Standing at this crossroads, it's time we helped America take the right fork once and for all.
When you come to a fork in the road, take it.
– Yogi Berra
With all due respect to Yogi, the question is which fork to take.
With Election Day approaching, and the very real possibility that
Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid may retake Capitol Hill, conservatives
reply that Republicans must quit hiding and start behaving like
Republicans again.
This is always the right thing to do. But midterm elections
are "base" elections, and since the GOP's conservative base
outnumbers the Democrats' liberal base, motivating it and turning it
out will ensure a November victory, preparing the way for the bigger
majority needed to stop liberal filibusters once and for all.
That is sound, solid advice for every Republican incumbent and challenger.
But it's not the only advice that's needed, both this year and beyond.
It’s long past time Republicans began countering three deadly
fallacies to which millions of Americans adhere. Until these lies
are overcome, the conservative agenda will continue to face difficulty,
too frequently from within the Republican Party itself. It’s time
to act.
Fallacy #1. The pursuit of wealth is a zero-sum game.
When it comes to economics, many Americans unwittingly embrace both Ronald Reagan and Karl Marx.
On the one hand, they are convinced that hardworking, resourceful
individuals can and do achieve the American Dream. On the other
hand, they picture the nation's wealth being some permanently limited
resource, concluding (wrongly) that if Bill Gates or Donald Trump are
earning more of it, others must be getting less.
But this whole picture is wrong, and the transformation of America — in just one century — from Little House on the Prairie to The Jetsons
(if my daughter’s new cell phone is any indication) tells the
tale. The Left wants to split up one, tiny pie.
Conservatives want to bake new pies, lots of them, for everyone.
And that free market approach is why you aren’t living in a log cabin.
So long as millions see our economic “pie” as static, hard Left
redistributionist demagogues will successfully block true tax reform,
health care reform, pension reform and anything else promoting growth;
and they’ll bash Republicans for supposedly “favoring the rich” at
every step of the way. We simply must educate the American people
on the nature of wealth, how it's created, and the glories of
entrepreneurship.
Fallacy #2. The way to solve a problem is to throw more money — especially federal money — at it.
Back in 1995 and 1996, when Republicans openly discussed abolishing
the federal Department of Education, parents recoiled in horror, afraid
they were proposing to gut education itself.
Republicans must refute two huge errors — that America's challenges
can always be solved with money, and that this money must always come
from Washington.
It's easy enough to show that dollars can't improve education if
other forces — family breakdown, demented educational theories, and
dysfunctional bureaucracy — are undermining it. And many of the
states with the highest education spending have test scores far
inferior to some of the states with the lowest for this very reason.
On this issue and many others, people must be shown that a
centralized answer is usually more expensive and less effective.
The statistics are clear enough. But Republicans are rarely
equally clear.
Fallacy #3. The '60s are over.
Where have all the flower children gone? Sadly enough, to positions of power and influence.
When conservatives rightly criticize biased news reporting, crude
depictions of sex and violence, the glamorization of unwed parenting,
unconstitutional judicial rulings and the coarsening of public
discourse, they're describing just one single phenomenon — the
counterculture’s lock on America's "Establishment."
Republicans’ failure to attack this head-on is partly motivated by
fear: they carelessly assumed that most of America's 78 million
baby boomers are Woodstock leftists. But this is patently
false. Most boomers are of the '70s generation, and are about as
embarrassed by their “make love not war” siblings as the rest of
us. Many '60s boomers have always agreed too.
So knowing this, when Republicans are labeled "intolerant" on
cultural or moral matters, they fearlessly reply: that it's really
the aging hippies who are intolerant — and supremely arrogant — in
overthrowing 20 centuries of moral wisdom without a hint of reflection
or thought. The rest of us know better, and think its long past
time these punks grew up. We shouldn’t miss a chance to say so.
Republicans may well keep Congress this year, and God help us if
they don’t. But these three fallacies will remain a powerful
stumbling block to conservatism until they’re put to rest.
Standing at this crossroads, its time we helped America take the right
fork once and for all.
“once and for all” ???
That’s the kind of short-sighted thinking that justifies a whole heap of evil.
No matter what you do, it won’t be “once and for all.”
Never has been, never will.
“It” might outlast you, it might outlast your children.
It really sounds totalitarian, and like something a fool would say.
“Once and for all” indeed.
“Make love not war” is subversive and dangerous! Far safer to make War not love! War all the time! Lets hear it for war! If you need loyal Republicans to get the base in line you should sign Kenny Lay up too beat the bushes for votes and donations. I hear he will have lots of time on his hands……………
Patrick, your unrelated and completely off-topic shot at Ken Lay notwithstanding, this impotent attempt at ironic political humor serves to make most of the points that conservatives are trying to get your ideological brethren to understand. Your simple-minded, pacifism-at-all-costs ideology is in fact quite dangerous and subversive to our national security, simply because we have enemies who will wage war on the United States regardless of whether or not we are prepared to meet their force with our own. Additionally, as Mr. Martin pointed out, yours not a point of view that is widely shared in anywhere in America, even among baby-boomers, making it difficult for anyone to take you seriously.
Pacifism at all costs? Says who?
Half the Democrats voted for the recent bullshit war in Iraq, and they _all_ voted for Afghanistan.
So, when you learn what a “Straw Man” is then you can whine.
There can’t be more than a half million actual “pacifists” (oh point one five percent of all Americans) in America. Most of them are in San Francisco represented by Nancy Pelosi, who voted for the Iraq war.
Amazing.
And you think people have trouble taking Patrick seriously? What about you, Matt?
What about you?
Your solidarity with your liberal buddy is touching. Significantly less impressive are your degenerate vocabulary (“this bullshit war in Iraq”) and your lack of ability to read comprehensively. I wasn’t making a commentary on any member of the House, nor on the Congress in general. Nowhere in my response did I even mention (or whine about) the government. In fact, what I did point out is that people who share your point of view are in a very vocal minority. Also, I am curious to know where you got your “oh point one five percent” figure. Speaking of taking one another seriously, your statement that “there can’t be more than half a million actual pacifists” seems to lack any basis in fact, and sounds more like something you fabricated than something you researched.
Matt,
Let me spare you the irony this time. My simple-minded, pacifism-at-all-costs ideology seems to be quite a concern to you.
You state that no one can take me seriously with this mindset but in a sentence preceding you consider me dangerous and subversive. Which is it now? My shot at Ken Lay is not off topic. You fail to follow a simple train of thought. Ken Lay is you Matt. Get on the stand and blame everyone but yourself. Commit crimes beyond reason and have the audacity to admit nothing wrong was done. If I am dangerous and subversive to national security what does that make you? You talk of war as if you have the answers lined up. You fail to tell us who we are fighting. It’s terrorists you say From what country? . No county. All countries. Mexico is the enemy. Canada is the enemy. Everyone is the enemy. The internal west, the Chinese, Russia, Hippies,
The mind bends under the weigh of every terrorist threat. The popularity of Cheney has sunk to the point where more people like Michael Jackson than him. The president’s rating is the worst almost in history but do not look to the disaster your solidarity has created. The hippies from the 60’s have foiled you. Like Kenny you let your arrogance speak for you. Like little lords in a fiefdom you feel as if we have no right to point out the losses to the kingdom your ideals have wrought. But let me tell you something. There has been huge amounts of “ mea culpa” entering the dreaded MSM because you have erred in such a spectacular fashion. My impression is that Americans are a people strong in faith that will never fail to rally around the flag but have now come to realize in a most painful way they were deceived. I believe this has angered them in a way never seen before.
The jury has seen the evidence much like in the Lay case and have given up a verdict. Guilty. And as much as you hate that verdict it will be hard to reverse it. Impossible I feel. November will silence your arrogance. My solidarity with my liberal buddy is touching. You should fear it. Instead of the vicious selling out of everyone in the Enron case where great buddies and the smartest guys in the room were sending each other down the river we just shut up and watched as you tore each other apart. Wait until Jack starts to sing. Then you will meet degenerates. .Let me reference a point here and now as I have lifted this word for word as an example of opinion as fact that is sadly misused by your “brethren” as the term goes.
“ Republicans’ failure to attack this head-on is partly motivated by fear: they carelessly assumed that most of America’s 78 million baby boomers are Woodstock leftists. But this is patently false. Most boomers are of the ’70s generation, and are about as embarrassed by their “make love not war” siblings as the rest of us. Many ’60s boomers have always agreed too”.
This has to be the most brain dead statement I have ever heard. This fool assumes he reads the mind of 78 million people. Or more. One last thing to say to you Matt. Better watch out. The times are a changing………….
Patrick
Patrick,
What exactly are you on about? Could you, or anyone in the left wing camp, ever just stick to a single topic of discussion? Or at least keep the meandering array of talking points relevant to the discussion at hand? This article was about fallacies the Republican party has made in it’s political assumptions and posturing. Good thing you were here to clear the issue right up with a completely unrelated tirade about Ken Lay and “the rich” (talk about reading millions of peoples’ minds: you have cast every “rich” person – which one could assume, I guess, encompasses everyone in the highest US tax bracket of $90,000 per year and above- as an arrogant “good ol’ boy” Republican out to steal from the poor. Nevermind that America’s top-earning company have happily sponsored both Republicans and Democrats in nearly equal company for decades). On top of having nothing to do with the article written, you decided to demonstrate the fact that you either: A) didn’t read the article or B) simply didn’t comprehend it, by quoting a piece from it and replying with an antogonistic quip completely unrelated to the cited quote! The quote you cite had nothing to do with anyone reading 78 million peoples’ minds: What it said, in terms you may be able to digest a bit better, is that Republicans made the mistake of assuming that all Baby Boomers were staunch leftists and thusly pandered to that and refused to address issues as conservatives, when in fact, not all Baby Boomers were extreme leftists, and would have happily climbed onboard with the ideology that Republicans were supposed to represent. Since that sentence, upon re-examination, is a bit long and complex still, let’s look at in an analogy: The Democrats trying to portray themselves as moderates in the mid-term to steal traditionally Republican-voting folks to their camp today, is similar to what Republicans did back then: They compromised what they really believed to get votes because they didn’t think a majority of people would accept their ideas. To be honest, times are not changing, they HAVE changed. We no longer live in the 60′s, where a rabidly liberal supreme court decides issues on behalf of the entire country without representation, to the glee of childish campus demonstrators bent on rebelling against whatever they perceive (read: whatever their professors told them) the “status quo” to be. And that’s a scary thought for you and your friends, which is why you’re here trying to cause a ruckus at a conservative website in the first place. And for that, one could applaud your “vigilance”. But your off-topic ranting only makes you look childish and ridiculous (most especially when you attempt to sound “intellectual”, and insult your readers’ intelligence assuming that they don’t know what you’re up to) to the people you’re trying to antagonize, and impressive only to your fellow hardcore liberals who either don’t frequent the conservative website circuit, or are here for the same reason you are. So at least save us the semantics and get rid of the pretext that you have any intention of logically debating a topic. A simple “FDR could beat up Ronald Reagan” would suffice.
I agree with Mr. Martin about the first two fallacies, but I’m not so sure about the third.
I thought flower children were for peace and love and were anti-capitalism. Judging by those on the Left today, some might be anti-capitalist in what they say, but they’re bank accounts would tell a different story, I think. Are Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid poor? How about those college professors that get publicity for their views? Are they poor folks just sitting around waiting for the next Woodstock? I think not. If these things are true, then the flower child thing doesn’t work.
As for making war, it usually seems to depend on which political party is lobbing the bombs. The doves on the Left were fairly silent when Clinton was sending fighters to the Balkans. If there were protests over this, I don’t recall them.
As for “Republicans should start behaving like Republicans again”, well, I’m starting to wonder if today’s Republicans ARE behaving like Republicans. They say all the right things at election time, but afterwards they seem to spend too much time trying to get Democrats to like them and agree with them instead of acting on what they were elected to do in the first place. This is puzzling to me.
I’m not sure I understand Leftists, either. My theory is that their core belief is that every person in the world would think and act as they do if we (as Americans) worked harder to get them to understand. No one would be our enemy if we just talked to them and understood their situation. There is no evil (except for Republicans), just miscommunication. I think this explains their foreign policy if nothing else. Some of the more radical ones, of course, think there is only one evil in the world and that would the the U.S.A. Every bad situation on the planet (past, present and future) is our fault. I’m sure there’s a theory to explain this type of person and it probably involves self-flagellation and feeling superior to others, but I’m not quite acquainted with that theory yet. These people are a minority, thankfully. A very loud one, but a minority just the same.
As for Democrats, well, I honestly don’t know what a Democrat is anymore. Is it the party of the Leftists now? They seem to do most all of the talking for it, but I don’t know.
So, while I think Mr. Martin hit the target with the first two, he missed on the third.
It seems to me that the phrase “once and for all” reflects a profoundly exclusive, malevolent and arrogant philosophy. You’ll be talking about a thousand year Reich next.
Also, if anyone has read Marx in this country then it is conservative business owners who seem to use these ideas as a kind of paint by numbers of how to acquire wealth at the expense of others. Something tells me that a hell of a lot of people are going to be waiting the whole of their lives for any sort of reasonable sized “pie” in return for their efforts under a completely unregulated market system. I will not go into the horrifying statistics about America levels of poverty and health care as compared with the rest of the developed world. You can all use the Internet.
Lastly, there was a survey a few years ago in which a large cross section of ordinary Americans were read a series of sentences and asked which ones were from the constitution. When read the line “From each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs” 70% of people thought that this was actually part of the American constitution. Why, because it is just good social policy and people instinctively knew it. Most people didn’t realize it was written by Karl Marx and that they were supposed to be automatically repulsed by it, they just took a reasonable idea on face value and responded accordingly.