Where Do We Go From Here?
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how people like me fit into today’s political society. My conclusion is that increasingly…we don’t. I describe myself as a “hard core conservative”, or sometimes as a “capitalist through and through”, and occasionally even as “a right wing nut job” (I suppose that means that Homeland Security is now watching me), but what I’ve found more and more is that those words don’t even mean the same thing to me as they do to most other people. What’s more, the very way in which I process information and reach conclusions seems to be increasingly at odds with those around me. (I know, that probably sounds like something from the diary of a mad man, but I think its more like something from the thoughts of a man without a country.) I talk about the ideas of freedom, liberty, and wealth creation as ideals that improve the greater good. Most people’s eyes just gloss over and they stare at me like I’m from another planet or speaking some language they don’t understand.
You see, I believe in America. I believe that in spite of our flaws, that the foundational principles on which our nation was built are among the purest and most honorable of any nation. Our fundamental commitment to the principles of natural law and the basic rights of men, and most importantly our commitment to individual freedom and liberty have been unique in the world and created the greatest good for the most number of people of any political or economic system ever devised. However, I find fewer and fewer people with any interest in defending those principles. Most people I talk to are far more interested in imposing their subjective view of “fairness” on society at large than they are in defending the very freedom and liberty that allows them to even entertain such ideas. Today, the common consciousness seems more focused on “social justice” and equality of outcome than it is on equality of opportunity and individual achievement and responsibility.
What’s more, in a sound bite culture with an increasing lack of education about even the most basic of economic principles, our national short sightedness about the economic implications of social issues and the so called “solutions” that are gaining popular support is staggering to me. Our entire economic system is built on the principle of individuals making rational decisions. So the we now have a situation in which government interventions in the market (Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac) forced irrational mortgage lending which in turn incented irrational mortgage borrowing ultimately resulting in a mortgage meltdown and the market is blamed? That isn’t “capitalism”, but that’s what people think of capitalism.
We point to our current economic woes such as our unemployment rate (8.1% in the most recent month reported, but averaging closer to 6% for the last 20 years) as evidence that “capitalism doesn’t work”. Meanwhile, the more socialist economies of the European Union have long had unemployment rates of almost 10%. Not to mention, their standard of living is much lower. Is no one thinking this through to its conclusion?
As for our elected officials, the differentiations between the parties seems to be quickly eroding as well. Sure, on some issues there are still significant differences that are unlikely to change any time soon (which is why I remain reluctantly attached to the Republicans most of the time), but both sides seems to have caught on to one particularly nasty truth; shifting the source of people’s freedom and rights from their maker to that of a centralized authority grants them increasing power in direct correlation to the amount of freedom and rights which they usurp. Our founding fathers understood this principle. It is, in fact, why we fought for independence in the first place.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
For those of you more recent to the site, I began blogging during the election under the name “Reluctant Republican” (a moniker I’ve kept since that time). That name wasn’t chosen randomly or lightly. The principles of freedom and liberty that I hold dear simply aren’t fully represented by either political party these days. While I believe in much of what George W. Bush did as President as it relates to foreign policy, I also acknowledge full well that he, just like the Democrats, seemed to feel that domestic problems were to be solved with giant piles of borrowed money (certainly a major assault on our national economic liberty). And now President Obama is making President Bush look like an amateur when it comes to spending money we don’t have. (As a side note; how arrogant do you have to be to reprimand business lenders for lending money they shouldn’t have or citizens for borrowing money they couldn’t afford all the while doing the same with the government on a scale that is almost incomprehensible?)
So where does someone like me go from here? Should I remain content to be represented by a political party which represents maybe only half of what I stand for? Should I go rogue and join the Constitution Party or some other third party that doesn’t have a snowball’s chance of ever getting elected to a major office just so I can feel better about myself? Neither of those options seem like good ones to me. It seems to me that the only option is to try to revitalize the Republican party from within, but I fear they’ve already gone too far down the road and can’t be turned back.
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