Every now and then, when I am in a really masochistic mood, I venture over to Daily Kos or to the Huffington Post to see what the other side has to say. I make these jaunts infrequently because I just can’t stand the unyielding leftist gibberish for long.
I am just returning from one of these journeys and am happy to find myself back in the real world. If you’re in the mood to torture yourself you can read a leftist lament on the recent FOX News Republican debate here (Bob Cesca The Lies of John McCain and Mike Huckabee). Follow up your read with the list of replies which applaud the messenger and you truly feel there is an alternate universe.
What I found so intriguing about this article I felt like I wrote it from the other side. I often site quotations and defer to America’s Founders in bolstering my arguments for conservatism. This guy was doing the same thing to bolster his arguments for liberalism leftism socialism communism.
Many people don’t clearly understand that liberalism can only evolve to communism; unfortunately a whole discussion describing the unmistakable connection is outside of the scope of this piece. Rest assured, liberalism can only progress in one direction, and it is not toward freedom and liberty, the concepts our Founders fought to secure.
I can go through Cesca’s piece and challenge each manipulation he makes which ostensibly shows the Founder’s support for the ideologies of contemporary liberalism, but those who choose to believe liberal dogma will still continue to malign our Founder’s words and make stipulations that in no way are supportable. Any words can be taken out of context to confuse uneducated and uninitiated people.
What conservatism must do is to appeal to the individual and inherent common sense that all people have, and try to connect this to an overall theme which clearly permeates America’s founding documents.
To believe Cesca’s opinion we must accept a few premises:
endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
in no way shape or form means that God has secured upon an unborn child (even one day before his birth) the right to life if it interferes with a mother’s reproductive rights. That seemingly insignificant right to avoid the endurance and nuisance of pregnancy should be elevated above a child’s right to his God given right to live.
that Liberty means government can forcibly audit your income and take thirty-five or forty percent of it (many liberal’s believe the rate should be 70% or higher) under threat of prison internment for non-compliance.
that the pursuit of happiness does not mean government gets out of your way to allow you to succeed on your own merit, but that government taxes, regulates, manages, and arbitrates, to ensure everyone ends up with similar rewards.
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof
Means government must purge every bit of religious reference from every public forum (schools, courts, etc.) and institute and promote secular values for these arenas because promoting atheist beliefs do not prohibit the free exercise of religion, but promoting a belief in God does.
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press
Means government shall enact legislation making it illegal for private citizens to voice their opinions through mass media within 60 days of an election while allowing major news outlets like the New York Times to do so with unfettered freedom.
the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.
Means government can take guns away from the people.
nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.
Means if government can take your property and give it to a big developer private citizen who will build structures on it that will bring in more tax revenue to government than it currently secures from said property that’s public use.
I could do this for hours the point is, conservatism embraces foundational principles, and these foundational principles are the principles the Founders of our Nation used to build our government and draft our Declaration of Independence and Constitution. Any movement away from these principles is not conservatism; it is liberalism or something else.
While Cesca tries to establish that our Founders were wild-eyed liberals, he maligns McCain for calling the United States a right of center nation, and Huckabee for suggesting that most of the Declaration’s signers were ministers.
He’s right about Huckabee. Most were not ministers, a handful were. Most were lawyers. Many were land owners, and a few were merchants. As for McCain:
Communism is on the left, capitalism is on the right
What do you think we are, left or right of center?
I know liberals are working hard to get us there, but I still believe the majority of Americans want to embrace the evils of capitalism more than they want to embrace the evils of communism.
If Cesca really wanted to get to the essence of the Republican debate and to the essence of conservative thought, he would have explained why John McCain (Cesca asserts to be the wily right wing zealout) is so low in the poles.
Cesca can’t make that analysis, because he is no more capable of understanding the benefit of conservative principles than I am of understanding the benefit of communist ones, and he can only assert that America’s Founders did not mean to be capitalists, and they did not mean to revere God. As for the slogan Annuit Coeptis adorned on the Great Seal in 1782 that must have been a mistake.
In what I thought was the best line of the whole debate, John McCain retorting to Hillary Clinton’s willingness to waste federal money on a Woodstock Museum , stated I was tied up at the time , which of course referenced his five year detention at Hanoi’s infamous prison during the Viet Nam war.
The comment brought a tear to my eye and got me a little choked up.
Will I vote for John McCain now? No.
Not because I think Senator McCain is not a great patriot who does not deserve our humble respect and gratitude, but because he stepped across the aisle to join forces with Russell Feingold to construct the campaign finance reform bill which has been an egregious assault on American liberty and our venerated Bill of Rights.
He has yet to realize or acknowledge that this bill has proven to have been a mistake.
As a conservative and as a patriot I do not want politicians and legislators who can get things done and usurp God given rights.
I want partisan political leaders who will fight to protect my vision of America and stop government from legislating anything contrary to that vision. On this point, I am sure Cesca would agree.
Copyright 2007 Jim Pontillo