American Conservatives have become angry with Senator McCain for his failure to support the Conservative base when it was supporting him.  His effective portrayal of his opponent as an honorable person casts significant doubt on his ability to discern the truth about America and what it is presently facing.  

On Thursday of this week presidential candidate John McCain was confronted by someone now known as the “mad Wisconsin guy.” An excellent piece about this incident by Bobby Eberle with embedded videos can be found here.  As Mr. Eberle so succinctly points out, this one man has fairly well summed up the frustration that most conservatives have felt over the last decade.  It is a frustration born of the fact that the people elected to office have failed to represent mainstream America, and have failed to live up to the ethical and moral standards that would have likely made a difference in the outcome of the 2006 mid term election.  Somehow, that message has failed to come across to Republican candidates so many times over the years.  Even Tom DeLay fell victim to temptation and became embroiled in the Jack Abramoff scandal; an incident that ruined him politically, even though he, personally, did nothing illegal. 

American Conservatives were expecting something better than they received when George W. Bush was given a Republican majority in the legislature in the late 1990’s.  What they received was essentially a socialist agenda and no serious progress toward dismantling the big government machine, which has come to dominate so much of our lives.  John McCain became part and parcel of the problem when he began promoting a “path to citizenship” for aliens residing here illegally.  Many Conservatives rightly saw him as willing to sell out the nation and the principles he was supposed to support for political expediency. 
The few Conservatives I know from California, when I lived there, were pleased by none of this.  The Texas Conservatives I know now are even less so.  The same can be said for the people I correspond with around the country.  Many of these people see, in McCain’s candidacy, a socialist pretending to be a conservative.  They don’t trust him one bit.  The problem is that most of them don’t trust anyone else much, either, and with good reason.  The tentacles of corruption have spread too far in the halls of Congress as well as the White House and some of us are not too blind to see them. 
It is well understood by historians that the founders of the United States of America never intended to establish a class of professional politicians to run the nation.  They saw Cincinnatus, who went back to his country estate as soon as his job was done as the model.  Yet a professional politician class is what we have.  It should be axiomatic that whenever such a class develops corruption follows.  The result becomes a perfect example of why we ask, “Who will watch the watchers?” 

The answer, of course, is that the citizens should be doing so, and should remove from office those who fail to meet the standards of behavior, ethics and dedication to the national best interest.  The problem is that all too few citizens do so.  At the same time, too many fail to properly understand the issues facing the nation.  They react to emotional arguments rather than facts, and can be mislead be someone promising them quick and easy solutions to problems that may never be solved.  They want the perfect society, not realizing that perfection is an ideal, not within our ability to achieve. 

The “mad Wisconsin guy” didn’t want solutions.  He wanted government to leave him alone and allow him and his colleagues to live their lives in the way best suited to their personal circumstances.  I’m pretty sure that he would generally agree with my assertion that the proper role of government is to provide for a system of ordered liberty where people are free to conduct their affairs without the interference of foreign enemies or domestic criminals.  Unfortunately, the system has changed into one where government sees the need to regulate liberty, and to interfere in the private lives of the average citizen.  The government promises security in exchange for this, but rarely follows through on the promise.  Anger is a natural outgrowth of this phenomenon and an increasing number of citizens are showing it 

While one can understand John McCain’s desire to conduct the electoral process as a gentleman, he should also understand that Senator Obama’s minions are running a covert operation designed to steal the election by any and all means possible, legal and illegal.  The recent activities of ACORN which have once again brought them under law enforcement scrutiny while the candidate they support has given them approximately $800,000 in funding, the New York Times admission that large amounts of contributions to the Obama campaign come from suspect sources, Obama’s failure to provide personal background information and documents, his associate with Ayers and Rezco, all point to a man who is running from something he finds embarrassing.  For Senator McCain not to acknowledge this is a travesty, and when he tells us that we have no reason to be afraid of his opponent is either extremely foolish, or horribly naive. 
 
Santayana’s rule, that those who fail to learn from history will repeat the mistakes of their predecessors applies squarely here.  For centuries people have been looking for government solve all of their problems and it never has.  We can, with some certainty trace it as far back as Plato’s purported attempt to rule the Greek city of Syracuse as a Philosopher-King.   There is statement circulating on the Internet, attributed to Scottish historian Alexander Tyler.  According to Snopes.com the attribution is incorrect, or at least, is not supported by the available data.  Nonetheless, this statement carries a lot of weight.  It asserts that democracy can only exist “until the voters discover that they can vote themselves money from the public treasure. From that moment on the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most money from the public treasury, with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy followed by a dictatorship.” 
Today’s society in America is dominated by a war between those who seek government largess to pay for the life style they would like to become accustomed to and those who seek to provide for themselves and want the government to get out of the way so that they can do it.  There are too many people looking for instant gratification.  They see government as the one to provide it, and people such as Senator Obama are more than willing to say all the right things to place themselves in positions of power to the ultimate demise of the American system.   

Average Americans don’t want a perfect life of luxury without challenge or effort.  They want to achieve and to show their mettle in adversity.  They want to show that they are the best people living in the best society ever devised.  Those who seek perfection and would tear down what we have to achieve it are doomed to failure.  The “mad Wisconsin guy” and others like him see this all too clearly, even if they don’t have Harvard law degrees.  They know what life is all about.   Unfortunately, there seem to be many more who lack the motivation to run their own lives.  When they learn the price of government doing it for them it will probably be too late; for them and those who knew better.