The Great American Sell-Out


U.S. Capitol

U.S. Capitol (Photo credit: afagen)





The Republican Leadership Deserves Only Contempt







The Tennessee Democratic Party and Mark Clayton

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The Tennessee Democratic Party disavowed its own candidate for the United States senate in Tennessee, Mark Clayton. The party claimed that Clayton was a member of “an anti-gay hate group,” Public Advocate of the United States, based in Falls Church, Virginia. Now Clayton is a member of Public Advocate, but there is nothing I have seen when looking over their website and Facebook pages that indicates this it is a “hate group.” It defends the traditional view that marriage is between one man and one woman and opposes the agenda of the homosexual rights groups. While to the liberal elite, those may seem to be extreme positions, much of middle American and the majority of Evangelical Christians would accept them. However, numbers do not make a position true or false. The problem is that the left labels any group that opposes the homosexual agenda to push accepting their lifestyle as morally acceptable as a “hate group.” The Southern Poverty Law Center, a group composed of Marxists and radical leftists, has a history of labeling legitimate organizations as bigoted. The SPLC has labeled Public Advocate as a hate group, but it does not follow from their labeling that it is a hate group. There is no evidence that Public Advocate hates homosexual people. They do believe that practicing homosexuality is morally wrong, which was the position of the Christian Church from the beginning until the late twentieth century–and even now, the Roman Catholic Church, the Eastern Orthodox Church, and most Evangelical Protestant would agree that homosexual orientation is unnatural and its practice sinful. Is the SPLC willing to label the Roman Catholic Church as a “hate group”? What about the Orthodox Churches? Evangelical Protestant churches? In the case of Public Advocate I would take the SPLC’s condemnation with a grain of salt. “Hate” has become a political tool to try to silence opposition to the radical left’s attempt to reconstruct society in its own image. The Tennessee Democratic Party has become part of that radical leftist agenda by condemning Mr. Clayton. I am a registered Republican, but if I lived in Tennessee again, I would vote for Mr. Clayton above the Republican candidate Mr. Corker, not just due to this issue but due to Mr. Clayton’s consistent small government position. It is a sad day when a major political party can slander a man and an organization due to the party’s radicalism.

Why I am not a Democrat


George McGovern, in Congress

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My granddaddy loved the Democratic Party. He always said “it is the party of the poor man while the Republicans are the party of the rich man.” He thought that FDR was the best president the U. S. ever had, appealing to WPA and Social Security as evidence. For many years in the South, the Democratic Party was the conservative party, and while it held some positions (on segregation, for instance) that were wrong, it also defended the Tenth Amendment regarding state’s rights–and I must agree with their view on that. Sending federal troops to the South, putting school boards under dictatorial federal judges who imposed asinine social engineering schemes such as forced busing, were abuses of power by the federal government. Better to use persuasion in a grassroots movement to encourage a change in people’s attitudes than to send in the 101st Airborne. Those in power could have been pressured by a grassroots movement to end segregation from within the individual states–with enough pressure, they would probably have given in, segregation laws abolished, and race relations would have been better than they are today.

Republicans had no problem abusing federal power, especially liberal Republicans in the North. The Republican Party had historically been the party of corporate welfare, and had formed an unholy alliance with railroads and with banks in the nineteenth century. It was the Republicans who forced states, which would have been almost universally considered to be sovereign just a few decades before, into the federal fold using U. S. military forces, with the attendant loss of over 600,000 lives.

There were some liberal democrats in the South in the 1950s–Senator Estes Kefauver of Tennessee is a good example–but even the liberals of that time period accepted the Judeo-Christian ethic that had been dominant in the United States since the Second Great Awakening. Except for a few radicals, abortion was wrong, and no one would have dreamed of supporting same-sex marriage. Even with the expansion of federal power and the government’s use of the military against the states, the federal budget was relatively small as well as the number of federal employees. The budget was balanced three times during the Eisenhower administration.

Then came the 1960s with the spoiled baby boomers calling for a radical transformation of society. These radicals gained control of the Democratic National Convention when it nominated Senator George McGovern (who seems almost moderate by today’s standards) for president. The Democratic Party became the party of radical social change, advocating abortion rights, looser rules concerning the family unit, and, more recently, same-sex marriage. It also extended the federal welfare system immensely, especially during Lyndon Johnson’s administration. This in turn helped to expand a permanent underclass, leading to more money being spent on welfare, leading more people to become dependent on the system. It became a vicious cycle.

The Democratic and Republican parties “switched” in the South, especially after the old George Wallace voters voted for Ronald Reagan in the 1976 presidential primaries. He almost the Republican nomination from Gerald Ford that year. In 1980, the trend continued, and over time, the Republican Party moved to the right at the same time the Democratic Party shifted radically to the left. Republicans were not always true to their promises, unfortunately, but to many voters, including me, they were the “lesser evil” to voting for a liberal Democrat. There are a few conservative Democrats around, and I will vote for one from time to time. Now, though, almost all my votes are for Republicans, with an occasional foray into voting for a Libertarian.

Why am I not a Democrat? Because:

(1) Most Democrats believe in nearly unlimited abortion rights–and I believe abortion to be murder. It is difficult for me to vote for someone who believes that it is morally acceptable for a mother, with the help of her “doctor,” to murder her own unborn child (and to someone who claims Catholic identity who told me an unborn child was not a child, my message is, “You are an utter hypocrite to call yourself Catholic).

(2) Democrats have generally supported radical social changes such as same-sex marriage, something I believe to be an affront to natural law and something that will be, long term, destructive to society.

(3) Democrats have, for the most part, supported social engineering schemes such as forced busing of schoolchildren.

(4) Most Democrats continue to support an overly large welfare system. They also have the idea that they can spend themselves out of any economic crisis. The United States will never recover from its debt given the amount of money the Democratic Obama Administration has spent.

(5)  The Democratic Party engages in race, sex, and class warfare. Many Democrats falsely accuse those who oppose the party’s policies on welfare, for example, of racism. Many Democrats love to stir up racial strife it can help the party with the minority groups in its voting base. The Party supports the most radical measures of certain feminists, supporting unlimited abortion and the continual disempowerment of men. The Party seems to think that “taxing the rich” will solve all our problems, although if the government seized all money from the rich it would only make a drop in the deficit.

(6) When Democrats could do some good and stand up to the warmongering Neoconservatives in both parties, the majority of Democrats  fail and end up supporting unnecessary wars just as much as Republicans (this is my biggest beef with the Republican Party).

(7) Many Democrats are hostile to traditional Christianity. They do all they can to remove traditional Christianity from the “public square.”

I get frustrated with both parties. I do not remember who wrote in Chronicles magazine that politics in the United States consists of the “Stupid Party” (Republicans) and the “Evil Party” (Democratic). He went on to say when they compromise one gets “stupid evil.” Given my choice between the alternatives, I would rather support stupidity rather than support evil. That is why in the presidential election between Bush and Kerry, I voted Libertarian, since I believe that both the Iraq War and the U. S. use of torture was evil. I am not duty-bound to the Republican Party–but I cannot be a Democrat unless the party makes a 180 degree turn to the Right–and that is not going to happen.

Obama and the Patriot Act

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Rand Paul campaigning in Kentucky.

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President Obama has signed an extension of the worst surveillance procedures of the Patriot Act. No records of a private citizen are safe from government intrusion. I commend Senator Rand Paul for standing up for liberty. Between Democrats who by nature love the expansion of federal power, and Republican “Red State Fascists” who have no problem with the expansion of law enforcement power, what freedom the United States has left is eroding. We now have a government that can check anyone’s phone records, anyone’s internet records, and invade a person’s private life in a vain attempt to find potential terrorists. Defenders of the Patriot Act claim it would only be used against people suspected of terrorism, but history shows when the government can do harm to the innocent, it will. Sadly, most people will go along with losing their freedom for an ephemeral security that they will never have this side of heaven. The public’s fears of terrorism are constantly used by the federal government to justify expansion of power in a world where a person is more likely to die of a myriad of diseases and accidents, as well as domestic homicide, than by terrorism. The media as a whole, “conservative” or liberal, supports the Patriot Act, and many Americans are stooges of the media. Government schools have failed to teach them critical thinking skills, and the decline of classical rhetoric classes in high school and college/university education keeps the public unaware of the government and media’s manipulative techniques. It is easy to become cynical and believe that the American people are getting the government they deserve. But the vote in the House was closer than the vote in the Senate, and this offers some hope that Rand and Ron Paul and his allies will be able to gain more support when the next renewal of the “Patriot Act” (talk about doublespeak!) comes before Congress. The actions of President Obama do not surprise me–he campaigned against the same provisions of the Patriot Act he now supports. He is a typical politician who says what he needs to say to gain power and then goes back on his promises when the election is over. To their credit, some liberals, such as Nat Hentoff (an honest man and a true civil libertarian), recognize this and have sharply criticized the president. Most of the rest, sadly, follow him like sheep. Maybe the American people will wake up; polls have revealed growing unease with the Patriot Act. The federal government has much more immediate power to harm the American people than terrorists–and Americans should keep that in mind.

The Republican Leadership and “Getting Along”

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Unofficial seal of the United States Congress

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Despite the clear message the majority of voters sent in November that they want government spending controlled and the size of government reduced, the Republican “leadership” insists on continuing the mistakes of the past. They are so concerned to be accepted by the media elites and to “get along” with the Democratic leadership that they have no problem compromising on basic principles. The Tea Party movement attempted to send a message to Congress, but unless the Tea Party freshmen make a stand against the wimpy, weak Republican leadership its electoral victories will come to naught. The recent extension of the Bush tax cuts is a good example. That extension included new spending that further increased the rapidly exploding budget deficit. The Republican leadership seems to have no problem being as eager as the Democrats to sell out the future of the United States for short-term “gains.” When the next Congress is sworn in and convenes, the Republicans had better take the voters seriously–cut government spending (even if Mr. Obama vetos bills) in both domestic and military spending (Republicans must stop being warmongers), reduce the size of government and the number of federal employees, repeal the freedom-denying provisions of the “Patriot Act,” and repeal the parts of the health care bill that entail a massive expansion of federal spending and an increase in size of the federal bureaucracy. The Republicans should not compromise on these issues no matter how much CBS, NBC, MSNBC, and ABC whine about “gridlock” in Congress. The majority of Americans will see through the obvious, open, and fundamentally dishonest bias of the mainstream media and will respect Republicans more for doing the right thing and standing up for the principle of limited government. If the Republican leadership continues the policies of the leadership of the past lame-duck Congress, and if the rest of the Republicans follow suit, they will deserve to lose in the next election–and the nation will deserve a strong third party that is firmly committed to limited government, lower federal spending, and removing the tentacles of the federal bureaucracy from the everyday lives of the American people.

The Death of the Democratic Party

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Portrait of Thomas Jefferson by Rembrandt Peal...

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