Friday, November 20, 2009

My Body, My Money, My Country

We constantly hear that only moderate centrist Republicans can win in some places. And that is true. But what kind of moderate? What kind of centrist? I think that it has to be a moderate with strong principles. A strange beast to be sure. At least in this day and age.

The last time the Republican Party was truly centrist and wildly attractive was when it was a libertarian Party under Ronald Reagan. Socially moderate, fiscally conservative, strong on national defense. Does that mean that social conservatives were unwelcome? Of course not. It just means that moral socialism was not the political center of the party. It means that government stays out of your business and you are free to live your life as you chose.

What too many of our elite mean by centrist is socially moderate, not too fiscally conservative, and don't scare people with heavy weapons. i.e. RINO. I prefer a little absolutism.

My body, my money, my country.


Now moderation may be a good thing. But you have to have principles so at least you will know when you are deviating from them. So you don't go too far. RINOs have no discernible principles. And thus they can never tell when they have gone too far. The evidence of that was the drubbing the Republicans took in 2006 and 2008 when the Party stood only for a strong national defense. Everything else was negotiable.

Are the kind of Republicans I'm describing going to be popular every where? Not at this time. Social conservatives are going to dominate in some areas of the country. But what about other places like Wisconsin, California, and Illinois? In places like that social conservatives do not do well, at least State wide and in many districts. In those places it is good to have a more socially liberal candidate. But not a RINO. Because without principles you are just drifting with the wind.

I'd like to close with one of my favorite and often repeated Reagan quotes:

"If you analyze it I believe the very heart and soul of conservatism is libertarianism." - Ronald Reagan

and how about another that describes the improper relation of government to the people:

"Government is not a solution to our problem, government is the problem." - Ronald Reagan

Cross Posted at Classical Values

8 comments:

RavingDave said...

Here's one of MY favorite Reagan Quotes !


"There you go again... "

:)

RavingDave said...

If we just go back to Federalism, the Social issues will more or less take care of themselves.

I think we can all get behind the idea of reducing the size of government and making it stay within it's proper mandate.

Tom Cuddihy said...

Reagan was socially moderate? Maybe for his time. If you actually line up his social positions against, say, Mike Huckabee, you might be surprised at how closely their positions align.

That, plus some issues that would have been considered absurdities in Reagan's day (like "gay marriage") are now part of the discussion.

M. Simon said...

Here is a good exposition on Reagan and the California 1967 Abortion Bill.

=====

You gentlemen realize that if abortion foes get their way and the legislation actually works (I can't see how in an age of RU-485 and the morning after pill [birth control pills] that is possible) there will come a time when children suffering in poverty will again become a cause (there will be a LOT more of them) and there will be calls to increase the breadth and depth of welfare.

There is no perfect world.

Of course abortion foes could always raise money and PAY women to have babies. But then you get into the moral hazard business.

It wonders me that such smart fellows like you can't find ways to sharply reduce or curtail abortion without government guns. Government enforcers. Government Bureaucracy.

Well I have actually done the work and will publish it soon.

===

On top of that it is Democrats aborting their babies (mostly). I like Napoleon on the subject:

"Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake."

The choices seem rather stark to me. Abortion or an ever larger constituency for socialism.

Which evil do you prefer?

RavingDave said...

Ronald Reagan wrote a book called "Abortion and the Conscience of a nation." I have that book somewhere. He was very anti-abortion.


As for Liberals and Democrats aborting themselves, yes it is a tactical advantage, however acceptance legitimizes the practice.
Like Slavery, the practice is morally repugnant, and like slavery, should not be tolerated, no matter who benefits from it.

How other than abortion ? Social pressure worked for most of human history. While Adultery (my understanding of the original language of the ten commandments is that Adultery is any sex out side of normal marriage.) may have been practiced throughout human history, it most definitely has not been so widespread until the last 50 years.

In order for social pressure to work, something cannot be legitimized by the law.

In an age during which there are any number of simple easy ways to prevent conception, a person has to be criminally stupid to get pregnant.

People talk about choice. Fine. Once you make one, you stick with it. If someone Chooses to get pregnant, then we should tolerate no changed minds on the subject, for the alternative was easy to choose.


In any case, sometimes government guns are necessary to solve a problem. Slavery was an example of one such problem. This issue is very similar in many peoples minds.

M. Simon said...

In order for social pressure to work, something cannot be legitimized by the law.

The law follows custom on what you like to call moral issues.

Adultery as you define it (and it is a fair definition) was against the law in a whole lot of places. The people changed before the laws (or lack of enforcement) did.

We see the same thing happening with the drug laws. Hell. We have an ex (I'm not so sure) coke head for president. And there is no doubt the marijuana laws are doomed.

Abortion was illegal in a lot of places. Then the tide turned and re-legalization started happening.

====

And here I want to speak of it as a political question. Abortion is a city issue. I have a post I want to do about that - soon I hope.

Cities predominate in America. And cities are left. It is biology - and no I don't want to discuss that now.

So if Republicans want to return to honest city government (a good idea) and political power in cities abortion needs to be taken off the table. It needs to be privatized. Pro and con.

The Right claims to be more in tune with human nature. If only that were so.

Humans behave according to the ecological niche they occupy. The conceit of both parties is to believe they have the right morality and the other side couldn't be more wrong.

====

And why did Wilberforce catch on when there were anti-slave agitators at other times?

The steam engine and mechanization eliminated the need for slaves. Machines could do hard boring repetitive tasks.

With the advent of electricity slavery would not been viable by 1900 in any case. The only place you occasionally still find slavery is in the lowest wage industries among immigrant populations.

The song "John Henry" epitomizes that.

===

And why did sexual morals change? Besides the move to cities? Technology. STDs were no longer so serious and various kinds of birth control made it easier to avoid consequences.

RavingDave said...

MSimon writes:
"Abortion was illegal in a lot of places. Then the tide turned and re-legalization started happening."


Nonsense. Liberal Nutjob Judges appointed by 20 years of Roosevelt/Truman Legalized it and declared it a constitutional right.

Public outcry at the time was immense and negative, but Roosevelt/Truman had so stacked the federal courts that no one could do anything about this imposed morality. Over time, the legitimacy conferred by the law has slowly eroded public hatred of Abortion, and over time a large chunk of the population now accepts it.

Give any idea thirty years of Legal support and propaganda and a large swath of simpletons will accept that idea too!





MSimon writes:
"The steam engine and mechanization eliminated the need for slaves. Machines could do hard boring repetitive tasks. "


It is amusing to notice that the northern states only became morally indignant about slavery when they no longer had any use for them.

It is a tragedy that the civil war could not have been postponed for 20 years or so, because as you say, mechanization would have eventually made slavery very unprofitable, and 600,000 people might not have died.




MSimon Writes:
"And why did sexual morals change? Besides the move to cities? Technology. STDs were no longer so serious and various kinds of birth control made it easier to avoid consequences."


They say the Victorian Era of prudishness was the result of massive deaths from sexually transmitted diseases that occurred in the preceding era.

Strangely enough, this era of prudishness coincides with the apex of Britain's might and power.

That's funny. The same thing happened to U.S. !

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