coming in conservative writings. Yeats’ radical revolutionary stirrings, however, generally do not jibe with conservatism.

Are there poets whose worldview is essentially conservative? Or is this an occupation reserved for the progressive soul ever probing the edges of human experience? May not a yearning for the good that is remembered in a now-lost past produce good poetry?

A passage in a blog post that I was reading struck a chord and distracted me into an entirely tangential run of thought. Speaking of the effects of the Enlightenment, the passage was as follows:

Of course, as our natural sympathies and associations are swept away there is one relationship that remains inviolable that between the liberated individual, and the source of his liberation, the central government. If this is a contract, it is hardly one between equal parties! Nevertheless, the trappings of this liberation are likely to be present in force: written constitutions, paper rights, and all the other guarantees that lead us to equate legitimate authority with rationalism on parchment and, by a trompe l’oeil, the omnipresent government as the only legitimate source of that authority.

What struck me was the image of government as trompe l’oeil. As a thought experiment, I wondered what would happen if some young Sawyer with a can of whitewash and a paint brush were to paint over that representation of authority? That is to say, if the federal government were entirely uprooted and abolished, would calamity follow?

It was curious, I should add, that my first, almost instinctual, reaction to the idea of abolishing the federal government was a sort of panicked mental scream: “ANARCHY!!” I admit this is extremely disappointing on a personal level as I like to flatter myself that I am not a statist and abhor everything about statism. It is perhaps emblematic of the havoc that public schooling and popular culture have wreaked on this society that even those of us who view the State with fear and loathing nonetheless maintain some vestigial attachment to it. Perhaps some enterprising young psychology doctoral student could make the case that the entire nation is suffering from a form of Mass Stockholm Syndrome.

So let us set that notion aside: abolishing the federal government would not result in anarchy. The individual states provide more than enough laws to see to that. There would be no free-for-all criminal’s paradise. Virtually every federal crime is also (or first) a state crime and the states do most of the heavy lifting in terms of maintaining public order as it is. Most of what people think of as law enforcement – police, prosecutors, public defenders, courts – are county-level government in action. Succinctly, public order would not collapse if the federal government were abolished. To the extent that there would be no overlap or stumbling of one agency over another agency’s case, the elimination of federal law enforcement may even be a positive boon to public safety. That being said, interstate crime would require cooperation among states in sharing resources to apprehend those types of offenders. I am confident that such an arrangement could be worked out to everyone’s mutual benefit.

So what would be missing? Continue Reading »

My friends, we all have the terrible problem of gun crimes on our minds recently. That is why I want to go on record as supporting common sense gun laws, like the ban that the citizens of Washington, D.C. placed on possession of a high-capacity magazine, like the one David Gregory of NBC News recently held up on camera in Washington, D.C. on Meet The Press. Mr. Gregory seems not to care about the laws designed to protect the citizens of our nation’s capital, sadly one of the most violence-plagued in the country. He doesn’t seem to care about the children there. This scoff-law must be made to see the error of his ways. Ignorance of the law is not an excuse, either. Nobody needs a 30-round magazine, especially not an anti-gun liberal newscaster like David Gregory. Please contact the D.C. Criminal Court system at (201) 879-1010 and demand that the district attorney take the police investigation seriously and pressure them to file and aggressively prosecute this case. It is imperative that so public and blatant an example of flouting the laws designed to protect us be met with swift justice. No justice? No peace. Call. Email. Write to the Chief of Police. Write to the Chief Judge. A $1,000 fine and 1-year prison term are the maximum penalty, which hardly seems adequate, but we should insist on the maximum allowed by law. We can do better.

Kudos to the intrepid investigators who did this amazing legwork.

As our regular readers have no doubt noticed, I changed the header image. It depicts the throttling of Senator Charles Sumner (R-MA) at the hands of Representative Preston Brooks (D-SC) in retaliation for Sumner’s comments about slavery two days earlier. Let me know what you think.

Is adherence to the concept of American Exceptionalism compatible with conservatism? To answer this question, we must first define what is meant by conservatism. For this purpose, I turn to Russell Kirk’s ten conservative principles in which he attempted to limn the contours of conservatism. In that essay, Dr. Kirk wrote:

“The attitude we call conservatism is sustained by a body of sentiments, rather than by a system of ideological dogmata. It is almost true that a conservative may be defined as a person who thinks himself such. The conservative movement or body of opinion can accommodate a considerable diversity of views on a good many subjects, there being no Test Act or Thirty-Nine Articles of the conservative creed.
In essence, the conservative person is simply one who finds the permanent things more pleasing than Chaos and Old Night.”

So we might say that conservatism is not found in adherence to ideologies, but by a habitual fondness and preference for the permanent things. The conservative reckons that the old ways – ways which are battle tested and proven – are equal to the task of preserving the permanent things inasmuch as the old ways have preserved them so far. Success is evident from success. Continue Reading »

I am in the midst of reading Ideas Have Consequences by Richard M. Weaver. It is quite thought provoking. The basic premise, if I’ve understood it properly, is that the rejection of universals in favor of data derived solely from concrete experience is the source of societal decline. This decline, he posits, began in the Fourteenth century and was epitomized by the writings of William of Occam and his doctrine of nominalism.

Written in 1948, in the wake of the Second World War, he certainly had a front seat look at societal degradation. Even so, I suspect he would agree that society has sunk even further since then.

I was discussing this with my wife last night and she laughed off the notion that society is any more degenerate than the last generation and so on. She correctly noted that every generation thinks so. This is, of course, true enough, but consider that the United States is a nation at war (with all the killing and destruction that entails) and almost no one seems to even notice that fact, so divorced have we become to the horror of violence and warfare that we barely take notice of it. It has become background noise, assimilated into the daily lives of every American, and accepted as the norm, unremarkable in any way. I contend that if that is not a sign of degradation – and one worse than existed in 1948 – then we have arrived at a point in time where the degradation is so advanced that we are incapable of recognizing it for what it is.

Weaver talked about this phenomenon. He noted that minor degradations are much more readily noticed early in the process than later. He writes:

Such is the task [of overcoming mankind's "hysterical optimism" that every change is progress], and our most serious obstacle is that people traveling this downward path develop an insensibility with their degradation. Loss is perceived most clearly at the beginning; after habit becomes implanted, one beholds the anomalous situation of apathy mounting as the moral crisis deepens. It is when the first faint warnings come that one has the best chance to save himself; and this, I suspect, explains why medieval thinkers were extremely agitated over questions which seem to us today without point or relevance. If one goes on, the monitory voices fade out, and it is not impossible for him to reach a state in which his entire moral orientation is lost. Thus in the face of the enormous brutality of our age we seem unable to make appropriate response to perversions of truth and acts of bestiality. Multiplying instances show complacency in the presence of contradiction which denies the heritage of Greece, and a callousness to suffering which denies the spirit of Christianity. Particularly since the great wars do we observe this insentience. We approach a condition in which we shall be amoral without the capacity to perceive it and degraded without means to measure our descent.

Without fixed points of moral truth, widely agreed upon throughout society, there is no way to maintain the order that makes society cohere. When people lose the capacity to name good good and evil evil, or good good and better better, there is nothing to direct society toward any goal, much less to the good of society (whatever that is). The impulse toward radical equality at the expense of fraternity, for the two cannot coexist despite Gallic slogans to the contrary, cements in place this leveling of all men and the negation of the notion that one man might deserve to be placed in a place of authority over any other for the good of both.

William Butler Yeats captures the essence of Weaver’s thesis, I believe, in a few justly famous lines, in his poem The Second Coming:

TURNING and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Weaver wrote about how all problems in today’s world tend to be reduced to questions of economics. Because there is no transcendent measure which all agree to, some other measure must be adopted. We see rampant today the Benthamic standard of greatest good for the greatest number in operation. Questions are reduced to benefit/cost relationships and are decided in isolation from any notion of metaphysical propriety.

I believe this impulse is most plainly seen in the rise of the school of Law and Economics, where the law – that tool that should most closely align and implement the common good – is made subject to analyses reporting the economic effects of a particular decision. Whereas lawmakers in some distant past may have relied upon a common metaphysical notion of the good life in crafting a law, the Law and Economics crowd would disregard any normative intent on the part of the lawgiver and replace it with a utilitarian assessment of economic effect and rule accordingly. If the law maintains the moral order, it is purely accidental and a happy coincidence. Where the law is cut adrift from any mooring rooted in moral rectitude, how can society long survive?

As I mentioned, I have read only part of Weaver’s book (about half of it so far), but it seems to me that the prescription for what ails our society must be to reestablish the priority of transcendence, of universal truths and Truth. We must crush the “hysterical optimism” that all change is progress and exercise prudence in selecting changes that conform to societal good and those that are harmful. This requires the placement of leaders and teachers of well-formed and correct moral sentiment as well as advanced learning.

Whether a society so advanced in its own decline can be pulled from its own wreckage is debatable. It is no idle question what, if anything, conservatives seek to conserve. For it seems in the face of a bestial society that there is precious little left worthy of preservation. And, therefore, it seems that any prescription likely to succeed in saving society is one that must radically transform it, to lift it from the abyss, and to orient it toward transcendent Truth.

U.S. District Court Judge James Fox ruled that it was unconstitutional to present a moral argument in the public square without presenting the countering argument in the same square. So says the First Amendment, in Judge Fox’s mind.

Simple enough. Offer the following as the alternative.
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The Republican Party ought to change its symbol from the wise, long-living and majestic elephant to a symbol that better represents the party today: That lovable loser, Charlie Brown.  Or maybe just the yellow shirt with black stripe, after all Charlie Brown is lovable because he is a child while the immediate future has the GOP looking like a bunch of old, white and out of touch losers. 

Case in point: Republicans will cave and allow tax increases on the wealthy (and maybe they should, but I’ve written about that already and so has Karl). Doing so, they will claim, will allow them to seize the initiative and focus on cuts to entitlements (cuts in spending to reduce the debt).  And, like Charlie Brown, the Republicans will gear up to kick the football held by the Lucy-like Democrats.  And just like that nasty, scheming little girl who can be sort of funny but otherwise has no redeeming qualities, the Democrats will yank the ball away just as the feckless Charlie Brown-like Republicans hit full stride. The Democrats will encourage this.  They will hold up the entitlement football and encourage the Republicans to give it a kick.

Lucy: This time you can trust me.  See?  Here’s a signed document….

Charlie Brown: It is signed…It’s a signed document!  I guess if you have a signed document in your possession, you can’t go wrong.  This year I’m really gonna kick that football.

(Charlie Brown hits full stride and just as he nears the ball, Lucy pulls it away and Charlie falls flat on his back.)

Charlie Brown: AARRRGH!

Lucy: Peculiar thing about this document, It was never notarized.

Just like Charlie Brown and the football, the Republicans have no advantage on entitlement reform.  The Democrats will entice Republicans to vote for tax increases by promising meaningful discussions on cuts to entitlements (a sort of Wimpy-esque “gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today,” but I’ll save that pop-icon comparison for January).  True to their eternally hopeful but naïve Charlie Brown form, the Republicans will take the bait and charge full speed ahead at entitlement cuts.  Just as true to their dishonest, self-aggrandizing alter-ego Lucy, the Democrats will pull the ball away just in the nick of time.  Lucy… err the Democrats will successfully holler about the poor, the effect on the elderly and those nearing retirement, the  disadvantaged and the sick and how Republicans are only seeking “revenge” for their inability to prevent their rich masters from paying their fair share by punishing the poor and middle class.  The Republicans, after all, hate the poor and fear the middle class and live only to serve the wealthy.

In the end the Democrats will win.  They will have been aided by the Republicans in forever painting the GOP as anti-poor, anti-middle class and pro rich white guys.  Its not true but truth has little to do with winning elections.  Sure, the economy will continue to suffer.  Unemployment will not come down much below 7%.  Inflation will surge, the welfare state will grow, entitlement culture will expand.  This will not help Republicans, it will hurt them.  Some principled conservatives will struggle, yelling “Stop!” even louder in to the wilderness.  But as the government doles out more and more freebies to a larger crowd, they too will be exposed as poor-hating elitists and quickly lose re-election to a big government welfare statist.  What will be left of the GOP without serious party reform?  California is the future.  For a glimpse of how this brave new world can come to pass see my previous pop-culture meme.  Republicans need to focus not on taking away what the democrats have over promised but by giving back liberty, personal freedoms and the control over one’s own destiny.  To do this they need to build a solid infrastructure:  A balanced budget amendment, an about face on drug and gay policies and focus on subsidiarity.  It can’t win by playing football with Lucy Van Pelt.  It can win by exposing her over-controlling tendencies, her horrible snobbery and her inability to improve rather than sustain the mire we are in.

In the meantime, and probably for the immediate future, the Yellow Shirt with a Black Stripe should be our symbol.

 Jeff Greenfield has proven himself both ridiculous and incredible.  He has penned an article calling for the creation of a national taxpayer lottery.  His plan is to create a lottery whereby a taxpayer enters simply by filing a tax return.  If the taxpayer’s return is correct, and is selected he/she wins anywhere from $50 million to $1 billion.  Mr. Greenfield assumes that human nature is such that, like a mosquito to a lantern, the individual who has not filed nor paid taxes previously will be drawn to the allure of a massive payout and be compelled to file. Furthermore, many taxpayers will be in arrears and/or their return will be incorrect and the audit power of the IRS will result in billions of new revenue.

Greenfield writes “My hunch is that the same irrational behavior that leads people to think it’s worth hours of their time and hundreds of their dollars to play a mega-lottery will lead them to be a lot more careful about reporting their real incomes when there’s a chance that evasion will cost them a fortune.”

What a joke.  Never mind that the IRS already has unfettered audit power or that the vast number of persons playing the lottery either do not file tax returns because their income level is lower than what is required or already file and receive more in government support than they currently pay in taxes.  Let us instead acknowledge that the wealthy play the lottery in vastly lower numbers than the poor.  Let us also acknowledge that those with the sophistication and gumption to avoid taxes by way of offshore accounts, hidden assets and outright fraud are unlikely to suddenly file returns just for the chance to win the lottery when doing so may as well win them an all expense paid trip to Leavenworth, Kansas. 

My hunch is that creating a taxpayer lottery would add many millions in administration and payout costs, result in no additional federal revenue and only add to the circus like atmosphere of an already ineffective and distracted government.   Instead, let the federal government defund the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and have hacks like Greenfield look elsewhere for a paycheck.  That will offer a guaranteed annual savings of $445 million.