Conservatism needs work

[a_majoor]

Taking the offense in the "culture wars". This is needed in Canada as well, maybe even more so because of decades of "official multiculturalism" which divides people even more sharply:

http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/its-time-gop-needs-to-radically-change-tactics-with-minorities/?singlepage=true

It’s Time: GOP Needs to Radically Change Tactics with Minorities

What the GOP has done for decades to reach minorities has not worked, and will never work.
May 5, 2010
- by John Hawkins

Republicans do poorly with minority voters.

As general rule, the Republican Party gets about one-tenth of the black vote, one-third of the Hispanic vote, and one-fourth of the Jewish vote. If this seems like a huge problem today, demographic patterns point to the radical liberalism destroying the country today becoming the norm forevermore.

Why do minorities vote Democratic in such numbers? Part of the cause is issue-oriented. Liberals, whatever their race may be, aren’t going to vote for Republicans. People who are lower on the socioeconomic scale naturally tend to favor the party enlarging the taxpayer-funded dole. Given that blacks and Hispanics, taken as a group, have fallen behind other Americans economically, the Democrats have particularly fertile ground for their message there.

However, that doesn’t come close to telling the whole story. Ever since Reagan, people have been looking at the Christianity and social conservatism of Latinos and saying: “Hispanics are Republican; they just don’t know it yet.”

The biggest issue for Jews tends to be the survival of Israel, and Republicans are unquestionably much better on that issue than Democrats.

Then there are black Americans. Even setting aside the historical alliance between Republicans and black Americans, most black Americans go to church, oppose gay marriage, are pro-life, are anti-illegal immigration, and are pro-school choice. These are not inconsequential issues.

So why is the GOP doing so poorly?

Republicans believe it should be all about the issues, while Democrats push culture. They tell minority groups that Republicans hate them, and it works — despite the fact that it’s entirely false. They also tell minorities that their ethnic identity is tied up in voting for the Democratic Party.

A good example of this is Jesse Jackson saying: “You can’t vote against health care and call yourself a black man.” Then there’s the NAACP, La Raza, CAIR, MALDEF, the Congressional Black Caucus … on and on and on. All these prominent groups implicitly or explicitly try to tie the cultural identity of minorities to the Democratic Party, even as they demonize Republicans as “the other.” Republicans are not merely treated as political opponents — they’re framed as racial enemies.

As a general rule, Republicans have a strong negative reaction to these organizations not only because they unfairly demonize, but because they divide by race when we should strive to be colorblind. It’s fine to feel that way — I do myself — but is the approach working?

No. Are we seeing any evidence that the tide is turning? Is La Raza about to collapse? Are most black Americans calling for a colorblind world where it matters, like with affirmative action programs?

So if the approach isn’t working and isn’t going to work, isn’t it time to change it?

Saul Alinsky would certainly say so: “One communicates within the experience of his audience — and gives full respect to the other’s values.” Isn’t it time Republicans took his advice? The Republican message has failed to reach minorities for decades, while the Democrats have found a message that works extremely well. Shouldn’t we be copying their approach instead of doing the same thing over and over again and hoping for a different result?

Many Republicans blanch at this suggestion, even though they’ve already bought into it. How many Republicans accept Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton as “leaders” of the black community? How many Republicans treat CAIR as a legitimate representative of Muslims? How many Republicans are honest enough to admit that they get a little extra-excited about Marco Rubio because he’s Hispanic, Sarah Palin because she’s a woman, and Michael Steele because he’s black?

That doesn’t mean it’s all about race or sex, but Republicans have been playing the same game, if halfheartedly.

Republicans have to make a choice. Do what it takes to pull minorities into the party, or cede them forever to the Democrats.

Do we want people like Jesse Jackson to be treated as a “black leader,” or do we want him to be the leader of “liberal black Americans”? Do we want Al Sharpton being treated as the arbiter of what’s offensive to black America, or do we want a conservative black man having a public voice on those issues, too? Do we want groups like La Raza to be treated as representatives of the Hispanic community, or do we want to have a powerful group of Hispanic conservatives calling out Democrats for racism?

Making cultural changes takes time. It’s also not cheap. For example, in the black and Hispanic communities, we’d need to fund something akin to a conservative NAACP that could hand out scholarships, help improve neighborhoods — and stand up for Christian values, better schools, and personal liberty.

At first, because a lot of people benefit from the current system, these people would be reviled and slurred. Black conservatives would be called Oreos. Hispanic conservatives would be called Coconuts. But over time, as they spread their message and make a positive difference, people would start to come around. Disprove the left’s lies and make it culturally respectable to be a Republican, and suddenly tens of millions of black and Hispanic Americans would see the Republican Party with fresh eyes. That would be revolutionary.

Imagine the moment the Democratic Party can’t pull 70 million minority votes with: “Republicans hate you! Your race determines your thoughts!” It would forevermore change this country for the better.

John Hawkins is a professional blogger who runs Conservative Grapevine and Right Wing News. He also writes a weekly column for Townhall.

 

[a_majoor]

From a larger article. I think TEA party activism can certainly take root in Canada given the increasing disconnect between political elites and the people (look at the evolving HST controversies in BC and Ontario, especially now the huge cost to ordinary taxpayers and consumers is becoming clear):

http://pajamasmedia.com/richardfernandez/2010/05/08/r-utah/

The game was redefined in a single place and time from “one of Republicans versus Democrats” (Romney’s reference) to that of “Small Government versus Big Government”. In isolation the Bennett defeat is insignificant, but it now raises the wider question of whether the ‘Smaller Government’ idea can catch on. If it does then it has the potential to redefine the political landscape in ways that are both a threat and opportunity to different communities.

The Tea Parties represent an asymmetric threat to political organizations optimized for party-line warfare. The threat is no longer across the aisle but outside the building. As such, two possibilities suggest themselves. The first is that the Washington elite will circle the wagons, bury their minor differences and concentrate on keeping the money and power flowing to the capital. A threat from outside the building is after all, a threat to everybody inside the building. The other possibility is that enough members of the elite will realize that jig is up and strive to accommodate themselves to the new reality. In the coming months we are likely to see both gambits. Some politicians will opt to tap the tide; others will seek to master it.

That new reality is driven by economics. The real problem is that Washington — and Brussels globally considered — is running out of Other People’s Money (OPM). The Tea Parties are not the cause but the expression of the underlying problem. By all the standards of power the Tea Parties are a nothing. But that is to misunderstand their nature. The political elite can infiltrate the Tea Parties, revile it in the press and put it down as hard as they can, but like the weighted doll it will rebound incessantly because the deficit, unemployment and the declining confidence in the elite system will keep pushing it up.  The Tea Parties are the elite’s dark political dual. The only way they can vanquish the doppelganger is to leave the stage themselves.

The evolution of the Tea Party “threat” in the media has followed the classic trajectory of recognizing asymmetric threats: it was at first dismissed, then denigrated, then patronizingly understood and is now going through the stage of being set up as a national security threat boogeyman, when as it turns out, its main effect so far has been to eliminate a three-term Republican candidate for Senator. At some point the Washington insiders will understand they are facing a real, bona fide political challenge. But although the elite may go out clinging with their fingernails to the carpets of their offices their real enemy will always be not the Tea Partiers but the repo men. It’s the lack of money that will be their ultimate downfall.

 

[Edward Campbell]

Here, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions (§29) of the Copyright Act from the Globe and Mail is a good ℞ for conservatives in government everywhere:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinions/down-with-big-government/article1576419/

Down with big government
If the Conservatives had held to this principle, Rahim Jaffer, abortion and the Gay Pride parade wouldn’t have become issues

Tom Flanagan

May. 21, 2010

Rahim Jaffer, abortion, the Toronto Gay Pride parade – these three issues have recently involved the Conservative government in heated debate. There is a common thread to these seemingly unrelated issues. They all illustrate what happens to a conservative government when it increases, rather than decreases, the size of the state.

Attention on Mr. Jaffer has focused on whether he violated the regulations for lobbying when he attempted to find subsidies for “green” businesses. But that question has little practical importance, given that he did not facilitate any grants and did not make any money. The much more important question is why has a conservative government created a $1-billion Green Infrastructure Fund? Such discretionary granting programs are an irresistible attraction to would-be middlemen of all types. Indeed, advisers and representatives are indispensable if ordinary businessmen are to find their way through the maze of government rules.

In the 2004 election campaign, the Conservatives opposed government grants to business. Abandoning that position was perhaps part of what made it possible for them to win the 2006 election. As a one-time campaign manager, I am in favour of winning, but campaign positions can’t change economic reality. Subsidies to business remain economically counterproductive, and a conservative government should work to decrease rather than increase them.

The abortion issue arose when Prime Minister Stephen Harper chose to make the health of mothers and children in the Third World his signature issue as chair of the G8 and G20 summits but also chose not to include abortion in the package of health measures to be promoted. The suppressed question here is not whether abortion should be included, but why is a conservative government promoting government-to-government foreign aid? From Lord Peter Bauer’s Dissent on Development to Dambisa Moyo’s Dead Aid, scholars have found that government-to-government foreign aid, except for short-term disaster relief, actually impedes economic growth and good governance in the Third World.

There was no imperative for the government to seize on this issue. It would make more sense for Canada to steer the G8 and G20 into areas where we have already shown leadership, such as the management of the financial system, as indeed the Prime Minister is now doing. Maternal health may be a motherhood issue (pun intended) that everyone can support, but approaching it in terms of government-to-government foreign aid will mainly help international bureaucrats and Third World politicians. A better course would be to raise the standard of living in Third World countries by reducing trade barriers and encouraging foreign investment.

And then there is Gay Pride. Everyone loves a good costume party, even if the dress code is leather chaps and Stetsons for Calgary cowboys and leather hot pants and feather boas for Toronto gays. But why should the federal government subsidize any of this? The government was right to cut off the Toronto Gay Pride parade, but it should also have cut off the Calgary Stampede and all other regional festivals without some demonstrable intellectual or artistic value. To its credit, the government did indeed reduce this year’s subsidy to the Calgary Stampede, but not enough to make Torontonians forgive the slight to their Gay Pride.

Again, the basic issue is government subsidies to festivals in the name of economic stimulus. This program is supposed to be temporary, so let’s hope it really does disappear. In the meantime, however, cutting Gay Pride while continuing to support other festivals, even on a reduced scale, allows the government’s opponents to paint it as homophobic.

Mr. Harper used to argue that the Conservative Party had to contain both fiscal conservative and social conservative wings, and that the key to holding them together was to reduce the role of government in society. With smaller government, fiscal conservatives would applaud lower taxes and less regulation, while social conservatives would have less reason to fear that government was bent on destabilizing the natural family and traditional morality. Mr. Harper’s analysis was correct, as shown by these political difficulties his government has faced when it has enlarged rather than restricted the sphere of government.

In any case, reality is about to take over in our new era of soaring deficits. Some may see it as bad news that there won’t be any federal money for regional festivals or grandiose foreign-aid initiatives or uneconomic green projects. But the good news is that there will be fewer contrived issues to fight over.

Tom Flanagan is professor of political science at the University of Calgary and a former Conservative campaign manager.

The old adage, “who governs least governs best” is grounded in good, solid practicality. People are, always, most able to manage their own affairs for themselves. There are some essential public functions including maintaining a sound, stable, properly valued currency, the defence of the realm and so on but, basically, especially when “times are tough,” doing less is doing better.

Canadians, like Americans and Europeans, are in love with their ”freebies” (social programmes, including the world’s biggest one: the US Social Security system) and their favourite ”causes” (like being green and “pro-choice”) but now is a good time, because these are “tough times,” to get the government out of the way. Those who want to be green or who want to stand on one side or the other of e.g. abortion or gay rights may continue to do so, without any government money. That would be an honest, conservative approach.

 

[RangerRay]

An interesting article on the Tea Party:

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2010/may/27/tea-party-jacobins/?pagination=false

and a Burkean review of this article:

http://burkescorner.blogspot.com/2010/06/tea-party-movement-libertarian.html

 

[Edward Campbell]

Here, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions (§29) of the Copyright Act from the Globe and Mail is some “flesh and blood” to amplify Prof. Mark Lilla’s cri de cour from the “old left”  in the New York Review of Books (posted just above by RangerRay):

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/strong-showing-for-conservative-women-among-us-primary-voters/article1597553/

Strong showing for conservative women among U.S. primary voters
Anti-incumbent sentiment strong, but Arkansas Democratic senator survives

Steven R. Hurst

Washington — The Associated Press
Published on Wednesday, Jun. 09, 2010

Arkansas' incumbent Democratic senator overcame a primary election challenge by labour to keep her name on the ballot for the general election in November, when President Barack Obama's party legislative majority will be under threat.

Sen. Blanche Lincoln's victory in the runoff vote against Lt. Gov. Bill Halter marked a stunning defeat for organized labour, which had poured more than $5-million (U.S.) into an effort to dump the incumbent in retaliation for her departure from party orthodoxy on a variety of issues.

She bucked a trend which already had seen two senators, one from each party, defeated in earlier primary elections by rivals from their own parties.

Twelve states voted Tuesday, the busiest primary day so far, as the Democrat and Republican parties locked in candidates for the fall election.

Voters went to polling stations with the nation still battling to recover from the worst economic recession in decades, unemployment that lingers near 10 per cent and the unnerving and continuing devastation from the oil rig disaster in the Gulf of Mexico.

Beyond the building anti-incumbent sentiment, the primaries offered fresh success for the conservative, anti-Washington tea party movement. It has already swayed several Republican races and pushed moderate candidates to espouse hard right positions. The tea party movement favours tax cuts and less government.

Nikki Haley, a candidate backed by the movement, easily outdistanced Republican rivals in the South Carolina governor's race, despite a nasty campaign — ethnic slurs about her Sikh family background and unsubstantiated allegations of extramarital affairs. But she faces a runoff June 22 because she garnered just under the 50 per cent needed.

Rep. Nikki Haley, R-Lexington, who garnered the most votes in the GOP gubernatorial primary gives a victory speech to supporters at the Capital City Club in Columbia, S.C., on Tuesday, June 8, 2010. Haley will face Rep. Gresham Barrett in a runoff election in two weeks for the GOP nomination. Her husband Michael, son Nalin and daughter Rana stand behind her.
Rich Glickstein/AP

In the same state, veteran Republican congressman Bob Inglis badly trailed his rival and barely forced a runoff.

In the West, Nevada's Republican governor, Jim Gibbons, lost his bid for renomination after a term marked by a messy public divorce.

California Republicans chose two wealthy women with big-business backgrounds as candidates for the senate and governor.

Former eBay chief executive Meg Whitman won the Republican nomination for governor after investing more than $70-million of her own money in the campaign to succeed term-limited Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

She will face Democratic state Attorney General Jerry Brown, who was governor from 1975-83, and won the party's nomination again Tuesday.

The state's Senate race features a similar matchup. Former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina won the Republican nomination. She will face three-term Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer, a liberal stalwart who won renomination.

“Career politicians in Sacramento and Washington, D.C., be warned: You now face your worst nightmare — two businesswomen from the real world who know how to create jobs, balance budgets and get things done,” Whitman told supporters.

Democrats are bracing for losses in the November vote, which falls at the midpoint of Obama's term. Incumbent parties traditionally lose seats in midterm elections, and Democrats, with strong majorities in both chambers of Congress, have the most seats to defend.

The task for Democrats has been made even more difficult by the weak economy, and, most recently, growing criticism of Obama's handling of the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

In recent months, however, incumbents from both parties have been defeated by a restless and dissatisfied American electorate.

Lincoln, celebrating her chance for a third term representing the state that was home to former President Bill Clinton, said she had proved her vote “is not for sale and neither is the vote of the people of Arkansas.”

Under fire from both the left and the right, Lincoln now faces an uphill campaign against the Republican candidate, U.S. Rep. John Boozman, in the Nov. 2 general election.

Gibbons lost the Nevada race for the governor's slot after a tumultuous term that was marred by a bitter divorce and allegations of infidelities. He was defeated by Brian Sandoval, a former federal judge. Sandoval will face Rory Reid, who won the Democratic primary. Reid is the son of Harry Reid, the U.S. Senate majority leader.

The elder Reid won his party's nomination Tuesday, but he remains one of the most vulnerable Democrats in the November vote. His popularity has fallen in Nevada, a western swing state where unemployment is close to 14 per cent.

Reid will face Sharron Angle, the candidate favoured by tea party activists. That is the matchup many Democrats had hoped for, figuring Reid would have a better chance of defeating her than a more moderate opponent. Angle has advocated phasing out Social Security for younger workers and once suggested that alcohol should be illegal.

Tea party activists saw their favoured candidates win in a special election in Georgia to fill a congressional vacancy and in the Maine gubernatorial primary.

The most prominent candidate backed by tea party activists was Haley in South Carolina, who was helped by an endorsement from former Alaska Gov. Sarah Plain. Four candidates were vying to replace Gov. Mark Sanford, who last year confessed to an affair with an Argentine woman. Sanford was barred by term limits from seeking re-election.

While Haley easily outdistanced her opponents in the run to become the state's first female governor, she tallied just below the 50 per cent needed to avoid a June 22 runoff against congressman Grecism Barrette, who had 22 per cent of the vote.

She had to battle unsubstantiated claims from two men that she has had trysts with them. She also has been the target of racial slurs because her parents are Sikhs who emigrated from India.

The Republican nominee will face Vincent Sheheen, a state senator who won the Democratic nomination Tuesday.

And see this, also reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions (§29) of the Copyright Act from the Globe and Mail about one of the “new faces,” most definitely not one of the  “angry white men” who are typically blamed by people like Prof. Lilla for the decline of the old, deferential, order - Nikki Haley:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/meet-the-new-face-of-republican-power-female-high-powered-and-growing-in-strength/article1598566/

owered and growing in strength
Primaries vault GOP image beyond that of “angry white men”

Konrad Yakabuski

Meet Nimrata Randhawa – better known as Nikki Haley, the new feminine face of the Republican Party.

Well, one of them, anyway

From Carly Fiorina and Meg Whitman in California, to Susana Martinez in New Mexico and Sharron Angle in Nevada, the past week of primaries has left the GOP with an embarrassment of high-profile, high-powered female candidates to help counter its long-standing gender deficit.

Sarah Palin, the original self-described “mama grizzly,” has company.

The new faces present the GOP with an estrogen-laced opportunity to broaden its image beyond that of the “angry white men” peopling Tea Party protests and throw off common depictions of the party as the last bastion of reactionary nostalgics pining for an America that is long gone.

Ms. Haley, an elegant and energetic 38-year-old Indian-American member of the South Carolina state house, has GOP operatives giddy at the prospect.

She emerged from fourth in the polls only weeks ago to top the ballot in Tuesday’s South Carolina Republican governor’s primary, capturing national attention and putting a fresh face on a party whose front line has been looking somewhat stale-dated and overwhelmingly pasty and male.

Except, of course, for Ms. Palin. And Ms. Haley has the former GOP vice- presidential nominee to thank for her sudden stardom. After an endorsement last month from Ms. Palin, Ms. Haley rocketed in popularity to finish 27 percentage points ahead of her nearest rival in Tuesday’s primary.

Though she fell just short of the 50 per cent needed to win outright, and faces a June 22 runoff to secure her spot as the GOP nominee for the governor’s race, the Republican establishment has already rushed to embrace (and exploit) their new star and implore her rival to bow out now.

In a sometimes seedy primary race, Ms. Haley, the daughter of Sikh immigrants, overcame last-minute charges of not one, but two extramarital trysts (denied) and endured a racial slur by a member of the South Carolina Senate who bemoaned that with “one raghead in the White House, we don’t need another in the governor’s mansion.” Her grace and grit – and Tea Party-backed conservative bona fides – made her an overnight sensation.

“She is very articulate, has a lot of charisma and has caught fire in South Carolina in the last month,” former U.S. ambassador to Canada and ex-speaker of the state’s House of Representatives, David Wilkins, offered in an interview. “From the beginning of her service in 2005, she was an up-and-comer in the House and you could tell she was someone who was ambitious and conservative and had a real opportunity to go places.”

South Carolina is a staunchly Republican state, leading most pundits to predict that Ms. Haley can already start measuring the drapes at the gubernatorial mansion. Victory in November would leave her as the second American governor of Indian descent, along with Louisiana Republican Bobby Jindal, and make her an automatic power player in the GOP.

An accountant who began doing the books for the family business at 13, Ms. Haley is joined by Ms. Whitman, 53, the Republican candidate for California governor, and Ms. Fiorina, 55, the GOP’s Senate nominee in the Golden State, in projecting an image of modern, successful Republican women that is potentially appealing to female voters. The latter overwhelmingly identify with the Democratic Party – 44 per cent to 24 per cent according to recent analysis by Washington consultants NDN.

“Career politicians in Sacramento and Washington, D.C., be warned: You now face your worst nightmare – two businesswomen from the real world who know how to create jobs, balance budgets and get things done,” former eBay chief executive Ms. Whitman, in a nod to ex-Hewlett Packard CEO Ms. Fiorina, charged in her victory speech.

Ms. Martinez, a county district attorney in New Mexico who caught national attention with Ms. Palin’s endorsement, could help the party repair its antagonistic relationship with Hispanics. She is running to replace the popular Democratic governor, Bill Richardson, who is term-limited and cannot seek re-election.

Ms. Angle, 60, who won the Nevada Republican Senate primary with Tea Party backing but no endorsement from Ms. Palin, is the true outlier of the bunch. With libertarian views that parallel those of Kentucky Republican Senate candidate Rand Paul, the GOP establishment has kept its distance from her, even though she stands a strong chance of knocking off the embattled Democratic incumbent and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.

Except for Ms. Whitman, all of these female GOP candidates stridently oppose abortion. That might be a non-starter with the young Millennial women the GOP desperately needs to court.

And it will take more than this group of new recruits to help Republicans close the gender gap.

“Running candidates like Nikki Haley, Meg Whitman and Carly Fiorina is a good start,” noted Jennifer Lawless, director of the Women & Politics Institute at American University in Washington. “But it does not obscure the fact that the overwhelming majority of women candidates who are running this fall are Democrats.”

So are 69 of the 90 current female members of Congress.

For this week, however, GOP stands for Girls Obtaining Power.

 

[Edward Campbell]

Further: In the New York Review of Books article referenced just above, Prof. Mark Lilla said:

” Which brings us to Fox News. The right-wing demagogues at Fox do what demagogues have always done: they scare the living daylights out of people by identifying a hidden enemy, then flatter them until they believe they have only one champion—the demagogue himself. But unlike demagogues past, who appealed over the heads of individuals to the collective interests of a class, Fox and its wildly popular allies on talk radio and conservative websites have at their disposal technology that is perfectly adapted to a nation of cocksure individualists who want to be addressed and heard directly, without mediation, and without having to leave the comforts of home.

The media counterestablishment of the right gives them that. It offers an ersatz system of direct representation in which an increasingly segmented audience absorbs what it wants from its trusted sources, embellishes it in their own voices on blogs and websites and chatrooms, then hears their views echoed back as “news.” While this system doesn’t threaten our system of representative democracy, it certainly makes it harder for it to function well and regain the public’s trust.

The conservative media did not create the Tea Party movement and do not direct it; nobody does. But the movement’s rapid growth and popularity are unthinkable without the demagogues’ new ability to tell isolated individuals worried about their futures what they want to hear and put them in direct contact with one another, bypassing the parties and other mediating institutions our democracy depends on. When the new Jacobins turn on their televisions they do not tune in to the PBSNews Hour or C-Span to hear economists and congressmen debate the effectiveness of financial regulations or health care reform. They look for shows that laud their common sense, then recite to them the libertarian credo that Fox emblazons on its home page nearly every day: YOU DECIDE.”

Which brings me to this article, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions (§29) of the Copyright Act from the Globe and Mail, about a proposal by Quebecor to establish a new analog of Fox News in Canada:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/quebecor-eyes-fox-news-style-tv-for-canada/article1598301/

Quebecor eyes Fox News-style TV for Canada
Former Harper aide spearheading bid for channel that speaks to conservative-minded Canadians

Steven Chase And Susan Krashinsky

Ottawa and Toronto — From Thursday's Globe and Mail
Published on Wednesday, Jun. 09, 2010

The former chief spokesman for Prime Minister Stephen Harper  is spearheading a bid by Quebecor Inc. to set up a Fox News-style TV station in Canada with an unabashedly right-of-centre perspective.

Quebecor has filed an application with the CRTC, Canada's broadcast regulator, to operate an English-language news channel. The application has not yet been made public but a source says an announcement on the venture is “imminent.”

Kory Teneycke served as director of communications to Mr. Harper in 2008 and 2009 and this week was appointed vice-president of business development at Quebecor Media Inc.

He's been working since last summer on contract for Quebecor, investigating the feasibility of creating a more unconventional news outlet that speaks to conservative-minded Canadians.

The venture appears to be driven by the potential for profit rather than a desire to advance big-C Conservative fortunes in Canada.

It’s an attempt to mine what Mr. Teneycke believes is a largely untapped market for more right-of-centre TV offerings in Canada, acquaintances and people familiar with the plans say. Sources say Mr. Tenecyke pitched the proposal to Quebecor last year and has been trying to prove the business case for the station ever since.

Mirroring the format of both Fox TV and MSNBC in the U.S., the envisioned Canadian station would offer straightforward reporting but also conservative-minded opinion shows – a mix of programming that would be clearly separated rather than blended.

Ezra Levant, a conservative author and activist, is being seriously considered as a host for one of the new station's anchor opinion shows, sources say. Mr. Levant and Mr. Tenecyke have worked together as far back as the 1996 Winds of Change conference, a precursor to the unite-the-right movement that merged the Canadian Alliance and Progressive Conservative parties.

Mr. Levant rejected the idea he’s in line for a job. “I have no contract with any network whatsoever. I have no offer from any network whatsoever,” he said.

“I will always be involved in whatever [Mr. Teneycke] is doing but right now I am happy to be a freelancer doing stuff on demand, whether it’s CBC or CTV or [others].”

Mr. Teneycke refused to comment on his employer’s plans. “When Quebecor has something to announce we’ll announce it and right now I am afraid we don’t.”

Now, I have little faith in any business plan coming out of Quebecor, Pierre Karl Pélideau always reminds me of a old, sad joke which was told about another Québec “whiz kid”:

Q: “How do you make a small fortune?”
A: ”start with a large one!”

That being said there is precious little diversity in the news/commentary (they are already too intermingled for my tastes) provided by CTV/CBC/Global so I suspect a new “voice” might prosper if it has the right mix of “shouting heads.”

 

[GAP]

Well, if nothing else, it might offer an alternative to constant c-Conservative bashing that I see on a daily basis on all the present channels.

note to self: you shouldn't have to apologize for being conservative.....even if the TV says you should.... :

 

[Edward Campbell]

Maybe, according to this report, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions (§29) of the Copyright Act from the Globe and Mail, the new Canadian conservative news channel is moving faster than I thought it might with sometime Army.ca contributor David Akin being recruited:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/ottawa-notebook/fox-news-of-the-north-nabs-its-first-host/article1599162/

'Fox News of the North' nabs its first host

Jane Taber

Thursday, June 10, 2010

Fox News of the North has its first television host: David Akin resigned this morning as a parliamentary reporter with Canwest.

(Photo by David Akin posted to his Picasa gallery)

Mr. Akin is now poised to join Sun Media as the Ottawa bureau chief and be a television host. He has a background in television, having worked for CTV.

His resignation from the news service comes as The Globe reported this morning that former Harper communications director Kory Teneycke is overseeing the operations of a 24-hour cable channel that is to emulate the very popular Fox News network in the U.S.

A senior Ottawa source says that Mr. Teneycke, who left the PMO last year and did pundit stints at CTV and most recently and controversially, at CBC, “has mused with others in general terms about hosting programs.”

“His time at CTV and CBC will certainly give him insight into how different news-channels work,” says the source.

Indeed, the idea of the new news channel is, according to the Globe report, “a shot aimed directly at CBC and CTV, which for years has dominated the all-news format in English Canada.”

Meanwhile, Mr. Akin is a prolific reporter, operating on all platforms - heTwitters, he blogs, he has a Facebook page, he appears in the Canwest newspapers and he is on television.

Sometimes, however, his eagerness to be out first lands him in trouble. Last February, he was pinned as the source of reports that Canadian singing icon Gordon Lightfood had passed away.

That was wrong; Mr. Lightfoot was very much alive. And Mr. Akin later explained on his blog that he was simply “re-Tweeting” an alert that he had seen or that had been reported to his news service.

So really, he wasn’t the source of the misinformation; rather, he was simply passing along what he had read.

This morning, Mr. Akin - reached by the Globe through Twitter and email - wouldn’t confirm exactly what his new role would be, saying instead that Quebecor, the owner of Sun Media, would saying something “shortly.”

“I'm sure you can appreciate that it's probably best left to them to say anything about their plans but, yes, I resigned today from Canwest,” he wrote.

Who’s next?

Who, indeed.

 

[a_majoor]

Progressivism and Classical Liberalism may in fact be swept away by changes happening under our feet, everything from ubiquitous communications to access to vast databased of information to the end of "credentialism" (anyone can contribute to Wikipedia, or start their own blog, own band, own movie studio etc. with cheap consumer grade equipment...).

What comes next is unknown territory, the same way oligarchies or monarchies were unable to comprehend the waves of democratic or Socialist revolution.

http://pajamasmedia.com/eddriscoll/2010/07/16/the-ancien-regime-isnt-going-out-without-a-fight

The Ancien Regime Isn’t Going Out Without a Fight
July 16, 2010 - by Ed Driscoll

Jonah Goldberg asks, “When Did the Rules Change?”

When Rome was “falling,” did it feel like it? When all of the tasty, leafy fronds started vanishing, did the dinosaurs say, “So this is what extinction looks like”? When British troops signed up for a quick war in 1914, they expected to be “home by Christmas.” They certainly didn’t say “goodbye to all that” — in the words of Robert Graves — until long after they realized “all that” had in fact disappeared.

I’m beginning to wonder if the current political moment is much, much, more significant than most of us realize. The rules may have changed in ways no one would have predicted two years ago. And perhaps 10 years from now we’ll look back on this moment and it will all seem so obvious.

In 2008, American liberalism seemed poised for its comeback. The pendulum of Arthur Schlesinger’s “cycle of history” was swinging back toward a new progressive era. Obama would be the liberal Reagan.

Now that all looks preposterous. Of course, considerable blame can be laid at a White House that seems confused about how to relate to the American people when the American people don’t share the White House’s ideological agenda. Indeed, the White House seems particularly gifted at generating issues that put it crosswise with the majority of voters — from the Arizona immigration lawsuit to the cotton-mouthed explanations about whether or not it considers NASA’s primary mission to be boosting the self-esteem of Muslim youth.

But it would be foolish to over-read the importance of much of that. Politicians are sometimes dealt bad cards and play them well; sometimes they are dealt good cards and play them badly. But the basic political rules stay the same.

But what about when the rules change? For nearly a century now, the rules have said that tough economic times make big government more popular. For more than 40 years it has been a rule that environmental disasters — and scares over alleged ones — help environmentalists push tighter regulations. According to the rules, Americans never want to let go of an entitlement once they have it. According to the rules, populism is a force for getting the government to do more, not less. According to the rules, Americans don’t care about the deficit during a recession.

And yet none of these rules seem to be applying; at least not too strongly. Big government seems more unpopular today than ever. The Gulf oil spill should be a Gaia-send for environmentalists, and yet three-quarters of the American people oppose Obama’s drilling ban. Sixty percent of likely voters want their newly minted right to health care repealed. Unlike Europe, where protesters take to the streets to save their cushy perks and protect a large welfare state, the tea-party protesters have been taking to the streets to trim back government.

But even on the Continent the rules are changing. European governments have turned into deficit hawks to the point where the American president feels the need to lecture them on their stinginess.

Of course, he increasingly feels the same need here at home as our out-of-control debt is becoming a live issue, despite the fact that voters should be clamoring — according to the rules — for more taxpayer-funded jobs.

As Margaret Thatcher has been quoted as saying, “The Facts of Life are Conservative.” Western civilization evolved over eons of trial and error. In contrast, the Rules of Progressivism were artificially created during a fairly small window of time in the late 19th century. While they varied to the degree that they were implemented in America, England, Germany, Italy and Russia during the first decades of the century that followed, they were of their time — and that time was the Industrial Revolution. Machinery was Big — from the steam locomotive to the assembly line to the hydroelectric plant to the printing press, the radio towers and the film studios. Thus they were expensive to acquire, and thus, ownership of that machinery was rare. Because it was expensive to change the assembly line, mass production replaced artisan craftsmanship. Mass industry created mass products produced for mass men who consumed mass entertainment.

For the first half of the 20th century, that model worked reasonably well in America. By the mid-1950s though, white-collar workers began to outnumber blue collar workers in the US, signaling the beginning of the end of the industrial revolution. Mass production slowly began to be replaced by more-finely tuned products. Mass entertainment followed as well. By the early to mid-1980s, there were a couple of dozen cable TV channels. Last time I checked, my DirecTV directory has literally hundreds. More importantly, there are literally millions of blogs and Websites on the Internet. Amazon makes almost every book produced in the last 100 years — and nearly every significant piece of popular and classical music, and vast swatches of Hollywood’s back catalog available. eBay takes up the rest of the slack.

But so much of the mindset of Progressivism, particularly its economics, remains trapped in the first half of the 20th century — which creates multiple levels of cognitive dissonance. First, there’s the “Cargo Cult” of the New Deal, as Jonah dubbed it in an earlier op-ed. But red tape, and the left’s general “standing athwart history” mindset, morphing from “Not in My Backyard” to “Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anyone” (AKA “BANANAS”). means that actually building New Deal-era projects such as Hoover Dam are almost impossible. (Not coincidentally, these days, environmentalists are much more interested in removing dams than building them.) Then there’s the constant goal of expanding socialist “freebies” such as welfare and socialized medicine, even when wide swatches of the American public — and increasingly Europe — understand them to ultimately be bottomless financial sinkholes.

Then there’s constant distrust of anyone to the right of progressivism — and not just Republicans and conservatives. As we noted yesterday, Obama-loving Democrats in early 2008 absolutely demonized Hillary Clinton, Geraldine Ferraro, Bill Clinton, and other Democratic stalwarts, who happened to be perceived as being marginally to the right of Obama. (And note again how quickly Bill and Hillary were welcomed back by the left once Obama achieved victory. It’s not personal, Sonny. It’s strictly business.) When Bill Ayers = regular guy down the street and Rev. Wright’s speeches are considered a “home run” by CNN, but you view the actual regular guy down the street who goes to a Tea Party tax protest one Sunday rather than watch the Cowboys-Eagles game on TV as being akin to a terrorist or “the enemy,” it might be time to check your assumptions about the world.

There’s also the systemic mindset of ban everything. During the latter years of the 19th century, and the first half of the 20th century, New Deal-era Progressives believed in consumer goods as a symbol of America’s manufacturing strength, and between private industry and government, built the railroads and highways to distribute them, and the electrical infrastructure to power them.

These days? “The American people are spoiled,” so “we’re going to take things away from you on behalf of the common good.” Ronald Reagan liked to quip, “government’s view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.” Within a couple of decades of Reagan departing as governor of California, Sacramento decided it would as likely ban something as tax and regulate it.

All of which is a roundabout way of saying that progressivism is a surprisingly old, and increasingly frayed philosophy, as the reality and technology of the present day continues to move away from its century-old roots. One of the writers on Saturday Night Live was once quoted as saying, you can only be avant-garde for so long before you become garde. As I’ve asked before, are we witnessing the old guard’s dotage? If so, chances are, its twilight years will likely be many. What will it morph into next?

In the short term, things will likely remain ugly.  Even if Republicans take the House this year, and the Senate this year or in 2012, Barack Obama won’t morph into Bill Clinton. Unlike Clinton, who turned on a dime from jamming socialized medicine down voters’ throats, and attempting to ban guns in 1993 to ‘94 to uttering “the era of big government is over” just a few years later, when the the GOP controlled both houses of Congress, Charles Krauthammer writes that if President Obama wins a second term, it’ll likely be a glutinous orgy of taxing, spending, and regulating:

Act One is over. The stimulus, Obamacare, and financial reform have exhausted his first-term mandate. It will bear no more heavy lifting. And the Democrats will pay the price for ideological overreaching by losing one or both houses, whether de facto or de jure. The rest of the first term will be spent consolidating these gains (writing the regulations, for example) and preparing for Act Two.

The next burst of ideological energy — massive regulation of the energy economy, federalizing higher education, and “comprehensive” immigration reform (i.e., amnesty) — will require a second mandate, meaning reelection in 2012.

That’s why there’s so much tension between Obama and the congressional Democrats. For Obama, 2010 matters little. If the Democrats lose control of one or both houses, Obama will likely have an easier time in 2012, just as Bill Clinton used Newt Gingrich and the Republicans as his foil for his 1996 reelection campaign.

Obama is down, but it’s very early in the play. Like Reagan, he came here to do things. And he’s done much in his first 500 days. What he has left to do, he knows, must await his next 500 days — those that come after reelection.

So 2012 is the real prize. Obama sees far, farther than even his own partisans. Republicans underestimate him at their peril.

Of course, that assumes the administration will stay relentlessly focused going forward, and also be able to bully a Congress that, it seems quite safe to say, will be more to the right of its current iteration. As Moe Lane writes, “Tell me again of this administration’s awesome message discipline.”

But communication breakdowns aside, the Ancien Régime isn’t going out without a fight — if the appearance of temporary good fortune arrives in November, Tea Partiers better not get complacent in the coming years.

Update (7/18/10): Bill Quick quotes from Jonah’s essay and writes “Good hunch,” adding that what we’re witnessing “is the leading edge of a transformation more far reaching than the discovery of the usefulness of fire, or the transition into agriculture, or the advent of industrialization:”

Whether you call it the Singularity, or the technological revolution, or simply magic, the fact is that we are in a virtuous spiral upwards as regards to what we know, what we can learn, and what we can do.

The Progressive ideology much of the western world has labored under for a century or so is a product of the industrial revolution. It will die and be replaced by something else as the technological revolution sweeps all before it. Political wonks live in the sort of bubble where they give primacy to politics over everything else, little understanding that politics grow from more basic factors, and those factors are currently being rearranged, rebuilt, newly created or destroyed by forces far more powerful than politics or ideology. Even the oldest ideology of all – religion – sways and teeters in the face of the oncoming storms.

The old Soviet Union – brittle and fragile – fell to that rising wave first. Our politics, in fact, the permanency of politics in general, will succumb soon. Your time frame of ten years, by the way, is just about right. By then it should be perfectly clear that The Old Ways so beloved of the standard-issue conservative dogma have been irretrievably shattered.

What’s coming? I’m not sure. I have some notions, and I’ll expand on them one of these days, but Jonah, you do have this one insight correct: Something is happening here, and almost nobody knows what it is, do they, Mr. Jones?

Certainly not the Ancien Regime; Glenn Reynolds links to blogger C.J. Burch, who spots this similarity between today and a century ago:

“In the days before World War I all of the Princes of Europe, all its nobles, all its educated and cultural elites saw a storm on the horizon. A storm that could lay all they had built low. Yet not one of them, not one, could muster the strength or the courage to do anything other than what they had always done before and what had brought them all to the brink of disaster.”

If that’s an apt comparison, let’s hope the societal transformations to come are on the whole much more benign than those that followed World War I.

 

[HavokFour]

I'm going to vote Conservative for the sole purpose of not letting Dalton get in again and slip in another tax right under our noses.

 

[George Wallace]

I'm going to vote Conservative for the sole purpose of not letting Dalton get in again and slip in another tax right under our noses.

I was surprised last night to watch the news and the ONT Government is encouraging the Provincial unions and Civil Servants to freeze their wages.  This after raising taxes and "Fees".  I guess they have a "Death Wish".

 

[HavokFour]

I was surprised last night to watch the news and the ONT Government is encouraging the Provincial unions and Civil Servants to freeze their wages.  This after raising taxes and "Fees".  I guess they have a "Death Wish".

They know they have no chance in hell of being re-elected. All this tax BS is them lining their pockets for a comfortable retirement.

Fun fact: ███████████████████████████████████████████████████

Edit: I am a sleep deprived derp. Disregard last statement.

 

[Fishbone Jones]

Fun fact: Did you know the "eco" tax here on certain items (paint, electronics, etc) doesn't even go towards environmental programs? Straight into Dalton's pocket.

You're going to have to cite reputable sources for a statement like that.

You've been getting a bit of a free ride since you got here, now it's time to start following the rules.

Milnet.ca Staff

 

[The Bread Guy]

Fun fact: Did you know the "eco" tax here on certain items (paint, electronics, etc) doesn't even go towards environmental programs? Straight into Dalton's pocket.

1)  What recceguy so eloquently said.
2)  Looks like the eco-tax is soon to be past tense:

The McGuinty government is set to scrap its recently imposed eco fees on thousands of consumer products in the wake of consumer anger and retailer irritation.

Environment Minister John Gerretsen is expected to announce today that the Liberals will eliminate the environmental fees on thousands of potentially hazardous products -- less than three weeks after retailers were required by Stewardship Ontario to start charging customers on new products from fluorescent bulbs to fire extinguishers ....

I was surprised last night to watch the news and the ONT Government is encouraging the Provincial unions and Civil Servants to freeze their wages.  This after raising taxes and "Fees".  I guess they have a "Death Wish".

There's always "the Rae solution"  ;D

 

[a_majoor]

More on the culture wars. I never really thought Bob Dylan represented the "Left" despite what most people said, his music was and is his own. On the other hand, I had never thought of his music as representing the "Right" either:

http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/the-bridge-bob-dylan-the-ruling-class-and-the-country-class/?singlepage=true

The Bridge: Bob Dylan, the ‘Ruling Class,’ and the ‘Country Class’
How Bob Dylan checked out of the culture war.
September 15, 2010 - by Brendan Bernhard

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Angelo M. Codevilla’s essay, “America’s Ruling Class — and the Perils of Revolution,” published this summer in the American Spectator, and released this week in book form, has already accomplished what few essays do: it has touched a nerve. In his essay, Codevilla contrasts the “Ruling Class,” including both Republicans and Democrats but tending leftward in word and deed, with the the “country class,” consisting of heterogonous individualists who’d rather be judged on their merits than their beliefs and affiliations. Despite its name, it should be emphasized that you can belong to the “country class” and still live in a tattoo-stained neighborhood in a big, fashionable burg like New York City. In fact, many do, even if they often feel a need to lower their voices.

At the heart of Codevilla’s essay lies the charge that today’s “ruling class” was trained to think the same way and speak the same left-of-center ideological language. This he sees as a tragedy for intellectual diversity, and as a danger to America’s future.

Culturally, who represents the “ruling class”? Look at any movie and TV screen, open any newspaper or magazine, and the A-list names and candidates will come tumbling forth like clothes out of a dryer opened mid-cycle. For it often seems as if every actor, singer, novelist, screen writer, TV producer, hairdresser’s assistant, sound engineer, and failed Foley artist aligns his or her beliefs with those of the Democratic Party and will continue to do so until he or she drops dead.

But culturally, who represents the “country class” while also being respected by the “ruling class”? Is there even a Laundromat? Technically, yes, albeit one peopled by strange, threatening,  or quarrelsome types like Clint Eastwood, John Malkovich, Ted Nugent, Elizabeth Hasselbeck, Robert Duvall, and Sylvester Stallone, several possibly armed. Would anyone even dare to go in?

The obvious response on the “country class” side, having a paucity of crossover cultural icons to their name, is to put forward a politician who will immediately and inevitably be covered in opprobrium on a thousand Web sites. After all, few people like politicians. As a certain American sang scornfully over four decades ago, “The drunken politician leaps / Upon the street, where mothers weep.” And if there’s one person who could be said to represent the “country class” it’s the very man who penned those words, namely Bob Dylan. The man, moreover, who was the “voice” and inspiration of the liberal “ruling class” in its infancy, and who nonetheless has long stood apart from its obsessions and precepts.

In the mainstream media, Dylan’s image is still rigidly defined by the social upheavals of the 1960s, though he rid himself of those shackles when he was only 26. To be precise, he divorced himself from the increasingly leftist, anti-American politics of his own generation when, in 1967, he moved to a house in upstate New York to record the Americana-drenched Basement Tapes with The Band. Soon after that, while free love made love to riots and psychedelic stalks burst from a million brain sockets, he married, started a family, and wrote more good songs, few of which had revolutionary applications, although “Dear Landlord” will surely always have a place in city-dwellers’ cramped, rent-obsessed hearts.

So while Dylan may not be conservative in the conventional sense — he’s sui generis, if anyone is — he is definitely not a member of the “ruling class” as described by Codevilla, even if many of its members still regard him with a mixture of wonder and awe. That they do so is partly based on merit and partly on generational solidarity. As the late New Yorker writer, George W.S. Trow, pointed out, rock ‘n’ roll is the baby boomers’ major contribution to the culture and they will forever circle the wagons to protect its status. And by boomer consensus, the most important rock ‘n’ roller of all is Dylan.

Yet by the standards of his ruling-class peers, Dylan is an old-fashioned patriot who wears cowboy hats, loves Texas as much as Greenwich Village, and spoke warmly to Rolling Stone of George W. Bush, whom he’d met when the latter was governor of Texas, while also wishing President Obama well.

Nor does Dylan endorse the anti-Christian fervor prevalent among today’s intellectuals. On the contrary, his work has been suffused in the Bible (Old and New Testament) from the start. One might even argue that the religious, mystical strain which runs through his songs plays a distinct role in keeping his audience interested. They hear it in so few other places, after all, it’s something of a relief. As someone remarks in Don DeLillo’s novel, Underworld, people like to have priests and churches around, or at least to know they’re there, because it would be deeply disconcerting to even the most militant atheist if they all vanished overnight.

Baby boomers have gone ballistic on Dylan from time to time. There was his Evangelical phase of the late ‘70s and early ‘80s (which really drove them crazy for all sorts of reasons, including the fact that he is Jewish), as well as the bitter disillusionment among folkies when he went electric in 1965. But as time has gone by, he has been forgiven his various trespasses against the secular order: Dylan is Dylan, after all. As Christopher Hitchens, who calls him “a great poet,” stated in a recent interview with Hugh Hewitt: “I think for every decade … there is a special voice. And certainly for my lot, it was him.”

That left-leaning boomers have put their philosophical differences with Dylan to one side in appreciation of his lyrical gift is to their credit, of course. But the strain often shows. During an interview with Jann Wenner in the 40th anniversary edition of Rolling Stone, Dylan replied to a question about the urgency of solving global warming with the mocking, “Where’s the global warming? It’s freezing here.”

When Wenner pressed him as to who would solve the world’s problems if not politicians, Dylan came out with words so Biblically harsh or nakedly Libertarian they are frankly astonishing to the modern ear. Forget politicians: “The world owes us nothing,” he told Wenner, “not one single thing.” And: “Human nature really hasn’t changed in 3,000 years. … It’s not meant to change. It cannot change. It’s not made to change.” Which does rather leave social engineers out in the cold.

OK, so maybe Dylan’s just a callous multi-millionaire who doesn’t need any government hand-outs, thanks very much. But he’s a song writer, not a policy maker, and he was expressing a view of the universe, not producing a sound-bite for “This Week In Politics.” With Codevilla’s essay in mind, we can also interpret his words in another way: He’s not playing the “what’s-the-password” game (which Wenner so desperately wanted him to) of enthusiastically embracing certain ideas while punitively condemning others, which Codevilla describes as the way to get ahead in modern America.

But to emphasize the ideological or even the counter-ideological is to go against the spirit of Dylan himself. What can be gleaned from the totality of his songs is a fixation on the eternals: love between men and women; an obsession with the mystery of creation and/or God; reverence for freedom and the individual; a love-hate relationship with urban life; and a forceful facing-up to mortality that many of his peers are surgically cutting and putting off.

Not everything Codevilla imputes to the “country class” characterizes Dylan. How could it? But this passage did catch my eye: “Unlike the ruling class, the country class does not share a single intellectual orthodoxy, set of tastes, or ideal lifestyle. Its different sectors draw their notions of human equality from different sources: Christians and Jews believe it is God’s law. Libertarians assert it from Hobbesian and Darwinist bases. Many consider equality the foundation of Americanism. Others just hate snobs.”

That fits Dylan not only because he has a song to represent practically everything on that list, but because above all, you can be sure he drinks deeply from equality’s American well. Dylan is not more impressed by a professor than by a construction worker. He may be famous for songs about outlaws and outcasts, but in the song “Dignity” (whose definitive version was released on the first CD of Tell Tale Signs in 2008), he also tipped his hat to the police:

Searching high, searching low,
Searching everywhere I know,
Asking the cops wherever I go,
“Have you seen Dignity?”

Which is what a lot of Americans are searching for at the moment, although unlike Dylan, it wouldn’t occur to them to ask the “cops” for directions, particularly when the entity being pursued is an abstraction. Yet dignity, or a democratically dignified way of life for all, is precisely what the police – and not only the police — are ultimately supposed to uphold.

It’s just one of those witty, slyly old-fashioned, paradoxical sleights-of-hand that makes Dylan an authentic American artist and perhaps a bridge over the increasingly choppy waters that divide the “ruling class” and the “country class.” Just don’t expect him to admit to it — or to anything else for that matter.

Brendan Bernhard is a contributing editor to the New York Sun, where he was the television critic from 2006-08, and a former staff writer at LA Weekly. He writes about culture, politics, and sports, and is the author of White Muslim (Melville House), a study of converts to Islam in the West.

 

[ModlrMike]

While I don't agree with everything in the foregoing article, it raises some things to think about. It would be foolish to distill the left vs right comparison into simple concepts, but there's perhaps a germ of truth here. In that the conservatives prefer to be judged by their efforts or accomplishments, where liberals prefer to be judged by their beliefs. One only has to recollect how many times the term "right thinking" is uttered by the Liberals and NDP to illustrate the point here in Canada. Such a term is an anathema to a true conservative who probably doesn't care, and is not impressed by what you think but is likely more concerned or impressed by what you do.

 

[a_majoor]

The Conservative trope may be radically redefined in the near future, as activists like the TEA party movement rise up and consume the old party establishment. I think this was once the goal of the Reform Party movement in Canada, but after reaching a high tide in the late 90's, it seems to have faded away. I wonder what the long term will hold for the TEA partiers?

http://pajamasmedia.com/rogerkimball/2010/09/15/some-thoughts-on-the-conventional-wisdom-department-of-psephological-prognostication/?singlepage=true

Some Thoughts on the Conventional Wisdom, Department of Psephological Prognostication
September 15, 2010 - by Roger Kimball

Talking with various friends these past weeks about the upcoming election, I was often put in mind of Matthew 13:42: ibi erit fletus et stridor dentium: There will be wailing and gnashing of teeth. The primaries yesterday provided a preview of what I had in mind. “Oh, those awful tea-party candidates! They’re ruining everything.”

Are they?

Exhibit A in the brief is Christine O’Donnell, the tea-party-endorsed candidate to who cleaned Michael Castle’s clock in the Republican Senate primary in Delaware. Castle, now 71, has been in politics since he was weaned — well, since 1966. Will he go out and get a real job now? Nobody knows. Early signs are that he is planning to take his marbles and march home in a huff. He certainly won’t be helping C. O’Donnell.

I say that Castle is a Republican. But he is not what you would call a conservative. Item: he supported the Obama administration’s  cap and tax (formerly know and “cap and trade”) legislation last year. This indeed seems to have been the catalyst for the spirit of opposition among conservatives. In due course, that opposition threw up Christine O’Donnell as a challenger, much to the consternation of the Republican establishment, which went from regarding her as an unsavory distraction to a dangerous interloper who, by refusing to play by the rules, was jeopardizing the whole Republican come-back strategy.

I admit to feeling conflicted about this. Many of those friends I mentioned are in the “fletus et stridor dentium” crowd on this issue. They’re smart folks, and God knows they’re much savvier about politics than your humble correspondent. Why, even Karl Rove, than whom (in my book) no one is smarter about politics, concluded that, with O’Donnell’s victory, “this is not a race we’re going to be able to win.” Republican strategist Mike Murphy agreed: “I’m sad to say the Delaware primary results tonight are straight out of Harry Reid’s dream journal,” he said when O’Donnell’s victory was certain.

Among Republicans, anyway, it was Matthew 13:42 time, all over the place. For Michael Castle may have been a “moderate” (i.e., left-leaning) Republican, but at least he was one of us. He was also the Great White Hope in the Delaware Senate race.  He was the establishment-anointed candidate who (so the pundits told us) might actually beat Chris Coons, the presumptive Democratic candidate, thereby recapturing “Joe Biden’s seat” (as the proprietary formula inevitably puts it) and, just possibly, the Senate itself for the Republicans.

Now here we are about to be cast into the old tenebras exteriores (Matthew 8:12), all because of folks like Sarah Palin, Christine O’Donnell, and Sharron Angle, the tea-partier who had the temerity to run and win in the Republican Senate primary in Nevada (how do you spell “Harry Reid”?) — why don’t they wise up and play the game as it ought to be played?

As I say, many of my friends feel this way. Whatever their fondness for the tea party as a special form of political theater, they are very worried that the movement is not ready for prime time when it comes to vetting candidates. Sure, they see that the Zeitgeist suddenly changed some months ago. At the end of 2008, it was full of Hope & Change.  Now Obama is in free fall and many of the beautiful people who supported him are busy looking at their shoes and hoping they won’t be called on in class. This was shaping up to be a Republican autumn. Just look at the tea party convocations around the country!  It will still be a Republican autumn, but not nearly so delicious as it might have been. O’Donnell. Angle. They’re embarrassments. Moreover, they can’t win. Karl Rove admitted it: O’Donnell, he said, is one of the party’s candidates who have “serious character problems, who cause ordinary voters who are not philosophically aligned with us to not vote for our candidates out of concern of what they said and what they do.” Fletus, I mean to say, et stridor dentium. Call the dentist!

I wish I knew where Karl got his crystal ball. I’d like to put in an order for the same model.  I have never met anyone smarter about politics than he.  Thinking back over his predictions, he has usually been right. Back when everyone assured me that Hillary Clinton was it in 2008, he came to a lunch I attended and warned  that Obama would not only be much more difficult to beat but would also be much more dangerous. He got it in one.

Karl’s record of perspicacity gives me pause. Nevertheless, I wonder. I do not have any brief one way or the other about Ms. O’Donnell or Ms. Angle. I mean, I hope they both win, but I do not know enough about either to entertain the serious qualms that keep people like Karl Rove from a sound sleep. When I look at the recent primaries that have brought people like O’Donnell and Angle to the fore, I see not them only but a vast and growing movement of people who are disenchanted with business as usual in Washington. The primary focus of their disenchantment is the Democrats and their statist initiatives. But there is plenty of animus left over to cover the Republicans and their statist initiatives, too.

“Democracy,” Ronald Reagan observed, “is less a system of government than it is a system to keep government limited, unintrusive: A system of constraints on power to keep politics and government secondary to the important things in life, the true sources of value found only in family and faith.” Democrats may be the most egregious violators of that precept, but plenty of Republicans have followed suit. That’s the thing that scares people about the tea party. It operates outside the jurisdiction set down by the other parties, be they Democratic or Republican. All those sources of patronage, wells of political preferment, reservoirs of prestige, perquisites, and power: That’s what politics as usual is about. It has built up an impressive institutional structure. It’s worked, more or less, for many decades. And now this decentralized, grass-roots organization (in so far as it is an organization) threatens to upset the whole apple cart.

My friend Kevin Williamson got it just right, I think (h/t to Instapundit): What O’Donnell’s victory should really communicate, Kevin wrote at NRO,  “is that the Right needs a lot more Club for Growth–style candidate-recruiting efforts. If conservatives do not like O’Donnell, then they should be out identifying better candidates to run against vulnerable RINOs — because somebody is going to run. These incumbent takedowns are going to inspire a lot of new people to get into electoral politics, many of them without the sort of experience or backgrounds that Establishment types are comfortable with. Power, like nature, abhors a vacuum.”

And what’s that other observation about power? The one from Lord Acton? The one about power corrupting and absolute power corrupting absolutely? I suspect that the establishment, whether its mascot is a donkey or an elephant, hasn’t really taken that on board. My friends are much more certain than I am about what it’s all going to mean in November.  Let’s wait and see.

 

[Brad Sallows]

I think Reform helped the conservative side of the political ledger to realign, although it took long enough.  Ultimately I expect the TP to do the same thing, albeit not as destructively.

 

[a_majoor]

The people championing the "Conservative" (AKA Classical Liberal) cause need to work very hard to be seen as upholders of the Rule of Law and uprooters of corruption in fact as well as theory:

http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/lawless-legislators-the-federal-rupture-of-the-rule-of-law/?singlepage=true

Lawless Legislators: The Federal Rupture of the Rule of Law
In recent years, it has succumbed to the rule of men.
September 24, 2010 - by Jeff Perren

    If men were angels, no government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.

    James Madison, Federalist Paper No. 51 (1788)

The Rule of Lawlessness

In the American system the legislature is tasked with making laws, and the executive with executing them. For those rules to be just laws they have to be comprehensible and apply equally to all. Following them must entail reasonably predictable results. To be valid they must not contradict the Constitution; they must not violate the basic rights it outlines.

Lately, Congress and the Obama administration alike fail on all those criteria. While that’s been a problem in the U.S. for generations now, that trend has worsened since the 2006 elections, and accelerated in the past 20 months. The Democratic majority that came to power in 2006 has violated the rule of law at every turn. The administration has upped the ante: from the petty to the critical, their actions have often been lawless in a very literal sense of the term.

In a dozen small ways, the ruling class expresses its contempt for the law and its intended function of protecting the rights of citizens.

Obama’s aunt flagrantly violates immigration law for years but is not deported, thanks to her family connection. Timothy Geithner neglects to pay his taxes and is still appointed Treasury secretary. Chris Dodd gets a sweetheart real estate loan from Countrywide and remains in office years afterward to retire with a comfy pension.

There is, unfortunately, a treasure trove of major examples from which to choose.

ObamaCare violates the Constitution in at least three different ways, and still passed. The financial reform bill lets regulators force any bank in the country out of business whenever they decide it represents an undue risk to “the system.” Obama himself violated long-standing bankruptcy laws by giving preference to union interests during GM’s reorganization. He appointed Ken Feinberg to hand out billions of BP’s dollars according to that petty dictator’s personal sense of fair play.

Maybe most worrisome of all is the half-complete CyberSpace National Asset Act, which would allow the president to shut down the Internet whenever deemed necessary for “national security.” (As it stands, the bill would limit the shutdown period to 120 days, but that can be extended by Congress. Cold comfort.) A more dangerous affront to free speech and the property rights of hundreds of millions of users would be hard to imagine.

This is the rule of men — and not good men at that — run amok.

Blending the Separation of Powers

One of the prime ways this has happened is the accelerated deterioration of the separation of powers in recent years.

As the examples above show, the executive has undertaken to decide issues intended to be left to the courts. In inserting himself into the discussion of which creditors get paid how much and in what order, Obama willfully ignored long-established precedents in bankruptcy law.

Likewise, Congress has significantly delegated its role to federal agencies who not only define details, but basic rules that serve as de facto laws. Those agencies have in turn usurped the role of courts by enforcing their own rulings. The Supreme Court sealed the deal by allowing the EPA to set acceptable standards of air quality, overriding the legislature’s role.

Undermining Compliance

    To make laws that man can not and will not obey serves to bring all law into contempt. It is very important in a republic that the people should respect the laws, for if we throw them to the winds, what becomes of civil government?

    Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1860)

Worse still for the morality and practicality of the rule of law, Congress has been busy passing laws no one will or can obey.

Attempting to coerce individuals to participate in health insurance commerce undercuts both in several ways. It’s a grotesque extension of the Commerce Clause (as the administration implicitly recognizes, shifting its legal argument every week to a new rationalization). It’s a blatant encouragement for millions to refuse to comply. Writing the statute so the IRS enforcement provision carries no teeth is just one more recognition of that.

Banks can’t possibly comply with the provisions of the Financial Stability Act. Even after creating yet another mammoth (2,300 page) bill, federal agencies now have to craft thousands of detailed regulations, several of them brand-new with the passage of the bill. Hearing this criticism, its chief sponsor Sen. Dodd responded:

    It’s the dumbest argument I’ve ever heard. What do they expect me to write, a 100,000-page bill? This is far beyond the capacity, the expertise, the knowledge of a Congress.

The Privileged and the Peons

The rule of law is supposed to support peaceful social integration. That’s hampered when Congress divides citizens into favored and disfavored groups, violating a basic principle of good law: that they should apply equally to all citizens.

The financial reform bill does nothing to alter the federally backstopped status of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the two GSEs at the center of the economic crisis of 2008. The recent ethics charges against Maxine Waters make clear that there are banks, and then there are congressional family projects. The Feds closed Obama’s pet, ShoreBank, then it re-opened the next day under a new name without so much as a bark from the Department of Justice.

Beyond cronyism, the provisions of some of the laws themselves create variations in status among citizens. Following a decades-long pattern of exempting the political class from its own legislation, ObamaCare allows the privileged few to avoid signing up. The financial reform bill further undermines the constitutional rights of executives by involving the federal government even deeper in compensation. (See “Clawbacks,” Section 954, and “Additional Regulations specifying ‘excess compensation,’” Section 956.)

Enforcement has followed a similar pattern. The thugs of the New Black Panthers walk without even a trial because they happen to be radical left-wing activists. Charlie Rangel has yet to see a day in jail, or even a hefty fine. ACORN is still in business, merely weakened and metastasized under a hundred new names.

The Creation of Chaos

Last but far from least, in far too many cases, attempting to follow the laws ensures chaos. It’s been demonstrated over and over again for centuries that price controls invariably produce unintended consequences the controllers themselves dislike. ObamaCare guarantees that no one will have a clue how insurances rates are likely to move. The Financial Stability Act will generate further uncertainty in the derivatives and mortgage markets.

The Progressively Heinous Results

From the creation of the Magna Carta in 1215 to the ratification of the United States Constitution in 1789, Western civilization struggled hard to establish the basic principles of justice and the protection of individual rights.

America’s ruling class, who in a more just society were the severely restrained class, have spent the past century undermining that effort every way they could imagine. Their depredations have accelerated in the past 40 years, reaching a new plateau in the past two. It’s well past time to reverse the trend.

Jeff Perren is a freelance writer. Educated in philosophy and physics, the lure of writing soon outweighed science. He lives in the Pacific Northwest and blogs at Shaving Leviathan.

 

[a_majoor]

Well here is a very useful definition to keep in mind:

http://www.nationalreview.com/exchequer/247783/exchequer-vs-economist

I think it’s a pretty useful heuristic: If you’re not willing to have somebody hauled off at gunpoint over the project, then it’s probably not a legitimate concern of the state.

So look around and decide which government projects so important that you could justify armed force to carry out or complete.....



Then work to eliminate the rest.